🌏 Shopping not dropping

Good morning, Quartz readers!

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

The Dow is on its longest losing streak in decades. Its nine days in the red are the most in a row since 1978.

Taco Bell is challenging McDonald’s with something new. The Tex-Mex chain is offering chicken nuggets for a limited time.

The Boeing strike is over, but the effects will be felt for a while. Analysts say a recovery in manufacturing output will be a “slog.”

Amazon might have a Christmas strike problem on its hands. Workers in New York, Illinois, and Georgia have threatened or authorized walkouts.

Biden’s FTC is banning ‘junk fees’ for hotels and concert tickets. The agency’s final rule would ban “bait-and-switch” pricing used in those industries.

Shopping not dropping

America’s shoppers are not betraying signs of an economic slowdown. U.S. retail sales rose by 0.7% in November, and October’s figures were revised up to a 0.5% advance.

Auto retailers and e-commerce sites were bright spots in the data release, but brick-and mortar stores did not fare as well. Inflation does not seem to be holding consumers back.

What other revelations were in the most recent retail sales numbers? Quartz’s Francisco Velasquez takes a look through the data points.

Warren worried about Musk

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not happy about how things are shaping up with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort. She worries that he has too many conflicts of interest to make spending cut recommendations ethically.

“Putting Mr. Musk in a position to influence billions of dollars of government contracts and regulatory enforcement without a stringent conflict of interest agreement in place is an invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes,” she wrote in a letter to President-elect Donald Trump. Trump has said he thinks everything will be fine.

What does Warren think will be the consequences of Musk’s big job? Quartz’s William Gavin explains what is worrying her.

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SURPRISING DISCOVERIES

Poland is auctioning off its butter reserves to fend off inflation. Prices rose twice as fast in the country this November as in the rest of the European Union. (paywall)

Wordpress is forcing users to agree with a controversial take to access its services. The site put up a checkbox requiring agreement with the statement “pineapple is delicious on pizza.” (paywall)

The brand Hill House has sold 1 million of its famous Nap Dresses. The item’s success has propelled the company’s valuation to $150 million.

A pile of rocks in Utah has received a big recognition. Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” was just added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Hackers are jailbreaking digital license plates to make other people pay their tolls. The mischief is being made through hardware tinkering, making a software fix difficult. (paywall)

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Our best wishes on a safe start to the day. Send any news or comments to [email protected]. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Melvin Backman and Audrey McNamara.