fortune--2020-11-23--Stocks and futures jump on AstraZeneca’s vaccine breakthrough. Here are the big winners

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Good morning. It’s a Monday, which means a fresh batch of COVID vaccine news jolting the markets. This time it comes from team Britain—AstraZeneca and Oxford University. Their latest trials show impressive results, or so the markets believe. Stocks in Asia and Europe are up, and U.S. futures are in the green.
The vaccine can’t come soon enough. The U.S. COVID numbers are frightening (but that’s hardly stopping travelers from getting onto planes to see grandma).
Let’s check in on the action.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are mixed in afternoon trading with Japan’s Nikkei down 0.4% and the Shanghai Composite up 1.1% .
are mixed in afternoon trading with Japan’s down and the Shanghai Composite up . The Trump Administration has drawn up a list of 89 companies , mostly in aerospace, that would be banned from doing most forms of business with U.S. companies, Reuters reports.
has drawn up a list of , mostly in aerospace, that would be banned from doing most forms of business with U.S. companies, Reuters reports. An air travel “bubble” linking Hong Kong and Singapore popped this weekend as COVID cases climbed in Hong Kong, putting on hold this unique travel model that was being watched the world over.
Europe
The European bourses are in the green out of the gates with the Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.6% an hour into the trading session.
are in the green out of the gates with the up an hour into the trading session. Shares in AstraZeneca were down 1.7% in early trade after the drug maker reported—along with its partner, Oxford University—that its COVID vaccine trials are effective as much as 90% of the time . Those are impressive results, even if they fall a tad short of last week’s Pfizer-BioNTech results. But there are big advantages on storage and price.
were down in early trade after the drug maker reported—along with its partner, Oxford University—that its are effective as much as . Those are impressive results, even if they fall a tad short of last week’s results. But there are big advantages on storage and price. The pronouncement is lifting beaten-down travel, energy and bank stocks with the Euro Stoxx Banks index up 2% and Stoxx Europe 600 Travel & Leisure up 1%. Food delivery stocks, meanwhile, sank on the news.
U.S.
U.S. futures point to a positive open, helped by the AstraZeneca news. That’s after the Dow (-0.7%) and S&P 500 (-0.8%) posted weekly declines last week.
point to a positive open, helped by the AstraZeneca news. That’s after the and posted weekly declines last week. November is the cruelest month: with more than 3 million cases since Nov. 1, the number of new COVID infections reported in America this month is well on its way to more than doubling the October case load, the previous record.
is the cruelest month: with more than since Nov. 1, the number of new reported in America this month is well on its way to more than doubling the October case load, the previous record. As we head into Thanksgiving week, with the markets hovering near all-time highs, there’s plenty to be thankful for. But please give a thought to the millions who are struggling as America’s K-shaped recovery trudges on. What’s a K-shaped recovery? Fortune‘s Lance Lambert breaks down the numbers.
Elsewhere
Gold is down, trading below $1,870/ounce .
is down, trading below . The dollar is down.
is down. Crude is up, with Brent futures trading above $46/barrel .
is up, with futures trading above . Bitcoin is up, trading above $18,500.
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Year-end, and beyond
Goldman Sachs earlier this month delivered a series of outlooks for stocks, including its year-end call and its 2021 year-end price.
And, according to Goldman, a fair number of investors were unimpressed with these forecasts. Meanwhile, another group thought they were being far too bullish.
Recap: Goldman calculates the S&P 500 will close this year at 3,700, up roughly 4% from the Friday close. As for 2021, it will rise a further 16% to top 4,300.
I’m posting here again the Goldman chart that spells out their vision of the next year, and beyond.
A 4,300 year-end 2021 close assumes a 21% gain from the Friday close. That’s not shabby.
And yet, there’s plenty of disagreement.
“Those who believe we are too bullish generally point to the risk of rising inflation and interest rates,” David J. Kostin’s team at Goldman writes. “However, we see little reason to expect much higher inflation in the next few years, and our economists believe the Fed will remain on hold until 2025.”
And what about the porridge-too-cold crowd?
“Investors who think we are too cautious point to the continued strong growth of the mega-cap FAAMG stocks along with a likely ‘catch-up’ of the other 495 S&P 500 constituents,” Goldman writes. “Investors have also focused on TSLA, which is set to join the S&P 500 next month and could rank as the 8th largest index constituent.”
Last week was an interesting test for the Goldman call on stocks. We started the week with blockbuster Pfizer vaccine news, which pushed the Dow and S&P to all-time highs. Grim COVID data then pushed stocks down, and we finished the week in the red.
Again today we start the week with the promising AstraZeneca vaccine trial news, lifting the markets. But it’s not a broad-based rally. There are winners and losers as investors rotate out of growth and into value stocks.
Whether that rotation trade will be enough to push stocks up a further 20-plus-percent over the next 14 months is the big question.
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Postscript
A programming note: due to the Thanksgiving holiday later this week, Bull Sheet will publish Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but will be off on Thursday and Friday.
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Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
Banking on bank stocks. It's been a Jekyll and Hyde kind of year for bank stocks—more the latter, unfortunately. And November has been a particularly topsy turvy month, with the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index experiencing one of its worst days (Nov. 4) and one of its best days ever (Nov.9) just a few days apart, the Wall Street Journal reports. The prevailing wisdom is that a clutch of bank stocks will benefit from an improving economy in 2021. As such, we've seen the KBW bank index jump 15% since a string of promising vaccine breakthroughs were reported.
Good companies, better returns. Here's a data point for all you ESG bulls: "From that severest point [of the March markets downturn] through October, sustainable funds and ESG funds took in $30.5 billion in new flows. By the summer, we had taken in more in that category than in all of 2019. And that 2019 number was four times the previous year," details Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Brown and four other heavyweights of the investment world took part in the Fortune Investor Roundtable discussion moderated by Fortune's Matt Heimer. They covered a lot of important ground on what to look for in the year ahead; I'll be plugging bits and pieces the whole week here.
Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a discount offer for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.
Market candy
21 stocks for 2021
Each year, Fortune's crack finance team assembles a list of stocks to put on your must-buy list. (Last year's batch outperformed the markets in impressive fashion). And what about this year? Drum roll...Here's our 21 stocks to buy for 2021, a list that includes international and U.S. stocks—some that will be completely familiar to you, and a bunch more that may surprise. It's all part of our annual Fortune Investors Guide.


fortune--2020-11-23--Hong Kong’s travel bubble bursts as city enters fourth wave of COVID-19

iPhone ’ s new ‘ orange dot ’ feature warns you when an app is listening

Hong Kong’s much vaunted plan for a “travel bubble” allowing passengers to fly quarantine-free to Singapore went bust on Saturday, the day before it was supposed to launch, as Hong Kong counted 43 new cases of coronavirus—rocketing the city onto its fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In light of the situation in Hong Kong, I think it’s the responsible way to put this back for a while, and then sort of relaunch it at a suitable juncture,” Hong Kong’s secretary for commerce and economic development Edward Yau said at a press briefing on Saturday, popping the travel bubble.
Under the agreement struck between the Hong Kong and Singapore governments, the normal 14-day quarantine arrangements would have been waived for passengers travelling between the two cities. The first flight was due to leave on Sunday but have now been postponed by at least two weeks. Passengers can still fly between the two cities, but will need to undergo quarantine upon arrival.
The plan had allowed for a single daily flight, each way, carrying a maximum of 200 passengers. But the “bubble” would be scrapped if either city reported five cases of untraceable local transmission across a seven-day average.
On Saturday, Hong Kong hit an average of four untraceable cases, from a total of 43 that day. On Sunday, Hong Kong reported an additional 68 cases, bringing the average above five, and the accumulated caseload in the city to 5,629 since the pandemic began in January.
Hong Kong lapses
Hong Kong has been effective in limiting transmission of the virus, through quarantine enforcement, readily available tests, social distancing and near universal mask wearing. However, some of the government’s lapses in quarantine measures—such as allowing ship crew to enter the city without isolating—have been criticized for sparking earlier surges in COVID-19 caseloads.
The source of the latest wave of infections is unclear, although authorities are pursuing one cluster that began at a dance academy and has so far resulted in 21 confirmed cases. The government has now mandated that anyone who attended one of 14 dance studios this month to report for testing or face a penalty.
Under new regulations, people who refuse a test can be fined HK$2,000 ($260). Continued refusal can result in a HK$25,000 and up to six months in jail. The Hong Kong government is planning to introduce mandatory testing for certain groups—such as a taxi drivers and care home workers—but hasn’t released details on how that will be enforced.
Meanwhile, the government has tightened social distancing restrictions, limiting in-restaurant dining from groups of six down to four, banning live music and dancing (which was only recently reinstated), ordering venues to close at midnight rather than 2 a.m., and prohibiting gatherings of more than four within hotel rooms.
As travel outside of Hong Kong has been heavily restricted this year, so called “staycations” have grown in popularity, as have hotel rooms parties where groups sometimes as large as 30 people meet in a single room. Recently one COVID-19 cluster was linked to a staycation group, prompting the government to crackdown on the activity.
With few other places to go, the limited “bubble” flights to Singapore had proven surprisingly popular. Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific said it had sold out the daily flights for weeks in advance, creating a route that could have brought $12 million a month into the beleaguered airline’s coffers.


fortune--2020-11-23--AstraZeneca says its Covid-19 vaccine is up to 90% effective

The Covid-19 vaccine being produced by AstraZeneca is effective, the company said Monday, bringing closer to approval a vaccine that may be easier to distribute and less expensive compared to rival candidates.
The vaccine was 70% effective on average—and up to 90% effective under its most favorable dosing regime—across clinical trials conducted in both the U.K. and Brazil, the company said.
The trials used two different dosing regimes, which seems to have generated markedly different effectiveness rates. The vaccine was 90% effective if people received a half-dose followed by a full-dose one month later—and 62% effective if people were given two full doses one month apart, the company said.
Regulators in the U.S. have set a threshold of 50% effectiveness for any vaccine they approve. AstraZeneca said it would seek approval for its vaccine from a variety of global medical regulators, including in the U.K. and European Union.
Mene Pangalos, AstraZeneca’s executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals research and development, said the company would be in contact with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week to see if they might consider granting emergency use authorization for the vaccine based on this data, or if the agency will say it wants further information from late stage clinical trials the company is conducting in the U.S.
A dose and a half
There were no serious safety events related to the vaccine in the clinical trials, which included more than 23,000 people, the company said.
The company also said that both dosing regimes seemed to prevent serious cases of Covid-19 in which people wind up hospitalized. There were no cases of people sick enough to be hospitalized among those inoculated, AstraZeneca said.
Sarah Gilbert, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, which developed the vaccine in conjunction with AstraZeneca, said there was some evidence from those who received a half-dose followed by a full dose that it could also prevent mild and even asymptomatic disease.
Investors were apparently unhappy AstraZeneca was reporting a lower overall efficacy figure than those reported in recent weeks by pharmaceutical company Pfizer and biotech firm Moderna, both of which said their Covid-19 vaccines had been found to close to 95% effective in clinical trials. AstraZeneca’s shares on the London Stock Exchange were down 1.75% in early morning trading following the announcement.
Refrigeration, expense, and dosage
But the vaccine being produced by AstraZeneca has some significant practical advantages over Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines. For one, it can be stored between two and eight degrees Celsius (35.6 to 46.8 degrees Fahrenheit), which is within the range of normal refrigerators.
The rival vaccines have different underlying technology and must be kept at super-freezing temperatures: Pfizer has said its vaccine needs to be kept at negative 70 Celsius (-94 Fahrenheit), while Moderna has said its vaccine can be kept at negative 20 Celsisus (-4 Fahrenheit.) That means they will be more difficult and expensive to transport and store.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is also expected to be far less expensive than either Pfizer’s or Moderna’s. The company, which has pledged to make no profit on the vaccine during the period of the pandemic, has priced the vaccine, according to some reports, at less than $5 per dose. In contrast, Moderna has priced its vaccine above $35 per dose; Pfizer has set an initial price just below $20 per dose.
Because the most effective dosing regime was found to be one in which people received just one-and-a-half doses of the vaccine in two separate injections, the company also said this would allow more people to be immunized using its vaccine than it had initially thought might be the case if people had required two full doses.
300 million doses globally
Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive officer, called the announcement of the efficacy results for his company’s Covid-19 jab “an important milestone in our fight against the pandemic.”
The company has made arrangements to manufacture up to 3 billion doses of its vaccine in 2021. The U.S. has contracted to receive up to 300 million of these, the U.K. 100 million, and the European Union up to 400 million. It has also committed to providing 300 million doses to low- and mid-income countries through an agreement with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the vaccine funding body Gavi, and has signed other agreements to supply doses to several other nations.
Pam Cheng, AstraZeneca’s executive vice president for global operations and information technology, said that the company would have 4 million finished doses of the vaccine ready for use in the U.K. by the end of the year and 40 million by the end of the first quarter. She said that AstraZeneca would have 300 million finished doses ready to be used globally in that same time frame.
Priming the immune system
The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a genetically-modified chimpanzee virus that has been rendered harmless to prompt the body’s immune system to produce antibodies and T-cells that can target SARS-Cov-2, the virus the causes Covid-19. This is in contrast to the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which both used genetically-modified messenger RNA (or mRNA), to directly instruct the body’s cells to produce a protein found on the surface of the coronavirus.
Andrew Pollard, a researcher at the Oxford Vaccine Group, which collaborated with Oxford’s Jenner Institute on running the clinical trials of the vaccine in the U.K., Brazil and South Africa, said it was not clear yet why a half-dose injection followed by a full dose inoculation seemed to be more effective than two full doses. “We think the smaller first dose primes the immune system differently,” he said, noting that this was often the case in vaccines given to infants, where a smaller initial doses made a subsequent booster much more effective.
But he added that the researchers were not yet sure in the case of the Covid-19 vaccination if this is a case of the initial half dose prodding the body to produce more antibodies and T-cells or, if instead, the difference was one of “quality”—where various parts of the immune system were better configured to target the virus after the initial half-dose shot.
“Tremendously exciting”
Scientists not affiliated with the vaccine project hailed the results, while sounding a note of caution about the difference in the efficacy figures between the two dosing regimens. Stephen Griffin, a professor of medicine at the University of Leeds, said the news was “tremendously exciting.” He said that “while it may seem confusing that a higher initial dose gives a less favorable response,” this might be because some people had a strong immune response to the initial dose of the disabled chimpanzee virus that is used to deliver the vaccine, and that this strong response made the booster less effective.
Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading, also speculated that the reduced effectiveness of the two full doses was the result of an immune response to the modified chimpanzee virus technology that AstraZeneca is using. He said this may be an indication that mRNA vaccines, which directly provide instructions to cells to make a protein that then prompts the immune response, may have an advantage over those that use a different virus to deliver those instructions.
“There is no vector in either the BioNtech/Pfizer or Moderna vaccines so the issue of immunity to the vector does not arise,” he said. But he also noted that the AstraZeneca vaccine had advantages in terms of storage and AstraZeneca’s commitment to not making a profit from the vaccine initially.
Potential changes to U.S. Stage III trial
There were about 3,000 people in the clinical trial arm that used the half-dose followed by the full dose booster, Pollard, from the Oxford Vaccine Group, said. He said this was enough people to make the results from this group statistically significant. He said Oxford would be publishing figures for exactly how many of the 131 Covid-19 cases recorded across both clinical trial groups were in that particular arm of the study.
AstraZeneca’s Pangalos said the company would discuss with the FDA whether to switch its large Phase III U.S. clinical trial over to a half-dose and then full dose regimen too. Currently that trial, which is expected to ultimately enroll 40,000 people, is set up using two full doses. He said about 10,500 people have already received an initial full dose in that trial so far.
He said it was possible that other regulators around the world will wind up approving the vaccine for use based on these trial results while the U.S. withholds approval until the vaccine can be proven in the U.S. trial.


fortune--2020-11-23--Formal transition to Biden administration authorized to begin as GSA issues statement

The General Services Administration ascertained Monday that President-elect Joe Biden is the “apparent winner” of the Nov. 3 election, clearing the way for the start of the transition from President Donald Trump’s administration and allowing Biden to coordinate with federal agencies on plans for taking over on Jan. 20.
Trump, who had refused to concede the election, said in a tweet that he is directing his team to cooperate on the transition but is vowing to keep up the fight.
Administrator Emily Murphy made the determination after Trump efforts to subvert the vote failed across battleground states, citing, “recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results.” Michigan certified Biden’s victory Monday, and a federal judge in Pennsylvania tossed a Trump campaign lawsuit on Saturday seeking to prevent certification in that state.
Yohannes Abraham, the executive director of the Biden transition, said in a statement that the decision “is a needed step to begin tackling the challenges facing our nation, including getting the pandemic under control and our economy back on track.”
He added: “In the days ahead, transition officials will begin meeting with federal officials to discuss the pandemic response, have a full accounting of our national security interests, and gain complete understanding of the Trump administration’s efforts to hollow out government agencies.”
Murphy, a Trump appointee, had faced bipartisan criticism for failing to begin the transition process sooner, preventing Biden’s team from working with career agency officials on plans for his administration, including in critical national security and public health areas.
“Please know that I came to my decision independently, based on the law and available facts. I was never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official—including those who work at the White House or GSA—with regard to the substance or timing of my decision,” Murphy wrote in a letter to Biden.
Trump tweeted shortly after her letter was made public: “We will keep up the good fight and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.”
Pressure had been mounting on Murphy as an increasing number of Republicans, national security experts and business leaders said it was time for that process to move forward.
Retiring Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, who has repeatedly called for the transition to begin, released a new statement Monday saying that Trump should “put the country first” and help Biden’s administration succeed.
“When you are in public life, people remember the last thing you do,” Alexander said.
Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio on Monday called for Murphy to release money and staffing needed for the transition. Portman, a senior member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, also said Biden should receive high-level briefings on national security and the coronavirus vaccine distribution plan.
Alexander and Portman, who have both aligned themselves with Trump, joined a growing number of Republican officials who in recent days have urged Trump to begin the transition immediately. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., also urged a smooth transition, saying in a statement Monday that “at some point, the 2020 election must end.”
Meanwhile, more than 160 business leaders asked Murphy to immediately acknowledge Biden as president-elect and begin the transition to a new administration. “Withholding resources and vital information from an incoming administration puts the public and economic health and security of America at risk,″ the business letters said in an open letter to Murphy.
Separately, more than 100 Republican former national security officials—including former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte—said in a statement that Trump’s refusal to concede and allow for an orderly transition “constitutes a serious threat” to America’s democratic process. The officials signing the letter worked under four Republican presidents, including Trump.
The statement called on “Republican leaders—especially those in Congress—to publicly demand that President Trump cease his anti-democratic assault on the integrity of the presidential election.”
Trump had publicly refused to accept defeat and launched a series of losing court battles across the country making baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and seeking to overturn the election results.
Murphy missed a deadline on Monday set by House Democrats to brief lawmakers about the delay in beginning the transition, which is usually a routine step between the election and the inauguration. A spokeswoman for the GSA said that a deputy administrator would instead hold two separate briefings for House and Senate committees on Nov. 30.
In response, the Democratic chairs of four committees and subcommittees said they could reschedule the meeting for Tuesday, but no later.
“We cannot wait yet another week to obtain basic information about your refusal to make the ascertainment determination,” the Democrats said in a letter to Murphy. “Every additional day that is wasted is a day that the safety, health, and well-being of the American people is imperiled as the incoming Biden-Harris administration is blocked from fully preparing for the coronavirus pandemic, our nation’s dire economic crisis, and our national security.”
Portman said it was “only prudent” for GSA to begin the transition process immediately.
“Donald Trump is our president until Jan. 20, 2021, but in the likely event that Joe Biden becomes our next president, it is in the national interest that the transition is seamless and that America is ready on Day One of a new administration for the challenges we face,″ Portman wrote in an op-ed calling for the transition to begin.
Murphy’s ascertainment will free up money for the transition and clear the way for Biden’s team to begin placing transition personnel at federal agencies. Trump administration officials had said they would not give Biden the classified presidential daily briefing on intelligence matters until the GSA makes the ascertainment official.
“Now that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy has fulfilled her duty and ascertained the election results, the formal presidential transition can begin in full force,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. “Unfortunately, every day lost to the delayed ascertainment was a missed opportunity for the outgoing administration to help President-elect Joe Biden prepare to meet our country’s greatest challenges. The good news is that the president-elect and his team are the most prepared and best equipped of any incoming administration in recent memory.”
Among those signing the letter from business leaders were Jon Gray, president of the Blackstone private equity firm; Robert Bakish, president and CEO of ViacomCBS Inc.; Henry Kravis, the co-chief executive of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., another private equity giant; David Solomon, CEO at Goldman Sachs; and George H. Walker, CEO of the investment firm Neuberger Berman and a second cousin to former President George W. Bush.


fortune--2020-11-23--Elon Musk is now the world’s second-richest person, passing Bill Gates

Elon Musk’s year of dizzying ascents hit a new apex Monday as the Tesla co-founder passed Bill Gates to become the world’s second-richest person.
The 49-year-old entrepreneur’s net worth soared $7.2 billion to $127.9 billion, driven by yet another surge in Tesla’s share price. Musk has added $100.3 billion to his net worth this year, the most of anyone on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 richest people. In January he ranked 35th.
His advance up the wealth ranks has been driven largely by Tesla, whose market value is approaching $500 billion. About three-quarters of his net worth is comprised of Tesla shares, which are valued more than four times as much as his stake in Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX.
Musk’s milestone marks only the second time in the index’s eight-year history that Microsoft co-founder Gates has ranked lower than number two. He held the top spot for years before being bumped by Amazon.com. founder Jeff Bezos in 2017. Gates’s net worth of $127.7 billion would be much higher had he not donated so prodigiously to charity over the years. He has given more than $27 billion to his namesake foundation since 2006.
With Monday’s move, Musk unseats an occasional verbal sparring partner in Gates, who the Tesla billionaire has ridiculed on Twitter for, among other things, having “no clue” about electric trucks. The two have also traded barbs over Covid-19. Gates, whose charitable foundation is one of the preeminent bodies backing vaccine research, has expressed concern over Musk’s stated suspicion of pandemic data and embrace of certain conspiracy theories.
The year has been a lucrative one for the world’s richest people. Despite the pandemic and widespread layoffs that have disproportionately affected the world’s working class and poor, the members of the Bloomberg index have collectively gained 23% — or $1.3 trillion — since the year began.


fortune--2020-11-23--The women joining the Biden-Harris administration

President-elect Joe Biden is assembling his Cabinet and filling roles in his White House administration. The former vice president has already revealed some of his choices to the public, and various news outlets have reported on other likely picks.
Biden faces pressure to please both progressive and moderates—and to get his Cabinet choices through a potential GOP-controlled Senate. The Biden team, which made history with the election of Vice President Kamala Harris as the first female, first Black, and first Indian-American veep, is also keeping gender and racial diversity in mind.
Two of Biden’s reported choices would see women run agencies that have never before had a female leader: Treasury and Defense.
These are the women who are so far expected to join Biden’s Cabinet and White House. This story will be updated with further announcements.
Courtesy of Kate Bedingfield
Kate Bedingfield, White House Communications Director
Longtime Biden aide Kate Bedingfield will join the White House as communications director. During the 2020 campaign, Bedingfield has worked as deputy campaign manager and communications director.
Bedingfield is one of seven hires who will be part of a senior communications staff entirely made up of women, a first for any White House.
Biden chose Avril Haines as his nominee for director of national intelligence. Stefani Reynolds—CNP/ABACAPRESS.COM/Reuters
Avril Haines, director of national intelligence
Biden’s transition team announced on Monday that he would choose Avril Haines as his director of national intelligence. Haines had also reportedly been under consideration to lead the CIA—a position that reports in to this one.
Haines would be the first woman to hold this role and would be the highest-ranking woman in the intelligence community. She is a former deputy director of the CIA.
Jen Psaki will be President-elect Joe Biden’s press secretary. Patrick T. Fallon—Bloomberg/Getty Images
Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary
Jen Psaki, a communications veteran of Democratic campaigns and administrations, will be the Biden administration’s press secretary. Psaki served as communications director in the Obama White House and State Department spokesperson under Secretary of State John Kerry.
During the transition period, Psaki is overseeing the incoming administration’s confirmations team.
Dana Remus, White House counsel
Biden and Obama team legal veteran Dana Remus is the President-elect’s choice for White House counsel. Remus was general counsel for the 2020 campaign and was deputy assistant to the President and deputy counsel for ethics during the Obama administration.
Cecilia Rouse, seen here in 2016. Mel Evans—AP Photo
Cecilia Rouse, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
The Biden transition team announced that Cecilia Rouse is the President-elect’s choice to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. Rouse, currently dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, was a member of the council during the Obama administration.
If confirmed, Rouse would be the first Black woman to chair the 74-year-old council.
Symone Sanders will be chief spokesperson for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Rueters Pictures
Symone Sanders, senior adviser and chief spokesperson for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris
Prominent Biden campaign senior adviser Symone Sanders will join the administration as a senior adviser and chief spokesperson for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Sanders is the former press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid.
Neera Tanden, here in May 2019. Michael Brochstein—SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
Neera Tanden, director of the Office of Management and Budget
Center for American Progress CEO Neera Tanden is Biden’s choice to lead the Office of Management and Budget, the agency that implements federal policy on behalf of the President.
If confirmed, the Biden transition team notes, Tanden would be the first woman of color and the first South Asian American to lead the OMB.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield is Biden’s pick to be the U.S. ambassador to the UN. Pablo Martinez Monsivais—AP Images
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the UN
Biden’s pick to represent the United States at the United Nations is Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a 35-year diplomatic veteran. His team announced the choice on Monday. The President-elect is also expected to restore the position to Cabinet-level after President Trump downgraded it.
Thomas-Greenfield has served as U.S. ambassador to Liberia and assistant secretary of state for African affairs under the Obama administration.
I’ve had the privilege to build relationships with leaders around the world for the past thirty-five years. As U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, I’ll work to restore America’s standing in the world and renew relationships with our allies. Blessed for this opportunity. — Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@LindaT_G) November 23, 2020
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control
The President-elect chose, Rochelle Walensky, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, as director of the Centers for Disease Control.
The Biden transition team points out Walensky’s expertise in infectious diseases, especially on HIV/AIDS screening and care in South Africa.
The President-elect has reportedly chosen former Fed chair Janet Yellen as his nominee for treasury secretary. Alex Wong—Getty Images
Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary
Biden will name former Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen as his nominee for treasury secretary.
Yellen was the first woman to lead the Fed; she would be the first woman to head the Treasury and the first person to have run the Treasury, the central bank, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Yellen was chosen from a field that included Fed governor Lael Brainard and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She is seen as a choice that appeals to both moderate and progressive Democrats.


fortune--2020-11-23--Blackstone’s Schwarzman becomes latest Trump ally to throw in the towel, acknowledge Biden’s win

Slowly but surely, some of Donald Trump’s closest allies in the business world are accepting what Trump himself has yet to acknowledge—that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and will be the next president of the United States.
On Monday, Blackstone Group chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman, one of the President’s staunchest and most prominent allies on Wall Street, publicly stated as much—telling Axios that the outcome of the election “is very certain today, and the country should move on.”
“I supported President Trump and the strong economic path he built,” Schwarzman said in a statement to the publication. “Like many in the business community, I am ready to help President-elect Biden and his team as they confront the significant challenges of rebuilding our post-COVID economy.”
Schwarzman acknowledged comments he made three days after the election, during a meeting of two dozen Fortune 500 CEOs, in which he defended Trump’s reluctance to concede the race. While many of the CEOs reportedly discussed taking collective action if Trump refused to leave the White House, Schwarzman defended the President’s right to legally challenge the outcome.
“I’m a fan of good process,” Schwartzman told Axios, adding that he was “trying to be a voice of reason and express why it’s in the national interest to have all Americans believe the election is being resolved correctly.”
The Blackstone head’s willingness to embrace President-elect Biden as the future commander-in-chief is notable because of his close relationship with Trump. Schwarman parlayed his status as one of Wall Street’s biggest political donors to become a close confidant of the President, particularly on matters relating to trade and U.S.-China policy.
But as the President’s legal challenges to the election’s outcome continue to falter and his administration continues to stonewall the tradition process of handing over the reigns, more business leaders and industry groups have taken Schwarzman’s stance of accepting Biden’s victory and urging an orderly transition of power.
Last week saw Tom Donahue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—one of the nation’s most powerful business lobbying groups, and traditionally Republican-leaning—urge Trump to “not delay the transition a moment longer.” Likewise, the leadership of the National Association of Manufacturers also called on the federal government to begin the transition process last week, while JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon appealed for a “peaceful transition” to “a new president,” and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon took the somewhat unusual step of congratulating Biden on his company’s third-quarter earnings call.
So far, those calls have yet to be echoed by most establishment Republicans, the overwhelming majority of whom have refused to publicly challenge the President’s efforts to challenge the election, baselessly cast doubt on its integrity, and stifle the transition process. Their willingness to accommodate Trump appears rooted in an aversion to alienating the Republican base, among whom Trump remains hugely popular.
But even that wall of obedience among mainstream Republicans appears to be cracking. Former New Jersey governor and Trump ally Chris Christie labeled the President’s legal strategy “a national embarrassment” over the weekend, while Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) congratulated Biden on his victory and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) called on Trump to respect “the sanctity of our electoral process.”
Renowned journalist Carl Bernstein also reported the names of 21 Republican senators who have privately “expressed extreme contempt for Trump and his fitness to be president”—raising the possibility that more lawmakers will break from the President’s ranks in the days and weeks to come.


fortune--2020-11-23--Janet Yellen will be Biden’s nominee for Treasury secretary say sources

President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to serve as his Treasury secretary, a move that would put the first woman and a seasoned central banker into the nation’s top economic policy job as the coronavirus pandemic threatens another U.S. downturn, people familiar with the matter said.
In Yellen, Biden is likely to find support from both Wall Street, which feared a more provocative pick such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, and progressives, who were concerned he might choose someone too friendly to big banks and the wealthy.
If confirmed by the Senate, Yellen, 74, would be tasked with helping steer the U.S. economy through a resurgent pandemic that is already causing parts of the nation to resume painful lockdowns. The most immediate challenge would be breaking a logjam on Capitol Hill to deliver economic relief to long and growing unemployment lines.
Biden’s transition team declined to comment.
Nine months into the pandemic, more than six million people still claim extended unemployment assistance and joblessness is again on the rise as U.S. coronavirus infections spiked to well more than 100,000 per day.
Investors, though, are likely to welcome Yellen. During her time as Fed chair, tech stocks doubled even as she presided over the first interest rate increases in 11 years.
At the same time, investors may be wary of recent comments she made on the need to take greater regulatory action after financial market mayhem when the economy was locked down in March to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Still, investors are likely to take comfort in her stance in favor of additional emergency government spending.
“While the pandemic is still seriously affecting the economy we need to continue extraordinary fiscal support, but even beyond that I think it will be necessary,” Yellen said Oct. 19 on Bloomberg Television.
But delivering will be tough. Talks between Republicans and Democrats on stimulus have been stalled for months over widely different views on the amount of fresh appropriations needed for COVID-19 relief. The Trump administration, led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, has been unable to find common ground since May.
Yellen’s selection was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.


fortune--2020-11-23--1 in 3 Americans are planning a holiday trip

An airborne virus doesn’t mix well with the holidays. Already the CDC is asking Americans to not travel for Thanksgiving, and health professionals are worried holiday shopping is making the pandemic worse.
But how exactly will Americans change their holiday plans? To find out, Fortune and Civis Analytics teamed up to survey 10,063 U.S. adults.*
Holiday activities are scaled back, but far from cancelled. Among U.S. adults, 31% say they’ll travel this holiday season to visit family or friends (21%) or for vacation (10%). That’s down from 51% who traveled last year.
The group most likely to hit the road: Americans with an advanced degree. These highly educated Americans are the most likely to travel during the holidays to visit friends or family (35%) and for vacation (15%).


fortune--2020-11-23--Apple security chief charged with offering bribe for concealed gun licenses

A California district attorney accused Apple chief security officer Thomas Moyer of offering a bribe to state officials, according to indictments issued on Monday.
Moyer was named along with Santa Clara County Undersheriff Rick Sung and Captain James Jensen in a case that involved offering bribes in return for concealed firearms licenses, according to court document and a statement from the Santa Clara district attorney’s office. Ed Swanson, Moyer’s attorney, said his client is innocent.
The two-year investigation by the District Attorney’s Office revealed that Sung, aided by Jensen in one instance, held up the issuance of concealed firearms (CCW) licenses until the applicants gave something of value.
“In the case of four CCW licenses withheld from Apple employees, Undersheriff Sung and Cpt. Jensen managed to extract from Thomas Moyer a promise that Apple would donate iPads to the Sheriff’s Office,” the district attorney said in the statement. “The promised donation of 200 iPads worth close to $70,000 was scuttled at the eleventh hour just after August 2, 2019, when Sung and Moyer learned of the search warrant that the District Attorney’s Office executed at the Sheriff’s Office seizing all its CCW license records.”
Moyer has been at Apple for about 15 years, and he has been the head of global security at the company since November 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“Tom Moyer is innocent of the charges filed against him,” Swanson, Moyer’s attorney, said in an emailed statement. “He did nothing wrong and has acted with the highest integrity throughout his career. We have no doubt he will be acquitted at trial.”


fortune--2020-11-23--Goldman Sachs downgrades GDP estimates for Q4 and beyond thanks to COVID case surge

Goldman Sachs is serving up some harsh projections just days before Thanksgiving.
The bank cited “the rapid and broad-based resurgence of the coronavirus” as the main reason it was downgrading Q4 and Q1 GDP forecasts. Goldman now expects +3.5% and +1.0% annualized growth in Q4 and Q1 (+4.5% and +3.5% previously).
Indeed, the worry is that as too many travelers in the U.S. ignore Thanksgiving COVID recommendations from the CDC and keep plans to mix and mingle with extended family, we’ll see cases continue to rise from their already staggeringly high levels. Then that will lead governments to reinstate regulations that curtail economic activity.
The resulting crackdowns may vary geographically, however. “We expect the largest hit in the Northeast, where lower temperatures will likely mean a larger virus headwind and where policymakers have indicated more willingness to impose restrictions, and the smallest hit in the South. We expect sequential declines in consumer services spending over November through January, and now see -1.0% annualized real consumption growth in Q1,” the analysts wrote.
Meanwhile, the outcome of any stimulus deal now seems to hang on the two Senate races that are heading to a runoff in Georgia. Should the Democrats capture both seats, and thus control the chamber thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President elect Kamala Harris, most economists see a big package, including another round of $1,200 direct payments. But if Republicans retain control they have long been partial to a much “skinnier” package which is not likely to include checks for individuals.
Goldman’s analysts had earlier cautioned that failure to reach a “fiscal agreement by the end of Q1 or widespread and more stringent virus restrictions could lead to outright contraction in Q1.”
But it’s not all bad news. Goldman analysts also predict that the “larger drag in the winter should imply an even larger reacceleration on the back of mass immunization. We have thus increased our Q2 and Q3 growth forecasts to +9.5% and +7.0%, respectively (vs. +7.0% and +6.0% previously).”
That may be one reason the bank remains quite bullish when it comes to the stock market. As my colleague Bernhard Warner wrote this morning in his Bull Sheet newsletter, “Goldman calculates the S&P 500 will close this year at 3,700, up roughly 4% from the Friday close. As for 2021, it will rise a further 16% to top 4,300.”


fortune--2020-11-23--Japan’s jailing of Carlos Ghosn was overly ‘harsh’ and compromises their case, U.N. rights lawyers s

Japan’s jailing of Carlos Ghosn was overly ‘harsh’ and compromises their case, U.N. rights lawyers say

Nearly a year after former Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn made his stunning escape from Japan, smuggled in a musical-instrument box, a panel of lawyers working under the ambit of the United Nations issued a strong rebuke of Japanese officials, saying that they had arrested Ghosn arbitrarily and held him under abusive conditions.
The ruling came after months of investigation by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a group of five experts which tries to determine whether U.N. members have violated international treaties they have signed.
In Ghosn’s case, the lawyers found, Japan most certainly did when they arrested Ghosn four times during 2018 and 2019, accusing him of underreporting about $88 million in earnings over nearly a decade, and using about $16 million in company funds for private spending—charges that Japan seemed willing to prove, even at the cost of violating human rights, according to the international lawyers.
“Mr Ghosn was subjected to unjustifiably prolonged detention in harsh conditions,” the 17-page finding says, adding that Japanese officials “gravely compromised” Ghosn’s right not to incriminate himself, and that he enjoyed little presumption of innocence—principles to which Japan has signed on in international treaties.
In the long-running drama around Ghosn’s legal woes, the panel’s findings seem almost small. After all, it is hard to top Ghosn’s escape in December 2019, under the noses of Japanese officials who had touted their arrest of a world-renowned auto executive as a major legal coup.
Yet one of Ghosn’s lawyers told Fortune on Monday that the experts’ findings could be crucial in ultimately winning his case, which continues in Ghosn’s absence. By showing that Ghosn had been forced to incriminate himself while in jail, the panel of lawyers were in effect throwing the government’s entire case in doubt.
“It will definitely weaken all the parts of the accusation based on the Japanese investments or procedures, because it does not comply with international treaties and human rights decisions,” François Zimeray, Ghosn’s lawyer in Paris, told Fortune. “Forced self-incrimination, plus other violates, effects the validity of the procedures.”
Exiled in Beirut
Hidden in a box, Ghosn was loaded on to private jet in Tokyo and spirited to luxurious exile in Beirut, where he has since holed up in his large mansion in the Lebanese capital; he has Brazilian, French and Lebanese citizenships. Less fortunate by far was Nissan executive Greg Kelly, arrested with Ghosn, who is now on trial in Tokyo, charged with concealing Ghosn’s earnings over several years. If convicted, Kelly could face up to 15 years in prison.
Zimeray—who is not involved in Kelly’s case—says the panel’s report on Monday brought deep relief to Ghosn, who felt a sense of validation about his “nightmare” at the hands of Japan’s legal system. “One could not find higher or more eloquent recognition,” he says of the report. “it is structured legally, and argued as it would have been in a judgment.” The lawyers, from Australia, Latvia, South Korea and Zambia, recommended that Japan compensate Ghosn, 66, for having been arrested four times.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday that the report was “based on limited information and biased allegations,” and that “the opinion is totally unacceptable, and is not legally binding.”
Indeed, the panel has no judicial power. It exists simply as a form of moral check on whether countries are violating international rules. But even so, Zimeray is hoping that the report might persuade Japan to ease off its aggressive prosecution of cases; about 99% of trials in Japan end in convictions. “The Japanese are quite sensitive to the U.N., and this could definitely have an impact on the country,” Zimeray says.
That would be welcome news for Michael Taylor and his son Peter, who have languished in a county jail near Boston since May, awaiting their extradition to Japan where they are indicted for helping to mastermind Ghosn’s epic flight from Japan.
The older Taylor, a former Green Beret-turned private-security businessman, was hired by a Lebanese contact to get Ghosn out of Japan. He tapped his son Peter for help, and together they devised how to extract the multimillionaire from the grip of Japanese authorities.
The Taylors have not denied their roles in the extraordinary escape, whose details read like a Hollywood thriller. But they say it was not a crime under Japanese law to help Ghosn, since he was out on bail at the time.
“There is only one positive to this, which is that I helped save a man’s life,” Michael Taylor told the Wall Street Journal last week, from jail. “I wish I was never involved.”
With Japan’s tough legal system outlined in Monday’s report by the international lawyers, Taylor’s wish could now be a lot stronger.


fortune--2020-11-23--COVID vaccines won’t come fast enough to save struggling businesses. But plasma might

A new mom recently came to me after contracting COVID-19. She was too weak to lift her tiny 3-month-old from her chest. And she was scared.
A surgery nurse was eating lunch when he realized he could not smell or taste his sandwich. He went straight home to quarantine.
Many patients note inability to walk short distances in the house because of shortness of breath.
We infuse these patients with plasma from someone whose body had rallied to produce antibodies that have already defeated the disease. With this added immediate support from a survivor’s blood plasma—known as high-antibody-titer convalescent plasma—many patients report improvement in a few days.
I can’t yet claim this treatment will work for more people. My colleagues and I are in the midst of trying to prove it. We’re investigating whether convalescent plasma versus control plasma, given in the context of a double-blind randomized clinical research trial, can prevent an infection from taking hold in someone exposed to COVID-19 and prevent an infected person from getting so sick they need hospitalization. This tandem trial approach offers the dual potential of moving COVID-19 treatment from the hospital to an outpatient setting and providing a “ring of protection” around those exposed so they never get sick.
If our gold standard trial proves plasma is effective in both these ways, consider the potential of the applications: A poultry processor who works closely with 15 others comes down with COVID-19. The sick person receives a dose of plasma to get better, and each colleague receives a dose of plasma to prevent them from becoming sick. The poultry line never shuts down.
Now apply that to a high school, a second shift at a distribution center, or an aircraft carrier.
Positive results from these outpatient plasma trials could radically affect how quickly society and the economy return to normal—even as we wait for promising vaccines and drugs to be proven both “safe” and “effective,” the FDA’s standard for approval for broader use.
Even with a vaccine, we will need immediate treatment options that can reach huge amounts of people quickly. Vaccine distribution takes time, and they require one to two months to develop antibody protection. Lastly, vaccines are not always effective: Some of the most vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and the immunocompromised, typically do not respond well.
Antibodies work. We need a therapy option in between infection prevention from a vaccine and hospitalization with COVID-19.
Convalescent plasma was proven safe decades ago. The low-cost technology has a long and successful history: It won the Nobel Prize in 1901 for curing diphtheria in children, was employed in the last great pandemic of 1918, has been used to curb measles, polio, and mumps outbreaks, and has been successfully used on over 70,000 COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals.
The early-stage immediate efficacy element is what Johns Hopkins is working on now, in collaboration with testing sites across the nation, and with the support of at least 1,100 volunteers who believe in finding a safe solution that’s proven effective at making people better, sooner. We could know whether convalescent plasma is effective in the ways we’re testing as soon as a month after full enrollment.
It’s important for businesses and society to understand, though, that our ultimate goal with outpatient plasma research isn’t to eradicate COVID-19: It’s to keep people out of the hospital, make the disease less harmful, and get people better sooner.
If this treatment is proven effective, we would be able to stamp the curve flat and live with COVID-19, instead of shutting down for two weeks every time infection rates rise too high.
Because plasma utilizes local blood banking systems, convalescent plasma treatment and prevention can scale up quickly worldwide in a way that vaccines and drugs that depend on ramp-up time, supply chains, and international distribution networks simply cannot.
Blood plasma is already used worldwide to treat other diseases. Sites that are already prepared to deliver blood plasma for these diseases would be ready to go to treat COVID-19. All they would really need, if it’s proven effective, would be a supply of high-antibody-titer plasma from recovered patients, a freezer for the blood products, and a safe site for sterile infusions. No one owns intellectual property for blood plasma. Pricing could be much lower than other options that will eventually emerge down the line, making plasma an equitable, accessible option.
There’s hope in the darkness of the pandemic. If you’re diagnosed with or exposed to COVID-19, or if you are a clinician working with patients who are, please follow health leaders’ guidance. Keep yourself and those close to you safe.
Each of us can make a difference as we creatively fight for ways to regain what we value. We can do this.
David Sullivan is professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a principal investigator for Johns Hopkins University–sponsored plasma trials. To see if you qualify for the study, please visit CovidPlasmaTrial.org or call 888-506-1199.


fortune--2020-11-23--Why Tesla stock could go to $1,000, according to a Wedbush analyst

According to some bullish voices on the Street, Tesla is only just getting started.
The stock has seen a torrid run so far in 2020, up nearly 490% this year and recently popping on the news of its long-awaited inclusion in the S&P 500 index—a move that, according to some analysts, now legitimizes the company in the eyes of institutional investors.
Yet bullish Dan Ives, managing director of equity research and an analyst at Wedbush Securities, is willing to bet the stock can go even higher. In fact, Ives raised his price target for Tesla on Sunday from $500 to $560, and upped his “bull case” from $800 to $1,000, which would represent an over 100% pop from the stock’s current levels.
One reason? Electric vehicle demand “is really starting to inflect, especially in China,” Ives tells Fortune. He notes globally 3% of auto sales are EV, and “We think that now has potential to be 10% by 2025. With Tesla being the clear leader, we believe China could represent 40% of sales by 2022, up from 15% today.”
Growing demand in China is a “rising tide [that’s] going to lift all boats” for EV makers, says Wedbush’s Ives, but he argues “this demand dynamic will disproportionately benefit” Tesla over the next few years, he wrote in a note Sunday.
Specifically Ives likes what he calls Tesla’s “Teflon-like” demand for its Model 3 vehicles in Europe and China, “while software driven upgrades (FSD, etc) have gone right to the bottom line,” he writes. And its China market could see “eye popping demand into 2021 and 2022 across the board with Tesla’s flagship Giga 3 footprint a major competitive advantage,” he argues.
Stateside, Ives also thinks President-elect Joe Biden’s victory could be a “potential bullish scenario” for EV investors because he expects “a more environmental-friendly platform, which could further boost EV credits as well as incentives for buying EV,” he tells Fortune. And the same goes for Europe, where there’s a heightened focus on reducing the carbon footprint and a regulatory push toward electric vehicles, notes Ives (and where the company is building out its Berlin factory).
Yet the Elon Musk-led company certainly has many risk factors for investors, one being its continued dependence on sales of regulatory emissions credits to other companies—creating what Morningstar’s David Whiston recently called a “quality of earnings issue.” In Tesla’s third quarter, free cash flow grew from the previous year, but “got help” from emission credit sales, Morningstar’s Whiston remarked in a recent note. Meanwhile Whiston points out another problem: “Tesla’s product plans for now do not mean an electric vehicle for every consumer who wants one, because the prices are too high.”
Indeed, Ives acknowledges that with Tesla’s valuation at such heady levels, “They need to continue to execute ahead of the Street, there’s higher expectations, there’s competition coming from all angles, so any hiccups in either production or demand would be viewed as a clear negative for the stock,” he says.
Notwithstanding Tesla’s increasingly lofty valuation, Ives firmly believes EV demand will only ratchet up from here: “We’re in for a golden age of demand over the coming years, which is why I believe Tesla continues to get rerated going forward.”


fortune--2020-11-23--$1 trillion in stimulus at stake: The shape of a deal hinges on the Georgia Senate runoffs

The power structure of Capitol Hill and control of the U.S. Senate will be decided by the outcome of two Senate seats heading for runoff elections in Georgia on January 5.
If Democrats take both Georgia seats, they’d have the power of the 50–50 spilt chamber through Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. But if Republicans secure one seat, they’ll maintain control of the Senate and Congress will remain spilt—given Democrats still have the U.S. House of Representatives.
And with stimulus unlikely to pass during the lame-duck session, control of the Senate next year is the key factor in determining the size and scope of the next economic aid package.
Just how high are the stakes? In the ballpark of $1 trillion. On Saturday, Goldman Sachs published a report that projects a $2 trillion economic aid package by February if Democrats win both Georgia seats. But if Republicans win one Georgia seat—and retain control of the Senate—Goldman Sachs projects an aid package between $700 billion to $1 trillion.
Back in May, House Democrats passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, but the bill died in the Republican-controlled Senate. And during their negotiations with the White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer lowered their offer from $3 trillion to $2.2 trillion while the executive branch moved its offer up from under $1 trillion to $1.9 trillion. Yet the two sides failed to reach a deal before the election, which ousted President Trump.
But if Democrats win both Georgia seats, they’d be well positioned to pass a multi-trillion-dollar economic aid package following the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. In such a scenario, Democrats could even revoke their $2.2 trillion offer and do something closer to their original $3 trillion plan, by using a Senate procedure called budget reconciliation, Senate Democrats could pass a stimulus bill with a simple majority—thus not needing to win over a single Senate Republican vote.
“If both Georgia seats go Democrat, then I think the question then becomes not just how big is this bill, it’s how many additional big bills do we get?” Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets, recently told Fortune. “So much really relies on what’s going to happen on January 5.”
On the other hand, if Republicans win one Georgia seat, it’s likely there could be significantly less economic aid. After the election, the White House’s $1.9 trillion offer effectively died as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took the reins for Republicans in the stimulus talks. Led by McConnell, fiscally-conservative Senate Republicans prefer a smaller stimulus package. On two occasions this fall, Senate Republicans put forward a $500 billion “skinny” package—which doesn’t include items like a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks. Both times that package was blocked by Senate Democrats.
Pelosi still calls McConnell’s limited package a “non-starter.” But if Republicans retain the Senate, Democrats might be forced to scale back their stimulus ambitions in order to get a package passed.
And if Republicans do maintain control of the Senate, they might not act quickly. Eric Winograd, senior economist at AllianceBernstein, says he finds it “hard to believe that Republicans in the Senate who were not eager to pass a stimulus bill in the midst of an electoral campaign would be willing to do so in the early days of a Democratic administration.”
These high stakes could make the runoff Senate races among the priciest in history: Already, more than $126 million in political ads has been booked in Georgia.
A tight race
Among the two runoffs, one Georgia contest pits Democrat Jon Ossoff against incumbent Republican David Perdue. In the November general, Perdue bested Ossoff by 49.7% to 47.9%. However, Perdue was shy of the 50% needed to clinch the seat, so the race moved to a runoff.
Meanwhile, the other race will see Democrat Raphael Warnock up against Kelly Loeffler, who obtained the Senate seat through an appointment by Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in December 2019. The November contest, which included more than a dozen candidates, saw Warnock edge Loeffler 32.9% to 25.9%. The remaining one-third of the votes went to other candidates who did not qualify to advance to runoffs.
Early polling shows a tight race: Perdue leads Ossoff by 50% to 46% in a Remington poll of 1,450 likely Georgia voters between November 8 and 9. That same poll, which has a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points, puts Loeffler at 49% to Warnock’s 48%. Meanwhile, an InsiderAdvantage/FOX 5 poll of 800 likely Georgia voters conducted on November 16 finds Perdue and Ossoff tied at 49%, and Warnock besting Loeffler by 49% to 48%. Both races are within InsiderAdvantage’s margin of error of 3.5 percentage.
PredictIt gives Republicans 3-to-1 odds of claiming at least one of the Georgia Senate seat—and thus the Senate chamber. But party operatives on both sides see tight contests. Indeed, the November general election in Georgia was a nail-biter: Biden narrowly beat Trump in the Peach State by 49.5% to 49.3%, or just 12,670 votes.


fortune--2020-11-23--Autonomous delivery startup Gatik raises $25 million in Series A funding

Autonomous vehicle startup Gatik announced today that it has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Wittington Ventures and Innovation Endeavors. The company did not disclose its valuation in the deal.
Gatik also announced a new agreement with Loblaw Companies, Canada’s largest supermarket operator, to create a fleet of self-driving delivery vehicles. The announcement follows a ten-month pilot in Toronto. Gatik already has a similar agreement with U.S. giant Walmart.
Gatik cofounder and CEO Gautam Narang describes his company’s goal as addressing the “middle mile” of autonomous transport, between long-haul trucking and last-mile delivery robots. Gatik’s fleets will also be limited to fixed routes, which Narang describes as a realistic approach to the current state of self-driving technology.
“Over the last few years everyone realized, okay, this is a very difficult problem to solve,” says Narang, who has researched robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. “So the narrative has changed.” The greater-than-expected challenge of creating autonomous vehicles has forced developers including Tesla to repeatedly delay the rollout of the technology.
By limiting its driverless fleets to fixed routes, Narang says, “we can get rid of a lot of unknowns, a lot of uncertainties. We get to pick intersections. We can avoid schools and fire stations.”
Those unknowns, often referred to as “edge cases,” present the greatest challenge to fully self-driving vehicles, which must be able to correctly interpret and react to any conceivable traffic situation. Edge cases might include construction work, confusing lane markings, or a sudden snowstorm disrupting visibility. Minimizing such edge cases is one reason autonomy leader Waymo chose to pilot its robotaxi service in Chandler, Arizona—a place with wide, well-maintained roads and nearly no inclement weather.
Gatik began operating autonomous vans for Walmart in July 2019, shuttling customers’ online grocery orders between a large central warehouse and local stores. For now, those vans use human safety drivers, who are responsible for monitoring the autonomy system’s behavior and taking control when necessary.
Gatik will provide similar services for Loblaw stores. While Walmart’s vehicles are Ford vans retrofitted with autonomous driving tech, the Loblaw fleet will consist of larger, refrigerated box trucks. Those trucks will begin operating over five routes in early 2021. The Loblaw vehicles will also have human safety drivers, who Gatik describes as “co-pilots.”
As with companies like Instacart, Gatik’s business has been juiced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everything is centered around the spike in online grocery orders” from shoppers isolating at home, Narang says. “I want my groceries in the next hour or two, and at the cheapest price. And retailers are struggling to fulfill that demand.”


fortune--2020-11-23--Improving your productivity could be wrecking your life

The top pick for weekend reads in Friday’s newsletter was Georgetown computer science professor Cal Newport’s essay about the pitfalls of personal productivity. Knowledge workers have the freedom to decide how to get their daily work done, but that means tasks get assigned in a disorganized way and the day gets interrupted by the haphazard arrival of emails and scheduling of meetings, Newport observes.
“We must, in other words, acknowledge the futility of trying to tame our frenzied work lives all on our own, and instead ask, collectively, whether there’s a better way to get things done,” he concludes.
It’s a challenge in many industries and journalism is no exception. We deal with assignments large and small, meetings, conferences, interviews, and emails, oh so many emails. Just over the weekend, I received 62 emails that made it past the spam filter and are awaiting my review right now.
But one message was more helpful than others. It’s from Microsoft’s MyAnalytics app, a new-ish piece of the company’s Office suite designed to address the exact problems that Newport and others have uncovered.
The app monitors my activities and makes suggestions to improve my focus and wellbeing, some of which can be put into practice automatically within Microsoft’s apps. For example, one report tracks the number of days that I had significant activity outside of my regular working hours (18 out of 28 last month—not great). A metrics dashboard explains: “Research shows people who disconnect daily from work report lower levels of stress and higher wellbeing.”
A different section helps me set aside time on my calendar for work that requires deep concentration. Within Outlook, I get suggestions, or nudges, to carve out time for focus. Other sections promote better meeting habits and more collaboration with colleagues through nudges in other apps.
Of course, the features work better the more you use Microsoft’s apps at work. We use Slack, not Teams, at Fortune, and I track some of my meetings in Google Calendar, not Outlook. My wife’s company is more fully enmeshed in Microsoft’s ecosystem, and her MyAnalytics report and related app tweaks are even more useful than mine.
I wanted to learn more about MyAnalytics, so I jumped on a video call (via Teams, of course) with Kamal Janardhan, a longtime Microsoft engineer who’s general manager of a unit called Microsoft 365 Insights. The technology behind MyAnalytics goes back to a small acquisition Microsoft made in 2015 of VoloMetrix, a startup that was trying to solve the productivity challenge, Janardhan explained.
“After years of helping people completing tasks, being on from anywhere, we needed to help them actually manage the human and help companies manage the organizations,” she said. She was bursting with passion as she spoke from a home office converted from her daughter’s old bedroom. “Are you your best self, not just managing your time but managing your energy? Do you feel good about work, do you have good relationships?”
Remote work has increased some of the worst habits of workers, such as doing email after hours and scheduling too many meetings, Microsoft’s data shows. Janardhan said they’ll also try to help by prompting people to take a virtual commute at the beginning and end of the work day.
“We don’t have that space in our brains where it resets, where you think, you prioritize, you clean up your thoughts,” she said. I’m ready for it.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
NEWSWORTHY
Getting up to speed. Don't forget that Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference is coming up on December 1 and 2. Among the hot topics we will cover is the SPAC and IPO boom with Ashley MacNeill, co-head of technology equity capital markets at Morgan Stanley, and Paul Ryan, former Republican leader and now SPAC board member. Kathleen McLaughlin, chief sustainability officer at Walmart, will discuss climate change, while Apple senior VP Deirdre O’Brien will fill us in on her company's COVID experiences. We'll also hear from Oded Gal, chief product officer at Zoom, Dan Ammann, CEO of Cruise, and Jennifer Tejada, PagerDuty's CEO. If you're interested in attending the virtual show this year, apply at this registration link.
Teach a man how to phish. Hackers gained control of the Internet addresses of some digital currency exchanges by fooling employees at Internet domain name registrar GoDaddy into transferring control of the addresses, security reporter Brian Krebs reports. GoDaddy says "a limited number" of its employees were socially engineered, adding, "We are constantly educating employees about new tactics that might be used against them and adopting new security measures to prevent future attacks.”
Spigot status: open. Pandemic or no, venture capital firms appear to be doing quite well. The VC industry raised $69 billion so far, breaking the prior record of $67.8 billion set in 2018, after Andreessen Horowitz announced $4.5 billion in commitments on Friday. More than a couple of startups backed by the famed firm are in line to go public soon, including Airbnb, Affirm, and Roblox, which may explain the desire to keep giving them more money.
Home is where the data is. A big data merger in the world of real estate: CoStar Group, a leader in commercial real estate analysis, is paying $250 million for Homesnap, which tracks data in the residential real estate market. CoStar is also in on the bidding war for a much larger residential data play, CoreLogic. It's trading at a value of over $6 billion as it sought to fend off a hostile takeover and find a friendlier acquirer. In other merger news, AvePoint, the cloud management helper, is going public via combining with Apex Technology, the SPAC started by former Oracle exec Jeff Epstein and former Goldman Sachs tech banker Brad Koenig. (This item was updated on Nov. 25 to correct which company Epstein and Koenig started.)
The men at the factory are old and cunning. Bad news for fans of cloud gaming and 4K movie streaming. Comcast is extending its 1.2 TB per month data cap to all of its customers nationwide (previously, the cable giant's service in northeast states was uncapped). It's $10 per 50 GB over the cap.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Despite an effort to ban TikTok, the teen sensation lives on. For a piece in The Atlantic, Rachel Monroe chronicles the rise of TikTok stars like Charli and Dixie D’Amelio who live together in a house in Beverly Hills.
The sisters avoid lip-synching profanities, for the most part, and don’t participate in trends that strike them as questionable, like last spring’s “mugshot challenge.” The week of my visit, TikTok (and the world) was obsessed with “WAP,” Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s delightfully profane song about, well, vaginal lubrication. The most popular dance to the song, which was created by Brian Esperon, a dancer and choreographer from Guam, involved “lots of twerking,” according to Charli, and her mother had declared it off-limits.
“The whole internet wants Charli to do it,” Dixie said.
“I mean, I can do it. I’m just not allowed to … show the people,” Charli said. She looked down and away, and for a minute she seemed like any other teenager teetering between obedience and rebellion.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Who’s liable when a self-driving car collides with another vehicle? By David Z. Morris
Facebook’s latest efforts to combat hate speech aren’t enough, ADL says By Danielle Abril
Robinhood co-founder steps down as co-CEO, leaving Vlad Tenev as sole chief ahead of a rumored IPO By Jeff John Roberts
She’s pushing a green, digital, diverse future. And this CEO doesn’t care who the president is By Katherine Dunn
Flee the city, keep your salary? Not so fast say more employers By Lee Clifford
Meet the sisters self-funding a sustainable footwear brand, creating shoes that ‘celebrate every woman’s step’ By Rachel King
How Trek Bicycles has kept a great culture rolling in a fast-moving 2020 By Ed Frauenheim and Great Place to Work
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
When star architect Zaha Hadid died almost five years ago, few could have imagined the controversy and scandal that engulfed her estate, now valued at about $134 million. A court battle over the estate surfaced whistleblower complaints against Hadid's longtime collaborator Patrik Schumacher, who is also one of four executors of her will. The Guardian has a run down of the somewhat sordid machinations.
A judge last week finally brought the case to a close, limiting Schumacher's authority and freeing most of Hadid's fortune to fund a charitable foundation with a focus on helping Arab women enter the architecture field. That's news we can be thankful for heading into the week before Thanksgiving.


fortune--2020-11-23--The dealmakers embracing the chaos

The dealmakers embracing the chaos

This is the web version of Term Sheet, a daily newsletter on the biggest deals and dealmakers. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
For better or for worse, 2020 is chaos.
A raging pandemic smashed into a seemingly unending U.S. presidential election. And while the economy remains uncertain, dealmaking and megafunds (ahem just look for a16z below) have returned with a vengeance.
Embracing the chaos—or rather Innovating in Times of Crisis—is the central theme of Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference on December 1 and 2. Typically hosted at the height of the summer in Aspen, when tech aficionados fly in from all over, this year’s conference is all virtual.
Among those ringing in from the comforts of their homes and offices will be Paul Ryan, 54th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who will discuss his new SPAC; SoftBank Opportunities Fund’s Stacy Brown-Philpot on investing in the pandemic; Slack CEO Steward Butterfield; the CEO of SoftBank’s sometimes rival Raukten, Mickey Mikitani; and many others.
If you’re interested in attending this year’s Brainstorm Tech event, please sign-up here. Would love to speak with you there.
IPO STANDS FOR INTERMINABLE PROCESSION OF OVERLY LARGE UNICORNS ALL GOING PUBLIC AT THE SAME TIME: Do you remember last week? I hardly do because it felt like an entire month. Consumer-facing unicorns decided this was their moment, with Airbnb, Roblox, and Affirm filing for IPOs following DoorDash the week earlier. Then on Friday, e-commerce marketplace Wish also filed for its IPO.
Its differentiator? It is a discount retailer competing with the likes of Dollar General and TJ Maxx as well as Amazon and Alibaba, keeping prices low by largely using merchants in China. Wish posted revenue of $1.7 billion in the nine months ending September 2020, up 32% from the year prior, and a net loss of $176 million, up from $12 million.
The company’s largest shareholders include DST Global, the Founders Fund, Formation8 Partners, GGV Capital, and Temasek.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- TuSimple, a U.S.-Chinese self-driving truck startup, raised around $350 million in Series E funding, Forbes reports citing sources. VectoIQ reportedly led the round. Read more.
- Chainalysis, a New York-based provider of blockchain compliance services, raised $100 million, per Forbes citing sources. Addition is reportedly leading the round with participation from Accel, Benchmark, and Ribbit Capital. Read more.
- Factory_OS, a Vallejo, Calif.-based designer and builder of homes using prefabricated components for multifamily housing, raised $55 million in Series B funding. Lafayette Square Holdings led the round and was joined by investors including Autodesk, Citi, Facebook, Google, and Morgan Stanley.
- Stackline, a Seattle-based maker of enterprise tools for retailers and brands to manage their e-commerce business, raised $50 million in Series A funding. Goldman Sachs Growth Equity led the round.
- Boulevard, a Los Angeles-based management system for salons and spas, raised $27 million in Series B funding. Index Ventures and Toba Capital co-led the round and were joined by investors including VMG Partners, Bonfire Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, and BoxGroup.
- Gatik, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company making autonomous vehicles for business-to-business short-haul logistics, raised $25 million in Series A funding. Wittington Ventures and Innovation Endeavors led the round and were joined by FM Capital, Intact Ventures, Dynamo, Fontinalis Partners, and AngelPad.
- GT Medical Technologies, a Tempe, Ariz.-based brain tumor treatment company, raised $16 million in Series B funding. MVM Partners led the round and was joined by investors including MedTech Venture Partners and BlueStone Venture Partners.
- Funnel, a New York-based maker of leasing software formerly known as Nestio, raised $14 million. RET Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Trinity Ventures and Camber Creek.
- Observable, a San Francisco-based maker of data visualization software, raised $10.5 million in a Series A funding. Sequoia Capital and Acrew Capital led the round.
- Kea, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company automating phone ordering, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Marbruck led the round and was joined by investors including Streamlined Ventures, Xfund, Heartland Ventures, DEEPCORE, Barrel Ventures, and AVG Funds.
- Connect Homes, a Los Angeles-based maker of pre-made homes and models, raised $5 million. Brick & Mortar Ventures led the round.
- AllRight, a Wilmington, De.-based maker of online English language classes, raised $5 million in Series A funding. Genesis Investments led the round and was joined by investors including TMT Investments, TerraVC, and Flashpoint and Misha Lyalin. Read more.
- Encantos, a Culver City, Calif.-based edtech focused on digital and physical play for kids, raised $5.7 million from a group of renowned investors. That includes a $3.2 million seed round led by Precursor Ventures who were joined by Angeles Ventures, Concrete Rose Capital, Metrodora Ventures, Next Play Ventures, Portfolia’s Rising America Fund, and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.
- Friday, a Portland, Me.-based remote work company, raised $2.1 million in seed funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Active Capital, Underscore, El Cap Holdings, TLC Collective, and New York Venture Partners.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- CVC Capital Partners is competing with Clayton Dubilier & Rice for Bilfinger SE,a German for German industrial services provider, per Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
- CVC Capital Partners, Advent International and FSI agreed on Thursday to acquire a 10% stake in a new media business created by Serie A, the Italian soccer league. They agreed to pay €1.7 billion (about $2 billion). Read more.
- BRS sold Simpson Performance Products, a New Braunfels, Tx.-based provider of safety equipment for the motorsport industry. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Rhône Capital acquired a minority stake in illycaffè S.p.A., an Italy-based coffee brand. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- GoGuardian, backed by Sumeru Equity Partners, merged with Pear Deck, a Iowa City, Ia.-based platform for online learning. Pear Deck was backed by investors including Growth Street Partners and Village Capital. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- GI Partners acquired Valet Living, a Tampa, Fla.-based amenity service provider to property owners and residents, from Ares Management and Harvest Partners. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHER
- The Competition Commission of India, India’s antitrust watchdog, approved Reliance Retail’s $3.4 billion deal to acquire assets of Future Group, a rival retailer backed by Amazon. Read more.
- Merck (NYSE: MRK) agreed to acquire OncoImmune, a Rockville, Md.-based biopharmaceutical company with a Covid-19 drug, for $425 million in cash. Firms including 3E Bioventures Capital backed OncoImmune.
- Western Union acquired a 15% stake in stc pay, the digital unit of Saudi Arabia’s STC Group, for $200 million. It values the firm at 5 billion riyals ($1.3 billion). Read more.
- Zurich Insurance Group AG is in talks to acquire the U.S. property and casualty business of MetLife Inc. (NYSE: MET). Financial terms weren't disclosed. Read more.
IPO
- AbCellera Biologics, a Canadian drug discovery company working with Eli Lilly & Co. on its Covid-19 drug, filed for an IPO. DCVC, Viking Global, and Peter Thiel back the firm. Read more.
- Backblaze, a San Mateo, Calif.-based cloud storage provider, is considering an IPO in 2021 that could value it around $1 billion, per Reuters. TMT Investments backs the firm. Read more.
- Olema Pharmaceuticals, a San Francisco-based biotech developing therapies for women's cancers, raised $209 million. Backers include BVF Partners, Cormorant Asset Management, and Janus Capital Management. Read more.
SPAC
- AvePoint, a Jersey City-based data management provider for the Microsoft cloud backed by Sixth Street, agreed to combine with Apex Technology Acquisition (NASDAQ: APXT), a SPAC. The deal values the combined firm at $2 billion.
- UpHealth Holdings and Cloudbreak Health, two digital healthcare companies, agreed to merge with GigCapital2, a SPAC, Reuters reports citing sources. The deal values the company at $1.35 billion. Read more.
- Revolution Acceleration Acquisition filed to raise $250 million. The firm is seeking a business in the technology, government policy, and regulation sectors. John Delancey, a former member of the House of Representatives, leads the firm. Read more.
- Nebula Caravel Acquisition a blank check company formed by True Wind Capital seeking an acquisition in the tech sector, filed to raise $250 million. Read more.
- Aequi Acquisition raised $200 million after lowering the number of warrants it planned to sell by a third. The firm is seeking to acquire a tech company. Read more.
- Fortress Value Acquisition III, a firm formed by executives at Fortress Investment Group, filed to raise $200 million. Read more.
- Americas Technology Acquisition, which is seeking a target in the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors, filed to raise up to $100 million. Read more.
- Frazier Lifesciences Acquisition, a SPAC formed by Frazier Healthcare Partners seeking a target in the biotech industry, filed to raise $100 million. Read more.
- Andrea Pignataro, the Italian businessman behind financial-data provider ION, is considering raising a SPAC, per Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
F+FS
- KKR & Co. is preparing to raise another European buyout fund that is likely to be larger than its €5.8 billion ($6.9 billion) fifth fund, raised just a year earlier. Read more.
- Blackstone Group is seeking to raise at least $5 billion for its second private equity fund focused on Asia, per Bloomberg citing sources. Read more.
- Andreessen Horowitz raised $4.5 billion across an early and growth fund. The firm raised $1.3 billion for its seventh early-stage fund and $3.2 billion across a second growth fund.
- Teleo Capital, a middle market private equity firm, closed its first fund with $250 million in commitments.
PEOPLE
- Siris Capital, a private equity firm, named Prosper Vignone as an investment principal.


fortune--2020-11-23--Lockdown, superspreader, unprecedented: 2020 has changed the English language, for good

Last year it was “climate emergency.” The previous year, it was “toxic.” But for 2020, the U.K.’s Oxford University Press (OUP) could not come up with one definitive “word of the year”.
Instead, the venerable publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary has chosen to reflect 2020’s decade-crammed-into-one-year nature by highlighting its rapid and wide-ranging effect on the English language.
The details can be found in a report published Monday by the OUP, but if it’s words you crave, here are some that are unsurprisingly given prominence in that report: coronavirus, lockdown, social distancing, superspreader, mail-in, moonshot, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, bushfires, impeachment and acquittal.
And, of course, doomscrolling.
“As our Word of the Year process started and this data was opened up, it quickly became apparent that 2020 is not a year that could neatly be accommodated in one single ‘word of the year,’ so we have decided to report more expansively on the phenomenal breadth of language change and development over the year in our Words of an Unprecedented Year report,” the publisher said in a statement.
“Unprecedented” was, incidentally, one of the words being used a lot more than usual this year, the report notes.
If you find this year’s Oxford decision unsatisfying, don’t worry, there are other organizations that also come up with a word of the year. Merriam-Webster’s only comes out in December, as does the American Dialect Society’s, but at least one other has already been decided.
A couple weeks ago, HarperCollins’s Collins English Dictionary opted for “lockdown” as its word of the year, because it refers to “a unifying experience for billions of people across the world, who have had, collectively, to play their part in combating the spread of COVID-19.”
Meanwhile, the Society of the German Language is yet to announce its Wort des Jahres for 2020, but last month the Pons publishing house announced Germany’s Youth Word of the Year, which is simultaneously English (Germans regularly co-opt English words as their own) and teutonically bleak: “lost.”


fortune--2020-11-23--Biden infrastructure package in jeopardy as bi-partisan cooperation fails to launch

Union leaders and transportation advocates have looked to President-elect Joe Biden and his former Senate colleague Mitch McConnell for possible action next year on a major infrastructure package.
Yet, as President Donald Trump and allies including McConnell refuse to recognize Biden as the election winner, hopes are fading for an early bipartisan breakthrough on a significant infusion of funding for bridges, highways and airports.
Trump himself had pressed earlier in his tenure to advance an infrastructure deal, something that had eluded Washington policy makers for years, yet the effort fell short as he and Democratic leaders including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi parted ways over how to pay for it.
Under his $2 trillion Build Back Better proposal for reviving the U.S. economy, Biden envisions investing in schools, water systems, municipal transit and universal broadband. Moving that through Congress, though, would require extensive cooperation with Republicans, especially Majority Leader McConnell — who since May has spurned a comparably sized pandemic relief package pushed by Pelosi.
“McConnell wasn’t too excited about doing an infrastructure package with Trump, so I am not sure why he would be suddenly excited to work on an infrastructure package with Biden,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and partner of the Washington-based EFB Advocacy lobbying firm. “So, I am bit skeptical.”
With a one-year extension of highway funding to expire next year, union leaders and transportation advocates still see reason for hope. They’re looking to the prospect that McConnell and Biden — who served seven terms in the U.S. Senate — could rediscover the bipartisan mojo that they used to seal deals during Obama administration.
Biden highlighted infrastructure in an economic summit Nov. 16 with business and union leaders via teleconference.
“We can also modernize infrastructure, roads, bridges, ports. 1.5 million new affordable housing units,” he said. “High-speed broadband, we talked about, for every American household, which is more important than ever for remote learning, remote working, telemedicine in the 21st century. Building a digital infrastructure to help businesses, health-care workers, first responders and students.”
Most Americans favor additional investment in public works. A February 2020 poll conducted by The Pew Charitable Trusts showed that 68% of U.S. residents support an increase in federal infrastructure spending. The poll was conducted before the coronavirus pandemic damaged the U.S. economy, however.
“Infrastructure is an issue where President-elect Joe Biden and Senator Mitch McConnell can find some common ground,” said Larry Willis, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department. “They should be able to do that.”
After serving together in the Senate for nearly three decades, Biden was frequently the Obama administration’s emissary to Capitol Hill when the former president needed to cut deals with McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. The question now is whether bipartisanship is still possible, especially if, as expected, Republicans maintain control of the Senate after a pair of runoff elections in Georgia.
The prospect so far doesn’t seem promising. Biden hasn’t even had a congratulatory call from his former Senate colleague, incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said in an interview with CNN’s “Situation Room” on Thursday. But Klain said Biden has talked to other Republican members of Congress, even as most of them refuse to congratulate him publicly.
“They’ve known each other for 30 years,” Klain said. “When the time is right for them to talk, they will not need an introductory coffee or get-to-know you session, that’s for sure.”
Biden’s transition team and McConnell’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the prospects for cooperation on infrastructure spending.
U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who chairs the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, expressed optimism that Biden will push hard to keep his campaign commitment to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, even if McConnell is initially recalcitrant.
“The President-elect has made it clear he is ready to work with Congress to deliver results for all Americans with bold investments in infrastructure that help everyone, from large metro areas dealing with unreliable transit and soon to be jam-packed highways, to rural communities that suffer from bridges in poor condition and deteriorating roads,” DeFazio said in a statement.
Washington has been mostly spinning its wheels on infrastructure spending under President Donald Trump.
A five-year, $305 billion transportation funding law was set to expire in 2020 but was extended until next year. The House passed a five-year, $494 billion surface transportation bill in July, but the measure has not been approved by the Senate.
Early in his term, Trump proposed a $1 trillion replacement — funded mostly by private investment — but the plan has been stuck in neutral.
Trump’s proposal called for federal spending of $200 billion over 10 years that administration officials said can be used to “incentivize” as much as $800 billion in private, state and local spending on infrastructure. At the plan’s core was the assumption that private companies would enter into “public-private” partnerships with local and state governments.
Biden, a supporter of rail projects, has been closely associated with Amtrak — he used to take it back and forth from Washington to his home in Delaware so often he earned the nickname “Amtrak Joe.” He promises on his transition website that his administration will “mobilize American ingenuity to build a modern infrastructure and an equitable, clean energy future.”
If it comes to pass, it would be a far cry from repeated declarations of “infrastructure week” by the Trump White House that were quickly subsumed by unrelated events.
“We have to get past the point where infrastructure week is a running joke,” Willis said. “It’s one of the backbones of our economy and it employs thousands of our members with good paying jobs.”
A cash infusion would appease state governments that have seen gas tax revenues plummet as Americans cut back on traveling in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Highway Trust Fund’s balance has fallen 56.5% so far this year, according to the Federal Highway Administration. The highway fund, which is used to distribute money to states, is supported by the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gasoline tax.
“It’s one of the few areas Republicans and Democrats should still be able to come together and agree on,” Jim Tymon, chief operating officer and director of policy and management for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said during a post-election transportation policy forum organized by his group.
Window for Compromise
The federal government usually spends about $50 billion per year on roads nationwide, but the federal gas tax only brings in $34 billion. The gas tax has not been raised since 1993, and there was little appetite in Washington for increasing it even before the pandemic led to an economic slowdown.
Congress has turned to other areas of the federal budget in recent years to close the infrastructure funding gap, most recently transferring $70 billion to help cover five years’ worth of transportation spending that will now run out in 2021.
John Porcari, a former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation in the Obama administration who advised the Biden campaign, said during the AASHTO event that he thinks there are “real prospects for a bipartisan, broad infrastructure package” in the early days of Biden’s administration.
But the window for a bipartisan infrastructure compromise “is probably pretty short,” said Adrian Hemond, a Democratic strategist with the bipartisan Grassroots Midwest consulting firm in Michigan.
“The first six months of the Biden administration are the best chance to get any legislation of consequence done,” he said. “There’s an incentive for every incumbent facing a potentially competitive election in 2022 to have an accomplishment or two that they can run on back home.”