fortune--2020-10-06--How Gitlab is adjusting to work from home

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Monday morning I interviewed Darren Murph, head of remote for the coder collaboration company GitLab, from my bathroom. There was a time when that would have been an odd and embarrassing thing to do, let alone write. But you already know where I’m going with this—and so did he. Some workers were in my home, and my school-aged daughter was remotely attending class in the small apartment I am using as an office. Thus my banishment to the privacy of the privy.
Murph has a simultaneously upbeat and realistic view of our work-from-home experiment. GitLab is an all-remote company, and Murph is clear-eyed about the difference between remote working as his company and others envisioned it before the pandemic and the unfortunate situation many now find themselves in. “The best part of remote is yet to come,” he says. “Right now we’re in what I call crisis-driven work-from-home.”
His point is that while there certainly are pros and cons, one shouldn’t confuse our current setup with the goal, which is a distributed setting that allows people to live where they want but with the right tools (like comfy furniture or a co-working space) and the ability to decamp to a coffee shop or whatever else floats a remote worker’s boat.
I asked Murph if GitLab used to bring its people together. The answer was something along the lines of ‘Heck, yes.’ The whole company gathers once a year, and teams meet for bonding and team-building. “In-person is vital,” he says. “We’re communal beings.” As for travel expenses: “If you unwind your offices you’ll be hard-pressed to ever spend what you would have spent on real estate by putting people up in hotels in San Francisco and New York,” he says. He lives in coastal North Carolina, near his and his wife’s extended family, and says he never could have done it without the ability to work remotely.
Murph thinks in a year’s time companies that truly and flexibly support their workers will shoot up in employee survey ratings such as Glassdoor. And reputations will plummet at companies that merely tolerate staffers who have re-architected their lives during the pandemic on the assumption they could.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Google rebrands its productivity tools. Google's G Suite software, which offers tools such as Gmail, Chat, and Meet, will now be known as Google Workspace and will also incorporate additional features to aid with remote work. Fortune
Software executive John McAfee arrested. John McAfee, who founded a well-known antivirus software company, was arrested in Spain on U.S. tax evasion charges. New York Times
An outage hits Slack. The Slack app was offline multiple times on Monday. “Our teams are aware and are investigating the issue,” a Slack spokesperson told The Verge. “We know how important it is for people to stay connected and we are working hard to get everyone running as normal.” The Verge
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
In professional running there are two events that matter more than all the others combined. The Olympics is the premier affair. A distant second, but still the third-largest sporting event in the world, is the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships. The Olympics take place every four years, with the World Championship alternating every other year, on the odd year, since 1991.
—Inside a secret running program at Nike and a win-at-all-costs corporate culture, Fortune
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Companies with happier employees outperform their peers By Lance Lambert
Here’s what Google’s new Nest Audio speakers are like By Jonathan Vanian
Alibaba’s making an opportunistic investment in Dufry By Lucinda Shen
Getting involved in diversity and inclusion is optional. That’s a problem By Julia Taylor Kennedy and Pooja Jain-Link
Tech firms in India coalesce around a common foe: Google’s ‘monopoly’ By Grady McGregor
Walmart CEO: To tackle today’s challenges, ‘listen with open ears and an open heart’ By Doug McMillon
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
The New York Public Library is urging people to read before they vote. To help with that task, librarians have compiled a 2020 Election Reading List, with nearly 200 nonfiction and fiction titles for adults, kids, and teens. Fortune


fortune--2020-10-06--Which COVID-19 vaccine works best? A new lab network promises an answer

Here ’ s when your second stimulus check could arrive if Congress passes more economic aid

Is Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine better than AstraZeneca’s? Is Pfizer’s vaccine superior to Sinovac’s? Now we may actually be able to find out.
In the next few weeks, the world may begin to see the first results from various late-stage human clinical trials. That will give an initial indication of which vaccines are effective and safe. But it still won’t answer the question: Which vaccine is really the best?
Last week, however, an international organization took a step that will bring us closer to finding an answer.
CEPI, the international public-private partnership dedicated to aiding the production of vaccines that can stem global epidemics, said it was establishing uniform testing procedures in five labs around the world that will enable like-for-like comparisons between COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
The labs will use the same chemical reagents and follow the same protocols to assess the neutralizing antibody levels found in the blood of those who are inoculated with the various vaccine candidates.
The move is significant because until now attempts to compare published results of the immune response in blood samples of those who have taken part in early stage human testing of vaccines have been stymied by a lack of standardized tests, protocols, and equipment. This has frustrated some vaccine researchers.
“There is no way to draw direct comparisons, as different labs may use different measurements to infer immune response,” said Richard Hatchett, the former head of the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority who is now CEPI’s chief executive officer.
The new labs are located in the U.K., Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, India, and Bangladesh. The U.K. lab, run by government agency Public Health England, is also coordinating with Nexelis, a biotechnology company in Canada, and will supply the reagents used by all of the labs in the network.
By using the same reagents and standardized protocols, the new labs will also enable some vaccine candidates to potentially reach approval faster: If a vaccine being tested with the standardized protocol shows an immune response that is better than that of another vaccine candidate already proven effective in clinical trials, it will be a strong indication that the new vaccine will provide at least as much, if not better, protection than the one already approved.
The new vaccine would still have to be tested for safety, but having the comparison data might speed its approval, experts say.
On the other hand, if a vaccine showed much lower immunogenicity than one already approved, it might be an indication that efforts on the second vaccine candidate should be abandoned.
Hatchett said a standardized protocol and designated laboratory network had never been set up so quickly before.
CEPI has helped to fund nine COVID-19 vaccine efforts so far, including the efforts of the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax, Inovio, and CureVac. But the organization said its designated labs would be available to any company that wanted to test its vaccine using the standardized protocol.


fortune--2020-10-06--The WNBA gives a lesson on choosing political action over empty words

This is the web version of The Broadsheet, a daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Kayleigh McEnany tests positive, all eyes are on the VP debate, and why the WNBA won’t say her name. Have a healthy Tuesday.
– She who must not be named. While most of the U.S.’s attention is, understandably, focused on presidential politics, I was interested to see that the New York Times yesterday ran a pair of stories focused on a certain female member of Congress.
If I were a WNBA player, I wouldn’t get any more specific than that. While I am a fan, I haven’t dribbled a basketball since junior high, so I’ll spell it out: Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
The first NYT story digs into how Loeffler—who is perhaps best known for making some very profitable stock trades soon after senators received a private briefing on COVID-19—went from “from political moderate to ‘more conservative than Attila the Hun.'” It’s an object lesson in how the GOP has moved Trump-ward in an attempt to appeal to—or at least to avoid punishment by—the President’s base. (Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat, is running in a special election in November.)
The second piece offers a very different type of lesson. In addition to serving in Congress, Loeffler is the co-owner of WNBA team the Atlanta Dream. The league, as we’ve covered before, has been at the forefront of the push for racial justice in America. Meanwhile, Loeffler has called Black Lives Matter a “dangerous Marxist movement” and falsely claimed that it has “promoted violence and destruction across the country.”
But rather than respond directly—engaging in the type of high-profile back-and-forth that might rile up the voters Loeffler is trying to court—the WNBA players have publicly engaged with political figures like Michelle Obama and Stacey Abrams, moved en masse to support Loeffler’s opponent, and, perhaps most potently, declined to use the senator’s name.
At a time when so much of our political and social discourse revolves around bad faith arguments and name calling, the players decision to choose silence—and action!—could not speak more loudly.
“Words have power,” Nneka Ogwumike, Los Angeles Sparks forward and president of the league’s players’ association, told the NYT. “And to give energy to a name I think is very meaningful. So, we stopped saying that name.”
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Trending positive. The latest senior White House staffer to test positive for COVID-19 is Kayleigh McEnany. The press secretary held briefings with reporters where she did not wear a mask as recently as Sunday evening, before her positive test Monday morning. CNN
- Debate prep. All eyes are on the vice presidential debate now that President Trump is sidelined—to a degree—by his COVID-19 diagnosis. The debate is set to move forward Wednesday night, with plexiglass separating Sen. Kamala Harris (who is profiled by Elle today) from Vice President Mike Pence. In other prep, Harris's team is reading gender studies literature to study up on how the senator could be perceived as a female candidate onstage.
- Real resale. The RealReal, led by CEO Julie Wainwright, struck a deal with Gucci allowing the luxury brand to sell its own consignment offerings directly on the resale platform. The two brands are billing the partnership as inspired by sustainability. Vogue
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Kati Levoranta announced she would resign as CEO of Angry Birds maker Rovio Entertainment. NBCUniversal named former Warner Bros. TV president Susan Rovner chairman of entertainment content, NBCUniversal TV and streaming.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Beauty maven. Unilever's Esi Eggleston Bracey created Febreze, revamped CoverGirl and now oversees Dove and Suave. In this interview, the head of beauty and personal care for Unilever North America shares her career trajectory—including which mentors and boosters were crucial to her success. Wall Street Journal
- Inside D&I. Julia Taylor Kennedy and Pooja Jain-Link of the diversity, equity, and inclusion think tank Coqual argue in this Fortune op-ed that the fact that deep involvement in corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives is so often optional for both employees and executives hurts progress on the issues. Companies, they say, must shift D&I from the periphery of their work to the core. Fortune
- Baby pay. Singapore is offering would-be parents a one-time payment to ease the financial burden of having a baby in the pandemic. “COVID-19 has caused some aspiring parents to postpone their parenthood plans,” Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said Monday. “To help with expenses during this period, we will introduce a one-off additional support for newborns.” Bloomberg
ON MY RADAR
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is doing things the Atlanta way Harper's Bazaar
Belgium's new deputy prime minister is Europe's most senior transgender politician Politico
The Zoom effect: Why plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures might be more popular because of the pandemic Fortune
PARTING WORDS
"I’m not overly political. I’m overly her husband.”
-Doug Emhoff, husband of vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris


fortune--2020-10-06--Meet the app that wants to be the Bumble of real estate

Venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and technophiles are often riffing about the new “Uber for X” or the “Netflix for Y.” The latest match: Bumble for…real estate?
Anyone who has looked for an apartment in a major metropolitan area, namely New York City or San Francisco, over the past few years knows a particularly acute feeling of frustration—to the point where you’ll try just about anything (legal) to make finding a decent place to live easier and faster. And a new startup is hoping to alleviate all that by bringing in a process so familiar to many mobile users that “swipe right” and “swipe left” are part of the common parlance.
Helmed by licensed real estate broker Hannah Bomze, Casa Blanca introduces dating app–like swipe technology, combining machine learning with real-life insight from some of New York City’s most experienced real estate agents.
“I’ve been working in the real estate industry since I was 18 years old and can truly say that I’ve seen it all. I’ve experienced the extreme competition, the disproportionate commissions, the agent poaching, and listing stealing firsthand, and I wanted to change it,” says Bomze. “For a process that should be centered around the excitement of buying a home, there was so much negativity surrounding it.”
Casa Blanca founder and CEO Hannah Bomze Courtesy of Casa Blanca
Citing a Zillow study that 87% of people search for homes online, Bomze is mystified that brokerages are still using outdated websites and technology.
“We saw that space as an opportunity to both propel the industry into the future and restructure the old ways,” she says. “For us, Casa Blanca is more than just a fresh approach to the real estate industry. The name, itself, has a history and sense of familiarity to it. Casa Blanca is the feeling that our clients get when they walk into their new homes for the first time: a blank slate, a new start, somewhere to live their lives and create memories.”
On the visuals side, the app uses a clean aesthetic and an engaging interface to simplify the home search. To use Casa Blanca, prospective buyers and renters download the mobile app and answer a set of questions around their lifestyles—from green space to architecture styles and pet ownership—to find a dream residence, whether it be an apartment, condo, co-op, or townhouse. (But no commercial spaces—at least not yet.) Designed to go beyond square footage and budget, the search engine also factors in familial status, day-to-day lifestyle necessities, and neighborhood must-haves to serve each user with the homes that best fit his or her life.
Housing markets are in a transitional period, and Casa Blanca says it is embracing the new normal with a hybrid of technology and affordability. Courtesy of Casa Blanca
“From current house hunters to future buyers, the app is tailored to each person’s unique preferences,” Bomze says. “With 91% of homebuying decisions made by women and single women buying homes at twice the rate of single men, we knew that customization would be key when building the app.”
Users are able to do multiple related tasks within the app, from scheduling viewings to chatting with an in-house agent. “We’ve integrated the entire home search into a centralized hub to give homeowners the support and tools they need to find their dream home,” Bomze says.
And Casa Blanca says it cuts out the middleman broker in the traditional homebuying process. “From the start we set out to prove that our commission model would work better than the antiquated industry standards in place, that people would respond to a non-legacy brokerage name, and that our agent culture would succeed,” Bomze notes.
The company launched the app in New York City 18 months ago with 15 agents under the name “Let’s Real Estate” and so far has managed 100% agent retention to date. While in beta, Casa Blanca has made more than $100 million in sales, and is projected to reach $250 million in 2021. Bomze also cites Samuel Ben-Avraham, an early investor in WeWork, apparel retailer Kith, as well as multiple other companies, as a partner and investor in Casa Blanca.
“We aren’t a typical brokerage, so we don’t operate like one,” Bomze says. “Under companies like Compass and Douglas Elliman, agents act as their own CEO—hiring assistants and drawing in leads on their own and ultimately competing with colleagues. We operate as a cohesive team, supporting each other and matching agents with clients based on relationship and expertise. We reinforce this with our fair commission structure—giving up to 1% back to the buyer at closing for them to, in turn, invest more in their new life at home.”
“We aren’t just showing real estate; we’re going beyond to help our clients build their new homes from the inside out,” Bomze says. Courtesy of Casa Blanca
Currently, the app is available for use in New York City alone, but Casa Blanca has plans to expand nationwide eventually.
“Ultimately we want people to be using the app to find their new home,” Bomze says. “The unique search engine we’ve built—tailoring questions to each user and using their answers to sort through every listing in New York City—is designed to streamline the house-hunting process and bring them the listings they want to see faster.”


fortune--2020-10-06--‘We’re weeding out the bad actors’: Mars says its M&Ms no longer contribute to deforestation

Mars Inc., the maker of Snickers and Dove candy, is trimming the ranks of its palm-oil suppliers and says it has now eliminated those that can’t commit to preventing deforestation.
The company said on Tuesday that it has reached the point where its palm-oil use is no longer contributing to the clearing of tropical forests—a practice that’s a major contributor to global warming. With fewer suppliers, Mars said it’s easier to verify that the providers are meeting environmental and ethical goals.
Mars is using satellite mapping to monitor land use and third-party validation, and says it has asked its suppliers to apply the same rules to all production, including for other buyers. Mars has gotten rid of two major suppliers and 21 second-tier suppliers for not following its protocols.
“We have cleaned up our act,” said Barry Parkin, chief procurement and sustainability officer at Mars. He added that the aim is for the changes to improve behavior across the entire industry. “We’re weeding out the bad actors and we’re rewarding the good actors,” he added in an interview.
Shortening the supply chain
While a tighter supply chain is easier to regulate, it also lets Mars “shorten the pipeline” from plantation to refinery, lowering costs, Parkin said.
Palm oil is used to make everything from chocolate and animal feed to deodorant and shampoo. Scrutiny surrounding its environmental and social impact is increasing as slash-and-burn farming destroys rain forests and pollutes air, water and soil.
About 85% of palm-oil production occurs in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the conversion of peat swamps into palm-oil plantations produces as much greenhouse-gas pollution as nearly half of the global aviation industry.
“If a fire starts somewhere in one of the areas that we’re sourcing from, an alert will go off and ground verification will happen,” Parkin said. “If it’s found that a supplier has done something wrong, they are immediately dropped out of our supply chain and then the investigation happens and they get a chance to explain it.”
With awareness rising, Mars and peers such as Mondelez International Inc., Nestle SA and Unilever NV have pledged to take steps to prevent further environmental damage. In a 2019 report, the World Wildlife Fund gave Mars a score of 17.3 out of 22, which ranks companies on their efforts to prevent deforestation and support a responsible and sustainable palm-oil industry. That places Mars as the 12th best performer amid the 173 total in the study.
Margaret Arbuthnot, director of commodity markets at WWF, said that supplies of palm oil depend on companies making changes to their supply chains now.
“It’s not just their current supply chains that matter, but that it’s shifting the whole industry to sustainability so that they have those supplies available in the future,” Arbuthnot said in an interview. “It’s a whole industry problem, so they need to do their part.”


fortune--2020-10-06--Whole Foods’ CEO on how business can be better than just ‘a bunch of selfish greedy bastards’

John Mackey founded Whole Foods in Austin in 1980. About 10 years later, he started the conscious capitalism movement. Now, as the veteran CEO of the company he started four decades ago, Mackey is still advocating for a shift to better and more intentional leadership in business, most recently on the latest episode of Leadership Next.
When asked what conscious capitalism is in layman’s terms, Mackey has his elevator pitch at the ready: “It’s capitalism, but it’s done in a more conscious way.”
The movement is oriented around four major pillars. First, every company has the potential for a higher purpose than just maximizing profits. Second, all stakeholders matter—not just the shareholders—and business must create value for all of them. Third, a different, more conscious type of leadership—one that is less about enhancing its own wealth and power and more about serving the organization and the stakeholders—is needed in the world today. And finally, companies need to create cultures in which people can flourish and develop their potential.
Mackey says that business isn’t evil, but that it should change toward this model because it creates immense value in society.
“I really feel like business is misunderstood in the world,” he says. “It’s seen as a bunch of selfish greedy bastards that are just in it to make as much money as possible. And while there are some people that are like that, that’s not most businesspeople.”
Host Alan Murray points out at 8:20 that many people do not view Amazon as an example of this conscious capitalism that Mackey so passionately evangelizes. How does that square with Mackey’s mission at Whole Foods after Amazon acquired it in 2017?
Mackey says that conscious leaders don’t spend much time judging other people’s consciousness, and that the merger so far has been great for Whole Foods, benefiting all stakeholders. And while he acknowledges that the two companies have different cultures, he said he is grateful that Amazon has not forced any changes on Whole Foods, allowing Mackey’s company to stay largely the same for its workers.
In the rest of the episode, Mackey expands on the Amazon merger, talks about how Whole Foods has been approaching business during the pandemic, explains his stance on CEO pay caps, and gives advice for mid-career professionals. Listen at the link below.


fortune--2020-10-06--Whole Foods founder John Mackey discusses the Amazon culture clash

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey was Ellen McGirt’s and my guest this week on the podcast Leadership Next. We invited him because he is the founder of the conscious capitalism movement, which is dedicated to the belief that every business “has the potential for a higher purpose beyond just maximizing profits” and has a responsibility “to all the stakeholders, not just investors.” You can listen to the full episode here: Apple/Spotify.
I couldn’t resist asking him about his 2017 merger with Amazon, because the two companies were kind of Mars and Venus when it came to corporate cultures. The Harvard Business Review described it as a difference between Amazon’s “tight culture”—valuing consistency and routine—and Whole Foods’ “loose culture” blending idealism and high margins. Culture clash, of course, has caused many a merger to end up on the rocks—including the storied combination of Fortune’s former owner Time Inc. with AOL. (Google “worst mergers in history” for detail.)
Here’s what Mackey had to say on the topic:
“Amazon has some different values than Whole Foods, but they haven’t tried to jam Amazon culture down our throat…It’s like a marriage. You change in a marriage. And you don’t love everything about your spouse. I’m happily married for 30 years, my wife has changed me, I love my wife, but I don’t love everything about my wife. I don’t love everything about Amazon. I love most things about Amazon. But I don’t love everything about Amazon.”
When I asked Mackey if he considered Jeff Bezos to be a “conscious capitalist,” he replied:
“The first thing you learn if you are going to be a conscious leader is you don’t spend a lot of time judging other people’s consciousness.”
And speaking of culture, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon penned a piece for The Dialogue Project, which we are publishing on Fortune.com this morning, calling for more “honest, open conversations” to strengthen our communities and our nation. He said the U.S. “seems more divided than ever on how to approach everything from climate change to the economy.” Solving those problems will require seeing “past our differences” and listening “intently”; “engaging in a difficult, but respectful, dialogue”; and “hearing, and really thinking about, another opinion more than just thinking about how to refute what they said or just giving your own.”
Amen to that, brother. More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Trump home
The world's most powerful COVID-19 carrier returned home last night, despite still being in the infectious stage of the disease, and ahead of the all-important second week of the infection where patients often take a turn for the worse. President Trump returned to the White House by helicopter, then took his mask off for photos. He insists he will participate in the next scheduled debate on Oct. 15. Politico
Debt cancellation
World Bank president David Malpass has called on investors to prepare to grant some form of debt relief for countries that may find themselves in a debt crisis, thanks to the pandemic. Malpass: "It is evident that some countries are unable to repay the debt they have taken on. We must, therefore, also reduce the debt level. This can be called debt relief or cancellation." Al Jazeera
European surveillance
The EU's highest court has told the bloc's countries to fix laws that force telecoms providers to store their customers' traffic and location data, for national-security purposes. The Court of Justice of the EU ruled that such laws are illegal if the data retention is "general and indiscriminate." This could be a blow to the U.K., one of the countries whose data-retention law was ruled illegal today—yes, it's leaving the EU, but it needs to convince the EU that its privacy laws are "adequate" if British companies are going to continue processing the personal data of European customers. Fortune
McAfee indictment
John McAfee has been indicted for tax evasion in the U.S. The highly colorful antivirus magnate was arrested in Spain and faces extradition. Prosecutors say he didn't file any taxes for the four years from 2014 to 2018, even though he earned millions from consulting work, speaking engagements, selling the rights to his life story, and promoting cryptocurrencies. CNN
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Blue wave
What if, this November, the Democrats won the White House and took control of Congress? According to Goldman Sachs, the result would be a boost to the U.S. and global economy early next year. Goldman chief economic Jan Hatzius said in a note yesterday that the benefits of a Biden stimulus package would outweigh his planned increase in corporate taxes. Fortune
Movie delays
More bad news for the cinema industry: Denis Villeneuve's Dune has become the latest planned-for-this-year blockbuster to be pushed back a year, much like Black Widow, No Time to Die, and The Batman. Not hard to see why—the release of Tenet did not go well and the studios are scared about seeing other hotly anticipated movies flopping. The Verge
COVID numbers
The World Health Organization estimates that one in 10 people around the world has already had the novel coronavirus. If true, that would amount to 800 million people, whereas the current official count is 35 million. However, it would still mean the vast majority of people have not been infected yet, and remain potentially vulnerable. BBC
Holiday travel
When's the best time to book holiday travel this year, if at all? Some suggest now, for trips in December, but also to keep an eye on local health guidelines that could change at any moment. The Points Guy founder Brian Kelly: "If you’re planning to fly home for the holidays, or are still hoping to take your annual holiday season vacation, know that you’ll need to do way more research than you normally would—and take more risks." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-10-06--European countries can’t collect everyone’s Internet traffic and location data all the time, top cou

European countries can’t collect everyone’s Internet traffic and location data all the time, top court rules

Bad news for France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and other European countries that force their Internet service providers to store all their customers’ traffic and location data for intelligence purposes—the European Union’s top court has confirmed it is illegal to do this, unless there is a clear and present danger to national or public security.
The rulings, handed down by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in three cases involving France, the U.K., and Belgium, aren’t just a victory for the privacy campaigners that have been fighting national data-retention schemes in the EU. They also could be a blow to the U.K.’s hopes of maintaining unimpeded data flows with the EU after Brexit fully takes place at the end of this year.
That’s because the U.K. would need a so-called data-protection adequacy decision from the European Commission, in order for its companies to continue serving customers on the Continent. This is awarded to countries whose privacy laws are roughly in line with those of the EU. But now the EU’s highest court has ruled that the U.K.’s data-retention laws, and those in France and Belgium, break the bloc’s privacy laws.
In a press release, the court said the EU’s 2002 ePrivacy Directive “precludes national legislation requiring providers of electronic communications services to carry out the general and indiscriminate transmission of traffic data and location data to the security and intelligence agencies for the purpose of safeguarding national security.”
“Today’s judgment reinforces the rule of law in the EU,” said Caroline Wilson Palow, the legal director of Privacy International, one of the activist groups that launched the cases. “In these turbulent times, it serves as a reminder that no government should be above the law. Democratic societies must place limits and controls on the surveillance powers of our police and intelligence agencies.”
Long-running argument
The argument over the legality of data retention laws has been raging for years now.
In 2014, the year after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed Verizon was collecting customer records for intelligence purposes in the U.S., the CJEU struck down an eight-year-old EU law that mandated similar activity across Europe. It said the Data Retention Directive did not include enough safeguards for people’s privacy—crucially, the law was disproportionate to the threat it was designed to combat.
But some countries continued to have their own data-retention laws, despite no longer having an EU law to underpin them. At the end of 2016, the CJEU again issued a ruling on the matter, saying such national laws were not acceptable unless they had strict safeguards.
Some European countries fought back, arguing that data-retention laws are not covered by the ePrivacy Directive, because countries—and not the EU—get to decide on national security measures. The European Commission backed them up on this. However, the court clarified Tuesday that, yes, EU privacy law definitely does apply here, and that means data-retention schemes have to be proportionate, with strong privacy safeguards.
What’s more, the CJEU said national courts have to disregard evidence gathered through the “general and indiscriminate” retention of traffic and location data.
Nonetheless, the CJEU’s ruling did leave open several routes for governments to maintain data-retention policies for traffic and location data. They can temporarily do so when facing “a serious threat to national security that proves to be genuine and present or foreseeable,” and they can have laws demanding targeted retention of such data, “on the basis of objective and nondiscriminatory factors, according to the categories of persons concerned or using a geographical criterion.”
Countries can even force electronic communications providers to collect traffic and location data in real time, as long as it’s limited to suspected terrorists, and a court or independent body has authorized the measure.
In the U.K., the Investigatory Powers Act—popularly known as the “Snooper’s Charter”—tells Internet service providers and mobile operators to store all their customers’ connection records for up to a year, whether or not those customers are suspected of a crime. The law allows British authorities to examine, without a warrant, which servers a person connected to and when.
According to the Irish data privacy lawyer Simon McGarr, the CJEU’s ruling in the British case “puts the U.K., with its surveillance system feeding into [signals intelligence agency] GCHQ, firmly outside the ‘adequacy’ zone of EU Data Protection law.”


fortune--2020-10-06--Tech firms in India coalesce around a common foe: Google’s ‘monopoly’

Indian tech firms are growing frustrated with Google’s expansive power on their home turf.
On Sept. 28, Google announced a new global policy that would require app developers on its Google Play Store to use Google’s billing platform starting in September 2021. The policy effectively closed a loophole that allowed some developers to use alternative, non-Google payment systems for digital purchases on Google’s app store.
In a statement, Google said that the “clarification will not affect the vast majority of developers with apps on Google Play” given that 97% of developers on the store already use Google’s billing system.
In India, where Google dominates the market for smartphone operating systems, tech firms saw it differently.
They decried the policy as an example of Google’s monopolistic power, with Paytm, a digital payments app and India’s largest tech unicorn, taking the lead in criticizing the American tech giant.
“[Google is] talking about taking billions of dollars from tech startups of this country,” Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told Indian newspaper The Economic Times. Sharma called Google’s 30% commission on purchases a “Google Tax” that underscores its “monopoly.”
“How can someone other than the government announce a tax in this country and give businesses one year to comply?” Sharma asked.
On Monday, Google said that it will delay enforcement of the policy in India until April 2022 even as the policy takes effect in the rest of the world in September 2021.
“We are setting up listening sessions with leading Indian startups to understand their concerns more deeply,” Purnima Kochikar, director of business development of games and applications at Google Play, said in a blog post. Kochikar said Google pushed back the policy’s implementation to “clear any additional questions” and ensure that Indian developers had enough time to make changes.
Google has near total control of smartphone platforms in India, since its Android operating system and Play Store are used by roughly 95% of India’s smartphone users. The second largest operating system in India is the iOS system from Apple, a company that has long struggled to make headway in the Indian market.
Sharma told The Economic Times Google’s decision to delay was an admission of “guilt.”
In a note to Fortune, a spokesperson for Google did not directly respond to Sharma’s allegations and pointed toward Kochikar’s post.
This not Sharma’s first run-in with Google. He’d complained about its power in India after Google temporarily pulled Paytm’s app off its Play Store in India for allegedly violating Google’s online betting policies in late December. Sharma said Google acted “arbitrarily” in the matter while Google said its policies are “consistently” enforced.
And Sharma clearly sees the tech community’s rift with Google as an opportunity.
On Monday, his firm Paytm announced that it is launching its own mini-app store ecosystem to compete with Google’s Play Store.
Sharma said in a statement that the new app “empowers our young Indian developers” and enables customers to use “their preferred payment option.” He said over 300 firms including Indian companies like ride-hailer Ola, food delivery company FreshMenu, and online pharmacy Netmeds had already signed on to making mini-apps, though the companies have not pulled their apps from Google’s platform.
Indian technology research firm MediaNama said in a post that the “mini-app store” is similar to a mini-app initiative Paytm launched back in July. Paytm’s fresh announcement of the program this week, however, portrays it as a direct rebuttal to Google, which blocks alternative app stores on its platform.
“The politics of the situation here is that this is Paytm throwing down the gauntlet to Google,” MediaNama notes.
Meanwhile, Paytm and other Indian tech companies are reportedly drafting a set of recommendations they will present to the Indian government in the coming weeks that are aimed at limiting the power of Google and other American tech giants in India. In early October, 56 tech startup founders reportedly talked over Zoom specifically about how to curb Google’s influence in the country.
In India, Google is already facing an antitrust investigation over its payment platforms on Android. The probe follows a slew of European Union probes into Google that included the EU fining Google $5 billion in 2018 for anticompetitive behaviors on Google’s Android operating system and Play Store. After the EU fine, Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a statement defending Google against the EU allegations.
“Rapid innovation, wide choice, and falling prices are classic hallmarks of robust competition, and Android has enabled all of them,” Pichai said. “Today’s decision rejects the business model that supports Android, which has created more choice for everyone, not less.”
Google’s Play Store is also facing a class action antitrust lawsuit in the U.S.
Google, meanwhile, appears more focused than ever on expanding in India.
In July, Google invested $10 billion into Jio Platforms, India’s largest tech conglomerate, saying that it would begin producing its own, low-cost smartphones for the Indian market.
“We think the time is right to increase our commitment to India significantly,” Sanjay Gupta, head of Google India, said in a July statement.


fortune--2020-10-07--Amid economic crisis, the world’s wealthiest gained $813 billion so far this year

The huge boost to the fortunes of technology and health-care billionaires during the coronavirus pandemic may be the beginning of a more permanent trend.
The Covid-19 shock could act as a catalyst to spur increased opportunities for those who offer digital or other tech solutions, while the wealth of those in older industries may in turn suffer, UBS Group AG and PricewaterhouseCoopers said Wednesday in a report.
“Those that are the innovators and the disruptors, the architects of creative destruction in the economy, are still increasing their wealth,” the 2020 Billionaires Insights report found. “The net wealth of billionaires in entertainment, financial services, materials and real estate sectors lagged the rest of the universe.”
Despite the global economic shock, the world’s 500 richest people are a combined $813 billion richer now than they were at the beginning of the year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Total billionaire wealth surged to a fresh peak of $10.2 trillion in July, up from $8.9 trillion at the end of 2017, according to the report findings. The heavy lifting came from the tech and health-care sectors, where fortunes jumped by 43% and 50%, respectively. Net worth among those in entertainment, materials, real estate and even finance, by comparison, grew at 10% or less.
‘More Digital’
While the U.S. is the country with the most wealth — $3.6 trillion — Asia Pacific counts 831 billionaires, more than any other region and representing 38% of the global billionaire population. The combined fortune of the super-rich there surged by 36% to $3.3 trillion between early April and July, adding 221 new billionaires, with 91% of them being women, the researchers said at a press briefing.
The post-Covid world will be “more indebted, more digital and less global,” said Maximilian Kunkel, chief investment officer of UBS’s global family office unit. “All of those points should reinforce these trends over the past few months.”
The growth in total wealth was accompanied by a rise in philanthropic efforts. The world’s richest donated $7.2 billion publicly from March to June, and potentially even more privately. The donors are increasingly focusing on tangible results such as lowering incidents of a particular disease, instead of just the amount of cash donated.
The results cover more than 2,000 billionaires in 43 markets, accounting for 98% of billionaire wealth, UBS and PwC said. The researchers also conducted about 60 interviews with the ultra-rich.
The surge in net worth among tech entrepreneurs this year — Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk both added more than $60 billion to their net worth in 2020, according to the Bloomberg index — has led to increased scrutiny as millions in the U.S. lost their jobs amid a slumping economy. Meanwhile, a U.S. house panel has proposed a series of far-reaching antitrust reforms to curb the power of the technology giants after a 16-month antitrust investigation found the companies are abusing their dominance.
But these wealthy individuals may just be the ones that will help lead the recovery.
“As the storm passes, a new generation of entrepreneurs looks likely to digitize, refresh and revolutionize the economy,” the report found.
–With assistance from Jack Pitcher, Ben Stupples and Yoojung Lee.


fortune--2020-10-07--While Trump’s Twitter feed goes quiet overnight, U.S. futures rebound

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning. With a single, abrupt tweet from President Trump late yesterday afternoon, an impressive market rally came to a crashing end. A speedy stimulus package, always remote (to this writer anyhow), looks all but dead now. And, well, this is how the markets felt about that news:
U.S. futures are up modestly this morning as I type, looking to claw back some of yesterday’s losses. They’re reacting to a later Trump tweet that maybe, just maybe, there could possibly be a sliver of hope for some kind of stimulus measure for the American economy.
Warning: Dexamethasone + remdesivir + Regeneron + tweet storms may produce side effects for your portfolio.
Let’s see what else is happening.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are mostly lower in afternoon trading, but Hong Kong’s Hang Seng continues its rally, up 1% .
are mostly lower in afternoon trading, but continues its rally, up . The global box office is floundering, but not in China . The country’s big Oct.1 holiday weekend saw movie ticket sales soar to pre-pandemic levels.
is floundering, but not in . The country’s big Oct.1 holiday weekend saw movie ticket sales soar to pre-pandemic levels. Elsewhere, the data doesn’t look so promising. The IMF warned that the rebound for the global economy will be more protracted than first thought, pushing beyond 2021.
Europe
The European bourses are down with London and Frankfurt a few ticks lower an hour into the trading session.
are down with and a few ticks lower an hour into the trading session. German industrial output unexpectedly fell in August, hurt by a slump in auto manufacturing, and that’s weighing on stocks.
unexpectedly fell in August, hurt by a slump in auto manufacturing, and that’s weighing on stocks. Who exactly is speaking for Britain as it battles soaring COVID numbers? PM Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak, his finance chief? The two are increasingly on a different page about how best to handle the outbreak. Adding intrigue: only one, Sunak, is growing more popular by the day.
U.S.
U.S. futures point to a positive open. That’s after the Dow closed down nearly 376 points in volatile Tuesday trade following Trump’s tweet to end stimulus talks . Just hours earlier, Fed chair Jerome Powell had warned that fiscal spending was needed to avert jeopardizing the economic recovery.
point to a positive open. That’s after the Dow closed down nearly 376 points in volatile Tuesday trade following Trump’s tweet to . Just hours earlier, Fed chair had warned that fiscal spending was needed to avert jeopardizing the economic recovery. The response outside Washington to Trump’s abrupt call-off-the-talks tweet was just as swift. The flight attendants union was apoplectic and American Airlines called the move disheartening, plunging the fate of tens of thousands of furloughed workers in the aviation sector into further turmoil.
was apoplectic and American Airlines called the move disheartening, plunging the fate of tens of thousands of in the aviation sector into further turmoil. In a harshly worded report evoking images of the trust-busting days of the early 20th Century, House lawmakers essentially called for the breakup of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google, saying the tech giants are abusing their dominant position and snuffing out competition.
Elsewhere
Gold is down, trading below $1,900/ounce .
is down, trading below . The dollar is off again today.
is off again today. Crude is down too, with Brent edging 1% lower.
***
Worst 3Q in history
Mutual fund managers are getting hit on all sides. The rise of DIY retail trading, ETFs and other passive investment funds are clobbering their livelihood. And this latest report card won’t help.
According to BofA, managers of active funds had a 3Q to forget, and that’s despite big gains overall in the markets.
“While US stocks posted the best 3Q in 10 years, only 27% of large cap active managers beat their benchmarks, representing the lowest 3Q hit rate in our data history since 1991,” the BofA investor note read.
Here’s what that 30-year miss looks like:
The culprit, BofA found, was AAPL. Yep, Apple. In short, if the manager of your growth fund was underweight Apple—apparently there are such growth funds out there—then you ought to get him on the phone.
“We calculate Growth managers’ underweight in AAPL (0.46x benchmark) detracted 1.5ppt of performance vs. the benchmark in 3Q, during which AAPL drove over 20% of the benchmark’s return,” the report says. That’s a long way of saying a growth fund that didn’t include the fastest-growing big cap was, naturally, doomed to underperform.
Now here’s the good news: “40% of funds are still ahead YTD,” BofA notes, and they’re above the historical annual average for the year.
What’s more, September was actually a good month for most active managers, setting them up for a promising Q4.
***
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
The R-word. "To a non-economist," writes Fortune's Geoff Colvin, "a recession isn’t about direction of change; it’s about how bad things are, and they’re still bad." Economists and central bankers, however, have a different altogether definition of "recession." Where we can all agree is this—we were in a deep hole. And some of us have begun to climb out. The exception would be this group:
Billionaire bulge. Don't worry about the billionaires. They're doing okay. No hole for most of them. That's the calculation, anyhow, from UBS, which reports that the number of billionaires rose this year, as has their collective wealth to top $10.2 trillion.
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
Quote of the day
The deal activity has totally dried up.
That's Chris Roeder, a real estate broker in San Francisco, who tells the Wall Street Journal that office rents in the city have fallen 4% since March, and that occupancy levels are below the national average, a sign that tech too is not immune from the ravages of COVID.


fortune--2020-10-07--Discontent with China reaches historic highs as the pandemic rolls on

Global perceptions of China turned sharply negative this year even as the world’s second-largest economy won increased recognition as an economic and political superpower. Those are among the findings of a survey of public opinion in 14 developed economies conducted by the Pew Research Center.
The survey, results of which were summarized in a report released Tuesday, found that a majority of respondents in all 14 countries hold unfavorable opinions of China. In nine of those countries—Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States, South Korea, Spain and Canada—negative perceptions of China surged to their highest levels since the Center began polling on the topic a decade ago.
And yet, across the 14 nations surveyed, a median of 48% of those polled identified China as the world’s leading economic power, eclipsing the U.S., which a median of 35% of respondents identified as the world’s top power. Notably, in most European countries surveyed, about half or more of those questioned ranked China as the world’s leading economic power. In the Asia-Pacific region, a majority in Japan and South Korea picked the U.S. as the top power, while in Australia 53% said China was No. 1.
In the 14 nations surveyed, a median of 61% offered a negative assessment of China’s record in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic—far higher than the percentage of respondents offering negative views of how the virus was handled by their own countries or international entities like the World Health Organization or European Union. The only nation to earn harsher reviews for its response to the pandemic was the United States.
“Only the U.S. receives more negative evaluations from the surveyed publics, with a median of 84% saying the U.S. has handled the coronavirus outbreak poorly,” the report says.
Pew said perceptions that China mismanaged the virus contributed significantly to the rise in negative attitudes towards the country in other nations. Australia experienced the sharpest spike in antipathy, with 81% of respondents saying they view China unfavorably, up 24 percentage points from last year.
Relations between China and Australia deteriorated rapidly this summer, after Canberra pushed for an international inquiry into Beijing’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. The two nations are now inching gradually towards a trade war, as Canberra moves to limit Chinese investment and Beijing imposes tariffs on Australian imports.
In the 14 nations surveyed, the rise in negative sentiment towards China began before the pandemic. U.S. enmity towards China has risen steadily since 2018 when the Trump administration began imposing trade sanctions on the nation. China’s relations with Canada have been strained since December that same year, when Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver and held on charges of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.
The pandemic appears to have accelerated discontent with China—specifically, with President Xi Jinping. Across the 14 countries, a median 78% of respondents said they have “not too much or no confidence” in Xi to “do the right thing regarding world affairs.” In nine of the surveyed countries, the level of distrust in President Xi saw a double-digit increase and reached historic heights.
But respondents professed even less faith in the American leader than in his Chinese counterpart. A median of 17% of those surveyed said they trust President Trump to do the right thing for international relations, compared to 19% who said the same for President Xi.


fortune--2020-10-07--Slack’s remote-work research yielded interesting results

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
The COVID lockdown may be the biggest social science experiment in history. That’s why the folks at Slack have created Future Forum—to learn its lessons. Brian Elliott, the Slack executive running the Forum, will reveal early research findings at the Slack Frontiers Executive Forum later today.
The survey covers 4,700 “knowledge workers” in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan and Australia. Respondents rated five key elements of remote work—productivity, work-life balance, managing work-related stress and anxiety, sense of belonging, and satisfaction with working experience—on a five-point scale, ranging from “much better” to “much worse.” CEO Daily got an early look at the output, and found some interesting results:
As previously reported, knowledge workers are generally more satisfied with work from home than work at the office (+9.2).
The biggest increases in satisfaction are in work-life balance (+25.7), satisfaction with working arrangement (+20.1), managing work-related stress and anxiety (+17.3) and productivity (+10.7). Sense of belonging, however, was rated worse (-5).
Mothers with children outside the U.S. scored work from home noticeably higher on work-life balance (+20.4) than those in the U.S. (+12), possibly because of differences in access to child care.
Excessive meetings actually undercut sense of belonging. Workers who attend weekly status meetings felt worse about their sense of belonging during the pandemic (-2.7) while those who received status updates “asynchronously through digital channels” (think Slack) felt more belonging. (+5.8)
Surprisingly, historically underrepresented workers valued the remote experience more highly than their white colleagues. And underrepresented groups actually reported an increased sense of belonging with remote work—Black (+8.4), Asian (+7.6), Hispanic (+5.2)—while white workers reported lower sense of belonging (-1.3).
I asked Elliott about the notion that an office provides a better environment for encouraging creativity and innovation. His response:
“Offices with whiteboards and water coolers don’t create innovation—people do. Studies show that loosely structured in-person brainstorming sessions mostly lead to groupthink. Used correctly, digital tools can enable a broader swath of employees with more diverse perspectives to contribute on a level playing field.”
More research to come on that. Other news below. And check out Geoff Colvin’s analysis of why the recession is over—even if it doesn’t feel like it.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Stimulus confusion
President Trump yesterday urged an end to talks over a potential second stimulus package, deferring such a move until after the election. The market-knocking move came as voters were already cooling on Trump's handling of the economy—polls used to give him the edge over Joe Biden on this front, but no longer—and after Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned "too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses." The Journal blames the Democrats for blowing up the negotiations. By the evening, Trump seemed to be reversing course, appealing to lawmakers to fund airlines and small businesses, and to approve more stimulus checks for individuals. Fortune
Big Tech
Democrat-led House lawmakers released a report yesterday accusing Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google of becoming "the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons," and calling for them to be essentially broken up on antitrust grounds. The lawmakers also called for the reform of U.S. antitrust laws. Fortune
Amazon questions
In the wake of Amazon's controversial job listings for intelligence analysts that might monitor "hostile political leaders," a cross-party group of members of the European Parliament have written to Jeff Bezos to ask whether the company had actually spied on politicians. The lawmakers are also concerned about the job listings' mention of targeting "labor organizing threats against the company." Guardian
Cryptocurrency regulation
Ripple, the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency giant, is threatening to leave the U.S. due to its regulatory climate. Ripple is engaged in a long-running argument with the SEC and investors over the nature of its XRP digital currency—it claims XRP is decentralized and therefore should be exempt from securities laws. Likely destinations if Ripple does flee the States? The U.K. or Singapore. Fortune
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Citi conspiracist
Citi has sacked a manager in its tech department for running a QAnon website. Jason Gelinas "is no longer employed by Citi. Our Code of Conduct includes specific policies that employees are required to adhere to, and when breaches are identified, the firm takes action," the company said. QAnon is a conspiracy theory that holds senior Democrats and Hollywood liberals are part of a global cabal of Satanic child sex-traffickers and cannibals, and President Trump is out to stop them. Facebook just banned QAnon pages from its platform. Reuters
Richer billionaires
The coronavirus crisis has seen the world's billionaires increase their combined wealth by a quarter, according to a new report from UBS and PwC. The report found there are now 2,189 billionaires, up from 2,158 in 2017, and their combined wealth amounts to $10.2 trillion. A couple hundred of them publicly donated $7.2 billion to help fight the pandemic. Deutsche Welle
Comparing vaccines
Results from various COVID-19 vaccine trials should start rolling in over the next few weeks, but how best to compare them? With that aim, the global public-private partnership CEPI has established uniform testing procedures in five labs around the world that will enable like-for-like comparisons between vaccine candidates. Fortune
Voting resources
The CEOs of the U.S.'s leading outdoor recreation brands—too many names to list in this summary—write for Fortune to detail how they are making sure employees have time to vote on Nov. 3: "We have seen how our collective efforts can change and improve the lives of everyday Americans. Imagine if industries applied this same united spirit to supporting the electoral process." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-10-07--Trump spent his first night back from hospital on a two-hour Twitter spree

President Donald Trump spent his first full day home from the hospital out of sight, but looked to make up for his absence Tuesday night with a spree of Twitter posts unleashing on some of his favorite targets.
In just a two-hour stretch, Trump announced he was declassifying all documents related to the probe into his campaign’s ties to Russia—a move he subsequently claimed to have already taken—re-tweeted criticism of a premium cable miniseries, predicted the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court would be “fast and easy,” and blasted presidential debate moderator Chris Wallace as “a total JOKE.”
He also criticized his own Food and Drug Administration, saying safety standards prepared by the agency for a coronavirus vaccine amounted to “another political hit job.” The president insulted the physical appearance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and declared that the upcoming election would be the “most corrupt” in American history. He further pledged to also declassify documents related to the four year old investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
In total, the president tweeted or re-tweeted just under 40 times between 8 and 10 p.m. Washington time.
Chris Wallace was a total JOKE. Protected Joe all night long. He’s no Mike!!! https://t.co/0mRHAVAUda— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
New FDA Rules make it more difficult for them to speed up vaccines for approval before Election Day. Just another political hit job! @SteveFDA— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions! https://t.co/GgnHh9GOiq— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2020
The remarkable barrage seemed to reflect his concerns about his own standing as he tries to recover from the coronavirus while watching his poll numbers slip. It prompted Democratic nominee Joe Biden to post an animated image of himself imploring the president to “get off Twitter.”
National polls from CNBC, SurveyUSA, and CNN released Tuesday all show Biden holding a double-digit advantage over Trump, while other surveys had the former vice president maintaining or expanding his lead in crucial battlegrounds like North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Trump added another wrinkle when he announced on Tuesday afternoon – in another string of tweets – that he was ending negotiations over an additional coronavirus stimulus bill. The news sent markets into a swoon and prompted concern among Republicans over the likely political fallout. The benchmark S&P 500 slumped 1.4% after Trump tweeted his comments late in the trading session, erasing a gain of as much as 0.7%.
But on Tuesday night, again on Twitter, he indicated that he was willing to approve aid for airlines and small businesses.
The president is still less than a week removed from his diagnosis for coronavirus, which prompted a three-day hospitalization at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Trump’s doctors said he would continue to receive treatments – including steroids and the antiviral remdesivir – upon returning to the White House.
Trump is battling the virus – which has already killed more than 210,000 Americans – alongside more than two dozen aides and close associates who have tested positive in the past week. Earlier Tuesday night, Stephen Miller – a senior aide and his principal speechwriter – announced he was among those who had contracted the virus.


fortune--2020-10-07--The COVID economic downturn is testing the promise of the ACA safety net

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The Affordable Care Act, facing its first test during a deep recession, is providing a refuge for some—but by no means all—people who have lost health coverage as the economy has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic.
New studies, from both federal and private research groups, generally indicate that when the country marked precipitous job losses from March to May—with more than 25 million people forced out of work—the loss of health insurance was less dramatic.
That’s partly because large numbers of mostly low-income workers who lost employment during the crisis were in jobs that already did not provide health insurance. It helped that many employers chose to leave furloughed and temporarily laid-off workers on the company insurance plan.
And others who lost health benefits along with their job immediately sought alternatives, such as coverage through a spouse’s or parent’s job, Medicaid, or plans offered on the state-based ACA marketplaces.
From June to September, however, things weren’t as rosy. Even as the unemployment rate declined from 14.7% in April to 8.4% in August, many temporary job losses became permanent, some people who found a new job didn’t get one that came with health insurance, and others just couldn’t afford coverage.
The upshot, studies indicate, is that even with the new options and expanded safety net created by the ACA, by the end of summer a record number of people were poised to become newly uninsured.
What’s more, those losses could deepen in the months ahead, and into 2021, if the economy doesn’t improve and Congress offers no further assistance, health policy experts and insurers say.
“It’s a very fluid situation,” said Sara Collins, vice president for health care coverage and access at the Commonwealth Fund, a New York–based health research group. “The ACA provides an important cushion, but we don’t know how much of one yet, since this is the first real test of the law as a safety net in a serious recession.”
Collins also noted that accurately tracking health insurance coverage and shifts is difficult in the best of times; amid an economic meltdown, it becomes even more precarious.
Coverage was already on the decline
Some 20 million people gained coverage between 2010 and 2016 under the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid and its insurance marketplaces for people without employer-based coverage. A gradually booming economy after the 2008–2009 recession also helped. The percentage of the population without health insurance declined from about 15% in 2010 to 8.8% in 2016.
But then, even as the economy continued to grow after 2016, coverage began to decline when the Trump administration and some Republican-led states took steps that undermined the law’s main aim: to expand coverage.
In 2018, 1.9 million people joined the ranks of the uninsured, and the Census Bureau reported earlier this month that an additional 1 million Americans lost coverage in 2019.
The accelerating decline is helping fuel anxiety over the fate of the ACA in the wake of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The high court is scheduled to hear a case in November brought by Republican state officials, and supported by the Trump administration, that seeks to nullify the entire law.
In July, researchers at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, forecast that around 10 million workers and their dependents would lose employer coverage in 2020. But they estimated that two-thirds of them will have found new coverage by year’s end—leaving about 3.3 million uninsured.
A more recent Urban Institute report, released Sept. 18, and using 2020 data from the Census Bureau, calculated that of the roughly 3 million people under age 65 who had lost job-based insurance between May and July, 1.4 million found coverage elsewhere—most through Medicaid—and 1.9 million became newly uninsured. Notably, 2.2 million of those who lost their coverage were between 18 and 39 years old; 1.6 million were Hispanic.
Another recent study, using different methods, reported higher numbers for the same period. The analysis released by the Economic Policy Institute last month determined that between April and July 6.2 million people lost employer coverage. The authors didn’t calculate how many found alternative coverage via Medicaid or the ACA, however.
Other findings support the notion that the health insurance loss trend shifted by midsummer. KFF, for example, published an analysis Sept. 11 showing that most companies that offered coverage to begin with chose to continue insuring furloughed and temporarily laid-off workers between March and the end of June. But as the virus continued to batter the economy, employers moved to permanently shed those jobs.
“The issue now is that the temporary layoffs have greatly decreased, and permanent job losses, including jobs that came with health coverage, are increasing,” said Cynthia Cox, a KFF vice president and director for the Program on the ACA.
Many low-income workers who lose their jobs and don’t have coverage through a spouse or parent turn to Medicaid, the federal-state health program for low-income people. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported last week that enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program grew by 4 million between February and June, a nearly 6% increase since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.
The impact of the marketplaces
Gains and losses of coverage in the ACA marketplace are not yet clear, experts say. The Trump administration issued a report in June indicating that 487,000 people had, between January and June, enrolled in an ACA plan via the federal website, healthcare.gov. But that report failed to say how many people dropped an ACA plan in that period—for example, because they could no longer afford the premiums.
A study by Avalere, a health research and consulting firm in Washington, D.C., has estimated that enrollment in the ACA marketplaces since March could have swelled by around 1 million. That includes new enrollees in the 13 ACA marketplaces that states, plus the District of Columbia, operate. Many of those states held a “special enrollment period” when the pandemic hit. Healthcare.gov, run by the Trump administration, did not offer a special enrollment period.
About 11 million were enrolled in an ACA plan in February. Open enrollment for coverage that would start on Jan. 1, 2021, begins Nov. 1.
Jessica Banthin, a senior health policy researcher at the Urban Institute and until 2019 deputy director for health at the Congressional Budget Office, said it’s anyone’s guess how many people who lost their job-based coverage this year will choose this option. She said numerous factors will influence people’s health insurance decisions this fall, and into 2021.
Chief among them is gauging whether they might soon get a new job, or get back an old job, that offers insurance. That may hold some people back from enrolling in an ACA plan this fall, Banthin said. Plus, buying insurance may be too expensive, especially for families more concerned with paying for housing, food, and childcare while going without a paycheck.
“Health insurance may not be their immediate concern,” Banthin said. “Many people’s lives have been disrupted as never before. There’s a lot of trauma out there.”
Collins of the Commonwealth Fund said that even before the pandemic, a growing proportion of families were vulnerable to loss of coverage and care.
In a survey of more than 4,000 adults early this year, Collins and colleagues found a “persistent vulnerability among working-age adults in their ability to afford coverage and health care that could worsen if the economic downturn continues.”
In large part, that’s because 1 in 5 respondents who had coverage were “underinsured.” Underinsurance reflects the extent to which coverage leaves people at risk of high out-of-pocket costs—a situation exacerbated by widespread job loss.
“Now is absolutely not the time for the ACA to be further undermined, let alone killed outright,” said Stan Dorn, director of the National Center for Coverage Innovation at Families USA.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.


fortune--2020-10-07--House panel proposes largest antitrust reforms in decades to rein in Big Tech

A House panel proposed far-reaching antitrust reforms to curb the power of U.S. technology giants including Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, culminating a 16-month investigation with a damning 449-page report that Republicans largely shunned.
The recommendations from the House antitrust subcommittee represent the most dramatic proposal to overhaul competition law in decades, and could lead to the breakup of tech companies if approved by Congress.
The findings target four of the biggest U.S. tech companies — Amazon, Google, Facebook Inc., and Apple Inc. — describing them as gatekeepers of the digital economy that can use their control over markets to pick winners and losers. The companies have abused their power to snuff out competitive threats, leading to less innovation, fewer choices for consumers and a hobbled democracy, the report said.
“Companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons,” the panel’s Democratic leaders said. “These firms have too much power, and that power must be reined in and subject to appropriate oversight and enforcement. Our economy and democracy are at stake.”
Facebook fell more than 1% in late trading after the report’s release. Amazon and Apple slipped less than 1% and Google was unchanged.
The staff report’s most consequential recommendation is for Congress to consider legislation that would prevent tech companies from owning different lines of businesses, which could lead to a mandate to break them up.
“Their ability both to use their dominance in one market as negotiating leverage in another, and to subsidize entry to capture unrelated markets, have the effect of spreading concentration from one market into others, threatening greater and greater portions of the digital economy,” the report said.
To address this, the report recommends structural separation — prohibiting a dominant platform from operating in competition with the firms dependent on it — much like the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 barred large banks from acquiring insurers, real estate firms, and other nonbanking companies.
It also calls for line-of-business restrictions, or limiting the markets in which a dominant firm can engage, similar to bans on television networks’ entering production and syndication markets.
Under congressional power, the breakups would target types of business, rather than particular companies, committee counsel told reporters on Tuesday.
“These ill-conceived ideas demonstrate a misunderstanding of the size and shape of the retail industry,” Amazon said in a blog post. “Amazon accounts for less than 1% of the $25 trillion global retail market and less than 4% of retail in the U.S. Unlike industries that are winner-take-all, retail has ample space for many winners.”
Facebook defended its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, which were criticized in the report as moves to eliminate nascent competitors and are under investigation by federal antitrust authorities.
“Instagram and WhatsApp have reached new heights of success because Facebook has invested billions in those businesses,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “Regulators thoroughly reviewed each deal and rightly did not see any reason to stop them at the time.”
Google said it has “invested billions of dollars in research and development to build and improve” free products like search, maps and Gmail. “We compete fairly in a fast-moving and highly competitive industry,” the company said.
Apple said it “vehemently” disagrees with the report and noted that it doesn’t have a dominant share in any market. The App Store developers “have been primary beneficiaries of this ecosystem,” said Apple, which defended its 30% commission rate as being “firmly in the mainstream” with rival stores.
The report is the culmination of an investigation announced by Cicilline last summer as federal antitrust enforcers were beginning probes of the dominant tech companies. The panel issued information requests that yielded millions of pages of documents and held seven hearings, including one in July that featured testimony by the chief executives of the four tech companies.
Republicans on the committee appeared poised to shun the recommendations from the Democrats, although Representative Ken Buck, a Republican member of the panel, told Bloomberg News on Tuesday some of his colleagues are interested in signing on to his response. A draft of Buck’s critique obtained Monday by Bloomberg News laid out areas of agreement and joint concerns about company behavior as well as proposals that are “non-starters” for conservatives.
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, which includes the antitrust panel, criticized the report for what he called “radical” proposals to overhaul antitrust law.
“Big tech is out to get conservatives,” he said. “Unfortunately, the Democrats’ partisan report ignores this fundamental problem and potential solutions and instead advances radical proposals that would refashion antitrust law in the vision of the far left.”
Jordan authored a 28-page report focused on claims of anti-conservative bias by the companies. Five GOP members of the Judiciary Committee, including Buck, signed on. The top Republican on the subcommittee, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, did not.
Business groups argued that Cicilline’s recommendations would harm consumers, punish success and overturn government’s traditional burden to prove its case. Groups advocating for more antitrust enforcement, meanwhile, argued it would reinvigorate consolidated markets and foster innovation.
The American Economic Liberties Project, which has called for the breakup of tech companies, praised it.
“Not only is this investigation and report a victory for workers, small businesses, and consumers, it is an immense achievement for the anti-monopoly and break up big tech movements,” said Sarah Miller, the organization’s executive director. “Congress should take up the subcommittee’s proposed remedies immediately.”
Other recommendations in the report include changing merger laws so that any acquisition by a dominant company is presumed to be anticompetitive unless the merging companies can show a takeover is “necessary for serving the public interest.”
Such a change would make it significantly easier for antitrust enforcers to stop deals by the big tech companies, which have completed hundreds of acquisitions over the past decade with little or no scrutiny. Dominant tech companies should also be required to notify enforcers of all transactions. Under current rules, many don’t have to be reported.
The subcommittee said it found that the dominant platforms have the ability to abuse their positions against suppliers, workers and consumers. But some of what the panel found objectionable wouldn’t fit the antitrust laws’ mold. To fix this, the report suggests creating a statutory red line, defining a seller as dominant if it has a market share of 30% or more and a buyer as dominant with just a 25% share.
The report also recommends increasing the ability of consumers to move their data between services, and for sites and services to work together more easily.
Companies such as Facebook are able to lock in consumers, the report contends, because few users would switch to an upstart that didn’t already have the powerful social connections that drive the companies’ networks.
The inability for consumers to switch between networks dims the possibility that competitors could dislodge Facebook. But if users could move their data, that might force Facebook or other companies to work with competitors, potentially cracking the company’s grip on consumers.
Congress has previously mandated portability standards when it forced telecommunications carriers to let consumers keep their phone numbers when switching networks. Phone dialing, and services such as email and texting, already work together across brands seamlessly.
Although Democrats control the House, Republicans’ longtime skepticism about changing antitrust law could dim the chances that Cicilline’s proposals are adopted. With time running out in this Congress, any real legislative action won’t happen until 2021. Even if the November presidential election hands the Senate majority to the Democrats, Republicans can still use procedural tools to block bills from passing.
Powerful business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had already begun to push back on Cicilline’s ideas in the months leading up to the release of the report. They’re all but certain to ramp up their opposition with the unveiling of a bill.
“Any contemplated changes to our antitrust laws will impact all sectors of our economy,” the chamber’s president, Suzanne Clark, said. “We urge members of Congress to refrain from relying on this one-sided staff report to guide future legislation.”
The group launched a five-figure ad campaign this week to push a video defending the current laws, a spokeswoman said.
–With assistance from Naomi Nix, Mark Gurman, Spencer Soper, Sarah Frier, Mark Bergen, Gerrit De Vynck, Alistair Barr and Joshua Brustein.


fortune--2020-10-07--The tech startup trying to restore our faith in COVID-free air travel

The prospect of jetting off to global conferences and meetings seems like a lost world these days, and so far, there is no obvious path back to it.
But beginning Thursday, a tech startup will begin testing a digital solution on Cathay Pacific and United Airlines, in London, New York, Singapore and Hong Kong—one that claims it’ll finally get us flying again, and offer a glimmer of hope that the old normal might not have vanished forever.
In the first attempt at a global travel system for COVID-19, Cathay passengers who have volunteered to trial the system flying from Hong Kong to Singapore and London Heathrow will be able to scan QR codes, as they check into their flights and go through passport control, using a platform called CommonPass. The code will show that they comply with whatever other coronavirus rules are in place. United joins the trial later this month, with a trial using passengers flying from Newark International Airport to Heathrow. And CommonPass is planning to roll out the system in 15 other countries over the next few months.
“Everyone was talking about the problem, but no one was coming forward with the solution,” says Paul Meyer, CEO of The Commons Project in New York, a non-profit tech company which calls itself a “public trust,” and which built CommonPass; its mission statement is to create “digital solutions for the common good.” Meyer joined forces with the World Economic Forum in Geneva to launch CommonPass, and recruited Alan Warren, a former Google veep for engineering who had built Google Sheets and Google Docs, to create the platform.
At least on screen, the system is simple. Each government uploads its COVID-19 requirements into a standard format. Passengers check a registry of medical labs that are CommonPass-enabled and find the one nearby that offers a coronavirus test, and hopefully at some point a vaccine; testing labs at airports will also be linked to the platform. Then, before flying, you upload the test results to the app, which automatically converts it into a QR code certifying you are good to travel. You scan the QR when you book a plane ticket, and the system will match the details with the country to which you are headed. The QR scan also works to pass through immigration—showing the border officials only that you are eligible to pass, without revealing any health details.
The CommonPass QR code will be able to inform airport officials whether air travelers meet local COVID-19 health requirements. Photo courtesy of The Commons Project.
More than 20 countries
The system was tested on Kenya’s borders earlier this year, when the pandemic caused epic traffic jams, as truckers underwent health checks. As Meyer and Warren began tweaking CommonPass, it became clear that dozens of countries might want to use the same system.
In July, Meyer convened an online meeting of airlines and government officials from across the world, most of whom seemed keen to try it out. “We have more than 20 countries now signed up to the next wave,” Meyer says. “It doesn’t work if it is just one corridor or bubble.” There have been tentative discussions with officials of the Tokyo Olympics Committee about how to screen ticket holders for the Summer Games next July (postponed from this year). And Saudi health officials have discussed possibly using CommonPass to vet the giant crowds of pilgrims traveling for the Haj; until the pandemic, about a million people made the trip to Mecca every year, in the world’s biggest single travel event. Warren, the ex-Google engineer, says those numbers would not be a problem for the platform. “It can handle tens of millions of people,” he says.
Meyer, who founded The Commons Project Foundation last year, says that as they began building the coronavirus platform, they realized that the confounding tangle of regulations was a major obstacle to reviving travel. Each country has imposed its own quarantine period and testing rules, and frequently changes them, making it almost impossible for airlines and passengers to follow the rules. “If every country and airline has its own model it is impossibly complex. It creates chaos,” he says. CommonPass would aim to be a uniform, global travel system for the pandemic that could be continually updated. “What we have built is critical for people to return to normal, go to work, and travel again,” says Meyer.
A lifeline for airlines?
It might also, at least in theory, be one way to try to rescue the collapsed airline industry, which is in the midst of the worst crisis of its 100-year history. Meyer says numerous airlines have expressed interest in joining the platform.
Yet in the minds of some analysts, a digital QR system might not be able to solve the industry’s biggest problem: People’s strong reluctance to fly while the pandemic is raging, and before a vaccine becomes widely available.
Barely 30% of the world’s 24,000 or so commercial airplanes are currently flying: Even though very few countries are still under lockdown, there are simply no passengers to fill them. Air travel this quarter is expected to be about 70% below the same quarter in 2019, according to Mark Manduca, managing director covering airlines at Citi in London. He estimates it could take as long as until 2027 to return to last year’s levels of demand, when there were a record 926 million trips made on U.S. carriers.
“You can tell me about QR codes and testing,” Manduca says. “But it still does not remove the fact that you are going to come into contact with hundreds of people at the airport, the hotel, and so on,” he says. “The reason I don’t want to travel is because I want to limit my interactions.”
Manduca says one critical issue facing airlines is that people are booking last minute, not knowing whether they might face quarantines on their arrival or return, or whether testing requirements have changed. “About 40% of bookings now are during seven days before the flight,” he says. “That means if you are an airline you cannot plan.” Digital systems like CommonPass, he says, “It only exemplifies the problem rather than solving it.”
Meyer and Warren are not concerned. They say they remain focused on longer-term issues, and believe that the pandemic has changed the world’s travel needs, perhaps forever. Even when passengers begin flying in great numbers again—and even if that takes years—governments and airlines will need a uniform, global system to check passengers’ health status.
Now, they say, they have built one. “It is clear to us that this tsunami is not going back out to sea and getting back to normal quickly,” Warren says. “This is going to be with us for a while.”


fortune--2020-10-07--Why are we letting America’s smallest businesses die?

When I was growing up in North St. Louis, my mother, struggling to buy groceries for our family of five, would sometimes make trips to Lee’s Pawn Shop to borrow against the few assets we had, like our family’s bicycle. The interest rates were high, but like many of the neighborhood moms we ran into there, she lacked access to credit and didn’t have the option to shop around.
That was my first experience with credit. Perhaps, then, it shouldn’t be a surprise that when I needed a way to get to and from my classes at the University of Missouri-Columbia and work, I gladly took out the loan the dealership offered at more than 25% interest so I could buy my Buick Le Sabre. I didn’t realize that people outside of our urban community weren’t paying interest rates that high until I met my wife, a CPA, who pointed it out.
I’ve thought of these experiences lately, as I’ve followed news about Congress’s inability to find a compromise on a second national stimulus package. The lawmakers disagree on many details, but there’s no debate about one key point: By not finding a compromise, the federal government isn’t meeting the needs of America’s smallest businesses at a time they need help the most.
I see the fallout every day as chairman and CEO of Midwest Bank Centre, a 115-year-old community bank in St. Louis, where I am one of only a handful of Black bank CEOs in the country. Many local small businesses—the mom-and-pop grocer, the shoe store, even my barber—have struggled or gone under, leaving gaping holes in the fabric of our local downtown and business community. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, with its steep paperwork requirements, closed many of them out from getting the loans needed.
Every time I see another “going out of business sign” in our community, I have to wonder: Why is this still going on? Why is it acceptable to let America’s smallest businesses die?
I think it is because most people don’t know how diverse and important this group of businesses is to our economy and local communities. Many people are surprised to find out that small businesses on Main Street represent 99.9% of all businesses, and employ 47% of all workers. More than half of those with employees are tiny “microbusinesses” with four employees or fewer.
And most are “nonemployer” firms—those with no W-2 employees. There were 26.5 million of them in 2018, the Census Bureau found. Young entrepreneurs and racial and ethnic minorities are overrepresented among nonemployer firms that have the potential to become employers, according to the Small Business Credit Survey, which is produced by the 12 Federal Reserve banks across the country.
Many of these businesses operate outside of the traditional banking system, the way my family did growing up. They haven’t started building business credit by forming a business entity and setting up a business bank account. They don’t have access to the low-cost loans that cushion many larger businesses when life happens. If they experience a cash crunch, they must turn to alternative lenders, who charge a lot more than a bank would. When a crisis like the coronavirus hits, it’s no wonder that many of them struggle and eventually shut their doors.
The impact of challenges like these is especially pronounced among Black-owned businesses. Between February and April of this year, 440,000 Black-owned businesses in the U.S. closed. They made up 41% of the total of 1.1 million, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. In comparison, 17% of white-owned businesses closed in the same time frame.
Many had nowhere to turn for help. Black-owned businesses are less likely to be approved for bank loans, with 53.4% of those who apply turned down, compared to 24.7% of white-owned firms, the Federal Reserve found. Only 1% of venture-backed founders are Black, according to another study.
The loss of these businesses will have a profound effect on many communities. Owning a successful business—even a one-person operation—is a great way for many people to make a living, build generational wealth, and experience positive byproducts such as quality education, stable housing, reduced crime, and improved health. For people in minority groups that have not had access to equal pay in a traditional job, business ownership is an appealing alternative.
When businesses close, it doesn’t only hurt the owners. It also leads to a loss of jobs, which causes crime rates to rise. The civil unrest that broke out in St. Louis and other cities across America earlier this year reflected not only how Black Americans are treated by law enforcement but also the lack of economic equity they experience every day.
So where do we go from here? If we want to inject hope into these communities, we need to do more than reform police departments. We need to support America’s smallest businesses right now, at a time they need help the most. Passing an aid package that truly helps them is essential and will have a powerful ripple effect.
But we also have to address systemic disinvestment that holds back this diverse group of businesses. Many of America’s smallest businesses would benefit from a concerted strategy to grow more of them to $1 million in revenue and beyond. That starts with bringing more of them into the banking system and helping them build credit.
We also need to take a fresh look at the supplier diversity programs that many governments and larger companies run. Most aren’t designed to work with entrepreneurs who’ve been starved of capital, support, and mentorship and don’t know how to help these entrepreneurs build capacity and sustainability. Instead, the programs mainly aim to hit a target “spend.” We need to change their focus to providing meaningful help.
We have an incredible opportunity right now to support America’s smallest businesses and help them grow—and, in doing so, to empower many disenfranchised entrepreneurs. Only by embracing these businesses will we be able to build the kind of sustainable prosperity that every American deserves.
Orv Kimbrough is chairman and CEO of Midwest Bank Centre and a YPO member.


fortune--2020-10-07--A TikTok star’s ‘Dreams’ come true

A TikTok star’s ‘Dreams’ come true

Nathan Apodaca, 37, lives in an RV camper in Idaho Falls, Idaho. It doesn’t appear to have running water. Apodaca works at a potato packing plant, an occasional setting in his sweetly goofy TikTok videos, which he’s been posting under the name @420doggface208 for a while now. His daughter taught him how the platform works. “I seen her doing this one step and I was like, ‘I can do that, I can kill that,’” Apodaca told KTVB news recently. “So I was like, ‘Let me do a video with you. I killed it in my eyes and she posted it.”
Sweetly goofy may be underselling it a bit, as Apodaca has some pretty good dance moves and a solid flair for staging. His earliest video on his current account (his first one disappeared somehow, he says) is a plein air tribute to The Hustle, shot on a snowy Idaho Falls day. Mostly though, Apodaca has just been he’d enjoying himself on TikTok, doing a little dancing, some lip-synching, and having fun. The Mexican American has been dubbed “Tío TikTok”, Mic explains, “and embodies an embarrassing stoner uncle persona, busting out dancing in public and cracking dad jokes,” which is sort of true.
Turns out, “killing it” was an understatement.
Last week, Apodaca’s truck wouldn’t start as he was heading to work. So, he jumped on his skateboard as one does, to take himself there. He whipped out his phone and mimicked what he saw another skateboarding TikTok’er do, smoothly taking a sip from a bottle of Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice before lip-synching along with singer Stevie Nick’s legendary 1997 breakup song, “Dreams.”
I can’t quite explain why it was so delightful—the mellow vibe, his untroubled demeanor, the easy mastery of the skateboard, but damn. That video made people smile.
Apodaca’s smile-inducing video has now been watched more than 50 million times across all earthly platforms. He now has 2.2 million followers on TikTok, 1.3 million on Instagram. It also gave a big boost to the song, which entered Spotify’s Top 40 most-played songs last Tuesday.
Apodaca has also received more than $10,000 in fan appreciation—he gave half to his mother—and is the star of his own TikTok challenge. He also has an agent, a merchandise site, a ton of celebrity fans, and a brand-new truck courtesy of Ocean Spray.
Everyone, it seems, including the U.S. Army has recreated his video. Mick Fleetwood, who was not the subject of the breakup song written by his Fleetwood Mac bandmate, joined TikTok specifically to pay tribute with his own video. (Lindsey Buckingham, who was the subject of the breakup song, has not yet participated.) And before greenlighting the new cranberry red truck for Apodaca, Ocean Spray CEO Tom Hayes appeared on the platform—on his skateboard – perfectly mimicking Apodaca’s style.
Apodaca’s new celebrity continues to unfold and I pray it all goes well for everyone. He accidentally created the most delightful commercial for Ocean Spray ever, a pretty big accomplishment since their ads were already popular. It also drew people’s attention to a little understood fact: The company is a farmer’s cooperative, not a corporation.
But I do find myself thinking about how easy it is for people, even someone with Apodaca’s charm and facility with technology, to end up underhoused, perhaps underemployed, largely unnoticed, and with little wiggle room if something seriously goes wrong. Apodaca represents an entire swath of people who are facing uneven recoveries and the potential of personal devastation from the pandemic recession.
“As a general point, recessions tend to hit small companies harder than big companies, and less educated and lower-income workers harder than more educated and higher-income workers,” notes Annie Lowrey, staff writer at The Atlantic. “But this recession and recovery have proved particularly skewed: Normalcy for some, apocalypse for others.”
If part of Apodaca’s viral fame is a deeper understanding of the fragile lives people are really living now, more than ever, then that’s a dream worth having.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
Today's mood board
Kamala Harris takes the stage tonight for the vice presidential debate. We'll be talking about it tomorrow; stay tuned.