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The Walt Disney Company has agreed to pay a $10 million civil penalty as part of a settlement to resolve allegations it violated child privacy laws, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. A federal court order in the case involving Disney Worldwide Services Inc and Disney Entertainment Operations LLC also bars Disney from operating on YouTube in a manner that violates the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act, the department said. The order requires Disney to create a program that will ensure it properly complies with the privacy law on YouTube in the future, it added. The law requires websites, apps, and other online services aimed at children under 13 to notify parents about what personal information they collect, and obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting such information “The Justice Department is firmly devoted to ensuring parents have a say in how their childrens information is collected and used, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said in a statement. Disney could not immediately be reached for a comment. The order finalizes a settlement reached in September in a case referred to the DOJ by the Federal Trade Commission. Ryan Patrick Jones, Doina Chiacu, and Dawn Chmielewski, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
The U.S. Federal Reserve agreed to cut interest rates at its December meeting only after a deeply nuanced debate about the risks facing the U.S. economy right now, according to minutes of the latest two-day session. Even some of those who supported the rate cut acknowledged “the decision was finely balanced or that they could have supported keeping the target range unchanged,” given the different risks facing the U.S. economy, according to the minutes released on Tuesday. In economic projections released after the December 9-10 meeting, six officials outright opposed a cut and two of that group dissented as voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee. “Most participants” ultimately supported a cut, with “some” arguing that it was an appropriate forward-looking strategy “that would help stabilize the labor market” after a recent slowdown in job creation. Others, however, “expressed concern that progress towards the committee’s 2% inflation objective had stalled.” “Some participants suggested that, under their economic outlooks, it would likely be appropriate to keep the target range unchanged for some time after a lowering of the range at this meeting,” the minutes said of a debate that saw officials dissent both in favor of tighter and looser monetary policy, an unusual outcome for the central bank that has now happened at two consecutive meetings. The quarter-point rate cut approved in December lowered the Fed’s benchmark overnight interest rate to a range of between 3.5% to 3.75%, the third consecutive move by the central bank as officials agreed that a slowdown in monthly job creation and rising unemployment warranted slightly less restrictive monetary policy. But as rates fell, and approached a neutral level that neither discourages nor encourages investment and spending, opinion at the Fed became more divided about just how much more to cut. New projections issued after the December meeting show only one rate cut expected next year, while language in the new policy statement indicated the Fed would likely remain on hold for now until new data shows that either inflation is again falling or unemployment is rising more than anticipated. The lack of official data during the 43-day government shutdown, a gap in information still not fully filled, continued to shape the outlook and policymakers’ views about how to manage risk. Some of those either opposed or skeptical of the most recent cut “suggested that the arrival of a considerable amount of labor market and inflation data over the coming intermeeting period would be helpful on making judgments about whether a rate reduction was warranted.” The data catch-up continues, with jobs and consumer price information for December coming on January 9 and January 13, back to the normal release schedule. The Fed next meets on January 27-28, with investors currently expecting the central bank to leave its benchmark rate unchanged. Howard Schneider, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
The White House cannot lapse in its funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal district court judge ruled on Tuesday, only days before funds at the bureau would have likely run out and the consumer finance agency would have no money to pay its employees. Judge Amy Berman ruled that the CFPB should continue to get its funds from the Federal Reserve, despite the Fed operating at a loss, and that the White House’s new legal argument about how the CFPB gets its funds is not valid. At the heart of this case is whether Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s budget director and the acting director of the CFPB, can effectively shut down the agency and lay off all of the bureau’s employees. The CFPB has largely been inoperable since President Trump has sworn into office nearly a year ago. Its employees are mostly forbidden from doing any work, and most of the bureau’s operations this year have been to unwind the work it did under President Biden and even under Trump’s first term. Vought himself has made comments where he has made it clear that his intention is to effectively shut down the CFPB. The White House earlier this year issued a reduction in force for the CFPB, which would have furloughed or laid off much of the bureau. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the workers at the CFPB, has been mostly successful in court to stop the mass layoffs and furloughs. The union sued Vought earlier this year and won a preliminary injunction stopping the layoffs while the union’s case continues through the legal process. In recent weeks, the White House has used a new line of argument to potentially get around the court’s injunction. The argument is that the Federal Reserve has no combined earnings at the moment to fund the CFPBs operations. The CFPB gets its funding from the Fed through expected quarterly payments. The Federal Reserve has been operating at a paper loss since 2022 as a result of the central bank trying to combat inflation, the first time in the Fed’s entire history its been operating at a loss. The Fed holds bonds on its balance sheet from a period of low interest rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, but currently has to pay out higher interest rates to banks who hold their deposits at the central bank. The Fed has been recording a deferred asset on its balance sheet which it expects will be paid down in the next few years as the low interest bonds mature off the Fed’s balance sheet. Because of this loss on paper, the White House has argued there are no combined earnings for the CFPB to draw on. The CFPB has operated since 2011, including under President Trumps first term, drawing on the Feds operating budget. White House lawyers sent a notice to the court in early November, where they argued that the CFPB would run out of appropriations in early 2026, using the combined earnings argument, and does not expect to get any additional appropriations from Congress. This combined earnings legal argument is not entirely new. It has floated in conservative legal circles going back to when the Federal Reserve started operating at a loss. The Office of Legal Counsel, which acts as the government’s legal advisors, adopted this legal theory in a memo on November 7. However, this idea has never been tested in court. In her opinion, Berman said the OLC and Vought were using this legal theory to get around the court’s injunction instead of allowing the case to be decided on merits. A trial on whether the CFPB employees’ union can sue Vought over the layoffs is currently scheduled for February 2026. It appears that defendants new understanding of combined earnings is an unsupported and transparent attempt to starve the CPFB of funding and yet another attempt to achieve the very end the Courts injunction was put in place to prevent,” Berman wrote in an opinion. Were very pleased that the court made clear what should have been obvious: Vought cant justify abandoning the agencys obligations or violating a court order by manufacturing a lack of funding, said Jennifer Bennett of Gupta Wessler LLP, who is representing the CFPB employees in the case. A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Berman’s opinion. Ken Sweet, AP business writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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