Dan Bobkoff

The value of a brand doesn't include anything physical. It's just the name of the company — and all of the customer loyalty attached to that name.

JPMorgan Chase agreed pay $5.1 billion to settle litigation over mortgage assets sold during the housing bubble. The deal, announced late Friday afternoon, is to resolve claims the company misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the housing market crashed. It is part of a tentative $13 billion deal the company is trying to reach with federal and state agencies over its mortgage liabilities.

Activist investor Carl Icahn has increased his stake in Apple and is pushing the company to replace its own stock buyback plan with a much more ambitious proposal. In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Icahn said that, given the size of Apple's cash holdings, its stock buyback should be $150 billion instead of the planned $60 billion.

The details are still being worked out, but JPMorgan Chase and the Justice Department have agreed to a $13 billion settlement that will close out numerous lawsuits. About $3 billion will go to compensate investors who lost money on securities from banks that JPMorgan acquired during the financial crisis. Federal prosecutors have agreed not to seek punitive damages against JPMorgan for losses related to those deals.

Thanks to the shutdown, economists are flying blind without government data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will finally release the September jobs report on Tuesday, more than two weeks after it was slated to come out.

Tuesday is the deadline for taxpayers who requested an extension on their 2012 tax returns. With most of its staff currently furloughed, the Internal Revenue Service is not answering calls, issuing refunds or collecting audits. Even so, don't expect a filing reprieve; the midnight deadline is still in effect.

Three American professors won this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their studies on asset prices.

JP Morgan Chase reported something unusual today: a loss. The bank has been forced to set aside a huge cash reserve to cover expected fines and related legal costs. In the most recent quarter, the set-aside was so large — $9.1 billion — that it produced a net loss for the bank.

L.L. Bean has taken back a live Christmas wreath that had turned brown and a shirt ripped by a rescue crew after a car accident. Is that any way to run a business?

Opening statements in the court case FCC vs. Verizon begin Monday. This case could determine the FCC's legal ability to enforce the principle known as net neutrality. At issue is whether the federal government may block Internet service providers from slowing or blocking certain online content.