Touching grass

Earnings to watch this week: BlackBerry, Nike and FedEx will all hold their final earnings calls of the year on Thursday, while cruise ship giant Carnival will report results on Friday.

About 45 years after Ronald Reagan called it the most dangerous drug in America, the U.S. government seems to be warming up to weed. 

Driving the news: President Trump is reportedly planning to sign an executive order as soon as today that would reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug, a move that would make it far easier to buy and sell cannabis across the U.S.

Why it matters: The U.S. market opening up could be a lifeline for a battered industry. Since weed was legalized in Canada, domestic cannabis producers like Canopy and Tilray — once boasting valuations higher than their best customers — have lost almost all of their value. 

Zoom out: It's not just dispensaries and producers burning cash (and unused inventory). Canadians have reportedly lost more than $131 billion investing in cannabis businesses. Even a small reversal of those losses would be a welcome development.—LA

Ticketmaster faces class-action lawsuit over prices. A judge in California greenlit a massive class action lawsuit that alleges Ticketmaster overcharged millions of customers for live events. The lawsuit also alleges parent company Live Nation used its monopoly in the live ticketing space to artificially inflate the prices of concerts and other events. 

U.S.-U.K. trade deals on the rocks. Britain was the first country to make a “trade agreement” with Donald Trump, but negotiations on the finer points of that deal have hit a snag, with the U.S. now demanding more concessions on British food safety standards and digital services taxes. 

At least 16 people were killed in an attack targeting a Jewish celebration in Sydney, Australia. Two men opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration, killing at least 16 people and injuring dozens more. One of the gunmen was killed by police, and the second was arrested in critical condition. A bystander was recorded on video heroically tackling and disarming one of the gunmen. 

Ukraine offered to drop NATO membership bid in exchange for U.S. and European security guarantees.

Bombardier won a $753 million defence contract to supply the Royal Canadian Air Force with six multipurpose jets.

Jose Antonio Kast, an ultra-conservative candidate, was elected president of Chile.

Pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai was convicted of sedition in Hong Kong and faces life in prison. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s last remaining opposition party disbanded under growing pressure from China’s central government.

📊 New inflation data. November’s Consumer Price Index will be announced today, and most analysts expect it will show inflation holding steady around the 2.2% level that we saw in October. U.S. inflation data for November will be released on Thursday. The report for October was cancelled because of the government shutdown.

🧑‍💻 Jobs numbers. On Thursday, the latest Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours arrives — the big question is whether it will echo the mostly positive Labour Force Survey from earlier in the month. In the U.S., the latest nonfarm payroll numbers arrive tomorrow. That will play a big role in the Fed’s rate cut plans for 2026. 

🏦 Central bank bonanza. A handful of important central banks around the world are making rate decisions this week, including the Bank of England (expected to cut), the European Central Bank (expected to hold), and the Bank of Japan (might hold, might hike).

We are quickly discovering that “financializing everything” through prediction markets also creates endless opportunities for corruption.

What happened: Last month, according to maps maintained by a D.C. think-tank, Russian troops captured Myrnohrad, triggering a payout to a group of Polymarket users who had bet the town in eastern Ukraine would fall by November 15. 

Only, the maps were wrong. The town never fell; Ukraine controls it to this day. 

What actually happened: A staffer at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) made an unauthorized update to a map of the front lines in the conflict showing the town had fallen, according to an ISW statement. That map was then used as proof to resolve the market on Polymarket, raising the (very likely) possibility that the staffer made the edit in order to (fraudulently) resolve the market in their favour.

Zoom out: Other examples of dodgy happenings on prediction markets from last week alone include apparent insider trading on the performance of new AI models and a likely leak of TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year (whether it leaked or not is now also something you can bet on).

Why it matters: The growing popularity of — and opportunity to profit from — prediction markets is creating incentives to impact events in the real world and do things (like insider trading) that would be crimes if they were done to profit in the stock market. Not so in the almost entirely unregulated world of prediction markets. 

Our take: Prediction markets are just one way the impulse to gamble on everything — whether it's meme stocks or sports or crypto — is taking over our society. It’s not for this humble newsletter to judge whether that’s healthy or not, but we need to try to understand why it’s happening.—TS

✈️ 22. WestJet planes that have been renovated to give economy passengers less legroom, part of the airline's plans to make reclining seats a paid option for its airfare. WestJet announced that it will pause the reconfiguration of its planes following major blowback from customers.

^{*This is sponsored content.}

Take on the ol’ reliable mini-crossword!

We’re also testing out a new daily Sudoku for your puzzling enjoyment. It is in beta testing, so please let us know if you find any bugs. We’ll be rolling out improvements every day. Enjoy!