The Senate voted 84-15 on Tuesday to confirm Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo to lead the Commerce Department.

Why it matters: The agency promotes U.S. industry, oversees the Census Bureau, plays a key role in the government's study of climate change through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and evaluates emerging technology through the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Between the lines: Republican objections to her nomination included her non-committal stance about keeping Huawei on the Commerce Department's "entity list," which blocks U.S. companies from providing the Chinese telecom giant with chips, software, and other components due to national security concerns.

• Raimondo told the Senate Commerce Committee during her confirmation hearing that she would consult Congress and "review the policy."
• She later said in written answers to the committee: "I currently have no reason to believe that entities on those lists should not be there."

Background: Raimondo, 49, is a former chair of the Democratic Governor’s Association and Rhodes scholar who co-founded a venture capital firm in Rhode Island earlier in her career.

• She clashed with unions as she worked to reform Rhode Island’s public employee pension plans and served as a national co-chair for Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign before endorsing Biden, Axios' Hans Nichols reports.
• Raimondo is Biden's 12th Cabinet nominee to be confirmed by the Senate. She will resign as Rhode Island governor this week, paving the way for Lt. Gov. Daniel J. McKee to replace her for the remaining two years of the term.

President Trump's haphazard war on Chinese tech has left the Biden administration with a raft of unfinished business involving efforts to restrict Chinese firms and products in U.S. markets.

Why it matters: The Chinese and American tech industries are joined at the hip in many ways, and that interdependence has shaped decades of prosperity. But now security concerns and economic rivalries are wrenching them apart.

Here's where things stand between the U.S. and several key Chinese tech powerhouses:

Xiaomi

• In the waning days of the Trump administration, the Defense Department added Chinese phone maker Xiaomi to its a list of companies with ties to the Chinese military, potentially requiring US investors to sell their stake in the company. Xiaomi denies it is owned or controlled by the military.
• Why it matters: Xiaomi doesn’t sell phones in the U.S., but it does have a significant amount of investment from U.S. funds — and also has long-term ambitions of doing more U.S. business.

SMIC

• China’s largest chip foundry was added to the so-called entity list in late December, notably limiting the firm's access to key gear from the U.S., especially equipment used in the newest generation of semiconductors.
• Why it matters: Much of the gear used to turn silicon wafers into chips is made by U.S. companies like Applied Materials. However, the U.S. move against SMIC also hurts global chipmaking capacity during a time of significant shortage.

Huawei

• The Chinese telecom giant remains the tech company most in U.S. crosshairs, facing actions and restrictions from a range of government entities, including the Justice Department, Commerce Department and FCC.
• Huawei is challenging many of these actions in court, including in a recent suit aimed at reversing FCC-imposed restrictions.
• Why it matters: Huawei is one of a handful of companies around the world that make the gear needed for 5G and other cellular networks.
• The company has been particularly successful in developing countries, partly because its equipment often sells for far less than that from rivals such as Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung.
• Huawei has also been a global leader in smartphones, though its ability to compete outside China has been severely curtailed by its lack of access to Google's Android services and other U.S.-developed technology.

TikTok

• Trump's effort to force a sale of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app by imposing a U.S. ban was his noisiest campaign against a Chinese company. But several key components of the effort ran aground in court, and a deadline for a sale came and went with TikTok still in limbo.
• Officials earlier this month said the Biden administration had paused talks initiated under Trump to sell TikTok's U.S. operations to an investor group that included Oracle and Walmart.
• Why it matters: Some lawmakers have suggested Beijing could force TikTok to hand over Americans' data or otherwise somehow exploit the app for spying or hacking purposes.
• The Trump administration didn't turn up any evidence of wrongdoing in making the case that TikTok should be banned, but suggested the risk alone justified its moves.

WeChat

• When Trump issued his order against TikTok, he paired it with a ban on WeChat, the chat app used globally by Chinese speakers. But that bid, too, got derailed in court.
• In his final weeks in office, Trump then sought to ban WeChat Pay from the U.S., together with a number of other Chinese-owned payment platforms.
• Why it matters: WeChat is widely used not only by people in China but among the global Chinese diaspora. Banning it could cut off a critical communications link between people around the world and their relatives and friends in China.

Between the lines: China is running into growing pains of its own in the push to own the future of technology.

• SMIC, for instance, was struggling to deliver on ambitious expansion and production goals even before facing the Trump administration's restrictions.
• Several leading Chinese tech executives have run afoul of Beijing.
• The Chinese government has also embarked on an antitrust crackdown that could clip several domestic tech giants' wings.

The bottom line: The Biden administration now has to sort out which Trump initiatives to drop — because they were botched, thrown out in court or self-defeating — and which can still serve the U.S.'s long-term goals of competing with China and limiting Chinese security threats.

Venture capital firms, formed to invest in startups, are increasingly becoming sponsors of SPACs, blank-check companies that bring later-stage businesses into the public markets. It's significant strategy creep, but so far there hasn't been much opposition from venture capital fund investors, known as limited partners.

Be smart: SPACs are similar to VC in spirit and skills, which is how firms are selling it to their own investors.

The big picture: More than a dozen VC firms have formed SPACs, with many more in the pipeline.

• Among them are Khosla Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Dragoneer, Tribe Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Greycroft, Foundry Group, Ribbit Capital and Lux Capital.

What they’re saying: “This is a growth investment for the fund, it happens to be done in a different way,” says Lux Capital managing partner Peter Hebert. “It’s just a financing product in our view.”

Between the lines: Limited partners seem mostly at ease.

• “This is just another tool in their toolbox,” explains an investor whose portfolio includes three VC firms that have formed SPACs.
• "They're able to back founders from the seed stage to the public markets now, as efficiently as possible," another LP offers, referring to it as a "full-stack" approach.

Yes, but: LPs who invest exclusively in early-stage VC funds aren’t quite as jazzed, believing it reflects diverted focus. Or, as one tells Axios: “None of my early stage funds better bring that noise!"

Line of demarcation: Limited partner sentiment is impacted, at least in part, by whether they get to participate (i.e. aligned interests).

• In some cases, the VC firm uses fund capital, meaning that gains or losses are shared with limited partners.
• In some cases, such as Thayer Ventures, limited partners are offered co-investment opportunities in the SPAC.
• But, in some cases, the SPAC is either separate from fund LPs, or even a side hustle by individual partners in a fund.

The bottom line: SPAC performance will ultimately dictate how long LPs stay aboard the train.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev apologized at a House hearing Thursday for the confusion caused by his platform's decision to restrict trading of certain "meme stocks," while admitting he did not handle the situation perfectly.

Yes, but: Tenev later admitted the company made mistakes, but could not spell out what those mistakes were — before Congress moved on to the next question.

Key exchange:

• Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.): "You admitted to making mistakes. Specifically what mistakes, did you make?"
• Tenev: "I admit to always improving. And certainly ... we're not going to be perfect. And we want to improve and make sure that we don't make the same mistakes twice."
• Dean: "But what are those mistakes? That's what we're here to learn about."

Why it matters: The wild stretch of Reddit-fueled trading last month has resulted in intense scrutiny of the power of platforms like Robinhood, short-selling hedge funds and the stock market's plumbing.

• Citadel's Ken Griffin said the firm was "absolutely not" in contact with Robinhood over its decision to limit users' ability to buy those meme stocks.
• Keith Gill (aka "Roaring Kitty"), hedge fund manager Gabe Plotkin and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman received considerably less attention from lawmakers.

The big picture: Regulators are scrutinizing what happened during the GameStop saga and whether there was wrongdoing.

• But there was no SEC representation at Thursday's hearing because Biden's pick to lead the agency has yet to be confirmed, said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).

Between the lines: Jennifer Schulp, director of Financial Regulation Studies at the Cato Institute, said she's seen "very little that would meet a test for [market] manipulation," but that doesn't mean the SEC shouldn't take a deeper look.

What to watch: Waters, who chairs the committee, says there will be "probably two more" hearings related to the GameStop saga.

The bottom line: The highly anticipated hearing revealed few new details about last month's "meme stock" phenomenon that shocked the world.

• There's still no definitive clue whether there will be any regulatory changes in response.

It's GameStop hearing day on Capitol Hill, so here's a drinking game you can play while you tune in to C-SPAN: Take a drink any time any of the above terms is mentioned.

Key term explainers:

• Payment for order flow
• Short-selling
• Settlement times

The oddest part of the Robinhood position on short-selling is the part where the company claims that problems with shorting could "potentially" be avoided by implementing "changes to the stock settlement process."

Why it matters: Currently, stock trades are settled on a T+2 basis — two days after the trade happens, the buyer transfers money to the seller.

• Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev — who is testifying Thursday before the House Financial Services Committee — blames the T+2 system for the fact that he was forced to curtail trade in GameStop stock last month. He has advocated for real-time settlement, where you pay for stock the second that you buy it.

Reality check: Tenev's stated aim in moving from T+2 to real-time settlement is to reduce the amount of collateral he would need to hold at DTCC, the central clearinghouse. But such a move would be far more likely to vastly increase his collateral requirements.

• As the DTCC explains, the current T+2 system only requires brokerages like Robinhood to put up the net amount of money they owe at the end of the day. Since on most days in most stocks the amount of purchases is very similar to the amount of sales, the total transferred can be surprisingly small.
• Real-time settlement, by contrast, would require that "all transactions in the U.S. market be funded on a transaction-by-transaction basis, thus losing the liquidity and risk-mitigating benefits of today’s netting features."
• The total number of transactions needing to be settled would explode, and therefore the number of failed transactions — including failed short-selling transactions — would also soar. Collateral requirements would skyrocket.

The bottom line: It makes a certain amount of sense to move from T+2 to T+1 or even T+0.5, where trades are settled on the same day that they're made. Those changes would have negligible effects on the DTCC's collateral requirements.

• Moving to real-time settlement, however, is utterly unrealistic.

Go deeper:

• Explaining GameStop hearing terms: Payment for order flow
• Explaining GameStop hearing terms: Short-selling

The reason that GameStop stock rose so sharply last month was, paradoxically, because so many people had bet that it was going down.

Why it matters: That kind of bet — known as short-selling — is often considered distasteful, or worse.

Driving the news: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev set the tone for Thursday's hearing by tweeting this week that "it should not be possible to short sell more shares than are out there."

• The blog post he linked to subsequently had to be edited to admit that "as long as there is short selling, there will always be a chance that short sellers can short more shares than there are outstanding."

Between the lines: Short-selling involves borrowing a share from one person and selling it to someone else. Since both people then own the stock, the process effectively increases the gross number of shares outstanding, while keeping the net number of shares constant (since the person shorting the stock effectively owns -1 shares.)

• This process is normally harmless, and helps with liquidity and price discovery.
• Tenev says in his Congressional testimony that Robinhood "does not allow short selling."
• He doesn't mention that he's happy to facilitate billions of dollars' worth of trades in put options, none of which would be possible without other market participants hedging those options by shorting stocks.

By raising the specter of "naked shorts," and even raising the question of whether short selling should be allowed at all, Tenev perpetuates the fallacy that when a stock has a large short interest of more than the free float, that's evidence of nefarious activity or market manipulation.

The bottom line: Short selling is a time-honored, much maligned, and little understood part of the financial markets. More famous CEOs than Tenev — including Elon Musk — have railed against it, but there's no political consensus to try to curb it.

Go deeper:

• Explaining GameStop hearing terms: Payment for order flow
• Explaining GameStop hearing terms: Settlement times

Payment for order flow, or PFOF, sits at or near the top of the list of people's complaints about market structure.

The big picture: The House Financial Services Committee is holding a hearing on Thursday about the trading mania that drove a group of "meme stocks" — most notably, GameStop — to meteoric heights. PFOF is one of the three most important policy issues that are likely to arise during the hearing.

What to know: Every stock trade involves a buyer and a seller. If you're a large institutional investor, your ideal counterparty is a small retail investor who is unlikely to have better information than you do.

• As retail trading increases, it creates competition for that order flow among high-frequency traders (HFTs), all of whom want to take the other side of the retail trade.
• That competition takes the form of so-called "price improvement" — better prices than seen on the official stock market exchanges — which in turn gets split between retail investors and their brokers. The broker's slice is the notorious PFOF.

Driving the news: Public, one of the smaller app-based brokerages, announced this week that it had stopped sending its order flow to HFTs in return for PFOF. Instead, it's sending those orders directly to exchanges, even though doing so, the company admits, is more expensive.

• Normally, if orders are sent directly to exchanges, there's no price improvement at all. But some exchanges, including NYSE, Nasdaq, and BATS, have "retail liquidity programs" where HFTs can once again compete to offer price improvement for what they assume are low-information trades.
• It's not clear that trading with HFTs via retail liquidity programs will end up giving customers better prices than the status quo of going to the HFTs directly.

How it works: Trades on Public will still be free, but customers will be able to add an optional tip of no more than 5% of the value of the trade.

• When customers do tip, the tip will almost certainly be substantially larger than the amount that Public used to receive in PFOF. That was about 0.1 cents per share, for S&P 500 stocks — so a $1,300 order to buy 10 shares of Apple would have netted Public about 1 cent.
• The tip increment on that $1,300 order will start at $1 — 100 times larger than the old PFOF payment. The maximum tip of $65 would be 6,500 times more than the standard payment that Public would previously have received.

The bottom line: The real problem with PFOF is not that it costs customers a lot of money. Rather, it's that it gives brokerages like Robinhood an incentive to maximize the amount that their customers trade, even if that much trading is not in those customers' best interests.

• The best way to disincentivize trades is to charge for them. Thanks to Robinhood, however, $0 trading commissions are here to stay — even (especially) for highly-risky options trades.

Go deeper:

• Explaining GameStop hearing terms: Short-selling
• Explaining GameStop hearing terms: Settlement times

Business is also feeling the bite from the Texas winter storm, with a number of chipmakers forced to suspend production.

Why it matters: Even a brief shutdown of chip production in Texas could exacerbate the global chip shortage that's already reducing production of everything from cars to computers.

Driving the news:

• Samsung Semiconductor said it has "gradually halted its operations" in Austin after being ordered to do so by local power utilities.
• NXP Semiconductor, which makes chips for cars, among other uses, has also halted production at two Austin-area plants at the insistence of local utilities.

What they're saying: Once power comes back, Samsung plans to resume production immediately, while NXP will do an impact assessment and determine when it can come fully back online, company representatives told Axios.

Meanwhile: The chip industry has been pushing Congress to fully fund federal investment in the U.S. chip industry that recent defense legislation authorized.

• A variety of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and auto and medical device trade associations, are signing onto a letter being sent today to President Biden to back this federal investment.
• The U.S. once accounted for 37% of global chip production but has seen its share fall to 12% as of last year.

Go deeper:

• Why Intel's troubles should concern us all
• Computer chips are still "Made in USA"

Walmart on Thursday said it is raising wages for approximately 425,000 employees to somewhere between $13–$19 an hour following a strong Q4.

Why it matters: The pay boost puts about half of all Walmart employees at $15 an hour or above, per Yahoo Finance.

• The move from the nation's largest private employer comes while Congress grapples over whether to include a $15 minimum wage in the next round of stimulus. President Biden supports the increase.
• The average wage for Walmart's workers will now come out to $15.25 an hour. The company-wide minimum wage is $11 an hour.
• The pay increases will take effect on March 13.

What they're saying: "We completed a strong year and a strong Q4 thanks to our amazing associates. They stepped up to serve our customers and members exceptionally well during a busy holiday period in the midst of a pandemic," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in a statement.

Retail sales were the big story on Wednesday, but the January readings of U.S. industrial production and producer prices also provided important insights into the economy.

The big picture: Industrial production rose by 0.9% month over month, following a downwardly revised 1.3% gain in December, and is rapidly approaching levels seen before the pandemic.

• However, the growth in production was well below the growth in retail sales, suggesting that either the increase is coming entirely from inventory reductions or exports.
• The pickup in U.S. imports and Chinese exports in recent months suggests it is the latter, and combined with supply constraints and bottlenecks in Asia could weigh on overall U.S. growth.
• U.S. capacity utilization has bounced back from its pandemic lows but is still at its lowest rate since February 2017.

The Producer Price Index rose 1.3% last month over December, the biggest gain since December 2009 when the government revamped the series. Producer prices rose 1.7% over January 2020 — strongly beating expectations of a 0.4% month-over-month gain and 0.9% annual gain.

Be smart: Taken together, the data tell a story of demand returning but supply not quite keeping up, meaning prices rise.

January's U.S. retail sales report showed a 5.3% gain, the third-largest month-over-month increase on record, trailing only the booming numbers seen in June and July, as states opened up after nationwide shutdowns because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Between the lines: January's big number was more impressive because it was 7.4% higher than in January 2020, whereas on a year-over-year basis both June and July's reports were below their commensurate 2020 figures.

Why it matters: The blowout reading — retail sales have averaged a 0.3% month-over-month gain over the life of the report and economists had predicted a 1.1% rise — shows that U.S. consumers were incredibly active in January and that they largely spent rather than saved their stimulus checks.

• That flew in the face of the significant increase in Americans' savings rates last year and surveys that showed more people would put their checks away or use them to pay down debt than spend them.

The big picture: The retail sales report also suggests that Americans may be in better financial shape than previously believed and have more confidence in the economy — or in the government to deliver more benefits.

• "The 2021 growth numbers have significant upside potential," Steven Ricchiuto, U.S. chief economist at Mizuho Securities USA, said in a note to clients.
• "Consensus GDP forecasts for 2021 were already at 2.9% and 4.9% for Q1 and the full year, respectively, and street forecasters are already upgrading their growth forecasts on this major surprise print. We will be upgrading our own GDP forecast, too."

Why you'll hear about this again: Goldman Sachs economists wasted no time upgrading their forecast, predicting the U.S. economy will grow 7% this year with the unemployment rate falling to 4.1% and core PCE inflation rising to 1.85% by year-end.

• The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker on Wednesday predicted the economy will grow at a 9.5% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the first quarter, up from a 4.5% estimate a week ago.

Yes, but: The report could pour cold water on some policymakers' appetites for another major fiscal spending package, which many argue is necessary to support the economy.

• "These numbers suggest the current fiscal policy setting is already over-calibrated, and the Biden proposal currently being debated is at least double current policy," Ricchiuto argued.
• "While the labor market and certain sectors of the economy are being held back by COVID and related government restrictions, overall, the spending data does not support the notion of an economy suffering from insufficient aggregate demand as we typically understand it."
• "The economy is suffering from an acute COVID problem, not a general demand problem."

The world's debt-to-GDP ratio rose to 356% in 2020, a new report from the Institute of International Finance finds, up 35 percentage points from where it stood in 2019, as countries saw their economies shrink and issued an ocean of debt to stay afloat.

Why it matters: The increase brings numerous countries, including the U.S., to extreme debt levels, well beyond what economists have called untenable in the past.

• Nonfinancial private sector debt alone now makes up 165% of the entire world's economic output.

What they're saying: "The upswing was well beyond the rise seen during the 2008 global financial crisis," IIF economists said in the report.

• "Back in 2008 and 2009, the increase in global debt ratio was limited to 10 percentage points and 15 percentage points, respectively."

By the numbers: Global debt increased to $281 trillion last year, with total private and public sector debt rising by $24 trillion in the 61 countries IIF follows.

• That rise accounts for more than a quarter of the $88 trillion increase in debt that has been accumulated over the past decade.
• Government debt accounts for 105% of global GDP, up from 88% in 2019, rising by $12 trillion in 2020 or nearly triple its $4.3 trillion increase in 2019.
• Debt in the financial sector rose by more than 5 percentage points to 86% of GDP in 2020. This was the largest increase since 2007 and the first annual increase since 2016.

Why the debt matters: While worries about significantly pushing up inflation and borrowing costs have not come to pass, slow growth and diminishing returns have, and the world's already high debt levels look to be inhibiting economic growth and threaten to hold back a full recovery from the pandemic in the long run.

• Further, almost all of the debt issued in 2020 was to deal with present circumstances rather than to invest in forward-looking projects or growth, making future investments in such projects more difficult and potentially more costly.

Where it stands: The CBO projected U.S. GDP growth over the next 10 years will be largely below 2% (with the notable exclusion of 2021), and that annual budget deficits will increase.

• The federal debt is set to exceed the size of the economy this year for only the second time since the end of World War II and grow to 107% of GDP by 2031.
• That projection was made without including President Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

There's little consensus about what went wrong, if anything, during the trading mania that drove a group of "meme stocks" to meteoric heights — and those tensions could animate today's GameStop-centered Congressional hearing.

Why it matters: What went wrong and who's to blame — short-sellers, Robinhood, Reddit daytraders, etc. — depends on whom you ask. Any of the witnesses set to appear could be targeted, and there's not much clarity about what direction Congress might go in response.

• "What went wrong depends on where you sit," Larry Tabb, head of market structure at Bloomberg Intelligence, tells Axios.

Where it stands: Regulators — and reportedly the Justice Department — are looking into whether anything unlawful happened in the wild days of trading that caused GameStop's stock to surge as much as 2,000% before falling back down to earth.

What to watch: Key sticking points for lawmakers include payments for directing trades to the likes of Citadel Securities, the length of trade settlements, market manipulation (on-and-off Reddit), and the rise of platforms that make it easy to trade.

A sign of the tension: "The Robinhood interface should not be providing visual rewards for day trading," referring to the confetti that appears when you make your first trade, Rep. Brad Sherman (D, Calif.), a member of the Financial Services Committee, which is holding today's hearing, tells Axios.

• Sherman adds: "There's been a stick it to the man idea here, and if you want to stick it to the short sellers then come to us with proposals on how to limit short selling. Don't buy a stock for more than you think it's worth."

The bottom line: The meme-stock phenomenon is over, for now. The next big question is whether the hearing will lead to legislation, and experts say that's unlikely.

• "We need to listen to determine if there were situations where existing rules and regulations failed — and then pursue aggressively ... but it may turn out that the system worked as designed," Rep. Frank Lucas (R, Okla.), another member of the panel, tells Axios.

Michigan is poised to enact the nation's most lenient "expungement" law, loosening the criteria for having a crime erased from one's record — and other states may soon follow suit.

Why it matters: In cities like Detroit, where a third of residents have felony or misdemeanor convictions that make it harder to get a job or rent a house, expungement paves the way to a higher income, better life prospects, and the joy of enhanced dignity.

Driving the news: Starting in April, Michigan's expungement rules will be generously expanded, meaning a lot more people with criminal records will qualify.

• People will be able to expunge "up to three felonies and an unlimited number of misdemeanors" from their records," per the Detroit Free Press.
• Two "assaultive" crimes will be allowed, as well as a wide number of traffic and marijuana-related offenses.
• Under a "one bad night" rule, multiple felonies or misdemeanors stemming from the same 24 hours can count as a single conviction.

"This is more than a criminal justice issue — this is an economic issue," Carrie Jones, senior advisor to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and top point person for his Project Clean Slate initiative, tells Axios. "This restores people's ability to find jobs, housing — I mean, it just impacts so many aspects of people's lives."

What's next: By 2023, Michigan's expungement system will be automated, with misdemeanors automatically cleared seven years after sentencing and felonies after 10 years. 

The big picture: Other state legislatures — like Virginia's, Mississippi's and Florida's — are debating measures that would broaden expungement rules.

• The bills have bipartisan support (though that doesn't ensure they'll pass).
• Some are aimed at automating the expungement process, the way Michigan is doing — the ultimate goal of criminal justice reform advocates.
• Code for America, a nonprofit that's pushing for automated expungement nationally, says one in three Americans has a criminal record that shows up on routine background checks, and nearly half of U.S. kids have at least one parent with a record.

What they're saying: Jansen Owen, a Republican state representative in Mississippi, sponsored the legislation there — which applies to nonviolent offenders only — and said it "targets those people who went through a span of their life where they made a lot of wrong decisions," per AP.

• "Somebody in their 20s who got a drug conviction at 22, 24, 27 — and now they’re 50 and they go to church and they want a job," he said.
• "They want their kids to not see that they have this mark on them."

How it works: Detroit's Project Clean Slate, begun in 2016 at the behest of Duggan, employs staff attorneys who handled 300 convictions last year — and are seeing a surge in applications as a result of the new Michigan law.

• Crimes that can't be expunged include murder, carjacking, kidnapping, and criminal sexual assault.
• The project — which acts as a sort of one-stop-shop for expungement — is seen as a role model: "We've been contacted by cities all over the state and country, looking to implement a program like ours," Stephani LaBelle, the lead attorney for Project Clean Slate, tells Axios.

Rose Gill of Bloomberg Associates, which serves as a pro bono consultant to Project Clean Slate, says expungement is "trending as a tool for helping people become more productive in society."

• "It's trending away from, 'Oh we shouldn't be expunging criminal records because those are bad folks and they should just continue to have those records.'"

The bottom line: A University of Michigan study found that most people eligible for expungement don't apply for it — only 6.5% — but that people who do get their criminal records wiped tend to have "extremely low subsequent crime rates, comparing favorably to the general population."

• They also see their wages rise by 22% on average within two years.

When the Australian government told tech platforms they had to start paying publishers for the headlines and links that fill their users' posts, Google caved but Facebook walked.

Why it matters: These companies' moves Wednesday — as Google struck a deal with News Corp to evade Australia's forthcoming rules, while Facebook essentially barred news content there — could shape how news companies are compensated for their work online for years to come.

Driving the news: Facebook said it will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content. It will also block links to Australian publishers for its users around the globe.

• The move came hours after Google announced it struck a multiyear agreement with News Corp, the largest owner of newspapers by circulation in Australia, to pay for its content, essentially skirting the law. Google has struck similar deals with several Australian publishers in the past week.

Catch up quick: These efforts are happening in response to the new law, expected to pass imminently, forcing Google and Facebook to pay Australian news publishers for content, including headlines and links, via terms set by a third party.

• Lawmakers said they would avoid passing the measure if Google and Facebook reached payment terms with Australian news publishers on their own.
• Google's deals will allow it to fulfill those conditions.

The big picture: Google and Facebook's opposing decisions set a precedent for how they may handle other global efforts to force them to pay news publishers.

• Restricting people from sharing articles on their News Feeds cuts into Facebook's business far less than Google would be affected if it had to stop Australians from using its search engine, the primary vehicle for sharing links on its platform.
• Facebook has been trying to reduce the amount of news content shared from publishers on its platform, anyway, in an effort to make the social network more intimate. More recently, it said it would try to reduce the amount of political news on its feed.

Be smart: News Corp, the global publishing giant run by Rupert Murdoch, has been aggressively lobbying in favor of the Australian law for years, as it owns a sizable portion of the newspaper market in the country. Google's decision to strike these deals at the last minute marks a huge victory for Murdoch's lobbying campaign.

What to watch: Countries around the world are eyeing ways to force tech companies to pay publishers. In the U.S., Australia’s efforts have caught the attention of some members of Congress, according to sources in the publishing industry.

The other side: Online platforms have long maintained that publishers voluntarily provide the headlines, images and links that users share on social media — and that such sharing serves the publishers' interest, since some users will click through to publishers' own pages.

• Google and Facebook take particular issue with the arbitration clause in Australia's code, under which a government-appointed panel sets the payout rate if the parties can't reach a deal.
• Sources say that the tech giants worry that involving third-party arbitrators could help publishers win unreasonable rates.

Go deeper:

• Tech coughs up money for news as regulatory threats loom
• Facebook to restrict users from sharing news in Australia
• Google strikes 11th hour deals with Australian publishers to avoid new law

Players central to the GameStop market bonanza will call on Congress to shorten the time required for stock trades to settle, according to testimonies released ahead of their appearances at a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

Why it matters: A typically obscure part of stock trading is set to be among the issues at the forefront — as Robinhood and others look to deflect the anger that stemmed from the Reddit-fueled stock frenzy.

What they're saying: Billionaire Ken Griffin will testify that there should only be one day between when a trade is executed and when it is settled — rather than the two business days it currently takes.

• Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev will go further, calling for trades to be settled in real-time.
• This would have allowed the company "to better react to periods of increased volatility in the markets without restricting the purchasing of securities," Tenev will claim to lawmakers.

Flashback: Tenev has said the sharp jump in the amount of cash required to post while the trades settled caused it to curb trading on its platform — a move that sparked anger from users and lawmakers.

Griffin, who owns Citadel Securities, will also defend the firm's outsized role in carrying out the stock market trades made on Robinhood's platform and elsewhere.

• "When others were unable or unwilling to handle the heavy volumes, Citadel Securities stepped up," Griffin will say.
• He will note the company executed 7.4 billion shares at the height of the trading mania on behalf of retail investors in one day — more than the average daily volume for the entire equities market in 2019.

Of note: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, who's also set to testify, will defend r/WallStreetBets — the community that served as ground-zero for "meme stock" posts.

• Huffman says group activity "was well within normal parameters," and the group was not infiltrated by bots, foreign agents or bad actors.
• Reddit trader Keith Gill will tell Congress the idea he used social media to "promote GameStop stock to unwitting investors is preposterous."

Gabe Plotkin, CEO of Melvin Capital — a hedge fund targeted on r/WallStreetBets for its short position in GameStop — will say he was "personally humbled" by the efforts that drove up the stock price, while emphasizing the antisemitic language directed toward him.

• Per his testimony, Melvin closed out its GameStop short after six years last month. It received a cash infusion from Griffin-led hedge fund Citadel (and Point72) after suffering heavy losses.

Jennifer Schulp, a former official at financial regulator FINRA, will testify that the wild trading "did not present a systemic risk to the functioning of our markets."

• Schulp, who's currently with the Cato Institute, will also say that regulatory changes in response to the episode are likely unnecessary "in light of the minimal impact on the market's function."

Go deeper: Read their testimonies...

• Vlad Tenev, Robinhood CEO
• Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO
• Gabe Plotkin, Melvin Capital CEO
• Keith Gill aka Roaring Kitty and Deep F---ing Value
• Ken Griffin, Citadel CEO
• Jennifer Schulp, Cato Institute

Companies are focusing on health security for returning workforces.

Why it matters: It's becoming clear that the novel coronavirus will be with us in some form for months or even years, which means companies need to invest in tools that can manage the biological safety of their workplaces.

What's happening: With COVID-19 cases declining and the pace of vaccinations rising, it's reasonable to expect that more workers will return to offices in the months ahead.

• But a return to normalcy is a long way off, and may never fully arrive — the Wall Street Journal reported this week that many companies are pushing return dates to September or beyond.

Be smart: Whenever workers return in some fashion to the office, they'll likely be greeted by systems designed to manage crowding and facilitate contact tracing in an effort to stem any potential outbreaks.

• More than 70 companies are now using the consulting firm PwC's Check-In, a smartphone-based system to screen workers for symptoms before they come to the office, as well as automated contact tracing that can determine who might have been in close contact with any infected workers.
• Kloudspot, a location intelligence company, has developed a Reopening Readiness Assessment Tool that helps businesses and schools determine when they're ready to reopen in some form, as well as offering a system that can trigger alerts in the case of PPE violations or overcapacity.

What they're saying: "People are beginning to look at contact tracing and all the other stuff we've been through as something that is just going to be part of work life going forward," says David Sapin, PwC Digital's chief revenue and risk officer.

What's next: Hybrid work systems — with people rotating from remote to the workplace on different days — will present new office challenges.

• "What happens if more people than you expect in a given day show up at the office?" says Guillermo Diaz Jr., Kloudspot's CEO. "You need the analytics and tools to be able to manage that."

The bottom line: Just as 9/11 put a premium on the physical security of workplaces for years after the event, COVID-19 ensures that health security will be a part of office life for the foreseeable future.

The rise of remote employment and the general erasure of work-life boundaries by the pandemic has led to a boom in calendar-management platforms.

Driving the news: Late last month, Calendly, a cloud-based service that can be used to automatically set up and confirm meeting times, closed a $350 million venture investment that values the Atlanta-based startup at over $3 billion.

• The 8-year-old company now has more than 10 million monthly users, a number that grew by 1,180% last year.
• Clockwise, another calendar-management startup, closed $18 million in funding over the summer and has over 100,000 active business users.

The big picture: Whether or not we're taking on more meetings than in the pre-pandemic days, the reality of remote work means that even what would have been quick in-person check-ins now often need to be formally scheduled.

• As a result, says Clockwise CEO Matt Martin, employees can end up as victims of a kind of calendar tragedy of the commons.
• "Time is this really valuable asset, and everybody is pulling from it, but nobody's coordinating or regulating in any meaningful way."

How it works: Clockwise uses AI tools to help workers organize their calendars in a way that optimizes focus time — blocked-out chunks of two or more hours of individual, uninterrupted work time — by automatically moving around meetings to the least-interrupted slot for all attendees.

• The company's approach is informed by research that frequent distractions — hold on, I have to check a Slack message — eat up as much as 40% of a worker's productive time.

The bottom line: In the age of remote work, you are your own assistant — and it's up to you to protect your most valuable resource: time.