For the cost of this #MAGA Moment, AT&T could only buy 44% of Leonardo's Salvator Mundi

As Ben Carson prayed for the Cabinet today, "Jesus, take away the debt!"

Having already pocketed net neutrality, AT&T made a downpayment on buying approval of its Time-Warner merger today:

More than 200,000 employees of the telecom giant will be eligible for a $1,000 bonus, AT&T announced. The company will cut the bonus checks over the holidays if President Donald Trump signs the tax bill before Christmas, as expected...

AT&T also announced that once tax cuts are made official, it will enact a plan to invest an additional $1 billion in the U.S. next year.

Back at the business norm, Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan laughed at such pandering:

“Is it our goal to increase return to our shareholders and do we have an excess amount of capital? The answer to both is, yes. So our expectation should be that we will continue to increase our dividend and our share buybacks next year and the year after that and the year after that.”

But this afternoon the bank announced it will buy some goodwill with some walking-around money, given that its fake account scandal seems to never end:

Wells Fargo & Co. WFC, -0.36% said late Wednesday that it will raise its hourly minimum wage to $15 and plans to give $400 million to community and nonprofit organizations in 2018. Wells Fargo stock is flat at $60.14 after hours. The wage hike for U.S. employees is an 11% raise from $13.50, which the bank announced in 2017, the company said. San Francisco, where Wells Fargo is headquartered, recently voted to raise its minimum wage to $15 by 2018. The $400 million philanthropic effort is a 40% increase from 2017, the company said, and will include gifts to the Untied Way, Habitat for Humanity as well as several programs the bank runs to provide small businesses access to capital and people with help buying homes. A fake-accounts scandal first made public in 2016 has continued to drag on the company. 

A $15 wage, of course, is socialism.