* Jesse Drucker: U.S. companies are finding ways to dodge repatriation taxes
* Jay Yarrow: Yahoo has sold, killed or plans to kill $4.8 billion worth of acquisitions
* Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London falls early, European shares climb and the Nikkei gains 0.5%.
* Tami Luhby: Blizzard is a “budget buster” for cities
* Felix Salmon: A guide to the market oligopoly system
* Jason Kincaid: One year after its acquisition, is Mint still fresh?
* Term Sheet’s daily email newsletter is on a holiday hiatus, but sign up for its return next week
* John Maggs: Trade spat could kill Columbia roses, just ahead of Valentine’s Day
* Nick Elliot: Compliance officers at PE firms must take a new look at foreign bribery rules
* Book her: Fugitive Wells Fargo banker surrenders to authorities, after months on the run
* Join this bandwagon: Why the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) should form a lobbying arm
* Want to see a V-shaped recovery? Take a look at this chart of enterprise spending on software and tech equipment
* Gregg Easterbrook rants against New York City’s backward recycling policy (skim down to where you see the pile of trash)
* Tweet of the Day: @jennfredfox29 “One thing I’ve noticed about @foursquare. If you are checking in before 6am you are likely the mayor”
* Julian Sanchez wonders why restaurant websites are so bad: “Who thinks it’s good idea to blast annoying music at people going to your site? Why do they so often rely on Flash, which doesn’t really add anything to the experience, when half the time people are looking up the site on mobile devices to get basic information? Why this bizarre preference for menus in PDF format?”
* Alice Gregory is sad as hell: “Refresh Facebook ten times and the status updates rearrange themselves in nonsensical, anachronistic patterns. You don’t refresh Facebook to follow a narrative, you refresh to register a change—not to read but to see. And it’s losing track of this distinction—between reading and seeing—that’s so shameful. It’s like being demoted from the category of thinking, caring human to a sort of rat that doesn’t know why he needs to tap that button, just that he does.”
