A big write-off could stimulate the U.S. economy — or maybe just reward those who don’t need any financial assistance

By Ben Holland and Alexandre Tanzi

Just a few years ago, writing off large chunks of the U.S.’s $1.7 trillion in student debt seemed like a fringe idea. In a few weeks’ time, it could be government policy.

Joe Biden ran on a promise of forgiving at least $10,000 in student debt per borrower. As president-elect he’s getting bombarded from all directions with advice on how to scale up that plan — or back away from it.

In Biden’s Democratic Party, many want him to cancel a bigger portion of the loans via executive order right after taking office this month. They say it’s a way to aid the economic recovery without getting bogged down in congressional wrangling. …

No matter how hard we try to defend ourselves, in cyberspace the attackers always have the advantage

By Joshua Brustein

The world has a way of reminding us of our own helplessness. The year 2020 has had more than its share of examples to choose among, but for those who prefer to direct their existential dread toward the inability of anyone to protect digital data, the recent revelation of one of the most significant cybersecurity attacks in history is an excellent place to start.

In the spring, hackers managed to insert malicious code into a software product from an IT provider called SolarWinds Corp., whose client list includes 300,000 institutions. About 18,000 of them were exposed when they downloaded a legitimate update from SolarWinds — the exact thing you’re supposed to do to keep your defenses fresh. The attackers spent months running freely through their victims’ networks before anyone noticed — harvesting secrets — and they may have been inserting vulnerabilities and doing who knows what else. The U.S. government and independent cybersecurity experts have tied the attack to hackers affiliated with the Russian government, and its victims include the U.S. departments of Commerce, State, and Treasury, Microsoft Corp., …

As it buys up medical practices, private equity is popularizing a favored Wall Street cost-cutting tactic — and stripping patients of rights

By Heather Perlberg

Last year, Jessie Harrell went to see her gynecologist for a routine appointment. She’d been seeing Dr. Tim Baird for 14 years, ever since she showed up at the hospital in labor five weeks early. He’d been on call that morning, and she’d been reassured by his calm demeanor, even as he delivered her first child via an emergency cesarean section.

But this time, right before Harrell’s visit, a staff member in Dr. Baird’s office in Jacksonville, Fla., called and asked her to watch a video on the medical group’s website. She clicked a link and saw an attractive actress in an immaculate office explaining a new policy. All of Dr. …

The U.S. and China pitch the rest of the world on very different visions of the web

By Alyza Sebenius

Almost a decade ago as vice president, Joe Biden believed that the internet was at an inflection point. In a 2011 speech he warned other countries that they wouldn’t be able to reap the internet’s economic benefits if they undermined its openness by imposing national-level censorship rules and other technical roadblocks. “There isn’t a separate economic internet, political internet, and social internet,” he said. “They are all one.”

When Biden becomes president in January, he’ll confront the reality that some key nations haven’t heeded his warning. National policies in various countries have reduced the range of globally shared websites and platforms while adding obstacles to online communication and commerce. Officials who served with Biden in the Obama administration expect that he will push the vision he laid out then, but some experts who track the internet believe it may already be too late. …

There were some bright spots in the midst of a devastating year for dining out

By Kate Krader

There’s no way to sugarcoat the impact of the pandemic virus on the restaurant industry.

In a Dec. 7 report, the National Restaurant Association said the industry was in “free fall,” with more than 110,000 restaurants closing since the start of Covid-19. Food-service revenue plunged an estimated $240 billion by the end of the year and restaurant staffing jobs fell 2 million below pre-pandemic levels, the NRA said.

But in desperate situations there are often silver linings. Chefs, restaurateurs, bartenders, and sommeliers across the country have shown the kind of creativity you might get if you mashed up Walt Disney with Steve Jobs. They’ve been tireless in rethinking the way restaurants can work from dynamic outdoor dining situations to take-away dinners and touchless service. …

The sudden exit of Timnit Gebru has aggravated concerns about whether the search giant is doing right by its AI researchers and its Black employees

By Dina Bass, Gerrit De Vynck, Shelly Banjo and Mark Bergen

Google has gotten itself into another management crisis. On Dec. 2, Timnit Gebru, an artificial intelligence researcher best known for showing how facial recognition algorithms are better at identifying White people than Black people, said she’d been fired. Gebru’s boss described her departure as a resignation, but both sides acknowledged the conflict centered on Google’s discomfort with a research paper Gebru planned to publish about ethical issues related to technology that underpins some of the company’s key products.

To date, over 2,300 Googlers and 3,700 others have signed onto a petition supporting Gebru. Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai sent an email on Dec. 9 apologizing to employees for how the company had handled her departure and promising to review the situation, saying it had “seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google.” …

Businesses in the area where Night of the Living Dead was filmed are staggering along on government stimulus but may collapse before more help arrives

By Shawn Donnan

This was supposed to have been a good year for zombies. At least that’s what Kevin Kriess, owner of the Living Dead Museum and Gift Shop in Evans City, Pa., thought. The business, not far from the cemetery where George Romero filmed the 1968 zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, was gearing up for an expansion. Kriess planned to open a second location at a mall a 45-minute drive away, where the sequel Dawn of the Dead was set. …

Webull offers free trades and has picked up users after outages at Robinhood this year

By Bloomberg News

Even in a year full of surprises on Wall Street, this one stands out: A Chinese-owned brokerage has quietly built one of the fastest-growing retail trading platforms in the U.S.

Webull, founded by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. alum Wang Anquan, has increased its roster of brokerage clients by about tenfold this year, to more than 2 million, by offering free stock trades with a slick online interface. While that’s still a fraction of the more than 13 million at Robinhood, the broker that popularized commission-free trading, Webull says it’s been peeling off users from its rival. The company has plans to pursue a big funding round from private U.S. …