A long-time hunting outfitter, Sears pleaded guilty in May to mail fraud. Prosecutors say he began enlisting backers in 2008 through mailings targeting people with hunting licenses. 

Sears’ proposal was to use investors’ cash to purchase Angus cows he would then lease back to mate with Romagnola bulls. Prosecutors said Sears offered to handle managing the herd and to cover all costs related to its care. 

In return, investors would receive an annual payment of 10% of what they paid in, and the right to either reclaim the mother cows after a certain period of time, or the return of their full investment, prosecutors said. Sears would get to keep all the calves born from the arrangement.    

But prosecutors say Sears never bought all the cattle he had promised investors he would, and ceased buying new stock at all after 2011, while continuing to raise money.

At certain points, he stopped making the annual payments or returning investors’ cash as promised, blaming drought for the high cost of hay and an outbreak of venereal disease among the herd, prosecutors said. 

Instead, he used the money to pay off tax debts he owed and to pay back earlier investors, according to court documents. In all, prosecutors say Sears raised around $7 million from dozens of investors and misappropriated nearly $5 million. 

Sears’ attorney, John Richilano, said his client had begun the venture with honest intentions, but after being dealt a number of setbacks, made some poor choices and dug himself into a hole he couldn’t get out from. 

“He has always been interested in cattle and didn’t do this to enrich himself,” Richilano said. “He is very remorseful and takes full responsibility.”

Prosecutors described it as a complex fraud that took thousands of hours of investigation to unravel.

“Creative fraudsters may go to great lengths to hide their crimes, but we are going to uncover them,” said Cole Finegan , U.S. attorney for the District of Colorado.

In addition to 41 months in federal prison, Sears agreed to pay $4.97 million in restitution. 

Should we get used to more late-year tornado surprises when winter behaves like spring?

Warm weather on Friday was a crucial factor as tornadoes chewed up parts of at least five states, but whether the long-run impacts of climate change is a factor is not quite as clear, and research is still evolving. That’s in part because the U.S. is unique to the rest of the world in the number of tornadoes it records, meteorologists say.

About 1,200 twisters hit the U.S. each year, according to the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory.

“This event was not just unusual — it was truly historic and deeply shocking. I fear we are poking the climate beast,” said Jennifer Marlon, a climate scientist at the Yale School of the Environment, in a tweet. She, too, says that the climate change connections to tornados are “complicated.”

Some scientists say that the atmospheric conditions that give rise to such outbreaks are intensifying in the winter, extending so-called tornado season, as the planet warms. What’s more, “tornado alley” is shifting to states farther east from the Plains states that are notorious for twisters.

President Biden was asked on Saturday if he can link climate change to the weekend devestation.

“All I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impacts as a consequence of the warming of the planet and climate change,” Biden said. “The specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point.”

“I’m going to be asking the EPA and others to take a look at that,” the president added. “The fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. Everything. And obviously it has some impact here, but I can’t give you a quantitative read on that.”

At least 64 people died in hardest-hit Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday, according to the Associated Press. There were at least another 14 deaths in Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri.

Read: Thousands of Kentucky residents without heat and water after tornadoes kill dozens

Spring-like temperatures across much of the Midwest and South in December helped bring the warm, moist air that produces thunderstorms. Some of this is due to the periodic La Nina, which generally brings warmer than normal winter temperatures to the Southern U.S.

Researchers are working to better understand how the building blocks for tornadoes, atmospheric instability and wind shear, will respond to global warming. It is likely that a warmer, more humid world would allow for more frequent instability. However, it is also possible that a warmer world would lessen chances for wind shear.

This weekend’s storms met with exceptionally strong wind shear, which appears to have prevented the tornadoes that can emerge with thunderstorms from dissipating as quickly as they typically might, weather experts said.

Tornadoes usually lose energy in a matter of minutes, but in this case it was hours, Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini said, according to the Associated Press. That’s partly the reason for the exceptionally long path of Friday’s storm, going more than 200 miles or so, he said. The record was 219 miles was set by a tornado that struck three states in 1925. Gensini thinks the latest will surpass that mark once meteorologists finish analyzing it.

Less than 10% of severe thunderstorms produce tornadoes, which holds back some scientists from drawing conclusions about climate change, Harold Brooks, a tornado scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory, told the AP.

Some scientists do expect atypical, warm weather in the winter to become more common. The U.N.’s climate panel has warned that global warming of 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless rapid and deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades, achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“The Gulf of Mexico is very warm. It means there’s a lot more warmth and moisture because the warmer the ocean, the more moisture that comes off of it, and that moisture and heat have been streaming into the southern half of the U.S.,” Penn State climate-change professor and author Michael Mann said on MSNBC, as he made connections between climate change and unusual storms.

But others said all storms should not be considered under the same climate-change umbrella.

“Tornados are not becoming more frequent; the average remains about 1,200 observed each year… Warming might change when ‘tornado season’ hits, but no scientific studies have yet shown any such link,” the New York Post editorial staff wrote, with a warning that higher energy costs with the elimination of fossil fuels
NG00,
-3.21%
will bring more damage to U.S. households.

“The link between tornadoes and climate change is currently unclear. Current data on tornadoes is inconsistent because measuring the presence of tornadoes relies on eyewitness accounts and aftermath damage assessments rather than quantifiable data,” said policy analysts at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, which advocates to include market-based approaches to slowing climate change.

“Additionally, it is difficult to identify long-term trends in tornado records, which only date back to the 1950s in the U.S., because the population in many areas affected by tornadoes has grown, contributing to increased eyewitness reports and greater property in harm’s way. Improved technology, such as advanced radar, also helps us ‘see’ tornadoes that may not have been detected decades ago,” the group said, addressing whether or not the number of tornadoes is on the rise.

The Associated Press contributed.

Earlier this year, Larson reintroduced legislation he has been working on for years called “The Social Security 2100 Act: A Sacred Trust,” and had a hearing for the proposal in December. It will face a markup by Congress in the new year, he said. Another Social Security proposal, introduced by Rep. Al Lawson earlier this month, also attempts to fix and improve the program. 

See: Seniors get the biggest Social Security raise in years — and it’s already been eaten up by inflation

The bill, if passed, has numerous provisions to improve Social Security, which is currently facing insolvency. Some include increasing the minimum benefit for low-income retirees, switching the consumer-price index benefits are currently tied to so they reflect the expenses of the elderly, and offering caregiver credits for people who leave the workforce to care for loved ones. Funding would derive from expanding the payroll tax cap on workers who earn more than $400,000, and phasing in workers between the current inflation-adjusted cap of $142,800 and $400,000 over the years. 

Larson spoke to MarketWatch about the urgency to pass this bill. 

(This interview was edited for clarity and length.)

MarketWatch: What makes this proposal so promising for improving Social Security for Americans?

John Larson: What makes it so promising is that we have a president who understands that Social Security is a sacred trust. We have to demonstrate that when we hear the overwhelming concern of our constituency, that we are able to translate those concerns as it relates to Social Security. 

It is more than just providing a pension. It is one of the No. 1 antipoverty programs for seniors, for children and for veterans, who rely on Social Security more than Veteran Affairs. 

People like to ask me, what’s different about this year’s proposal? We have a president who is behind the proposal, who has put in his own reforms. We are quite excited by this prospect. We thought we got off to a good start with critical witnesses and are now looking forward to a markup when we return in January. 

MW: There are many provisions in this proposal — they all have their benefits, but are there any that you think would have the greatest impact on Americans? 

Larson: The greatest impact would be lifting more than five million people who worked their whole lives and paid into the system. To make the new floor for minimum benefits 125% of what the federal government establishes as the poverty line. No one will be out running to buy stock options.

Then a COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) that keeps pace with the expenses of people in their old age and not generally on the consumer-price index. 

These are all modest proposals but it makes a difference between sustenance and survival or continued despair and poverty. You can’t deny the fact that it has been 50 years since any kind of enhancement [to Social Security]. A lot more needs to be done for Social Security and its long-term solvency, but this deals with over 50% of the shortfall. 

Also see: Social Security proposal would raise revenue and temporarily enhance benefits

MW: Some critics take issue with funding the changes. Other researchers have said this is a temporary fix. What do you say to that? 

Larson: They are only temporary if Congress decides they’re temporary.

All polling data show even if it meant personally for [Americans] to pay more into the system, they know the value of a guarantee and that’s the real difference. 

You can argue you can make more money if you privatize it. Can you imagine if they had been successful in privatizing Social Security in 2006, and then the Great Collapse in 2008, when people saw their 401(k) become a 101(k) — what that would have meant and the devastation that would have occurred? [With Social Security], no payment was missed. That was the genius of the program. It is a guarantee. What Roosevelt understood is we have to protect people from the vicissitudes of what can happen. 

This is just a matter of trying to level the playing field and close the gap, and do this in a common sense fashion so that people again understand their government has their backs. This is a sacred trust. 

All the provisions are paid for within a 10-year budget window. It will require Congress to act. The public wants to see how you’re voting on these issues, and overwhelmingly Democrats, Republicans and independents support this notion. This is a first step but it is a big first step in what it does. 

MW: This isn’t the first time you’ve introduced this proposal. What pushback have you gotten, and why have you continued to persevere each year? 

Larson: I persevere each year because how can you go home and face your constituents and see what they’re going through in regard to the pandemic? Just for example, who has the pandemic hit the hardest? The elderly. Of the more than 700,000 people who have perished, 82% of them are seniors.

Congress hasn’t done anything in 50 years [for Social Security]. Suffice it to say, a lot has changed. We are still dealing with a cut that was enacted in 1983 that will take effect in January 2022 when the age for Full Retirement Age is raised again to 67. As Martin Luther King, Jr. would say, the fierce urgency of now is upon us. This is not the time for incrementalism. This is the time to act and vote. 

Vox Media, owner of media properties including tech-focused website the Verge, current-events site Vox.com and sports-focused SB Nation, has been expanding. In August, it agreed to acquire cocktail website Punch to deepen its coverage of food and drinks. Vox has explored ways to raise cash for further growth, including the possibility of going public, people familiar with the matter have said.

Group Nine Media, whose brands include news outlet NowThis, lifestyle site Thrillist and animal-focused the Dodo, has also been an active consolidator in the media space. It earlier explored a deal with BuzzFeed and in 2019 purchased female-skewing digital-media company PopSugar.

An expanded version of this story appears on WSJ.com.

Popular stories from WSJ.com:

Christian also posted a video on Twitter that shows him at the pump. In it, he mocked President Biden’s pledge to unify the nation. “This is divisive to my bank account and my hard-earned money,” he said.

But on social media, some were quick to note that the issue couldn’t be affecting Christian all that much, given that he was wearing a Givenchy hoodie that costs nearly $1,300. And the discussion led both Herschel and Christian Walker’s names and Givenchy to trend on Twitter on Monday. The video was also high on Reddit’s homepage earlier that morning.

One commentator on Twitter summarized it thusly: “I’m not sure which is more ridiculous…Christian Walker whining about gas prices while wearing a $1200 Givenchy hoodie, or anyone spending $1200 on a hoodie because it says Givenchy on it.”

Others had similar reactions:

Christian has already responded to some of the criticism. In one tweet, he noted that he’s worked for a living. In another, he said: “Democrats care more about my sweatshirts than the fact that they voted for a nutjob president who’s hurting the working class.”

Regardless of all the back and forth, the one fact that’s undeniable is that the cost of gas has indeed surged of late. U.S. monthly government data shows that prices increased from an average of $1.93 per gallon in April 2020 to $3.49 per gallon last month.

The ensuing profile highlights Musk’s momentous year, such as: SpaceX scoring a $2.9 billion NASA contract in April to fly U.S. astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972; Musk hosting “Saturday Night Live” in May and revealing he’s on the autism spectrum; and Hertz
HTZ
announcing in October that it plans to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles, which pushed Tesla Inc.’s valuation past $1 trillion at the time. 

But plenty of readers were quick to ground the larger-than-life CEO and Twitter
TWTR
personality as a man who’s said and done questionable things, such as the ProPublica report released in June that found billionaires including Musk and Amazon
AMZN
founder/space race rival Jeff Bezos have avoided paying federal income tax in some years. Or when Musk defied local health regulations to reopen a California Tesla plant early in the pandemic; more than 400 COVID-19 cases among workers in the factory were reported in the months afterward. 

Granted, plenty of people, including Musk’s little brother Tosco Musk, applauded the award. 

So being named Time’s Person of the Year is certainly a win in the public relations department, as Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX dominated Google and Twitter trends on Monday morning and early afternoon. 

But what could this mean in the long run? After all, landing some coveted magazine cover awards has often been considered a curse. The “Sports Illustrated cover jinx” and the People magazine “Sexist Man Alive curse” are two popular urban legends that claim the teams, athletes or stars who grace these No. 1 spots end up jinxing their careers. 

And some past “Person of the Year” winners have fallen on hard times after their Time covers. For example, Bezos was named the “Person of the Year” in 1999 as e-commerce was just beginning to take off — but the dot-com bubble burst just months later in March 2000, and Amazon stock plummeted 90% by the end of the year. (Granted, many tech companies were crushed that year as the Nasdaq lost almost half of its value, and Amazon has certainly recovered since then.) 

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani graced the 2001 cover for his leadership after the Sept. 11, 2021 terrorist attacks, but his political career has taken a turn since, and he was recently suspended from practicing law in both New York and Washington, D.C. 

Former President Donald Trump was named “Person of the Year” after he was elected in 2016, but he was impeached twice and voted out of office after his first term. He has been permanently suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation, and the former president continues to face questions about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

It’s not all bad news, however. Time awarded Facebook
FB
CEO Mark Zuckerberg the title in 2010; the social media company wasn’t public yet, but in the following year, the company reached 1 trillion page views and became the second most-visited website in the U.S. behind Alphabet’s
GOOGL
Google.

Former President Barack Obama was named “Person of the Year” in 2008 and 2012, and while his legacy will also continue to be debated, he’s largely avoided controversy — and enjoyed Netflix and Spotify contracts, and published a best-selling memoir — since leaving office.  

It should be noted, of course, that high-profile individuals like world leaders, innovative thinkers, business titans and celebrities can lead somewhat volatile lifestyles that swing between extreme highs and lows, and that’s due to many factors beyond simply being profiled by a magazine. 

And it’s hard to gauge what these kinds of awards do for company performance. For one thing, Time hasn’t given “Person of the Year” (previously “Man of the Year”) to many business leaders — most times, the title is given to world leaders and politicians. Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg are exceptions, along with Chrysler founder Walter Chrysler in 1928 and General Motors
GM
president Harlow Curtice in 1955.

What’s more, a 2007 paper from the University of Richmond in Virginia looked into how cover stories affected company shares. Researchers looked at 549 covers over 20 years from Forbes, Business Week and Fortune, and divided the coverage into positive, negative and neutral, before comparing how each cover company’s shares performed in the 500 days before and after the magazine profile. 

They found that companies whose stocks had been doing well before the coverage were often featured in positive magazine cover stories, while companies whose stocks had been down were more likely to get negative coverage. No big surprise there.

But after those stories hit newsstands, there was often a reversal of fortune: the companies with the positive profiles saw their stock prices dip, while those with the negative coverage often started to recover. The findings were published in the Economist, which noted, “positive stories generally indicate the end of superior performance and negative news generally indicates the end of poor performance.” 

And one of the researchers suggested this is because these magazine covers often come at peak positive or negative performance, which means the company is due for a correction. “What you can extrapolate [from the research] is that the extraordinary performance is capped by the magazine cover,” one researcher told the Economist. “You’ve hit your apex. So instead of staying superior, they just became average afterwards.”

What goes up must come down. And once you hit bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up again. 

So is this Time award an apex for Musk and his companies? Or can they still fly higher? That remains to be seen.

As for the Twitter debate over whether he’s the “right” choice for the year’s most influential person, Time itself notes that its choices are often controversial — such as when it selected Adolf Hitler in 1938, or Joseph Stalin in 1939 and 1942. 

“Our goal is to deliver a cash flow management platform,” Kabbage co-Founder Kathryn Petralia told MarketWatch. “Our products are designed to work better together, so you’re not going to five different providers. There’s advantages to that…better pricing and services.”

Generally, businesses can’t use credit cards to pay suppliers, for rent or to expand a business into a new space. Kabbage allows businesses to borrow money to improve revenue opportunities. 

Don’t miss: How debit cards are becoming ‘a democratizing force’

Petralia said Kabbage was the first to use real-time access to third-party data to evaluate eligibility for lines of credit. The framework allows companies to get capital when they need it.

“You’re seeing more investment [by small businesses] in digital experience, e-commerce, online ordering and delivery and payment processing and accounting,” Petralia said.

Since the acquisition of Kabbage for an undisclosed sum late last year, American Express now provides capital for loans by Kabbage. 

Kabbage’s business is not broken out by its corporate parent, but its activity has grown since the acquisition, Petralia said. 

ICMYI: Expensify stock surges after IPO in vote of confidence for ‘rare profitable tech company’

American Express CFO Jeffrey Campbell said last week at the Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference that the Kabbage acquisition provided a “fabulous set of technology” for the company to aim at small businesses.

“Pairing that [technology] with also some short-term working capital-oriented lending that is not done on a card basis is kind of the third leg of the stool that we think gives us a many, many year runway to continue the kind of growth that we’ve had with small business,” Campbell said.

See: PayPal ‘now risks getting disrupted’ by competitors, analyst says in downgrade

Petralia said the backing of American Express will allow Kabbage to provide loans to more medium-sized companies.

The acquisition of Kabbage came as bigger financial firms shop for smaller fintech players to boost their growth.

Amex shares have gained 36% in the year to date, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
has added 17% and the S&P 500
SPX
has gained 25%.

See: PayPal, Square stocks look attractive amid fintech ‘carnage,’ says analyst

Pfizer was also enjoying an upgrade from UBS analysts who are expecting the drug giant to garner sales of $50 billion in 2022 from its COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed with German partner BioNTech SE
BNTX,
+10.85%.

Read now: ‘The days you were considered fully vaccinated with two shots are going to be a thing of the past’

 Today’s deal “makes strategic sense to us as a way to boost Pfizer’s inflammation and immunology (I&I) pipeline, diversify it away from oral JAK inhibitors that have come under increased scrutiny by the FDA in recent months, and add an attractive growth driver that can help Pfizer’s 2026-2030 growth outlook,” Mizuho analysts led by Vamil Divan wrote in a note to clients.

See: FDA authorizes BioNTech, Pfizer’s COVID-19 booster for 16- and 17-year-olds

Arena’s lead drug candidate, etrasimod, is currently in Phase 2 and 3 trials as a treatment for the chronic inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis, and is also being reviewed as a treatment for Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome and eosinophilic esophagitis. It is also being investigated as a treatment for the skin disease atopic dermatitis and hair loss disorder alopecia areata.

 “In addition, Arena’s Phase 2 assets, such as temanogrel, APD418 and RIST4721, could fit in nicely into Pfizer’s Internal Medicine and/or Rare Disease businesses, if they are able to successfully make it to the market,” said Mizuho’s Divan.

See: A new study finds that most COVID-19 boosters strengthen immunity, though there is no winning shot

Under the terms of the deal, Pfizer will pay $100 per Arena share, double the stock’s closing price of $49.94 on Friday. The stock had lost 35% in the year to date, before Monday’s news. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022, pending regulatory approvals.

San Diego-based Arena’s shares hit an all-time low in May of 2017, a few months after the company scrapped an anti-obesity treatment called belviq, its only FDA-approved drug at that time, after it failed to gain any traction in the market. Arena sold the drug to Eisai Co., which pulled it from the market in 2020 over safety risks.

Arena then reoriented its pipeline toward inflammatory diseases.

“We view PFE as a logical partner for ARNA as the latter continues to progress its gastroenterology, dermatology, and cardiology focused platform, which should benefit from the executional expertise of a large pharmaceutical company,” SVB Leerink analyst Joseph Schwartz told analysts in a research note. “

PFE’s commercial framework can capitalize on etrasimod’s best-in-class potential,” wrote RBC Capital Markets’ Kennen MacKay.

But some analysts questioned Pfizer’s decision to execute a deal before the upcoming readout of Phase 3 clinical trial data for Arena’s etrasimod as an ulcerative colitis treatment. That data is expected early next year.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman said this could be the first of a wave of new deals for Pfizer, which he estimates has $132 billion in firepower to be used through 2022.

“Pfizer is making good use of the deluge of cash from COVID-19 vaccines/boosters to further bolster its pipeline,” Seigerman wrote in a note.

Pfizer shares have gained 50.5% in 2021 to date, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.90%
has gained 16.5% and the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.79%
has gained 25%.