fortune--2020-11-24--Dow crosses 30,000 for the first time ever

Happy Thanksgiving indeed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 30,000 threshold for the first time ever Tuesday, capping an astounding run from the depths of the pandemic last spring when the index bottomed out just above 18,000.
Investors were feeling optimistic on three fronts. First, vaccine optimism was flowing Monday with the announcement that a third candidate from AstraZeneca was up to 90% effective. Second, news late Monday that the Government Services Administration, which had been stalling the transition from the outgoing Trump Administration to the incoming Biden Administration, would begin its formal handover process, came as a relief to those who had feared an extended transition-of-power crisis.
And finally, yesterday’s news that Biden was poised to name Janet Yellen Treasury secretary was also greeted warmly by Wall Street. Not only is she a steady hand—someone the Washington Post called “a battle-tested leader who helped the nation recover from the Great Recession”—she is seen as a supporter of government stimulus. Moreover some on Wall Street had feared a more progressive choice would have roiled the stock market and favored heavier regulation.
Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist for LPL Financial wrote in a note Monday that “The reaction from stocks since the US election has been truly impressive. The S&P 500 Index is up 8.8% for the month, on pace to be the best November for the S&P 500 in 40 years. Small caps have also soared, with the Russell 2000 Index up 16%, which would be its second-best month ever. Although we remain longer-term bullish on equities, there are some signs that sentiment could be getting a little frothy at the moment, which could increase the odds of a pullback.”
The runup in small cap stocks has been sizzling, with the Russell 2000 on track for its best month ever. That in particular is a sign, say some analysts, that the underlying economic conditions are on the mend, given the index increased sensitivity to changes in GDP and the economic cycle.
Still, spiking COVID cases and the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday are a worrisome backdrop to the exuberance in the stock market. In fact, economists at Goldman Sachs recently lowered their GDP estimates for that reason. “The bank cited ‘the rapid and broad-based resurgence of the coronavirus’ as the main reason it was downgrading Q4 and Q1 GDP forecasts. Goldman now expects +3.5% and +1.0% annualized growth in Q4 and Q1 (+4.5% and +3.5% previously).”
That’s one reason some bearish investors aren’t convinced we’ll stay at these levels. James McDonald, CEO of Hercules Investments in Los Angeles wrote in a note Tuesday that, his firm is preparing for a 20% stock market pullback between now and the inauguration, and that he sees substantial risk in rising COVID-19 cases, continued election uncertainty and the likelihood of insufficient fiscal stimulus from Congress.
“While Dow 30,000 is a symbolic moment for the stock market, it is simply a continuation of the market’s euphoria after the pre-election selloff. At the end of the day, Dow 30,000 is just a number and the milestone doesn’t hold any credence in determining the near-term stock market outlook,” McDonald writes.


fortune--2020-11-26--Left for dead, twice, RadioShack gets another shot online

Suddenly , Swedes are ‘ very worried ’ that the ‘ herd immunity ’ strategy is no match for COVID

RadioShack, a fixture at the mall for decades, has been pulled from brink of death, again.
It’s the most prized name in the basket of brands that entrepreneur investors Alex Mehr and Tai Lopez have scooped up since the coronavirus pandemic bowled over the U.S. retail sector and sent a number of chains into bankruptcy protection. Those brands so far include Pier1, Dressbarn and Modell’s.
Mehr and Lopez plan to make RadioShack competitive again, this time online, rather than on street corners or in malls. However, unlike RadioShack’s glory years, it’s Amazon’s world now.
The big question is: How much value does the RadioShack brand have when the prized target audience of younger consumers may have never owned a radio, let alone stepped inside a RadioShack store?
“It’s a very thin line between being iconic and being dead,” said Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys Inc., a marketing and research consultancy. “Being iconic a lot of the time just means people have a memory of it. I’m not sure that just remembering something is leverageable enough to be able to convert something into success.”
Success is something that’s been in RadioShack’s rear-view mirror for quite some time. The company, which would celebrate its 100th birthday in 2021, appeared to be on top of the tech world in the pre-personal computer days of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the place kids and hobbyist would go to buy radios, walkie-talkies and all the parts to fix them, or even build them themselves.
Somewhere along the way, “The Shack” got lost. Unable to capitalize on the PC boom that began in the mid-eighties, it also found itself largely on the outside of the portable device revolution of the aughts and drifting toward irrelevancy. It booked its last profit in 2011. After store redesigns and other changes failed to draw customers, the Fort-Worth, Texas, company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015 and then again two years later.
Mehr and Lopez have no designs on rebuilding the brick-and-mortar RadioShack empire. But they say there is a path back to profitability, and it all starts with the name.
“We bought the raw material to build a big business,” Mehr said. “Brand means trust. And the brand is very, very strong. I have quantifiable data that the brand is very strong.”
Mehr said REV’s formula for measuring public opinion of a brand differs significantly from the way other experts value such things, including their own polling and analysis of how the company might work in a specific “ecosystem.”
The plan, in short, is to build a vast online marketplace on top of the RadioShack brand. Trust in that name will get consumers to the site, where the quality and variety of merchandise will dictate whether or not shoppers click the “Buy” button, they say.
Since it was founded in 2019, REV has been in the hunt for other names that could once be described as “household.” It’s turned Pier1, Dressbarn and Modell’s into online-first businesses.
Other bankrupt retailers have found a second life online. The overhead is low and there are people who remain loyal to the brand, even after the store lights go out. But they are typically much reduced affairs. American Apparel, which went bankrupt and closed all its stores a few years ago, now sells hoodies and sweatpants online. Toys R Us, which closed its doors two years ago, opened a couple of small stores and it has a website. However, the Toys R Us site redirects those who want toys to Amazon.com.
REV says that its much leaner RadioShack will sell from its own website and an Amazon storefront. RadioShack was the place to go for batteries, phone chargers and headphones. Those are products that Amazon sells under its own brand name in vast quantities.
And therein lies REV’s challenge. Megachains like Walmart and Target have been able to slow Amazon’s encroachment, but Amazon is the ultimate disrupter. It has upended industries from tech and grocery, to global shipping.
If Amazon is the biggest threat to some of America’s largest corporations, what are the prospects for a relic from the 1980s?
“Amazon is the Death Star,” said Allen Adamson, co-founder of the marketing strategy firm Metaforce. “They have everything and it’s easy and fast. There’s no need to go to your corner RadioShack to find something, or even to RadioShack online.”
Yet Mehr doesn’t look at Amazon as a competitor. Rather, he said, it’s another channel where RadioShack can sell its products.
“It’s like a big mall with a lot of traffic,” Mehr said. “So I think of Amazon as a partner, and I’ve done that in other brands, too. So this is yet another distribution channel for us.”
REV bought RadioShack from General Wireless Operations Inc. for an undisclosed amount this year. The former owners have retained a minority stake, betting on the social media marketing expertise of Mehr and Lopez.
The new owners say they hope to have RadioShack.com open for business by the end of the month. About 400 RadioShack locations remain open, but operate independently from the REV-owned parent company.


fortune--2020-11-26--Christmas aside, Germany prepares for a long, locked-down winter

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Like most European countries, Germany has spent November in COVID-19 lockdown, albeit a relatively mild version. And as in many of Germany’s neighbors, the lockdown will be eased over Christmas. But when will it actually end?
Only in the spring, a senior official in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel predicted Thursday, indicating ongoing hardship for many businesses over the coming months.
According to Merkel herself, the coronavirus restrictions are likely to continue into January at least. “Given the high number of infections, we assume that the restrictions which are in place before Christmas will be continue to be valid until the start of January, certainly for most parts of Germany,” she told the Bundestag Thursday.
But Merkel’s chief of staff, Helge Braun, told RTL television that Germany’s restrictions will probably have to continue all the way into March, at which point spring will arrive and the government will—it hopes—be vaccinating large numbers of people.
“We have difficult winter months ahead of us,” Braun said. “This will continue until March.”
High plateau
Germany case numbers, which were rising exponentially in October as the pandemic’s second wave struck in earnest, have plateaued in recent days but are still regularly above 20,000 new infections per day. The COVID-19 death rate continues to rise sharply, with 416 deaths recorded on Wednesday.
Late Wednesday, Merkel and Germany’s 16 state leaders agreed to extend the current “lockdown lite,” which is disproportionately affecting the hospitality and leisure sectors, until at least December 20. That means bars and restaurants remain closed to sit-down patrons until then.
From the start of December, contact rules will be tightened, with only five adults from a maximum of two households being allowed to meet. Shops stay open, but will have to tighten their social-distancing measures; their customers will also have to wear masks while waiting outside and while in parking lots.
But from December 23 to January 1, larger gatherings of up to 10 people (not counting children under 14) will be allowed, with people being encouraged to self-isolate before and after they meet friends and family.
Unless the situation suddenly improves drastically, restaurants and bars will stay closed over the Christmas period, and hotels will still not be able to offer rooms to tourists.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, this is what the hospitality industry had been calling for.
The German Hotel and Restaurant Association (Dehoga) said ahead of the government meeting that a brief reopening of restaurants over the Christmas period would not be worthwhile for its members, who would have to clean, decorate, stock and staff their facilities for a window lasting less than a week.
Although retail shops have remained open during the lockdown, German GDP is expected to drop by a point this quarter, and consumer sentiment has also taken a hit from the closure of restaurants, bars, hotels, cinemas and theaters.
The market research firm GsK said Thursday that nearly half of the people it surveyed were either very concerned or somewhat concerned about the coronavirus’s economic impact on their own futures.
“How the infection rate develops in the coming weeks will play a decisive role in determining whether the consumer climate will be able to stabilize again,” said GfK consumer expert Rolf Bürkl in a statement. “Only a significant decrease in the number of infections and an easing of restrictions will restore a more optimistic outlook.”
Christmas plans
By signaling a continuation of restrictions well into the new year, Germany is playing it more cautiously than many other European countries. However, its Christmas plans are largely comparable with theirs.
In the U.K., the current lockdown will replaced by a tiered system of restrictions, based on infection rates in particular regions, next Wednesday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said this system would also stay in place until March.
This festive season, up to three British households will be able to gather in one “Christmas bubble” from December 23-27, and they will be able to travel freely in order to do so. However, people are being urged to increase their social distancing for two weeks afterwards, and the preceding three weeks will be characterized by stricter measures in many places.
France, which will ease its heavy lockdown on Saturday to allow things like the reopening of shops, plans to mostly lift lockdown on December 15, allowing people to travel to meet their friends and family for Christmas. However, a nighttime curfew will still apply, restaurants will have to remain shut until January 20, and there is as yet no planned reopening date for bars.
According to Spanish media reports, the government there intends to introduce a “rule of six” for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, allowing up to six people to gather. People would be advised to stick to their household, though, with work Christmas meals being steered outside. Travel between regions would again be advised against.
Italy’s leaders are still discussing what should be done about Christmas there; the country’s current partial lockdown will end on December 3.


fortune--2020-11-26--The Supreme Court will decide: Can Big Chocolate be blamed for child slavery?

The rocky and tense transition of presidential power isn’t the only Washington drama with global implications these days. On Tuesday, another years-in-the-making conflict will play out at the Supreme Court, when the nine justices finally consider whether Nestlé and Cargill are responsible for the use of child slavery on cocoa farms in West Africa.
The case could potentially deliver a huge blow to the companies’ public images, in the face of mounting concerns over how chocolate is produced.
No one disputes how bad conditions are on those farms, and the Supreme Court briefs filed by the cocoa workers’ lawyers make for chilling reading—a tale about horrific abuse of children, for the benefit of global commerce. But the question before the Supreme Court is: Are chocolate companies to blame for that?
The case against Nestlé—the world’s biggest food producer—and Cargill, one of the biggest privately traded U.S. companies by revenue, has wound its way through the justice system for 15 years. It involves an 18th century law called the Alien Tort Claims Act—also referred to as the Alien Tort Statute—which allows foreigners to seek damages in U.S. courts for alleged violations of international law.
At stake for the companies is whether the original plaintiffs have a case against them at all, for allegedly aiding and abetting human rights abuses. If the Supreme Court decides that the Alien Tort Statute can be used to hold Nestlé and Cargill accountable, the six plaintiffs will be able to seek damages against them in lower courts. The companies are asking the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling in a San Francisco court allowing the plaintiffs to pursue their case.
Missed deadlines, broken promises
The $100 billion chocolate industry has vowed for decades to eradicate child labor from its supply chain. Nestlé, Cargill, Mars, Hershey, and others all signed a 2001 U.S. agreement, promising to stop sourcing cocoa beans from farms in Ivory Coast and Mali that use child workers, within a decade; those two countries supply about 70% of the world’s cocoa. The companies failed to meet their deadline, and then blew through two others.
Instead, as production has soared over the past decade, so too has the number of children picking cocoa. Today, about 1.56 million children, some as young as five, toil on the cocoa farms, under arduous conditions, and for pennies, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor. As Fortune reported last month, NGOs and human-rights lawyers claim that rampant child labor is one factor in the chocolate industry’s outsized profits.
Attorneys for the original plaintiffs say their clients—six Malian boys who were then between the ages of 12 and 14— were trafficked to farms in the Ivory Coast, which supplies the key ingredient for chocolate made by, among others, Nestlé and Cargill.
There the boys were used as slaves, according to their brief. They picked cocoa for up to 14 hours a day, six days a week, in exchange for “scraps of food,” the brief says. When the farmers decided the boys were not working hard enough, they “were beaten with whips and tree branches.” At night, they slept on the ground under armed guard, ensuring they could not escape.
Those details collide sharply with the marketing presentations on Nestlé and Cargill’s websites, which highlight how they invest heavily in Ivory Coast and Mali, training farmers and building schools in the cocoa region. The chocolate-makers outline plans to ramp up and monitor all farms for child labor by 2025—something they originally promised to have accomplished a decade ago.
“Tremendous sympathy”
Nestlé and Cargill could risk sounding baldly callous in the Supreme Court next week. One of their main arguments, laid out in briefs they have filed through this year, is that while child labor is awful, they are not responsible.
Nestlé USA, the subsidiary of the parent company in Switzerland, says in its brief to the Supreme Court that it has “tremendous sympathy” for the children’s suffering, but that it does not own cocoa farms in West Africa—and in fact might not have sourced any of its beans from the farms where abuses occurred. Cocoa farmers often sell their beans to local middlemen, who then sell it on, several steps down the chain. It is all a long way from the company’s headquarters in the U.S., Nestlé says. “The only allegations about Nestlé USA are that it does business in the United States and therefore makes some corporate decisions here,” the company argues.
Nestlé and Cargill have gathered powerful support, with amici briefs, or legal arguments to the court, including from heavyweights like Chevron and Coca-Cola, which are not involved in the chocolate industry, but whose operations span the globe. They argue that if Nestlé and Cargill are eventually found guilty of having helped perpetrate child slavery, it could put a chill on other major U.S. companies investing in poor countries—perhaps leading to even worse conditions there. “It takes a proverbial—sometimes literal—village to address the scourge of human rights violations, and The Coca-Cola Company is proud to do its part,” the beverage giant tells the court.
In separate briefs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the World Cocoa Foundation (which comprises about 80% of the global industry) argue that U.S. companies should not have to account for human-rights abuses across the world, in parts of the supply chain with which they have only a tenuous connection. If the Alien Tort Statute applied to those cases, they argue, it could lead to other countries launching retaliatory legal action against companies that do business in the U.S.
Human-rights violations
The lawyers representing the child cocoa pickers—now in their late 20s—say the companies are simply trying to dodge accountability. Nestlé and Cargill, they say, publicly portray themselves as being deeply engaged with African cocoa farmers, and yet in court, distance themselves from them.
“Virtually all of the business community is asking to be rescued from a law that applies only to the most extreme human-rights violations,” says Terry Collingsworth, executive director of International Rights Advocates in Washington, which brought the case against Nestlé and Cargill on behalf of the six boys. “That is a shocking development.”
With most of the business community ranged against the human-rights lawyers, Collingsworth believes the Supreme Court will likely rule in favor of the companies, and find that the Alien Tort Statute cannot be used to hold U.S. corporations to account for their actions across the world. The probability of that outcome, they say, only increased with the death in September of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who championed child-labor cases, and the addition to the court of Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to replace her. “We did the best we could, but we have a very conservative court,” Collingsworth says.
Even so, the lawyers believe that mounting concern over human-rights violations could steadily lead to legal changes—perhaps beginning outside the U.S.
On Sunday, Switzerland will hold a national referendum that, if passed, could force companies headquartered there to be held accountable for risks to people and the environment in their supply chain, even among its suppliers abroad, and allow foreigners to sue companies in Swiss courts.
If it passes, that law could have major implications for several companies whose supply chains have drawn criticism for potential human-rights violations. Nestlé and commodities giant Glencore are just two of many such companies headquartered in Switzerland—a country that for decades has prided itself on protecting business interests.
The Supreme Court decision could also impact how business is done far beyond the chocolate industry. Nestlé, for one, has faced similar scrutiny over child labor on coffee plantations in Brazil where it sources some of its beans. And global seafood companies have been accused for years of using forced labor in Southeast Asia. “We are doing this as a test,” Collingsworth says of the case against Nestlé and Cargill. “If it ends up being the case that allows these conditions to continue, it will be shame.”


fortune--2020-11-26--Bitcoin bombs lower, taking other digital coins with it

Bitcoin and other digital currencies plunged Thursday, a slide likely to stoke speculation about the durability of the boom in cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin slumped nearly 12%, the most since early August, while digital coins like Ether also tumbled. Analysts said that profit-taking after the recent rally, and speculation about tighter regulations, were among the reasons for the shift lower.
“Conditions are very massively overbought and bound for a correction,” said Vijay Ayyar, head of business development with crypto exchange Luno in Singapore. “So I don’t think it’s unusual frankly.”
Even with the retreat, Bitcoin has more than doubled this year and until recently was knocking on the door of the record high of $19,511 set in 2017. Crypto believers tout purchases by retail investors, institutions and even billionaires, as well as the search for a hedge against dollar weakness amid the pandemic, as reasons why the boom can last.
Skeptics argue the cryptocurrency’s famed volatility portends a repeat of what happened three years ago, when a bubble burst spectacularly. Some see signs of retail investors piling in to chase momentum for fast gains, storing up an inevitable reckoning.
Bitcoin dipped 11.95% as of 9:39 a.m. in London to about $16,870, while Ether was more than 10% lower at about $514.
Concern about the possibility of tighter U.S. crypto rules, as well as profit taking, help explain Thursday’s price drop across most major digital assets, said Ryan Rabaglia, global head of trading at OSL brokerage in Hong Kong.
“It’s also not unusual to see a short-term pullback following periods of significant, accelerated gains as traders look to take profits before resetting once volatility subsides,” he said. “Once the dust settles, we’re back to business as usual with all medium to long-term bullish indicators still in play.”
Proponents of digital assets say the current focus on cryptocurrencies compared with three years ago is different because of growing institutional interest, for instance from the likes of Fidelity Investments and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Just this week, Van Eck Associates Corp. launched a Bitcoin exchange-traded note on the Deutsche Boerse Xetra exchange. In October, PayPal Holdings Inc. said it would allow its customers access to cryptocurrencies.
There is also a buzz around Ethereum, the most-actively used blockchain in the world, which is set for a network upgrade that would allow it to process a similar number of transactions as Mastercard Inc. and Visa Inc. The shift to the new system could curb the total supply of Ether, whose price has quadrupled so far this year.
Luno’s Ayyar said he expects Bitcoin to stabilize and achieve all-time highs. But that would be followed by a larger drop in the cryptocurrency, he said.


fortune--2020-11-26--Suddenly, Swedes are ‘very worried’ that the ‘herd immunity’ strategy is no match for COVID

Swedish confidence in the nation’s strategy to fight the coronavirus pandemic has slumped, with concerns over capacity in the health-care system now almost universal.
A poll by DN/Ipsos published on Thursday showed that 82% of Swedes are either “somewhat” or “very worried” as to whether their health-care system can meet the challenge facing it. Confidence in the authorities’ ability to fight the virus sank to 42% of those polled from 55% in October. Meanwhile, 44% of Swedes fear authorities aren’t doing enough to fight the virus, compared with 31% last month.
“It is quite obvious that the increased rate of infection, combined with the measures that the authorities have taken, have led to a sharp rise in concern,” Nicklas Kallebring, an analyst at Ipsos, told DN.
Sweden’s decision to avoid a lockdown has been controversial from the get-go, as it coincided with a considerably higher death rate than in the country’s Nordic neighbors. After a relatively calm summer, daily cases have started to spike and hospitals are filling up. As of Wednesday, more than 200 people were in intensive care.
The national statistics agency said earlier this week that the impact of the Covid crisis will dent life expectancy in Sweden, after over a century of almost uninterrupted growth.
In a recent OECD study, Sweden consistently ranked among the hardest hit nations in Europe, as measured by relative Covid mortality and infection rates. It was also the slowest at containing transmission.
“In a third wave, the health-care system will be even more strained than it has been so far,” Thomas Linden, a departmental head at Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare, said on Tuesday.


fortune--2020-11-27--In an era of political polarization, ‘Trump TV’ makes perfect sense

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Though he may never publicly admit it, Donald Trump effectively conceded the 2020 presidential election on Monday, when his federal government’s General Services Administration finally signed off on the transition to President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming regime.
With a constitutional crisis, for now, averted, there is much speculation on what the future will hold for Trump. Whatever follows his remarkable, unprecedented four-year term in the White House, it’s hard to envisage him settling into a quiet post-presidency—perhaps one spent designing his presidential library and keeping quiet on his successor’s job performance.
What’s clear is that he leaves Washington much as he arrived: a divisive, polarizing figure who, despite losing a national election by millions of votes, retains a fiercely devoted following among segments of the American electorate. A new CNBC/Change Research poll this week found that 73% of Trump voters, apparently parroting the President’s baseless propaganda, believe that he was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. Should Trump decide to break away from the Republicans and start a political party of his own, 72% of those voters said they would gladly desert the GOP and follow him to a fledgling Trump Party.
If Trump really did run for president in 2015 primarily to bolster his brand and generate publicity—if he truly did think his long-shot candidacy would, if nothing else, lead to future media opportunities, or at the very least provide the upcoming season of The Apprentice with a ratings bump—then, all in all, the entire affair was a raging, unmitigated success. For all the talk of the Trump Organization’s sullied reputation and the millions of dollars in revenue lost as a result of Trump’s presidential joyride, the man himself will leave the White House with a built-in audience of tens of millions of Americans willing to hang on his every word and posture. As a public-facing brand, Trump’s is perhaps the most formidable in the history of American politics.
As such, there’s been heightened conjecture that Trump will finally realize what his presidency may have always been about in the first place: capitalizing on his burnished brand, and its fervent following, via a media venture of his own. Talk of “Trump TV” sprang up almost immediately after the election, apparently fueled by the President’s fury at Fox News Channel—and, reportedly, News Corp baron Rupert Murdoch—over the conservative network’s coverage of the race.
What that venture could look like is anybody’s guess at this point. Given the financial and logistical barriers to launching a cable news network from the ground up, a subscription-based online streaming channel has been floated—one that could see Trump parlay his campaign’s enviable troves of cell phone and email contact information into a database of would-be subscribers, according to Axios. And last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that allies of the President have explored an investment into Newsmax, the conservative website and broadcast network run by Trump confidant Christopher Ruddy, with the aim of building Newsmax into a legitimate challenger to Fox News. (Ruddy, for his part, has denied there being any such deal in the works.)
Both Newsmax and fellow right-wing cable channel One American News Network (OAN) have grown their reach substantially during the Trump era, thanks in no small part to co-signs from the President in the form of retweets and endorsements. In turn, they’ve displayed a willingness to do his bidding by disseminating talking points that are factually dubious at best and misinformation at worst—such as peddling spurious claims about COVID-19 and promoting Trump’s baseless allegations that the election was somehow stolen from him. It is content that “MAGA Nation” has proven all too ready to gobble up.
Indeed, Trump’s foray into politics was always a product of the sprawling, reactionary echo chamber that is the right-wing media apparatus. With his keen grasp of television and his mastery of social media, Trump was able to parlay his rhetoric of nativism and economic populism into a national political movement. Spurred on by conservative media figureheads like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, he has long since surpassed them in both his gravitational pull and tenuous relationship to the truth—driving conservative political discourse even further to the fringe in the process. With an army of devotees willing to follow him down any rabbit hole, no matter how bizarre and factually challenged, “Trump TV” would be the logical next step for America’s propagandist-in-chief, a man for whom even Fox News isn’t cutting it these days.
And should Trump somehow manage to avoid the myriad legal storm clouds looming on his post-presidential horizon, an upstart media vertical could not only prove a profitable endeavor, but also a launching point for yet another run for the White House in 2024. Deprived of the platform afforded to him by the White House, “Trump TV” would provide a bully pulpit from which he could strengthen his command of a conservative electorate that already appears to favor him as its preferred candidate the next time around.
While it would take some feat to challenge Fox News’ dominance of the conservative airwaves, there are signs that the Murdoch empire is taking notice. This week, Vanity Fair reported that News Corp is considering offering Trump a $100 million deal to bring him back into the fold—one that would involve publishing his presidential memoir through its HarperCollins subsidiary, and potentially rewarding him with his very own show on Fox News. “Rupert is going to make a humongous offer,” a source told the publication. “The thinking is, Let’s buy Trump off so he shuts the f— up.”
It remains to be seen whether such a reconciliation truly is in the cards, or if Trump decides to strike out on his own. Whatever path he chooses, any foray Trump takes into the media world will certainly be followed by the tens of millions of Americans who still look to him as their political truth-teller, despite ample evidence to the contrary. The era of hyper-polarization that he ushered in has equipped Trump with an enormous audience eager to tune in to what he’s pitching. In the media business, there are few things as valuable.


fortune--2020-11-26--Everything to know about T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T’s 5G plans

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The three major carriers are rapidly expanding their superfast 5G networks, which offer download speeds as much as 10 to 100-times faster than 4G connections.
That means users with 5G compatible phones can get an entire a movie in seconds and, someday, use even more data intensive apps like high-definition virtual-reality games. And with Apple’s line up of 5G phones now available, more people than ever are poised to access the newest networks.
But before any of that, consumers must decide which carrier to sign up with for 5G service, a potentially confusing task. Or perhaps they already have 5G access but don’t know it.
Whatever the case, 5G coverage is often spotty, even in many cities. And some carriers don’t provide 5G in their plans unless customers pay for the most expensive plans.
Here’s what you need to know about 5G plans from the various carriers:
T-Mobile 5G plans
At T-Mobile, 5G is included with every plan thanks to the carrier’s merger with Sprint earlier this year. In the run up to that deal, former-CEO John Legere promised regulators that if the acquisition were approved, T-Mobile would rapidly offer 5G without raising prices.
The merger finally closed in April, and now Legere’s promises are in effect.
So whether a customer pays $85 monthly for the top of the line “Maganeta Plus” unlimited plan, $60 for the “Essential” unlimited plan, or $40 for a 10 GB limited prepaid plan, 5G is included. Even T-Mobile’s cheapest data and prepaid plans get 5G, though a limited data plan could burn through the 5G allowance quickly, restricting the customer to a slower connection for the remainder of the month.
T-Mobile’s network offers three distinct types of 5G technology, and all three are included with all plans. One network using low-band airwaves covers an area in which over 200 million people live, but it provides speeds that aren’t much faster than 4G. A mid-band network offering speeds that are four to 10-times faster than 4G covers more than 30 million people, with a goal of reaching 100 million people by year end. Finally, in just a few cities, T-Mobile has a high-frequency 5G network that offers speeds 10 to 100-times faster than 4G.
Verizon’s 5G plans
Verizon has two versions of 5G. The fastest—in fact, the country’s fastest, according to testing firms—uses high-frequency airwaves that it calls “5G ultrawideband.” However, this service is only available in parts of 57 cities. And that network is accessible only to customers on one of Verizon’s three main unlimited plans, “Play More,” “Do More” and “Get More,” which cost $80 to $90 monthly for one line. Verizon also offers an “Unlimited Plus” 5G plan for tablets, laptops, and Wi-Fi hotspots that costs $30 monthly if added to a phone line, or $85 a month on its own.
Verizon also offers a low-band network,”5G nationwide,” that covers an area in which 200 million people live, but it is not much faster than 4G. Customers on the “Start Unlimited” plan, which costs $70 monthly, limited data plans of $55 to $65 monthly, and various lower cost prepaid plans get access to this “5G nationwide” service.
In addition to requiring a 5G compatible phone, like the iPhone 12 or OnePlus 8 5G, Verizon also requires that customers use a special 5G-compatible SIM card. AT&T and T-Mobile, in contrast, don’t require a special SIM card for 5G access.
AT&T’s 5G plans
AT&T has two types of 5G service (not to be mistaken with parts of its 4G network that it confusingly calls “5GE”). Like its rivals, AT&T offers a low-band network covering 200 million people that is typically no faster than 4G.
Additionally, the company offers a faster 5G service in parts of 35 cities.
But for AT&T customers, all 5G access is limited. The carrier’s three top unlimited data plans, Unlimited Starter, Unlimited Extra, and Unlimited Elite, costing $65 to $85 monthly, include access to the carrier’s 5G networks. The $60 per month prepaid Unlimited Plus also includes 5G. A cheaper $50 per month 4 GB data plan is limited to 4G only, as are prepaid plans that have limited data allotments and cost $30 to $40 monthly, and a prepaid unlimited 4G plan for $50.


fortune--2020-11-26--Former World Bank president James Wolfensohn dies at 86

James Wolfensohn, who served as the president of the World Bank for 10 years and was a guiding force for a couple of the most well-known cultural institutions in the U.S., has died. He was 86.
Wolfensohn died Wednesday at his home in Manhattan according to the Institute for Advanced Study, where he had been a past chair of the board. His son and one of his two daughters also confirmed his death in media reports.
Wolfensohn, born in Australia, worked on Wall Street for many years before taking over as the head of the World Bank, a loan-offering global development organization, in 1995. He was nominated by then-President Bill Clinton.
In his time there, he took on issues like corruption in the organization’s development projects, and emphasized paying attention to the needs and priorities of the countries doing the projects.
He was also a lover of the arts, serving as chair of New York’s Carnegie Hall in the 1980s and the Kennedy Center in Washington in the first half of the 1990s. At both places, he worked to boost finances and renovate physical spaces.
He even performed, holding cello performances with high-profile musician friends at Carnegie Hall on significant birthdays.
Along with his three children, Wolfensohn is survived by seven grandchildren. His wife, Elaine, died in August.


fortune--2020-11-26--Italy allows first quarantine-free flights from U.S. to Europe since the beginning of the pandemic

Italy will open its borders to quarantine-free flights from the U.S. for the first time since the imposition of COVID-19 travel curbs.
The waiver, backed by rigorous testing before departure and on arrival, is the first on a trans-Atlantic route, according to Delta Air Lines Inc., whose flights from Atlanta to Rome Fiumicino will trial the new rules. Alitalia will serve the Italian capital from New York John F. Kennedy airport on the same basis.
The International Air Transport Association told Bloomberg that it knows of no other quarantine-exempt services from the U.S. to Europe.
While marking a further advance toward reopening the lucrative North Atlantic market, significant restrictions remain. The policy applies in only one direction, with the U.S. maintaining an effective bar on non-nationals entering the country, and Americans must have “essential reasons” for visiting Italy.
Delta will introduce the flights from Dec. 19, it said in a statement Thursday, adding that reasonable grounds for travel include work, health, and education.
Italy, hit hard by the pandemic, has been experimenting for weeks with COVID testing on flights between Rome and Milan, as well as to Germany. Getting buy-in from the U.S. and other European countries is key to the airline industry’s push to replace the system of restrictions, including quarantines, that has deprived them of North Atlantic revenue.
Italy currently imposes a 14-day quarantine on arriving travelers from the U.S. EU arrivals are broken into groups with varying restrictions based on infection levels in the country of departure.
Since March, the U.S. has suspended entry to most travelers from the EU, while American citizens are free to enter. Several domestic agencies have recommended that the Trump administration lift the ban, people briefed on the discussions said Wednesday.
Other trans-Atlantic flights aimed at trialing COVID testing don’t feature quarantine waivers, such as services to London operated by British Airways and American Airlines Group Inc. from Dallas, New York, and Los Angeles, and by United Airlines from Newark.


fortune--2020-11-26--Oil slips from its eight-month high as OPEC+ tensions rise

Oil fell from an eight-month high as cracks appear among some OPEC+ members days before a key policy meeting to discuss delaying the end of output curbs.
Futures fell 1.6% in New York. Iraq’s deputy leader this week criticized OPEC, saying the economic and political conditions of member countries should be considered before they are asked to withhold production. OPEC’s president said Thursday the group must remain cautious, with internal data pointing to the risk of a new oil surplus early next year. Most of the production that was cut under an agreement earlier this year has already been brought back.
While an extension of existing cuts is expected, the recent oil rally gives leverage to members reluctant to go along, including Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, Standard Chartered’s Paul Horsnell wrote in a note. Trading on Thursday was light due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.
“The post-vaccine announcements and post-U.S. election oil price rally is a mixed blessing for Saudi Arabia and its main ally in oil policy, Kuwait,” Horsnell said. “The rally has increased special pleading from the more reluctant members of OPEC+.”
Oil has jumped 26% this month after signs that COVID-19 vaccines are imminent boosted expectations for a swift recovery in energy demand next year. However, while there are indications that Asian consumption remains healthy, Europe is still lagging.
On Wednesday, Germany extended a partial lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus for at least three more weeks. After a sharp rise in prices, both West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude futures settled technically overbought on Wednesday, a sign that a possible reversal had been on the cards.
Crude’s rapid price gains this month has added to OPEC+ member Russia’s concern that U.S. shale producers will be able to resume production growth, disrupting the group’s efforts to ease a supply glut. The group will delay an output increase by three months, according to a survey of oil analysts, traders and refiners.
In the meantime, a strike in Norway could threaten some oil and gas production. If a long running safety guard strike isn’t resolved before the weekend, two of the country’s fields may have to stop flows.
—With assistance from James Thornhill.


fortune--2020-11-26--What to expect from retailers on this pandemic-era Black Friday

In the last few years, the crowds that used to throng stores for Black Friday have gradually thinned, as online deals released earlier and earlier in November diluted the shopping extravaganza. This year, between COVID-19-related crowd control and spiking e-commerce, Black Friday promises to be an even slighter shadow of its former self in terms of in-person shopping.
Since Amazon’s Prime Day last month essentially kicked off holiday season spending, prompting big stores like Target and Walmart to also offer Black Friday-like deals several weeks earlier than in 2019, consumers have long been in spending mode, likely muting any madness this weekend.
“The holiday shopping season started in October,” says Sonia Lapinsky, a managing director at AlixPartners.
Yet retailers, many still reeling from weeks of store closures in the spring, and wary of new restrictions between now and Christmas given the current record levels of infections across the U.S., are under the gun to have a strong Black Friday weekend. “It’s their last chance to actually pull something off this year,” Lapinsky says.
No crowding, please
But this year, pulling off a strong Black Friday is complicated by the fact that retailers can’t rely on some of moves in their classic playbook, like big doorbusters, which are unlikely to be enough to sway shoppers worried about visiting crowded stores. Data firm ShopperTrak recently forecast store visits on Black Friday could fall as much as 25% this year. And a International Council of Shopping Centers survey published on Tuesday found 69% of people planning to spend in a physical store, down from 84% last year.
The brick-and-mortar retailers themselves don’t want big crowds on Friday, preferring a steadier flow of business over the course of the season, lest they risk having workers and customers sickened.
“We are spreading the Black Friday event over the course of several weeks instead of making it about one day,” Home Depot finance chief Richard McPhail told Fortune.
Reversing so-called ‘Black Friday’ creep in the last decade that saw store opening hours slowly moving earlier and earlier from Friday morning to Thanksgiving late afternoon, almost all major retailers have returned to opening on Friday morning at 5 a.m., a tacit acknowledgement that there are diminishing returns to being open for so many hours.
Home Depot, Walmart, Best Buy and Target are among the retailers going as far as to meter the number of shoppers to a fraction of their stores’ capacity, a step all the more crucial as new daily COVID-19 infections near the 200,000 mark in the U.S. Target has even set up a reservations system in case lines form.
Macy’s, whose flagship in Manhattan sees crowds of 15,000 when stores open on Thanksgiving, is taking a muted approach this year too.
“We are definitely tamping it down because we expect the customer is not going to show up in the same (sized) crowds,” Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette told Fortune. “The whole month of November is the play, not just Black Friday.”
Showtime for e-commerce
The season as a whole is expected to be fairly strong. On Monday, the National Retail Federation said it expects holiday season sales to rise between 3.6% and 5.2% for November and December.
But as the last nine months have shown, retail success in a pandemic hinges more than ever on digital prowess, particularly on a high volume day like Black Friday.
Only three years ago, Black Friday weekend was still such a big deal it attracted 174 million Americans shoppers, or more than half the U.S. population. This year, in contrast, the sense of occasion is diminished with shopping clearly having started earlier. More important, shopping is going online even faster: Adobe Analytics has forecast U.S. online sales to be up 39% on Black Friday over 2019, hitting the $10 billion mark. (Last year they rose 20% over 2018.)
To get in on that, retailers need to offer services like curbside pickup and in-store retrieval of online orders.
Best Buy, for instance, saw online sales more than triple in October as the holiday season gathered speed, thanks in part to mastering those services. Some 40% of the electronics chain’s online orders last quarter were retrieved at stores, primarily curbside, practical for customers worried about going into a store.
“From an operations standpoint, we have really worked hard to build in a lot of optionality and we’re clearly using our digital channels as much as possible,” Best Buy CEO Corie Barry told reporters on Tuesday.
On top of all this, retailers have to contend with yet another pressure point: the absence of a stimulus package for lower-income workers, who typically have been hit much harder financially by the pandemic. A recent survey by Fortune and Civis Analytics found that 40% of families earning $25,000 to $50,000 are planning to spend less this year on holiday purchases, something that could dent sales at a chain like Walmart.
No one should expect tumbleweeds at malls or empty parking lots at big box stores on Friday: It will still likely be the second busiest in-store shopping day of the season after Super Saturday, as the last Saturday before Christmas is known. But Black Friday is a good gauge at the mid-point of the holidays of what’s working and what’s not as retailers start that final sprint.
“A big part of the season is still in front of us but so far, it’s playing out exactly the way it had anticipated,” said Target CEO Brian Cornell.


fortune--2020-11-26--The world’s largest wind farm is truly enormous, and it’s one step closer to reality

Financing for what will become the world’s largest offshore wind farm project, off the Northeast coast of the U.K., was completed on Thursday—further evidence of the strong demand for renewable energy projects even during a global economic downturn.
The Dogger Bank wind farm, which has been in the works since 2010, is a joint project of the Norwegian state energy giant, Equinor, and SSE Renewables, headquartered in Scotland. The deal covers financing for two of the three phases of the project, with total investment equivalent to £6 billion ($8 billion), SSE Renewables said in a release. It’s on track to be completed and operational by 2026.
Financing for the third stage will be released at a later date, Equinor said. Each stage will have a capacity of 1,200 MW, and the full three stages of the project within the next six years. At full capacity, the entire farm will produce an equivalent of 5% of the U.K.’s total electricity demand, or enough to power about 6 million homes.
At a length of 107 meters, each turbine blade is longer than a professional soccer pitch. Meanwhile, a single rotation of the blade will be able to power a home for two days, the project’s website says.
That will be a significant contribution from a single project. Renewables’ share of the total electricity supply varies day to day. For context, 6.5% of the total was supplied by renewable energy—of all kinds—on Thursday afternoon, according to the National Grid. Only 1.8% of the country’s power came from wind.
The project, which is built on what was once a spit of land—known as Doggerland—connecting the U.K. to the Northwest coast of mainland Europe, is just one piece of a rapid push towards renewable energy by countries and governments alike in northwest Europe.
That includes pledges by the U.K. to add momentum to the country’s expanding wind production, which is already the largest in the world. Last week, the U.K. unveiled its “green industrial revolution” plan, which pledged to quadruple the amount of offshore wind power by 2030, from its current rate. The British government has committed the country to legally binding targets to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
The Dogger Bank project is not the only wind farm either company has in the works. SSE Renewables is currently leading construction on two other wind farms, one of which will be Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm.
Equinor, for its part, has pledged to hit a net-zero target for emissions by 2050—despite still being rooted in the Norwegian oil industry. To meet that goal, the company says it plans to increase 30-fold its installed global by 2035, to between 12-16 GW. The company already operates three offshore wind farms in the U.K., two of which it plans to extend.


fortune--2020-11-26--Delta and Alitalia are bringing back quarantine-free flights between the U.S. and Europe

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Through the use of repeated COVID-19 testing, Europe and the U.S. are going to establish the first quarantine-free air corridors since the coronavirus pandemic led countries to isolate arrivals.
Delta and Alitalia will be operating the flights from next month. However, with both the U.S. and Europe maintaining heavy restrictions on who can enter from the other side, these are still just trials of procedures that are only likely to be widely rolled out in the summer of 2021.
From December 19, Delta said Thursday, it will start operating test flights between Atlanta and Rome in which passengers do not have to go into quarantine on either end.
However, they will have to take a series of tests to make this possible.
Roman protocol
Those travelling from Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport to Rome-Fiumicino International Airport will first need to take a high-assurance PCR test, up to 72 hours before departure. If the result is negative, they’ll get a rapid test at the Atlanta airport, and another on arrival in Rome. Travelling in the other direction will require a rapid test at Rome-Fiumicino.
“Carefully designed COVID-19 testing protocols are the best path for resuming international travel safely and without quarantine until vaccinations are widely in place,” said Delta president Steve Sear in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Roman airport has also struck a deal with Alitalia, the Italian flag carrier, to create similar corridors to New York JFK and Newark Liberty International. There will also be COVID-tested corridors between Rome and the German hubs of Munich and Frankfurt.
In a separate statement, Rome-Fiumicino said it had gained valuable experience from the COVID-tested flights between Rome and Milan that have been running since mid-September. “We are proud to have been forerunners of these models,” said airport CEO Marco Troncone.
Government action
The airport’s statement thanked the governments of both Italy and the Lazio region for helping to develop the procedures, and Delta said it had worked closely with Georgia’s health authorities.
However, the fact remains that, for now, most non-U.S. citizens are banned from entering the country from the EU, and American tourists are banned from entering the EU. If the corridor tests pan out well, that may speed up the rescinding of those measures—but until then, it’s trial basis only.
The industry, which has been thoroughly battered by the pandemic, has for months been calling for a testing-centric reopening of international air travel.
“The systematic testing of travelers is the immediate solution to rebuilding the connectivity that we have lost,” said International Air Transport Association (IATA) senior vice-president Sebastian Mikosz in a Wednesday statement bemoaning the impact of the pandemic on major cities’ connectedness. “The technology exists. The guidelines for implementation have been developed. Now we need to implement, before the damage to the global air transport network becomes irreparable.”
“Governments must realize that there are major consequences for peoples’ lives and livelihoods,” Mikosz added. “At least 46 million jobs supported by air transport are in peril. And the strength of the economic recovery from COVID-19 will be severely compromised without the support of a functioning air transport network.”


fortune--2020-11-26--Which stores are open—and when—on 2020’s unusual Black Friday

It’s back to the future for America’s retailers. For the first time in more than a decade, the so-called “Super Bowl of Retail,” Black Friday, will start in the early hours of well, Friday, rather than Thanksgiving.
In the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, retailers, desperate for sales, started opening earlier and earlier every year, until opening at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving became the norm for most big chains about four years ago. (Some, like J.C. Penney, went even further, opening at 3 p.m. in recent years.)
But with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing stores to limit the number of shoppers allowed inside at any one time, and online sales picking up most of the slack, major retailers are largely reverting to the store hours last seen more than a decade ago.
Walmart, traditionally open all day on Thanksgiving so customers can buy food with Black Friday doorbusters starting late afternoon, set the tone in July when it said it would stay closed on Turkey Day for the first time since the 1980s. That gave other retailers, notably Best Buy, Target, and Macy’s the cover to follow suit.
Here are the store hours on Friday, November 27th, for many of America’s largest retailers, with the caveat they might vary by location because of local laws, so double-check before heading out to a specific store.
Walmart: The world’s largest retailer will open at 5 a.m., with many online-only deals having already been offered throughout November. It will limit shopper traffic to about 20% of capacity.
Target: The company is on fire in terms of digital sales, which have more than doubled so far in 2020. That will help as it meters store traffic to make sure crowds don’t build up and opens at 7 a.m., later than most rivals.
Macy’s: The struggling department store, whose Manhattan flagship has traditionally seen throngs of shoppers 15,000 strong at the start of Black Friday sales but won’t this year, will open its doors at 5 a.m.
J.C. Penney: Unlike in recent years when Penney tried to outmaneuver rivals by opening hours even earlier, Penney will open at the same time as Macy’s, 5 a.m.
Kohl’s: Unlike Macy’s and Penney, few Kohl’s stores are in malls. But the retailer goes toe-to-toe in strip centers against Target and Ulta Beauty, among others and is opening earlier than the competition at 5 a.m.
Best Buy: A central player in the Black Friday wars since time immemorial, the electronics retailer is also choosing an early Friday, pre-dawn opening at 5 a.m.
Dick’s Sporting Goods: With running shoes a popular Black Friday indulgence, the sports gear company opens at 5 a.m.
Old Navy: Bucking the early Friday morning opening virtually all retailers have chosen, Old Navy will open stores at the stroke of midnight. Its Gap Inc siblings Banana Republic and The Gap will have varying store hours, a spokeswoman said.
Home Depot: The home improvement chain’s sales have been surging this year and it is hoping for a repeat of last year’s holiday season when Home Depot added a lot more “giftable” items. Its stores open at 6 a.m. Rival chain Lowe’s stores will open at each location’s regular business hours on Friday.
Ulta Beauty: The beauty retailer’s Black Friday gets underway at 6 a.m.
Coach, Kate Spade: The two brands are rare among upscale chains to do Black Friday, and their stores will open at 6 a.m.
Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister: The teen chains will open at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. depending on the individual store.
GameStop: Its stores will open at 7 a.m., with the retailer banking on robust sales of Microsoft’s newly released consoles, PS5 and Xbox Series X.
Barnes & Noble, Petco: The bookseller and the pet store chain will welcome shoppers at 8 a.m.
Saks Fifth Avenue: While the luxury store doesn’t do Black Friday doorbuster, it will open at 9 a.m. to increase its odds of at winning some overflow shopper traffic at the mall.
Nordstrom: The upscale department store is opening an hour earlier than usual at 10 a.m.
Signet Jewelers chains Kay, Jared and Zales will all open at 10 a.m.
Outdoor retailer R.E.I. will remain closed on Friday as is its long held custom.


fortune--2020-11-26--Why it would be a huge mistake to allow Big Tech firms to acquire banks

Prior to 1980, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 maintained a strict separation between our banking system and our capital markets. However, financial regulators opened loopholes in Glass-Steagall during the 1980s and 1990s, allowing banks to engage in securities activities and permitting nonbanks to offer bank-like products.
“Universal banks” (banks engaged in securities activities) and “shadow banks” (nonbanks offering bank-like services) dominated our financial markets after Congress repealed Glass-Steagall in 1999. Universal banks and shadow banks played leading roles in the toxic subprime lending boom that led to the financial crisis of 2007–09.
In response to the financial crisis, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve bailed out big banks as well as large shadow banks (including AIG, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs). Federal agencies also protected short-term financial instruments that functioned as substitutes for bank deposits, such as money market mutual funds, commercial paper, and securities repurchase agreements (“repos”).
The federal government’s response to the financial crisis went far beyond the traditional U.S. policy of protecting banks and bank depositors. Federal authorities effectively wrapped the federal “safety net” around our entire financial system. By doing so, they “bankified” our financial markets.
The Dodd-Frank Act’s regulatory reforms did not correct the deeply flawed structure of the financial system—including the dominance of universal banks and shadow banks—that caused the financial crisis of 2007–09. Consequently, federal agencies felt compelled to provide another series of bailouts when the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a new financial crisis. Federal authorities aggressively intervened in March to protect universal banks, shadow banks, and short-term financial markets from failure. In addition, federal agencies took the unprecedented step of backstopping the corporate bond market.
That extraordinary measure was not coincidental. Universal banks and shadow banks promoted a massive expansion of corporate debt during the past decade. The debts of U.S. corporations reached a record level of $10.5 trillion in March 2020. Almost two-thirds of those debts were either rated as “junk” or received the lowest investment-grade rating (BBB). Corporate debt markets would have collapsed without the federal government’s backstop, with severe knock-on effects for our financial system and economy.
This year’s events have once again revealed the unhealthy bankification of our financial markets. Now federal regulators are trying to bankify the rest of the economy. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)—the regulator of national banks—wants to give national bank charters to fintechs that offer lending or payment services but do not accept deposits. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is considering a rule that would allow all types of commercial firms to acquire FDIC-insured industrial banks (consumer banks chartered by Utah and several other states).
The OCC’s and FDIC’s initiatives would allow technology firms and other commercial enterprises to obtain banking privileges and benefits—including access to the federal “safety net”—without complying with many of the prudential requirements governing FDIC-insured full-service banks. For example, commercial owners of fintech national banks and industrial banks would not have to comply with the Bank Holding Company (BHC) Act, which prohibits affiliations between FDIC-insured full-service banks and commercial firms. That prohibition is the cornerstone of our historic policy of separating banking and commerce.
The Glass-Steagall and BHC acts separated banking from commerce to prevent undue concentrations of financial and economic power and to minimize conflicts of interest in bank lending and investment advice. A bank that controls—or is controlled by—a commercial firm has powerful and dangerous incentives to use its lending and investment policies to support its commercial affiliate. Problems that arise in the commercial affiliate are likely to infect the bank, as shown by the recent collapse of Wirecard in Germany.
If the OCC’s and FDIC’s initiatives succeed, Congress will face intense pressure to repeal the separation of banking and commerce. Big Tech firms will lobby for permission to acquire full-service banks, and big banks will push for authority to acquire technology firms. If Congress gives in (as it did when it repealed Glass-Steagall), mergers between Big Tech companies and big banks are virtually certain to occur.
The result will be a bankification of our economy. Giant banking-and-commercial conglomerates will spread across the nation. Commercial owners of banks will profit from the federal “safety net,” including the ability to offer FDIC-insured deposits—the cheapest and most stable source of funding available in the private market. Large commercial firms that own sizable banks will be considered “too big to fail” and will enjoy enormous advantages over smaller competitors that can’t afford to acquire banks.
When the next crisis occurs, federal agencies will feel compelled to rescue not only our financial system but also our leading banking-and-commercial conglomerates. Market discipline, which has already been greatly weakened in our financial markets, will largely disappear from the rest of our economy.
Congress should adopt two crucial measures to reverse the bankification of our country. First, Congress should enact a new Glass-Steagall Act to reestablish a strict separation between our banking system and our capital markets. Congress should prohibit banks from underwriting and trading in securities and other capital market instruments, except for government bonds.
Congress should also prohibit nonbanks from offering short-term financial instruments that function as deposit substitutes. Only banks should be allowed to issue money market mutual funds, commercial paper, and repos. Requiring nonbanks to fund their operations with longer-term securities would eliminate the shadow bank business model, restore market discipline, and improve the stability of our financial markets.
Second, Congress should reaffirm the separation of banking and commerce by overruling the OCC’s and FDIC’s initiatives. Both measures would return banks to their traditional roles as objective providers of deposit, credit, payment, and fiduciary services. The “too big to fail” problem would be greatly diminished with the elimination of universal banks and the likely disappearance of shadow banks. Banks and commercial firms would be prevented from exercising any type of control over each other.
Banks and the capital markets would once again become independent sectors with strong incentives to serve the needs of consumers, communities, and Main Street businesses. Our financial system and our economy would become more stable, more competitive, and more productive.
Art Wilmarth is a professor emeritus of law at George Washington University. This essay is based on his recently published book, Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act, and his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee’s Task Force on Financial Technology on Sept. 29, 2020.


fortune--2020-11-27--Amazon says it will offer warehouse staff a one time bonus amid union drive

Thousands of Amazon workers will walk off the job today to fight for fair pay and COVID protections

Amazon.com Inc. will pay the employees who pack and deliver its goods a one-time bonus of up to $300, extra compensation that comes as the company faces a union drive and criticism from others for rolling back pandemic hazard pay.
The company said on Thursday that it would pay full-time operations workers $300, and part-timers $150, if they are employed by the e-commerce giant for the entire month of December. The cost to Amazon will amount to about $500 million, logistics chief Dave Clark said in a corporate blog post.
Like many of its peers in retail who had offered hazard pay as an incentive for workers to keep coming in during the pandemic, Amazon ended its bonuses after an economic upheaval swelled the ranks of job seekers. The company ended its $2-an-hour bump for hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers at the end of May. In June, it paid one-time bonuses of as much as $500.
More recently, Amazon has faced criticism from some employees for trying to attract new hires with a $3,000 bonus to ensure sufficient staffing to cover the holiday rush while only offering existing workers vouchers toward Thanksgiving turkeys. Earlier this week, a union drive organized by a group of workers at an Alabama warehouse became public, a rare step at a company that has worked to fend off organized labor in its ranks.
“Our teams are doing amazing work serving customers’ essential needs, while also helping to bring some much needed holiday cheer for socially-distanced families around the world,” Clark said in the blog post Thursday. “I’ve never been more grateful for — or proud of — our teams.”


fortune--2020-11-27--Who will Biden name as SEC chair? Here are insiders’ best guesses

President-elect Joe Biden has reportedly settled on Janet Yellen to lead the Treasury Department, but for now it’s unclear who he will choose for another top finance post: That of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairperson.
The SEC plays a critical role in overseeing U.S. capital markets and protecting investors, and the head of the agency plays a key role in shaping its priorities. President Trump’s pick for the position, Jay Clayton, announced this month he will step down at the end of the year, six months before the formal end of his term.
As for Clayton’s replacement, media reports have floated the names of Gary Gensler, a former Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who is helping Biden’s team with the transition, and Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York. During his time as U.S. Attorney, Bharara’s aggressive prosecutions earned him the nickname “Sheriff of Wall Street” and he became a hero in some Democratic circles over a showdown with Trump who dismissed him in 2017.
Neither Gensler or Bharara, however, are likely to be Biden’s ultimate choice, according to some Washington, DC, insiders. The head of one finance trade industry group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Fortune that Bharara’s crusading streak makes him radioactive to Republicans, and that Senate confirmation would be impossible—a view shared by others interviewed for this story. As for Gensler, the influential banking lobby is reportedly concerned about increasing diversity at the top ranks of finance, which means a white male is unlikely for the pick.
As for who Biden will choose, the trade industry source said the most likely picks include former SEC Commissioners Annette Nazareth and Kara Stein. As both are regarded as moderate and as they have been previously confirmed by the Senate, their appointment would likely be uncontroversial. The source also named Keir Gumbs, a top lawyer for Uber who is Black, as another person who will receive serious consideration.
Whoever takes the helm of the SEC will inherit an agency that, under Clayton’s tenure, has been relatively free of the conflict and politics that have wracked other federal departments in the Trump era. According to a current SEC lawyer, Clayton has won the respect of agency staff as a result of his non-partisan style and straightforward demeanor.
“The SEC doesn’t try to hide the ball. They’re transparent in what they’re going after,” said the lawyer, who also credited Clayton for being supportive of the agency’s staff who have been working from home in the COVID era.
Clayton’s tenure hasn’t been entirely without controversy. His agency went after maverick Tesla CEO Elon Musk for erratic tweets that disclosed non-public information, fining Musk and the company a total of $40 million. The SEC under Clayton was also instrumental in pursuing Theranos, the disgraced blood testing startup whose purported medical breakthroughs turned out to be a pack of lies.
And despite occasional Democratic complaints about leniency, the SEC under Clayton brought a record 3,152 enforcement actions, including ones against cryptocurrency scams. Under a Biden administration, the incoming SEC Chair could well exceed that tally.


fortune--2020-11-27--SoftBank stock rides Uber and DoorDash to 20-year high

SoftBank Group Corp. rose to a fresh 20-year high as the recent stock market surge boosted the value of holdings like Uber Technologies Inc. and brightened the prospects for portfolio companies going public.
The U.S. ride-hailing pioneer recovered from stumbles after its initial public offering last year and its shares have gained more than 70% this year. Softbank’s 13% stake is worth about $11 billion. The Japanese company is also a major shareholder in U.S. delivery giant DoorDash Inc., which filed to go public this month. SoftBank’s stock gained 2.3% to 7,250 yen on Friday, the highest level since March of 2000 in the midst of the dot-com boom.
Citigroup Inc. earlier this week raised its target price on SoftBank to 11,000 yen from 10,200 yen, citing improved earnings prospects at the Tokyo-based company’s investments business. Nomura Holdings Inc. raised its target to 9,100 yen from 8,190 yen citing the same reason. Both brokerages have a buy rating on SoftBank.
A series of missteps in the investment business including a failed WeWork IPO and the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak led to record losses last fiscal year. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son responded by unveiling plans to sell 4.5 trillion yen ($43 billion) in assets and buy back a record 2.5 trillion yen of his own stock. Shares are up more than 160% from their March low.
“We see plenty of room for the shares to rise against a backdrop of aggressive share buybacks and efforts to improve financial health,” Citigroup analyst Mitsunobu Tsuruo wrote in the report.
The Japanese conglomerate reported a record 784.4 billion yen profit in its Vision Fund business for the three months ended Sept. 30, a sign the fund’s investments in startups are paying off amid a broad rally in technology stocks. The bull market is also making it easier for SoftBank-backed startups to go public.
Opendoor, which buys and sells homes, is going public through a merger with a blank-check company led by Chamath Palihapitiya. Compass, another SoftBank portfolio company, has selected underwriters for a potential initial public offering, a person with knowledge of the matter has said.


fortune--2020-11-27--AstraZeneca eyes another global trial for its COVID vaccine following dosage blip

AstraZeneca Plc’s COVID-19 vaccine looks like it’s headed for an additional global trial as the drugmaker tries to clear up uncertainty and confusion surrounding favorable results in its current study.
The company wants the new test to confirm the 90% efficacy rate that the shot showed in a portion of an existing trial, Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said. It’s favoring that option rather than adding an arm to a separate study that’s already underway in the U.S.
Questions are mounting over one of the fastest-moving shots after the company acknowledged that a lower dosage level that appeared more effective resulted from a manufacturing discrepancy. The company and its partner, the University of Oxford, didn’t initially disclose the error and other key details, leading to concern over their transparency.
“Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study,” Soriot said in his first interview since the data were released. It will probably be another “international study, but this one could be faster because we know the efficacy is high so we need a smaller number of patients.”
Soriot said he didn’t expect the additional trial to hold up regulatory approvals in the U.K. and European Union.
The U.K. government said Friday it had asked the medicines regulator to assess whether the Astra-Oxford vaccine was suitable for temporary authorization. The unusual step comes after the government amended legislation in light of the pandemic to allow the U.K. to approve a vaccine ahead of the European regulator, which Britain is still subject to until January.
Clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may take longer because the regulator is unlikely to approve the vaccine on the basis of studies conducted elsewhere, especially given the questions over the results, Soriot said. Authorization in some countries is still expected before the end of the year, he said.
“The question for us was, will we need the U.S. data to get approval in the U.S. or can we get approval in the U.S. with international data, and it was never clear,” said Soriot, who is in quarantine after arriving in Australia. “Now with those results it’s more likely that we will need the U.S. data.”
Astra and its CEO are facing scrutiny as the drugmaker responds to growing confusion over the vaccine. The company’s late-stage data initially increased confidence that the world would soon have multiple shots to combat the pathogen, following positive reports from front-runners Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. But scant disclosures and the manufacturing discrepancy have sparked doubts among scientists and investors.
Different Rates
Astra and Oxford reported Monday that a lower initial dose of the vaccine, followed by a full dose, produced a 90% efficacy rate in a smaller set of participants, compared with 62% for two full doses.
A day after the data were unveiled the head of Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. vaccine program, said that the regimen showing the higher level of effectiveness was tested in a younger population. He also said the half-dose was given to some people because of an error in the quantity of vaccine put into some vials. None of those details were disclosed in Astra or Oxford’s original statements.
Soriot disputed the idea that the half-dose regimen was an error, saying that after researchers realized the dosing discrepancy they formally changed the trial protocol with the blessing of regulators.
“I won’t tell you we expected the efficacy to be higher,” said Soriot. But “people call it a mistake — it’s not a mistake.”
Astra shares closed 0.7% lower in London. They have declined about 7% this week amid questions about the trial results.
The company has previously said it might add a new arm to its U.S. trial to test the lower dosage.
Astra and researchers have declined to provide more data ahead of a peer-reviewed analysis that is expected to be published in the coming weeks. Results have been submitted to an undisclosed journal, Astra said in a statement.
Astra’s is one of three vaccines that could be approved before the end of the year. Pfizer and Moderna, which have both created shots using messenger RNA, published data earlier this month that showed their vaccines were about 95% effective, and Pfizer has applied to U.S. regulators for emergency approval.
There’s added pressure on the Astra shot to succeed because it’s easier to store and the company is selling it at cost during the pandemic, which means many low- and middle-income countries are relying on it.


fortune--2020-11-27--Thousands of Amazon workers will walk off the job today to fight for fair pay and COVID protections

Unions representing tens of thousands of Amazon.com Inc. employees are planning walkouts and other action as the year’s busiest shopping season begins this week, in protest at the e-commerce giant’s handling of everything from sick pay and COVID-19 precautions to user privacy.
The giant Verdi trade union in Germany is holding a walkout across seven Amazon facilities, it said in a statement Thursday. (It organized similar protests a month ago for Prime Day.) It’s part of the Make Amazon Pay campaign, an assemblage of organized labor, human rights organizations, environmentalists and other groups that are demanding changes at the Seattle-based company in a program of protests and online press conferences.
Garment workers in Bangladesh will call for higher pay outside an Amazon supplier facility in Dhaka. In Australia, unions will perform “health and safety” inspections of the company’s facilities using their “statutory right of entry,” the campaign said. Many workers’ groups, blocked from picket lines and protests due to pandemic restrictions, have been driven online. Others will project the campaign’s logo on buildings in Brussels, London, Sao Paulo and other cities.
Amazon is working “to make a positive impact as a progressive, innovative and sustainable business” for customers, partners and employees, the company said in an emailed statement. “Our jobs come with excellent pay, comprehensive benefits and great career opportunities, all in a positive, safe and modern working environment. We encourage anyone to compare our overall pay, benefits and workplace to other retailers and major employers across the world.”
In all, the organizations participating in the protests represent roughly 40,000 Amazon employees, according to a spokesman for the UNI Global Union, which represents millions of workers in industries including logistics and technology, and is helping organize the event.
Unions, particularly in Germany, Spain and France, have for years used the Black Friday shopping holiday as a rallying point for action against Amazon. Such protests have done little to dent the company’s dramatic growth. However, with criticism of its market power mounting, and the pandemic highlighting the plight of essential workers, some groups see a bigger opportunity this year to share their concerns.
In France, where unions have fought a battle over Amazon workers’ rights, the e-commerce giant has agreed to go along with other major retailers to postpone Black Friday. The move followed an outcry from smaller owners of physical stores who fear Amazon will take business from them during the country’s virus lockdown. Politicians including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo are calling for a boycott of the Seattle-based company for Christmas shopping.
Make Amazon Pay—which includes political, human rights and environmental groups such as Oxfam, Greenpeace and U.K. political movement Momentum—presented Amazon with a list of demands including increased health-and-safety protections and worker representation, a lower carbon footprint at Amazon’s delivery and cloud operations and an end to its sale of “devices and software that expand mass surveillance,” such as the Ring camera and Rekognition facial-recognition service.
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon became a trillion dollar corporation,” Make Amazon Pay said in the letter. “Meanwhile, Amazon warehouse workers risked their lives as essential workers, and only briefly received an increase in pay.”
In the U.S., the company’s employees aren’t represented by unions. Labor groups have tried to make inroads for years, without success. But that may be changing as Amazon’s workforce swells to more than 1 million, making it one of the largest private employers. A group of Amazon workers in Alabama recently filed a petition to organize.
The company has a history of guarding against unions’ influence. In September, it briefly posted a job listing for an analyst to research “labor organizing threats against the company” and to compile information that could be used to seek restraining orders against activists. An Amazon spokeswoman said at the time that the job posting was an inaccurate description of the role and had been corrected.
Vice reported recently that Amazon has been using operatives from Pinkerton, a private security agency, to collect intelligence on warehouse workers and to monitor labor unions and environmental activists, citing leaked documents. An Amazon spokeswoman told Vice that the company has an internal investigations team that works within the law and denied that it had hired “on-the-ground operatives.”
An Amazon spokesman said Thursday that the company respects employees’ right to join or form a labor union “without fear of retaliation, intimidation or harassment.”
Still, Amazon’s biggest problem this holiday season may be keeping up with demand.
Merchants around the U.S. have said some products that normally take a day or two to reach customers are taking a week or longer and they aren’t able to access the e-commerce giant’s faster, in-house logistics service. That suggests some of the company’s warehouses and delivery stations are at full capacity.


fortune--2020-11-27--Trump says he will leave office if the Electoral College votes in Biden

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will leave the White House if the Electoral College formalizes President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory—even as he insisted such a decision would be a “mistake”—as he spent his Thanksgiving renewing baseless claims that “massive fraud” and crooked officials in battleground states caused his election defeat.
“Certainly I will. But you know that,” Trump said Thursday when asked whether he would vacate the building, allowing a peaceful transition of power in January. But Trump—taking questions for the first time since Election Day—insisted that “a lot of things” would happen between now and then that might alter the results.
“This has a long way to go,” Trump said, even though he lost.
The fact that a sitting American president even had to address whether or not he would leave office after losing reelection underscores the extent to which Trump has smashed one convention after another over the last three weeks. While there is no evidence of the kind of widespread fraud Trump has been alleging, he and his legal team have nonetheless been working to cast doubt on the integrity of the election and trying to overturn voters’ will in an unprecedented breach of democratic norms.
Trump spoke to reporters in the White House’s ornate Diplomatic Reception Room after holding a teleconference with U.S. military leaders stationed across the globe. He thanked them for their service and jokingly warned them not to eat too much turkey, then turned to the election after ending the call. He repeated grievances and angrily denounced officials in Georgia and Pennsylvania, two key swing states that helped give Biden the win.
Trump claimed, despite the results, that this may not be his last Thanksgiving at the White House. And he insisted there had been “massive fraud,” even though state officials and international observers have said no evidence of that exists and Trump’s campaign has repeatedly failed in court.
Trump’s administration has already given the green light for a formal transition to get underway. But Trump took issue with Biden moving forward.
“I think it’s not right that he’s trying to pick a Cabinet,” Trump said, even though officials from both teams are already working together to get Biden’s team up to speed.
And as he refused to concede, Trump announced that he will be traveling to Georgia to rally supporters ahead of two Senate runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate. Trump said the rally for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler would likely be held Saturday. The White House later clarified he had meant Dec. 5.
One of the reasons Republicans have stood by Trump and his baseless claims of fraud has been to keep his loyal base energized ahead of those runoffs on Jan. 5. But Trump, in his remarks, openly questioned whether that election would be fair in a move that could dampen Republican turnout.
“I think you’re dealing with a very fraudulent system. I’m very worried about that,” he said. “People are very disappointed that we were robbed.”
As for the Electoral College, Trump made clear that he will likely never formally concede, even if he said he would leave the White House.
“It’s gonna be a very hard thing to concede. Because we know there was massive fraud,” he said, noting that, “time isn’t on our side.”
“If they do,” vote against him, Trump added, “they’ve made a mistake.”
Asked whether he would attend Biden’s inauguration, Trump said he knew the answer but didn’t want to share it yet.
But there were some signs that Trump was coming to terms with his loss.
At one point he urged reporters not to allow Biden the credit for pending coronavirus vaccines. “Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they’ve ever been pushed before,” he said.
As for whether or not he plans to formally declare his candidacy to run again in 2024—as he has discussed with aides—Trump said he didn’t “want to talk about 2024 yet.”
All states must certify their results before the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14, and any challenge to the results must be resolved by Dec. 8. States have already begun that process, including Michigan, where Trump and his allies tried and failed to delay the process, and Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Vote certification at the local and state level is typically a ministerial task that gets little notice, but that changed this year with Trump’s refusal to concede and his unprecedented attempts to overturn the results of the election through a fusillade of legal challenges and attempts to manipulate the certification process in battleground states he lost.
Biden won by wide margins in both the Electoral College and popular vote, where he received nearly 80 million votes, a record.


fortune--2020-11-27--China slaps 200% anti-dumping tariffs on Australian wine as relations continue to sour

On Friday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it will impose anti-dumping duties of up to 212.1% on Australian wine imports starting Saturday, prompting one of Australia’s largest wine exporters, Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), to suspend trading as its shares plummeted 13%.
“We don’t see it’s justified and we’re obviously deeply concerned about what it does,” Tony Battaglene, CEO of Australia’s wine association Australian Grape and Wine, told local media of the tariff move. The tariffs will range from 107.1% to 212.1% but the Ministry of Commerce also revealed specific tariffs for a number of exporters. Among those named, TWE was hit with the steepest tariffs, levied at 169.3%.
The levies come roughly three months after Beijing began investigating complaints made by the Wine Industry Association of China that Australian winemakers have flooded the market with cheap wine since 2015. Mainland China is an $850 million market for Australia’s wine exports and the leading consumer, consuming about 40% of Australia’s total overseas shipments.
The tariffs are the latest aggravation in rapidly deteriorating relations between Australia and its largest trading partner, China. Beijing already has imposed import restrictions on Australian barley, wheat, coal, beef, lobster, sugar, copper and timber. The wine tariffs will take effect tomorrow.
Relations between Canberra and Beijing have deteriorated sharply since 2017, when Australia’s domestic media broke reports of a coordinated Chinese campaign to buy influence in Australian politics. That scandal resulted in the resignation of an Australian senator, accused of accepting bribes in order to lobby for Chinese interests, and prompted the creation of Australia’s first rules against accepting political donations from overseas.
“It wasn’t foreign interference, it was China interference. It was very targeted at one country,” Linda Jakobson, director of Australian think tank China Matters, told Fortune of the legislation in September.
When the legislation passed, then-Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull chose to paraphrase Chairman Mao Zedong’s declaration at the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and said, in Chinese, that the Australian people had “stood up.”
Tensions flared again in 2018 when Canberra blocked China telecoms giant Huawei Technologies from bidding on contracts to develop Australia’s 5G infrastructure, calling it a national security threat. Other politicking picked further at the fraying ties until, in April this year, Australia’s push for an independent inquiry into the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, marked a breaking point.
“The Chinese public is frustrated, dismayed and disappointed with what Australia is doing now,” China’s ambassador to Australia warned at the time, in an interview with the Australian Financial Review. “If the mood is going from bad to worse…maybe the ordinary people will say ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?”
China imposed 80% tariffs on Australian barley imports and banned beef imports from four major Aussie abattoirs a month later, when a watered-down version of the COVID-19 investigation Canberra pushed for was approved by the UN World Health Assembly.
Although Beijing initially downplayed the political motivations behind its moves, the government has since directly accused Canberra of “poisoning bilateral relations.” In a dossier distributed by the Chinese embassy in Canberra to several news organizations, China listed 14 grievances it had with its trading partner.
Among the complaints are Australia’s “incessant wanton interference” in issues related to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan; Canberra’s funding of “anti-China” think tanks, such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI); the Australian media’s “unfriendly or antagonistic reporting” on China; and the decision to ban Huawei on “unfounded national security concerns.”
Beijing’s sentiment towards the feud was reportedly surmised by remarks the Sydney Morning Herald attributes to a Chinese official: “If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy.”


fortune--2020-11-27--R.I.P. Black Friday? Pandemic, online shopping lead to thin crowds

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The major retailers wanted sparse crowds on Black Friday in this COVID-19 era. They certainly got them.
On Friday morning, only a few dozen people were lined up outside the Macy’s flagship in Manhattan before it opened, compared to 15,000 or so in recent years. A nearby Aéropostale and Victoria’s Secret were devoid of any customers at all at 7 a.m. And at the sprawling Newport Centre in Jersey City, N.J., across the Hudson River, it was a ghost town: not a single customer inside its Sears store, and only a smattering of shoppers at its J.C. Penney or Kohl’s.
Even at the nearby Target, Best Buy and Home Depot, which were busy in comparison, the crowds were modest compared to previous years. Best Buy, a perennial Black Friday favorite, was the only retailer in the area with a wait line.
That scene was repeated in many markets across the U.S. As NPD Group analyst Matt Powell put it in a tweet on Friday morning: “We used to call it ‘Black Friday’; last year was ‘Blah Friday.’ 2020 will go down as ‘Blank Friday’, at least in physical stores.”
Shoppers seemed to have heeded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advice to consumers to shop online on Black Friday.
But the sparse crowds were also by design by the retailers themselves. Macy’s, for example, offered no deals in-store that weren’t also available on line. Target and Walmart were metering crowds. And those chains, and others like Home Depot, have been trotting out deals since October to even out demand and avoid surges at a time when COVID infections are spiking.
The thin crowds reported nationally are the continuation of a trend in recent years that has seen Black Friday get diluted not only by online shopping, but by deals coming earlier and earlier in a retail arms race for consumers’ shopping dollars.
“They’ve been busting Black Friday as an event for years,” quipped Moody’s Vice President Charlie O’Shea “As soon as the retailers decided they didn’t care where they made the sell, be it online or in-store, that took a lot off luster off of in-store Black Friday.” And so every year, more and more consumers have opted to stay on their couch and shop rather than hit stores.
This year, the soaring pandemic has only sped that up. “It’s a logical evolution that’s been accelerated by the circumstances of the pandemic,” said O’Shea.
Mall stores hit harder
That’s not to say people are not shopping: They’re just doing more of it online. Adobe Analytics said that online spending on Thanksgiving Day, the first in many years where most retailers were closed, rose by nearly 22% year over year to hit $5.1 billion. The company has predicted online sales on Black Friday would increase 39% this year.
Still, the near absence of consumers at shopping malls and department stores in contrast to the humming—though not bustling—business at strip center retailers suggests the divide between retail’s winners and losers will only grow wider this holiday season.
Best Buy, whose third-quarter U.S. comparable sales rose 23% as online sales nearly tripled, had a long line of people waiting to get in store in Jersey City, along with a few drivers getting online orders curbside. Target, whose electronics sales boomed in the autumn, was selling many televisions. And the Home Depot, until recently not a big Black Friday destination, was busy too, hoping to extend its enormous sales gains this year.
Mall-based retailers have been struggling, in part because they are so focused on apparel, a category decimated in the pandemic. What’s more, shoppers are avoiding malls, preferring to shop at centers where they can park close to the entrance of a store and get in and out relatively quickly.
National retail chains have long since stopped putting all their holiday season eggs in the Black Friday basket, a more urgent need at a time the pandemic. And steadier business is the goal.
“We’re making sure they’re getting Black Friday value all month long,” Target CEO Brian Cornell said last week.