Bloomberg

[Commentary] The government's insistence on bringing such a weak lawsuit [AT&T/Time Warner] does not bode well for the immediate future of antitrust. There are going to be plenty of mergers over the next few years that will have far more serious consequences than the AT&T-Time Warner deal. Having been slapped down in this lawsuit, the Justice Department is unlikely to be willing to go after those worthier targets, even when they raise important issues of innovation and consumer choice.

Tech companies know that they have a race problem. But their efforts to address it have so far yielded little. Facebook Inc. says that 3 percent of its U.S. workforce is black, up from 2 percent in 2014, while black workers in technical roles stagnated at 1 percent. Only 2 percent of Google's workers are black, a figure that has remained static for the past three years. The Alphabet inc unit's efforts to increase that have sparked an internal backlash, with one former employee suing because of perceived discrimination against white and male candidates. Among 8 of the largest U.S.

Justice Department Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim, who is leading a review of the proposed $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile US with Sprint, says the elimination of one major competitor in wireless service isn’t necessarily a deal killer. The law and market economics will be the crucial factors, Delrahim said. “I don’t think there’s any magical number that I’m smart enough to glean about any single market,” he said. 

Seattle (WA) levied an annual tax of about $50 million on big companies recently to help solve the city's homeless problem. The tax was watered down from the original proposal but it was controversial and pitted the city against its most powerful corporate resident, Amazon.com. Now the action moves to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.

A group of journalists protesting outside the offices of a New York City hedge fund recently shined a light on a little-known fact about the state of the local American newspaper: Behind the scenes, financial firms often hold all the cards. Investors like Alden Global Capital LLC and Fortress Investment Group LLC have acquired ownership stakes in newspapers that have struggled to adapt in an online world, from the Denver Post to the Providence Journal. Funds have brought their cost-cutting know-how to help restructure several newspaper chains in heavy debt after the 2008 financial crisis.

A proposed rule change before the Federal Communications Commission for spectrum licenses in the 3.5 GHz band presents a clear choice between the needs of the few and the needs of the many—though with some complications.  The FCC is on the cusp of making a decision about a spectrum auction that has pitted the nation’s largest wireless carriers against a broad and eclectic coalition of shippers, railroads, ports, electric companies, manufacturers, and rural internet service providers.