Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Elon gets Twitter

Elon Musk is buying Twitter for $44 billion, using one of the biggest leveraged buyout deals in history to take the 16-year-old social media platform private. Simultaneously, Musk is raising a lot of questions about Twitter’s future and that of his broader empire. While Twitter shares closed way up, Tesla shares fell on the news. One issue is what Musk will do with Twitter’s efforts to corral hate speech, Covid-19 misinformation and election manipulation of the kind Russia allegedly attempted in 2016 and 2020? Which leads to another question: will Musk reinstate Donald Trump’s account, suspended shortly after his followers violently sought to block the transfer of American power on Jan. 6, 2021? Though not directly related to ongoing investigations of his actions that day, on Monday Trump was found in contempt of court for failing to respond to subpoenas in a New York investigation of his real estate company. The judge ordered the billionaire pay a fine of $10,000 a day. —Natasha Solo-Lyons

Bloomberg is tracking the coronavirus pandemic and the progress of global vaccination efforts.

The U.S. announced more than $700 million in additional military financing for Ukraine as defense officials said Russia faces a major depletion of its military hardware. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who with Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kyiv over the weekend, said Washington wants to see Russian forces ground down so they can’t repeat an invasion thought to have already killed thousands of Ukrainians. Austin said Washington wants Ukraine to remain a sovereign, democratic country and to be able to protect itself.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, with President Joe Biden earlier this month. Photographer: Chris Kleponis/CNP

Nevertheless, several rounds of international sanctions and waves of weapons shipments have failed to end Vladimir Putin’s war, now in its third month. Last week, Putin said Russian forces wouldn’t try to storm the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, where some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters and 1,000 civilians are trapped. Russia did however continue to bomb it throughout the Easter weekend. And on Monday, one of Putin’s aides again raised the specter of nuclear war.

The U.S., frustrated at Jakarta’s refusal to withdraw a G20 invitation to Putin, is among nations pressing Indonesia to include Ukraine as a guest at the November summit.

U.S. stocks rose in a late-day turnaround as dip-buyers jumped in ahead of a busy week for Big Tech earnings. The S&P 500 rallied back to end near the day’s highs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 climbed more than 1%. Here’s your markets wrap.  

Twitter headquarters in San Francisco  Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Nevertheless, the S&P 500 is about to drop sharply as investors struggle to find havens amid fear of a recession and aggressive tightening by the Federal Reserve, Morgan Stanley warned. “With defensive stocks now expensive and offering little absolute upside, the S&P 500 appears ready to join the ongoing bear market,” the bank’s strategists said Monday. 

Bitcoin seems to be stuck in a rut: Prices are flagging, online searches for the largest cryptocurrency and other digital assets have fallen off, fewer and fewer coins are changing hands and crypto-related funds are seeing massive outflows.  

The novel situation faced by Ketanji Brown Jackson, the federal appellate judge confirmed to a U.S. Supreme Court seat yet to be vacated, has been raising an interesting, if likely only theoretical question: What if retiring Associate Justice Stephen Breyer decides to unretire? 

Optimism abounds about the future of wind power, with a clean-energy boom powering robust growth in an industry that businesses and governments agree is key to slowing climate change. But there’s a big problem: Turbine makers are struggling to make a profit. “What I’m seeing,” said Ben Backwell, chief executive of trade group Global Wind Energy Council, “is a colossal market failure.”

The Block Island Wind Farm in the waters off Rhode Island. Photographer: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg

• China politburo under pressure to help economy as Covid-19 spreads.
• Energy-hungry Europe buys up supertanker-sized U.S. oil cargoes.
• Elliott wants a $2 billion-plus war chest for private equity deals.
• Bloomberg Opinion: Musk is wrong leader for Twitter’s vital mission.
• But the Tesla CEO says he wants his toughest critics to keep tweeting.
• Musk’s deal for the platform elevates him to media mogul status.
• Bloomberg Opinion: Workers are winning the return-to-office war.

For decades, the small group of companies that once comprised America’s private weather industry would repackage government data and sell it to newspapers and radio stations. But driven largely by the catastrophic effects of global warming, cities and towns are increasingly desperate for hyper-local weather the government doesn’t have. The demand has sprouted a crop of startups with AI-fueled tech they say can forecast by the minute and the city block. There are billions of dollars to be made now that climate change is making the weather more unpredictable and deadly.

Piles of damaged furniture on a flooded street after Hurricane Ida in Laplace, Louisiana, on Sept. 2, 2021. Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg

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