fortune--2020-08-27--There’s (digital) gold in them thar hills: Crypto giant DCG is betting $100 million on mining Bitcoi

There’s (digital) gold in them thar hills: Crypto giant DCG is betting $100 million on mining Bitcoin in North America

In the early days of Bitcoin, people could mine the cryptocurrency in their homes using cell phones or laptops. Today, mining crypto is a lot like mining gold: It requires expensive equipment, lots of capital, and the right location. Barry Silbert, a prominent crypto entrepreneur, believes he has the chops to succeed in this challenging new industry and, in doing so, repatriate some Bitcoin production to the U.S. from China.
On Thursday, Silbert’s company, Digital Currency Group, revealed the existence of a subsidiary called Foundry that will invest $100 million into mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in North America over the coming months.
Foundry, which has been operating below the radar since 2019, runs its own mining operations and also provides equipment and financing to crypto startups.
The equipment in question, an example of which can be seen in the image below, consists of large banks of servers stuffed with specialized chips designed specifically to mine various cryptocurrencies.
An array of crypto-mining servers. Photo: Courtesy of DCG
The specialty chips in question are optimized to perform trial-and-error calculations to solve the random math problems that Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies use to allocate rewards to those who maintain their networks. In the case of Bitcoin, its software creates a new math problem every 10 minutes or so, and the current payout for solving one is 6.25 Bitcoin—worth around $70,000 at current prices.
Despite such lucrative payouts, there are few significant crypto mining operations in North America. Instead, the industry has been dominated by Chinese conglomerates that pool resources while tapping into cheap sources of electricity.
Silbert, however, believes the opportunity is ripe for North American crypto firms to reclaim a significant share of the world’s mining power. To lead the effort, he selected Mike Colyer, a veteran of GE and other traditional industrial firms, to be CEO of Foundry.
While cheap power has long been the primary consideration for crypto miners, Colyer says that other factors are becoming increasingly important. In the case of Foundry, he believes that access to a new generation of energy-efficient mining equipment, as well as its transparent business culture—crypto mining is a notoriously opaque industry—will help it succeed.
But access to inexpensive electricity still matters very much. To that end, Foundry is launching operations in places with affordable and abundant power, including Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and upstate New York. Its sites also include British Columbia and Quebec in Canada—two provinces with massive hydroelectric capacity.
Despite the scope of Foundry’s ambitions, the company could face tough odds, given how other recent crypto mining ventures in North America have foundered. Examples include an aborted 2018 plan by Chinese mining giant Bitmain to create hundreds of mining jobs in Rockdale, Texas, that left local officials embittered. Earlier this year, a startup called Layer1 announced it raised $50 million to build U.S. mining operations—only to face recent accusations that it misrepresented its balance sheet and executive team.
“The mining space is littered with the carcasses of failed mining efforts,” Silbert acknowledges.
According to Colyer, these failures often arise because companies fail to understand the cyclical nature of crypto mining, which he likens to the price swings that occur in commodity markets. He and Silbert claim that DCG’s broad network of contacts, along with its deep experience in the crypto industry, will let Foundry succeed where others have not.
One factor that could boost Foundry’s efforts is geopolitics. According to a DCG spokesperson, lawmakers and policy groups in Washington, D.C., are becoming concerned about ceding the production of Bitcoin—whose circulating supply is now worth over $200 billion—to China. These sentiments could help Foundry find support for crypto mining among federal and local officials, who may in the past have been suspicious of Bitcoin.
While China may be a strategic competitor in the cryptocurrency industry, Foundry is nonetheless relying on Bitmain and other Chinese companies to supply mining equipment. Silbert says that despite earlier controversies over Bitmain, the company has become more reliable in recent years. He adds that as the crypto industry grows, it is likely American firms will begin manufacturing mining equipment.
As for Foundry’s partnerships, Silbert says the company has signed deals with crypto mining companies and manufacturers, and is in talks to do the same with energy firms and government agencies.
Foundry’s business plan also calls for offering “staking” services. This involves managing the voting rights that arise from owning certain cryptocurrencies—a process akin to proxy voting in traditional equity markets.
If Silbert’s Foundry gambit succeeds, it will further solidify Digital Currency Group’s position as a giant of the industry. The company has three other subsidiaries, including the trading firm Genesis, and Grayscale, a firm that packages currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum into shares for the stock market. Over the past year, Grayscale’s Bitcoin offering has become more popular among millennial investors than Netflix and other prominent stocks.
DCG does not disclose its financial records, but the fact it is funding the new $100 million investment from its own balance sheet, according to Silbert, suggests it is in a strong position.
For Colyer, Foundry is not just an opportunity for DCG to earn more money. A native of upstate New York, he says he relishes the idea of communities like Rochester using their supply of power to attract a new industry and new jobs.
“When is the last time western New York enjoyed a competitive advantage?” he asks.
More personal finance coverage from Fortune:


fortune--2020-08-27--WNBA players and Naomi Osaka go on strike for Jacob Blake

We need a COVID vaccine .
We also need to figure out how to get it to people

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women take the stage at the RNC, Vanessa Pappas becomes interim CEO of TikTok, and female athletes go on strike. Have a thoughtful Thursday.
– Athletes on strike. The sports world came to a halt last night; the bubbles professional leagues had built figuratively burst. The mass stoppage wasn’t due to the coronavirus, but outrage over another pandemic, that of racial injustice, politic brutality, and the disregard for Black lives.
It started with the Milwaukee Bucks, who decided that their NBA playoff game could not go on as their home state grappled with the police shooting in Kenosha, Wisc., of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man accompanied by his children. Blake, who was shot in the back seven times, remains in critical condition.
More NBA, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer teams joined in the strike, as did the six teams in the WNBA, a league that has led professional sports’ support of Black Lives Matter for months now, even before the police killing of George Floyd in May reignited BLM protests.
“What we have seen over the last few months, and most recently with the brutal police shooting of Jacob Blake, is overwhelming. And while we hurt for Jacob and his community, we also have an opportunity to keep the focus on the issues and demand change,” Atlanta Dream forward Elizabeth Williams said in a statement. “These moments are why it’s important for our fans to stay focused, hear our voices, know our hearts and connect the dots from what we say to what we do.”
Tennis star Naomi Osaka also took up the strike, saying she would not play in a semifinal match of the Western & Southern Open that was scheduled for today.
“Before I am an athlete, I am a black woman,” she wrote on social media Wednesday night. “[A]s a black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis. I don’t expect anything drastic to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction.”
Athletes for months have tried to call attention to the crisis of racial injustice and police brutality in a restrained manner, using pointed statements and national anthem kneeling and t-shirt tributes. But the strike goes a step further. It separates entertainment from their messaging; what’s left is an exasperated plea for humanity.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Women of the RNC. Last night's RNC included speeches from Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, departing White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, and President Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. The New York Times describes the evening's female-heavy lineup as an "effort to lift Mr. Trump’s standing among women." New York Times
- An understanding interviewer. In marked contrast to the messaging going on at the RNC, The Atlantic has launched a new series in which E. Jean Carroll, the writer who alleged in her book that President Trump sexually assaulted her, is interviewing other women who say they have been assaulted or harassed by the President (Trump has denied all claims). The first piece in her series features Natasha Stoynoff, the former People magazine writer who was among the first to bring forward a claim just before the 2016 election. The Atlantic
- Gender gap. According to a new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, women-owned small businesses now have a less positive outlook about the year ahead. In the first quarter of this year, male business owners anticipated an increase in revenue in 2021—an expectation that has remained consistent through the pandemic. Female business owners, however, now have lower expectations than they did before the crisis. Fortune
- One-on-ones. Two other duos in conversation to check out: Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex and Gloria Steinem talk about the feminist movement's progress. And Angela Davis and Ava DuVernay reflect on the Black Lives Matter movement and Davis's legacy.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: TikTok's U.S. general manager Vanessa Pappas will replace former CEO Kevin Mayer as interim head of the company following Mayer's sudden resignation.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Reporting report. The U.K. requires companies to report their gender pay gaps, although that initiative has stalled to a degree during the coronavirus downturn. Now the push to mandate large companies do the same for their racial pay gaps is receiving renewed attention. New York Times
- Immune boosters. Why do women, when infected with COVID-19, seem to fare better than men? A new study finds that women produce a stronger immune response to the virus. And why do school-age boys seem to be weathering social isolation better than girls in their age bracket? Socialization while playing video games is one hypothesis.
- Recording history. Ancestry, led by CEO Margo Georgiadis, promised yesterday that records related to the Holocaust will be free on its platform through a partnership with the U.S.C. Shoah Foundation. The rollout of the initiative encountered some hurdles, including descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors who felt uncomfortable with the level of publicly available information. New York Times ˇ
ON MY RADAR
Chatting with the feminist icon I played on TV The Cut
Black women are topping bestseller lists. What took so long? Elle
GOP women in Arizona could decide an unexpected 2020 battle New York Times
Yale Law professor Jed Rubenfeld has been suspended for sexual harassment New York Magazine
PARTING WORDS
"It's like dating a guy that you know sucks."
-Serena Williams on relinquishing a lead in the Western & Southern Open


fortune--2020-08-27--TikTok’s most vocal defender is now its new interim CEO

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TikTok’s U.S. general manager Vanessa Pappas will replace former CEO Kevin Mayer as interim head of the company following Mayer’s sudden resignation on Wednesday. Mayer announced his resignation less than 100 days after taking on the role, blaming the U.S. government for interfering in TikTok’s operations.
TikTok is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance Ltd and has been a target of U.S. government criticism over alleged data privacy and national security risks that the company has repeatedly denied.
TikTok’s hiring of Mayer, a former Disney executive, was seen as part of a broader effort to counter U.S. government scrutiny of TikTok by putting a more American face on its operations.
Pappas has pointed to Mayer as evidence of TikTok’s U.S.- and security-friendly credentials, telling Marie Claire in an August article, “There’s a lot of misinformation about TikTok out there. TikTok has an American CEO … and a U.S. team that works diligently to develop a best-in-class security infrastructure.”
But Pappas herself, who worked at YouTube for more than seven years before joining TikTok in 2018, had emerged as a voice for the short video app, even before Mayer’s sudden resignation.
The TikTok general manager is active on Twitter, where she shares articles about TikTok, promotes her own company blog posts, and publishes tweets about the company with striking candor.
“No, we are not a national security threat. Frankly it feels odd to have to say this when the CIA has said it for us,” she wrote on August 20.
While Mayer’s social media and news presence was comparatively quiet during his stint as TikTok CEO, Pappas has appeared on a Vox Media podcast and participated in a Zoom interview for the Marie Claire profile that called her “the reigning queen of TikTok” and the company’s “secret weapon.” It was Pappas who posted a video statement after Trump first threatened to ban the app, vowing that TikTok is “here for the long run.”
It’s not yet known how long Pappas will stay in the interim role at TikTok—or whether she or someone else might eventually take on that role on a permanent basis.
A TikTok representative didn’t respond to Fortune‘s request for comment on Pappas’s interim role.
Sudden resignation
In resigning, Mayer said that he decided to quit after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. will ban TikTok unless an American company takes over U.S. operations of the short video app by September 15.
“We appreciate that the political dynamics of the last few months have significantly changed what the scope of Kevin’s role would be going forward, and fully respect his decision. We thank him for his time at the company and wish him well,” TikTok said in an emailed statement to Fortune.
However, it isn’t just the U.S. situation that’s changed. India, TikTok’s largest market, also banned the app in June. Jeffrey Towson, a private equity investor and former professor at Peking University, reckons Mayer would never have left Disney for TikTok if he had known the U.S. and India weren’t a part of it.
“Mayer was a major player at Disney, and he wants to run a major international media company,” Towson says. “That’s obviously what he wants, and TikTok outside of China is clearly not that anymore.”
In light of continued pressure from the Trump administration, ByteDance’s plan to paint TikTok as a U.S.-centric company independent of Chinese government influence appears to have failed.
“ByteDance has been trying to address issues raised by the U.S. for a long time, but it seems like it’s still not good enough for Donald Trump,” says Zhang Mengmeng, an analyst at Counterpoint Research.
ByteDance is currently in talks to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations. Microsoft is the frontrunner, but Oracle is reportedly another bidder. Although Mayer’s exit in the midst of negotiations seems like a bad omen for TikTok’s future, Zhang says the Microsoft deal is unlikely to be unaffected.
“Mayer probably doesn’t want to be in the middle of this turmoil,” Zhang says. “He signed up to lead a global company, but there wouldn’t be a lot of development for TikTok at the moment—just wrangling with lawyers and the government.”
Mayer’s exit could also mean that the deal is progressing without him. In his letter to employees, Mayer hinted that the company expects “a resolution very soon” to the political issues it is facing—which seemed to telegraph that a deal is forthcoming.
“If I had to guess why Mayer’s leaving I’d say probably because he’s just hanging out in his office and isn’t involved in the dealmaking,” Towson says. However, if a deal is close to completion, the more interesting question is who will head up TikTok’s U.S. operations instead of Mayer.
“Mayer was the heavy hitter, a major player in the media industry, but whoever the new owner is let him go,” Towson says. “They have to be pretty confident they have someone to replace Mayer if they didn’t even get him to stay as a backup.”
While TikTok’s future leadership remains uncertain, Pappas has stepped in for now as CEO.


fortune--2020-08-27--Hurricane Laura is expected to join these devastating storms as the most destructive ever

Hurricane Laura, which is roaring toward Louisiana and eastern Texas, threatens to become the eighth storm that’s Category 4 or stronger to reach the U.S. Gulf Coast in modern history.
It follows Michael, which devastated the Florida panhandle in 2018, and Harvey, which deluged Houston in 2017.
Three of the eight biggest storms have come in the past four years, posing significant risk to Gulf of Mexico drilling platforms that account for as much as 17% of America’s oil production and about 3% of its natural gas output. Four of the top hurricanes were in the 1950s and 1960s, and Charley struck in 2004.
Laura is already a Category 3 major hurricane and its winds are forecast to peak at 145 miles (233 kilometers) per hour. That would be stronger than Hurricane Harvey had at landfall in 2017. It may cause $25 billion in damage and economic losses, with at least $5 billion in destruction to refineries alone, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research.
Most Expensive Atlantic Hurricanes to Reach U.S.


fortune--2020-08-27--Inclusion in the Dow does not guarantee a bump to your share price

Good morning.
Salesforce stock soared a stunning 27% yesterday—its biggest jump ever—on the day after it was announced that it would be added to the Dow Jones index. Amgen and Honeywell, which are also being added to the Dow, rose modestly as well, while the stocks being bumped—Exxon, Pfizer, and Raytheon—all fell. That makes sense, since being in the index assures companies an extra influx of money from index funds.
But here’s an interesting fact: In recent years, those added to the Dow have actually performed worse than those that are dumped. Looking at the last decade, companies added to the Dow gained only 0.3%, while those removed grew 10.37%. Starting from 1999, those added lost 10.1% and those booted lost only 2%. So maybe being added to the index isn’t such a good thing after all?
Salesforce investors seem confident their stock will buck the historical trend—and that confidence was fed by the company’s strong earnings report on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Tesla’s ever confident investors sent the electric car maker’s market value over $400 billion yesterday. That makes it more valuable than Walmart— the world’s biggest company.
Separately, 84% of the CFOs surveyed by Deloitte for their quarterly survey, coming out later today, say the stock market is overvalued…the second highest reading in the survey’s history. Only 2% believe it is undervalued.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Laura makes landfall
Hurricane Laura barreled ashore in Louisiana early Thursday as a Category 4 storm. The storm is bringing a wall of water that is predicted to reach 20 feet in height, a surge the National Hurricane Center called "unsurvivable". That water could reach as far as 40 miles inland, effectively annexing low-lying regions into the Gulf of Mexico. More than 1.5 million people in coastal Texas and Louisiana are under an evacuation order. New York Times
TikTok CEO Quits
TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer has resigned after just four months on the job, days after the video sharing app, owned by China's ByteDance, asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from banning it in the U.S. A spokeswoman said: "We appreciate that the political dynamics of the last few months have significantly changed what the scope of Kevin’s role would be going forward." Fortune
"GolfGate" resignation
The EU's trade chief, Phil Hogan, a key bridge between the bloc and the Trump administration, has stepped down over criticism he broke health and safety rules in an incident now known as "GolfGate", when Hogan attended a dinner at a golf club in his native Ireland that flouted COVID-19 social-distancing mandates. The dinner has already claimed an Irish minister's career. Bloomberg
HSBC in the middle
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleged on Wednesday that HSBC had continued to keep accounts for people on the U.S. government's sanctions list, while closing accounts linked to people in Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement. Pompeo blamed "the Chinese Communist Party's coercive bullying tactics against our friends in the United Kingdom." HSBC is headquartered in London, but was founded in Hong Kong in 1865. Fortune
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Kenosha shooting
The Justice Department will open an investigation into the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as protests spread and a teenager who shot and killed two people in the aftermath of the attack was arrested. Protestors have poured into the city's streets in recent days, sometimes met by counter protestors. President Trump tweeted on Wednesday that he would send the National Guard to the city. New York Times
Covid Gag Rules
This Businessweek story covers a "silencing spree" across American businesses, with hundreds of employees across a broad range of companies allegedly told not to share information about COVID-19 cases, or even raise their concerns about the virus—lest management retaliate against them. One complaint alleges that a trailer manufacturer set its policy as "Don't ask, don't tell." Businessweek
Labor Day 2021
Oliver Kharraz, the CEO and founder of Zocdoc, a medical-care appointment booking service, and a doctor, writes for Fortune that he won't bring his employees back into the office for at least another year. "Safeguarding our employees’ health is paramount," he writes. "Companies should not require their teams to return until an effective vaccine or treatment is broadly available." Fortune
North Korean heists
U.S. government agencies warned Wednesday that North Korea was running a vast campaign to steal money to fund its nuclear weapons programs, from draining ATMs to spearphishing attacks. The heists have been underway since February and represent a resurgence, officials said. U.S. and UN officials say the efforts reap billions of dollars. WSJ
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by Katherine Dunn


fortune--2020-08-27--Jefferies strategist expects China to fulfill its U.S. trade deal commitments for an unexpected reas

Jefferies strategist expects China to fulfill its U.S. trade deal commitments for an unexpected reason

For months now, trade experts have wondered if the U.S. and China will make good on the pledges outlined in phase 1 of the trade deal. The pact, signed in January, requires China to increase its imports of American goods by a combined $200 billion within two years.
The two sides reiterated their commitment to the deal this week, but doubts remain because China is far behind on its purchases through the first half of 2020, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics’ trade deal tracker. It has bought only 23% of the goods it should have purchased by now.
Even with those shortfalls, Jefferies chief global equity strategist Sean Darby says his confidence in the superpowers fulfilling phase 1 of the trade deal is “actually quite high.” Why? He points to weeks of torrential rains and catastrophic flooding in China. The devastating conditions have ravaged farmland, meaning China must import large amounts of agricultural products from the U.S., since farmers in China will not be able to produce and deliver enough food for the population.
That new demand will benefit “Mr. Trump and the farming community in the United States because it does open a door for the mainland to import the much larger amounts of agricultural products from the United States,” says Darby, who’s based in Hong Kong. The Trump campaign touts the trade deal as one of the President’s crowning achievements, one that could bring economic relief to American farmers whose livelihoods were hit hard by trade war tariffs.
In an Eastworld Spotlight interview with Fortune‘s Clay Chandler this week, Darby also talks about Hong Kong’s stock market, U.S. pressure on Chinese firms, and the possible fallout from U.S. actions against Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.
Fortune: A lot of people over the past year have lamented the “death of Hong Kong,” which has been hit hard by the pandemic, concerns about the new national security law, and rising U.S.-China trade tensions. Yet the Hong Kong stock exchange just announced a record profit. What’s going on with the Hong Kong market and what’s your outlook?
Sean Darby: A bit like the rest of the world, there’s been a disconnect between the equity market and what’s been happening in the real economy. And part of that is a function of the U.S. Federal Reserve policy, which has been extremely loose and expansionary because we’re paired to the U.S. dollar. Secondly, we’ve benefited from China’s economy being one of the first to recover from COVID-19. Because most of the earnings of companies on the Hang Seng Index are generated either in China or overseas, that has also been a reason why you’ve had this very big displacement in the performance of the equity market despite near recession levels within most parts of the economy.
We feel that the Federal Reserve policy is going to remain extremely loose. And China will be celebrating the centenary founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 2021. It’s clearly got to have the economy doing very well. So in terms of the profit cycle and the external environment for Hong Kong, things are still in place to be reasonably good.
On the ground, we’ve been frustrated by a second wave of COVID-19 cases, which pushed back the recovery in many ways…The key litmus test for us is whether we can open the border with Guangdong and the hinterland, or what we call the Greater Bay Area. If that occurs, then I think we can really say that the end of the recession pretty much [will be] the third quarter of this year.
President Trump said recently that the Hong Kong exchange would no longer be successful since the U.S. has ended its special economic status with the city. But in some ways, it looks like the opposite is happening. Is it the case that the more U.S. policymakers try to push Chinese companies off U.S. exchanges, the better it is for Hong Kong? What’s your read of the situation?
I think that was always going to be, at some point, part of the route China would take; returning companies to the mainland, into Hong Kong, purely for the fact that they were also part of their industries and their economy. So in many ways, Mr. Trump’s actions and the actions by the [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] have actually caused that to be sped up very, very rapidly.
The longer-term issue is whether there are going to be more difficult issues for the domestic banking system here [in Hong Kong] in dealing with counterparts in the United States or overseas. That is still the big question mark; how far will sanctions move from the United States toward Hong Kong?
What does that imply for Hong Kong as a financial capital? There has been much speculation that Hong Kong might lose out to Singapore, Tokyo, or Seoul. Do you see any of those cities as potential alternatives to Hong Kong?
To build up the infrastructure of a financial center takes decades. You need to have the confidence of very strong regulatory banking; you need to have the architecture of a very well-run banking system. And in particular, for this time zone, [you need to have] access to China’s renminbi. The flow of Chinese currencies has given Hong Kong a unique advantage over its peers. So Hong Kong stock exchange’s Connect program, which we have for equities and bonds and now even wealth management products, has allowed Hong Kong to have this dual exchange rate system that operates at dollar pay and has almost unlimited funding of RMB from China. That unique setup, that infrastructure, is going to be hard to compete away.
The difficulty for Hong Kong, maybe 24 or 36 months from now, is that mainland bourses, both in Shenzhen and Shanghai, are looking enviously at the IPO activity, the trading turnover that Hong Kong has established. There’s a sort of turf war between Hong Kong and its sister bourses on the mainland. I think that’s going to be where Hong Kong is going to find itself competing, rather than the financial centers in Tokyo or Singapore.
Would Shenzhen and Shanghai be able to tap into the global capital market?
The investor base in China has itself grown commensurately. We have to recognize that retail turnover is a very large part of mainland activity, more so than anywhere else in the world. But [the Chinese market is] also becoming highly institutionalized, and even China insurance companies now can have a weighting in equities of up to 35%. If we had this…tension between the U.S. and China five or six years ago, it might have been impractical for these companies to have quickly re-listed [in China]; we would not have had the depth of the markets in the mainland to absorb such a large amount of capital requirements. But it’s fortuitous now that the depth of the market in the mainland and in Hong Kong have broadened so significantly over the last five years.
Despite all of the rhetoric between the United States and China, China has actually welcomed foreign companies that want to be engaged in the financial industry because it seeks a greater depth for its capital markets. In many ways, that’s not going to change over the next couple of years because it’s very important for China to feel that its capital markets are [entering] the mainstream. Ultimately, they want to ensure that the Chinese currency itself becomes part of the mainstream asset class, a mainstream means of exchange.
The end game of the long-run view from China is that they should continue to welcome foreign companies participating in their capital markets because ultimately it brings the bigger prize of the RMB becoming more internationalized, and therefore, the economy becomes less dependent on those flows of dollars moving around the system.
You mentioned the face-off between the United States and China. That really seems to be escalating as we move into the U.S. presidential election. One flashpoint has been a fresh wave of U.S. restrictions against Huawei. What kind of repercussion do you see from it?
It is actually quite a complicated way of trying to control China’s emergence because there are lots of unintended consequences that can come back to the United States. The first thing to highlight is that you introduce a lot of idiosyncratic risk on corporates globally because it is not unthinkable that China itself will set up its own entities list as the Americans have done, and restrict the ability of American companies to operate in the Chinese domestic market.
It is only going to force Chinese authorities to speed up the delivery of local tech components within their own economy. So eventually, they won’t be as dependent on the United States for their inputs or their products. And that in itself will actually be a negative for the U.S. economy.
China has fallen behind in its purchases of American agricultural products and energy imports. Can it make that up and fulfill the phase 1 trade deal as we get closer to November?
Our confidence level on the fulfillment of the phase 1 trade deal is actually quite high. Certainly, our discussions with people on both sides is that both parties wish to honor it. Initially after COVID-19, simply because the Chinese economy was not functioning and couldn’t actually import a lot of these products, there was a lag in terms of China’s commitment or peer-to-peer commitment to phase 1. Now, by accident, the ongoing flooding and the terrible conditions in some of the provinces after these very dramatic rainstorms [have] meant that a large part of the agricultural base in China will not be able to deliver a sufficient amount of food for the population. And measures from China in recent weeks—domestic data, trying to curb food consumption—are hinting that that’s going to be a much deeper problem for the economy. And that falls very nicely for Mr. Trump and the farming community in the United States because it does open a door for the mainland to import the much larger amounts of agricultural products from the United States.
So I think, by accident, out of terrible weather conditions, the phase 1 trade deal probably looks to be in the bag for Mr. Trump, and certainly he can point to a great deal of success in getting that sealed and delivered by the Chinese coming into the November election.
This story is part of Eastworld Spotlight, a series of conversations on matters of business, tech, and finance with executives, experts, entrepreneurs, and investors in Asia. Subscribe to Fortune’s Eastworld newsletter to get them in your inbox.


fortune--2020-08-28--The future of working will be at home—and at the office

Why the Fed ’ s huge policy shift on inflation could be rocket fuel for stocks

Good morning.
This is Future of the Office week at CEO Daily. After Monday’s conversation with the co-CEOs of Gensler, I talked yesterday with Matthew Lock and Simon Pole, founder and global design director of Unispace. Like the Gensler gang, they are working with companies to reimagine the workplace for the post-COVID world. “There is dramatically increased market activity, rethinking space, rethinking everything,” says Lock. “Anyone who is taking space or looking at a lease expiration is looking at a major redesign.”
Pole says that while work-from-home fatigue is setting in, the “cat is out of the bag on choice and flexibility. It’s going to be demanded.” Unispace predicts the percentage of office workers who want to work from home at least three days a week will settle at around 40% in January of 2022. That’s up from pre-pandemic levels of 21% in Europe, 19% in APAC and 12% in the U.S. And with much of the “focus” work being done at home, the new office will increasingly be a place for “collaboration,” “social,” and “learning.”
One challenge they foresee is creating ways for people at home and office to work together. “There is a lot of trepidation around managing distributed teams,” said Pole. “Managers were happy when everyone was in the office, they were happy when everyone was home. But in two places at once is difficult.” The firm is creating what they call video “wormholes” to better connect workers at the office with those elsewhere.
Meanwhile, since it’s Friday, some feedback:
BW wrote in to ask about the Deloitte survey: “Who are the 2% of CFOs who believe the stock markets are undervalued? I want to make sure I don’t own those stocks.”
JN wrote: “I keep seeing (your) writings about the importance of stakeholder capitalism. But nothing concrete is happening besides loud statements.” He proposes companies commit to giving shares worth 1% of their market value to employees each year.
And RG wrote: “By themselves, America’s largest companies cannot solve the burning issues of today. BUT they can innovate within their ecosystem, they can impact their communities, and they can influence the federal government to move in the best interests of the country and the globe.”
More news below. And kudos to PwC U.S. for its unusual disclosure of diversity statistics to its employees and the public. This should become the norm. What gets measured gets managed.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Laura wreaks havoc
Hurricane Laura has weakened, but the super storm is still wreaking chaos—including unleashing tornadoes hundreds of miles inland—as it turns towards the Eastern Seaboard this weekend. The storm became a tropical depression late Thursday, but was one of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit Texas, and has so far caused at least six deaths. Associated Press
Abe resigns
Japan's longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said he would resign Friday for health reaons. The Japanese leader recently visited a Tokyo hospital and has long suffered from an autoimmune condition. It's not yet clear who will be his successor. WSJ
Fed puts heat on ECB
The Fed's decision, revealed on Thursday, to aim for periods of inflation averaging 2% over time will now put the heat on the European Central Bank to adopt the same policy. While low inflation has long been a major concern for central banks, that seems to be shifting. Meanwhile, US jobless claims this week hovered around 1 million. Bloomberg
Teen charged in Kenosha
A teenager was charged with fatally shooting two protestors, and seriously wounding another with a semi-automatic rifle in the days following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisc. Protests, meanwhile, continue over the shooting, while Blake's family says he has been left paralyzed from the waist down. Meanwhile, athletes including NBA and WNBA players were striking last night in protest. Fortune
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Russia warns Belarus
Belorussians have taken to the street over the last two weeks to protest the country's authoritarian president Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. But now Russian president Vladimir Putin warns that he has created a "reserve of law enforcement officers" to assist the leader. It was the sharpest warning yet that Russia could step in to crush dissent—but such a move would pose risks for Russia, too. “For Putin, Belarus is an existential question," says one analyst. New York Times
Walmart's TikTok fling
Why is Walmart chasing TikTok? Fortune's Danielle Abril runs through a compelling case for buying the video-sharing app, despite its new role as a geopolitical flashpoint, and amid a power vacuum at the top now that the U.S. CEO has announced his resignation. The advantages include better understanding its young shoppers—and bolstering its digital footprint. Fortune
Canada-China vaccine fail
A vaccine partnership between the Canadian government and the Chinese company CanSino has fallen apart—according to the Canadian health department, because the supplies to develop the vaccine have been held in limbo for months by Chinese customs. The impasse is widely viewed as retaliation over Canada's arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the founder of Huawei, in 2018 in Vancouver. Fortune
Action on democracy
A group of CEOs—and military veterans—tell Fortune that executives now have a critical job ahead of them: to support safe and fair elections, and to invest in democracy, including assisting organizations that advance voter access and work against voter suppression. "If the business community is silent while elected officials do not, in good faith, work to ensure a free and fair election, then those same officials will interpret that silence as a green light from business," they write. Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by Katherine Dunn


fortune--2020-08-28--Canada moves on from vaccine partnership with China, blaming it for delaying critical shipment

The future of working will be at home—and at the office

Canada’s once-promising vaccine partnership with Chinese vaccine maker CanSino appears to be over.
This week, Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) announced that it has ended its partnership with CanSino due to months of ongoing delays in receiving Cansino’s Phase I vaccine trial shipment.
“It’s evident that the opportunity [with CanSino] is over,” NRC president Iain Stewart told Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail this week.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau originally announced the CanSino partnership on May 16, saying that the Chinese vaccine maker would partner with Canada’s Dalhousie University to conduct the Phase I clinical trials.
But, over four months later, the supplies for the vaccine have yet to arrive. Health Canada, a government agency that oversees the country’s health policy, told Fortune in early August that the shipment had “not yet been approved by Chinese customs.”
As of this week, the shipment still appears to be caught in customs. “Due to the delay in the shipment of the vaccine doses to Canada, the NRC has since moved on to focus our team and facilities on other partners and COVID-19 priorities,” the NRC said in a statement this week.
China’s government has not commented on the shipment, but CanSino founder Yu Xuefeng lashed out at Chinese customs authorities this week, telling the Globe and Mail that government decision making around vaccine research is “too complicated,” and the time to the trials has “already passed.”
CanSino later clarified to Chinese media that while its shipment remains held in customs, its partnership with the NRC hasn’t been officially terminated.
Yu originally appeared to be an ideal candidate to partner with Canada on vaccine research, given that he spent decades as a vaccine researcher in Canada with the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur before moving to China and founding CanSino in 2009.
Yet even his close ties to the Canadian pharmaceutical industry and with Chinese authorities—CanSino is partnering with the military-run Academy of Military Medical Sciences on its vaccine research—did not prove enough to make the partnership work.
Earlier this month, Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Fortune that the lengthy delay would only make sense if it was done for political reasons.
Some observers have said China may have been holding the shipment as leverage to pressure Canada to send Meng Wanzhou, a former Huawei executive and daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, back to China. Meng was detained upon arriving at Vancouver’s airport in December 2018 at the request of U.S. authorities. She remains under house arrest in Vancouver while her lawyers fight a U.S. request to have her extradited to New York to face fraud charges. American prosecutors allege that in order to get financial services, Meng lied to banks about Huawei’s relationship with an unofficial subsidiary in Iran called Skycom.
Meng and Huawei deny the U.S. charges. Chinese officials have denounced Trudeau for colluding with what they claim is a political move by the Trump administration to constrain China’s rise as a global technology power.
China is holding two Canadians, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor, who were arrested on unspecified national security charges in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Meng. On Tuesday, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois-Philippe Champagne appealed for the release of the two men during a meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in Rome.
China appears to have rebuffed the plea. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, speaking to reporters in Beijing Wednesday, said, “The Canadian side is well aware of the crux of the problem and should immediately take effective measures to correct the mistakes and create conditions for the bilateral relationship to get back on track.”
“It’s likely that the shipment is being delayed as part of China’s retaliation against Canada over the Meng [Wanzhou] arrest,” David Mulroney, former Canadian ambassador to China, told Canada’s National Post.
The Chinese state media outlet the Global Times refuted this notion on Thursday, suggesting that the shipment was likely delayed either because Canada’s relative success against the coronavirus has made it a less viable location for the trials or that CanSino’s candidate uses portions of Canadian technology, raising potential legal questions should the vaccine supplies be shipped to Canada.
CanSino, meanwhile, announced partnerships this month with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Mexico to launch Phase III clinical trials.


fortune--2020-08-28--Why the Fed’s huge policy shift on inflation could be rocket fuel for stocks

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Happy Friday, Bull Sheeters. U.S. futures are holding onto gains this morning, looking to close off a stellar week on a high note. That’s after the Fed’s big policy shift on inflation yesterday more or less locks in for the foreseeable future this era of rock-bottom interest rates. Reminder: low rates are generally terrible news for Treasurys, great news for growth stocks.
Let’s check in on the action.
Markets update
Asia
The major indexes are mixed, with Japan’s Nikkei the laggard, down 1.4% .
the laggard, down . The Japanese markets took a dive after the state broadcaster revealed a shocker: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will step down for health reasons.
will step down for health reasons. The plot around TikTok’s future thickens after a shuffle at the top, and a new suitor, Walmart, emerges for the U.S. business. The retailing giant will join forces with Microsoft as the courtship intensifies.
Europe
The European bourses were mixed in mid-morning trade with Germany’s Dax down 0.3% .
were mixed in mid-morning trade with down . Bayer shares were down 3.4% on Friday morning after a U.S. judge threw fresh doubts on the company’s $11 billion Roundup weedkiller settlement .
shares were down 3.4% on Friday morning after a U.S. judge threw fresh doubts on the company’s . Europeans are returning to auto showrooms, and they appear to have one major request: show me your electric-powered cars. EV registrations soared to record levels last month leading an autos analyst to declare, a “‘V’ shaped recovery in the European car industry” is possible.
U.S.
U.S. futures are solidly higher this morning after the S&P 500 set a new all-time high for a fifth straight day. The Dow briefly went positive for the year in yesterday’s session after Fed Chairman Powell signaled low interest rates may be here to stay.
are solidly higher this morning after the S&P 500 set a new all-time high for a fifth straight day. The Dow briefly went positive for the year in yesterday’s session after Fed Chairman Powell signaled may be here to stay. Yesterday’s lousy jobless claims report wasn’t enough to push Washington into deal-making mode on a new stimulus package . The Dems and White House are still at “a tragic impasse,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says.
. The Dems and White House are still at “a tragic impasse,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says. Abbott Laboratories shares were 3.5% higher in pre-market trading, adding to yesterday’s gains, after news broke that the U.S. government is purchasing 150 million of its rapid-testing COVID kits.
Elsewhere
Gold is up, but continues to trade around $1,950/ounce .
is up, but continues to trade around . The dollar continues to be volatile in FX trading after the Fed’s pronouncement yesterday.
continues to be volatile in FX trading after the Fed’s pronouncement yesterday. Crude is flat.
By the Numbers
>1 million. In just one week out of the last 23—dating all the way back to March—weekly jobless claims have come in above 1 million, adding to the carnage in the labor market. Yesterday’s figure came in worse than economists’ estimates at 1.06 million. Just as worrying, continuing claims came in at 14.535 million, also worse than expected. Since March, 58 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits. The markets reaction to this grim update? The S&P and Dow finished the day broadly higher.
2%. That was the Fed’s long stated goal for inflation. Once prices shoot above that threshold, the instructions read, central bankers are to go into action to determine if an interest rate hike is needed to rein in an overheating economy. The thing is, we’ve been living in an age of tepid price growth, as the chart below shows, even as central banks print money and flood the markets with cheap credit. How can this be? Didn’t we learn in Econ 101 that too much money in circulation would lead to a rise in prices? Throw that book out. The big fallacy is that it assumes that everyone in the economy is dealing from the same deck of cards. That hasn’t been the case for decades.
The ugly truth is massive income inequality, on the scale we have in America and most other developed economies, magically subdues inflation. (Inequality also does a job on economic growth.) We haven’t had real inflation in 40 years. Inequality has soared in that period. The Fed’s decision yesterday to throw out the old playbook on inflation, to let it run higher if need be, is being hailed as a landmark moment in monetary policy. The hope is it will boost the labor market (see figure above for why that’s so crucial). In the short term, the Fed’s move yesterday will mean inflation rates will stay near zero, and guess what benefits from that scenario? Equities. The Fed is telling the world its priority is full employment, but Wall Street is reading it differently. “The issue remains: will the Fed’s ultra-easy policies actually stimulate accelerating economic activity, or just pump up asset prices and make the stock market happy?,” Berenberg economists Mickey Levy and Roiana Reed wrote in an investors note yesterday.
I think we know the answer.
***
Postscript
I’ll be back next week with a proper Postscript or two (if I manage to make it off deadline for a feature I’m writing on one of the banking world’s biggest success stories. Stay tuned for that.)
I just wanted to leave you with a quick update on Scilla, our Lagotto pup. We’ve found a local dog trainer who promises to hone her truffle-hunting skills (we’re roughly two months away from the start of the big season; maybe she can help pay the mortgage around here with a few finds). The same trainer promises to curb her habit of excitedly nipping at my hands, heels and other extremities at play time.
My sandals are trashed.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
***
Have a nice weekend, everyone. I’ll see you here on Monday.
Today's read
$3 billion valuation. Eyeglasses startup Warby Parker nearly doubled its valuation after bagging a new funding round headed by D1 Capital, Durable Capital Partners, T. Rowe Price, and Baillie Gifford. Not bad considering the retailer was hard hit by the pandemic.
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Market candy
Quote of the day
“This might be the weirdest market I’ve ever seen.”
That's Jason Goepfert, president of Sundial Capital Research Inc., writing in an investor note earlier this week. The weirdness comes courtesy of a spiking VIX as the S&P 500 hits one new record after another. What's the VIX, and why should investors keep a close eye on it? Read on.


fortune--2020-08-28--Tesla loses ground in Europe despite a local surge in EV purchases post-lockdown

Tesla Motors has emerged as the leading seller of electric vehicles in China this year, shipping over 50,000 units to date. But in Europe, registrations for the California company’s EVs plummeted 76% in July, as local government subsidies spur competition.
“The rise in demand for EVs [in Europe] is strongly related to a wider offer that is finally including more affordable choices. The higher competition amongst brands is also pushing down prices,” said Felipe Munoz, global analyst at auto industry analysts JATO Dynamics.
According to JATO’s latest report, demand for EVs increased 131% in Europe for the month of July when compared to the same period last year, reaching a record-breaking high. Hybrid-engine vehicles (HEVs) saw the greatest demand surge, soaring 89% year on year, while fully electric vehicles accounted for 18% of registrations for new energy vehicles (NEVs)—a wide-ranging category that includes fully electric, plug-in, and battery-electric vehicles, plus hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Tesla scored only 1,050 new registrations in the month. The waning demand can in part be explained by production issues at Tesla’s main factory in Fremont, Calif., which supplies Europe.
The EV giant’s China sales, meanwhile, are now largely supported by its Gigafactory in Shanghai, which explains how Tesla has raced ahead in China while slipping behind in the EU. But competition from traditional automakers is also rising in Europe.
According to JATO there are now 38 NEV models available, compared to just 28 last year, buoyed by offerings from legacy brands like Peugeot, Skoda, and Mini. Meanwhile government subsidies, intended to support OEMs during the pandemic and help automakers hit new emission standards, have reduced costs of local production.
Matthias Schmidt, an independent auto analyst in Berlin, says registrations for NEVs in West Europe—a region covering 18 countries—have actually surpassed registrations in China so far this year. Europe saw over 500,000 new registrations in the first seven months, while China recorded just 486,000.
Yet despite the strong growth in EV registration, total passenger vehicle sales remain down across Europe, dropping 35% in the first seven months compared to the same period in 2019. The downturn does appear to be slowing, however, with sales dropping just 4% in July—the lowest monthly decline yet.
Munoz cautions that the unpredictable pandemic continues to pose a risk to future auto sales but—daring optimism—adds that “if the current situation continues to improve, we could start to talk about a ‘V’-shaped recovery in the European car industry.”


fortune--2020-08-28--How Tesla led the way for Chinese rival Xpeng’s $1.5 billion IPO

Chinese electric-vehicle maker Xpeng Motors raised $1.5 billion in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday—the second Chinese EV manufacturer in as many months to make a U.S. debut, despite mounting pushback from Washington against Chinese firms listing in the U.S.
Shares of the company surged more than 40% on their first day of trading.
“The U.S. market still remains the gold standard for Chinese companies looking to go public because it has characteristics that are unlike other markets,” says Drew Bernstein, cochairman of accounting firm Marcum BP. In this year alone, more than 20 Chinese companies have debuted in the U.S. even as Congress debates legislation that would make it harder to do so.
In May, the Senate passed legislation that would delist Chinese companies that fail to produce audit documents for three consecutive years. Currently, the Securities and Exchange Commission is unable to review audit documents of many U.S.-listed Chinese firms because Beijing, deeming the internal records of Chinese companies to be state secrets, forbids disclosure.
The lack of access has been a sore point within the SEC for the past decade. Washington is now debating legislation that would allow the SEC to delist Chinese firms if they don’t produce the audit documents for three consecutive years. But the prospect of being delisted in the future isn’t enough to deter Chinese firms from raising fresh funds now.
“If I’m going to give you a billion dollars today and tell you the rules may change later, would you rather take the money now and deal with the rule change later, or wait until the rules change and not get the money anyway?” Bernstein says.
For Chinese unicorns like Xpeng—whose investors include Alibaba Group and the Qatar Investment Authority and was valued at over $3.5 billion before its debut—the U.S. is a particularly attractive market because of its deep and diversified capital sources. Few other markets are able to fund the listing of so many unicorns. U.S. investors have been especially keen to bet on electric-vehicle makers.
Electric avenue
“Investors have a view that the EV market in China has reached a turning point, with the momentum growing around Tesla,” says Bill Russo, founder and CEO of Automobility, a Shanghai-based investment advisory that focuses on mobility. In the first half of this year, Tesla emerged as the leading EV seller in China, shipping over 50,000 units and claiming 21% of the market.
Russo says there’s now a “spillover of investors searching for the next big thing,” and Xpeng is one of the contenders. The five-year-old company began production of its first vehicle in late 2018 and today has two models available with a third planned for next year.
Xpeng was founded in 2014 by He Xiaopeng, a former Alibaba executive. According to its prospectus, the Guangzhou-based EV maker had revenues of $328 million in 2019 with a net loss of $522.5 million. As of July 31, the automaker had delivered just under 21,000 vehicles in total.
Though Xpeng’s lack of experience makes it a potential risk factor for investors, Russo says, the company’s management team provides an advantage that could help it steal market share in China.
He, who serves as CEO, has drawn on his Alibaba experience to build data monetization into Xpeng’s business model. The company’s president, Heng Xia, is a veteran vehicle designer from Guangzhou Auto. Xpeng’s vice chairman and financial lead, Brian Gu, is a former Wall Street banker.
“You have a leader with digital DNA, an expert in EV architecture, and a top-level financier. Put those things together and that’s what it takes to create a successful auto company in the 21st century,” Russo says.


fortune--2020-08-28--Prosecutors charge teen in fatal shooting of two protestors and wounding of a third in Kenosha

Prosecutors on Thursday charged a 17-year-old from Illinois in the fatal shooting of two protesters and the wounding of a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a night of unrest following the weekend police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Kyle Rittenhouse faces five felony charges that include first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide, and a misdemeanor charge for possession of a dangerous weapon by a minor. Rittenhouse, a white teen who was armed with a semi-automatic rifle as he walked the streets with other armed civilians amid protests this week, would face a mandatory life sentence if convicted of first-degree intentional homicide.
The shootings late Tuesday—largely caught on cellphone video and posted online—and the shooting by police Sunday of Blake, a 29-year-old Black father of six who was left paralyzed from the waist down, made Kenosha the latest focal point in the fight against racial injustice that has gripped the country since the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
The two men killed were Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, of Kenosha, and Anthony Huber, 26, of Silver Lake, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of the city.
A third man was injured. Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, of West Allis, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Kenosha is recovering after surgery, said Bethany Crevensten, another activist. She said Grosskreutz was volunteering as a medic when he was shot and called him “a hero.”
Rosenbaum was shot and killed first, after following Rittenhouse into a used car lot, where he threw a plastic bag at the gunman and attempted to take the weapon from him, according to a criminal complaint released by prosecutors Thursday. The medical examiner found that Rosenbaum was shot in the groin and back—which fractured his pelvis and perforated his right lung and liver—and his left hand. He also suffered a superficial wound to his left thigh and a graze wound to his forehead.
Rittenouse then ran down the street and was chased by several people shouting that he just shot someone before he tripped and fell, according to the complaint and video footage. Huber, who was carrying a skateboard, was shot in the chest after apparently trying to wrest the gun from Rittenhouse, the complaint said.
Grosskreutz, who appeared to be holding a gun, then was shot in the left arm after approaching Rittenhouse, the complaint said.
Rittenhouse’s attorney, Lin Wood, said the teenager was acting in self-defense.
“From my standpoint, it’s important that the message be clear to other Americans who are attacked that there will be legal resources available in the event false charges are brought against them,” he said. “Americans should never be deterred from exercising their right of self-defense.”
Kenosha police faced questions about their interactions with the gunman on Tuesday night. According to witness accounts and video footage, police apparently let the gunman walk past them and leave the scene with a rifle over his shoulder and his hands in the air, as members of the crowd yelled for him to be arrested because he had shot people.
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said the gunman likely slipped away because the scene was chaotic, with lots of radio traffic and people screaming, chanting and running — conditions he said can cause “tunnel vision” among law officers.
Video taken before the shooting shows police tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle and thanking civilians armed with long guns walking the streets. One of them appears to be Rittenhouse.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes on Thursday decried how Rittenhouse, whom he described as a vigilante accountable to nobody, could walk away while police talked about finding a knife inside Blake’s vehicle after he was shot in the back.
He said the fact that Rittenhouse and others came to Kenosha to take matters into their own hands “was completely horrifying.”
Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Kenosha, was taken into custody Wednesday in Illinois. He was assigned a public defender in Illinois for a hearing Friday on his transfer to Wisconsin. Under Wisconsin law, anyone 17 or older is treated as an adult in the criminal justice system.
Kenosha’s streets were calm Thursday following peaceful protests. During and after demonstrations earlier in the week, dozens of fires were set and businesses were ransacked and destroyed.
Blake was shot in the back seven times Sunday as he leaned into his SUV, in which three of his children were seated.
State authorities have identified the officer who shot Blake as Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha Police Department.
Authorities said Sheskey was among officers who responded to a domestic dispute, though they have not said whether Blake was part of the dispute. Sheskey shot Blake while holding onto his shirt after officers unsuccessfully used a Taser on him, the Wisconsin Justice Department said. State agents later recovered a knife from the floor on the driver’s side of the vehicle, the department said. State authorities did not say Blake threatened anyone with a knife.
Ben Crump, the lawyer for Blake’s family, said Tuesday that it would “take a miracle” for Blake to walk again. He called for the arrest of Sheskey and for the others involved to lose their jobs. State officials have announced no charges.
Blake’s father told the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday that he was upset to learn his son was handcuffed to the hospital bed.
“He can’t go anywhere. Why do you have him cuffed to the bed?” said his father, also named Jacob Blake.
Online court records indicate Kenosha County prosecutors charged Blake on July 6 with sexual assault, trespassing and disorderly conduct in connection with domestic abuse. An arrest warrant was issued the following day.
The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that all hospitalized patients in police custody are restrained unless undergoing medical procedures, and that it was working “to ensure a safe and humane environment for Mr. Blake.”
At a news conference, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers replied “hell yes,” when asked if he was concerned about Blake being handcuffed. “He paid a horrific price already,” the governor said.
The governor has authorized the deployment of 500 members of the National Guard to Kenosha, doubling the number of troops in the city of 100,000. Guard troops from Arizona, Michigan and Alabama were coming to Wisconsin to assist, Evers said Thursday. He did not say how many.
In Washington, the Justice Department said it was sending in more than 200 federal agents from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The White House said up to 2,000 National Guard troops would be made available. The Justice Department also announced that the U.S. attorney’s office and FBI would conduct a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Blake, in cooperation with Wisconsin state law enforcement agencies.


fortune--2020-08-29--It’s time to make Jackie Robinson proud

It’s time to make Jackie Robinson proud

Own Apple Powerbeats 2 earphones ?
Here ’ s how to claim your share of a $ 9.75 million settlement

Major League Baseball celebrates a pandemic-delayed Jackie Robinson day, the NBA gets back to work following the Jacob Blake strikes, and protestors march on Washington—once again.
But first, here’s your athletic week in review, in Haiku.
Take me out of the
ball game, I am leaving the
ice. Hang on to your
peanuts and homemade
snacks, we’re not sure when
we’ll ever be back
Sports are also a
platform, if we don’t speak
it’s our shame. Really.
It is. If we don’t
speak, strike, protest, lobby, march
write, boycott, weigh in
Jackie Robinson
Day will be just another
swing and a big miss.
Get in the game — any game! —this weekend, if you can.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
In Brief
Today is Jackie Robinson Day, the annual Major League Baseball commemoration to mark the first day a Black athlete played in the league. The event is typically held on April 15, when all players and coaches honor Robinson by wearing his "42" uniform number. Like so many of our traditions this year, it was pushed back by the coronavirus pandemic.
“I guess you could call it a rain delay,” says Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, speaking by phone from his office in Kansas City, Mo. It's not easy to celebrate anything during a pandemic—and a renewed wave of racial unrest—but it feels good to remember Robinson's legacy.
Athletes have always had a role to play in lifting spirits and opening minds, which is one of the most valuable legacies of the Negro Leagues, says Kendrick. “The museum makes the case that Black baseball wasn’t just part of the civil rights movement, it was the beginning of the movement,” he adds. Long before Rosa Parks sat down in the wrong part of a public bus, or the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, there were outstanding Black athletes operating in a parallel universe, elevating the communities they served and demanding equal treatment. “Martin Luther King was a sophomore at Morehouse when Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers," Kendrick says.
But the pipeline that made Jackie Robinson possible, also made Black families possible. “Wherever you had successful Black baseball, you had thriving Black economies,” he says. “The story of the Negro Leagues is a story about economic empowerment.”
It's a formula worth reconsidering. Kendrick notes with admiration the efforts of the current crop of professional athletes using their platforms to advocate for justice. Particularly those sports, like professional hockey —and yes, baseball — that don’t have majority Black workforces.
“It’s a show of solidarity that we need right now,” he says. “Society can’t make the big changes unless everyone is in it together.”
The museum began as a one-room office in 1991, founded by former players including John “Buck” O’Neil, who played for the Kansas City Monarchs. It’s now a 10,000 square foot — and growing — testament to the courage it took to fight systemic racism while playing damn good baseball.
“The circumstances that made the need for a Negro League are shameful,” Kendrick says. But the fight to compete and be recognized is not. “The League itself was an all-American impulse. It said, 'my league is just as good as yours.' Some might say even better.”
On Point
How the NBA got back to work Chris Haynes at Yahoo Sports has the inside story of the negotiation that saved the league’s postseason. Other NBA players were surprised when the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play Game 5 of their series against the Orlando Magic, in a spontaneous protest over the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha. It was not part of an organized plan of action, and the Bucks had planned to forfeit. But other players felt an obligation to support the effort, further compounding the surprise of officials and players. Click through for the ticktock, which includes a series of emotional in-person meetings, Zoom calls, and lots of pointed negotiation with management, all of which hinged on the support of LeBron James.
Yahoo Sports
Marching on Washington, again In a timely response to President Trump’s long acceptance speech on the White House’s South Lawn, thousands of people began gathering at the Lincoln Memorial for The Commitment March, a modern-day sequel to the 1963 March On Washington. The programming and speeches are distinctly political. “My grandson isn’t going to be marching for the same thing my granddaddy marched for,” said advocate Frank Nitty, who marched 750 miles from Milwaukee to address the crowd. “We’ve got to vote Trump out of office, right?” Organizers, which include Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, are emphasizing safety: to get into the event, everyone will be temperature-checked and must be wearing a mask. Follow along at #MarchOnWashington2020
New York Times
PwC releases its first-ever diversity report Few organizations of its size have done more for the cause of equity and racial reconciliation than the audit giant, which includes a deep dedication to examining its own record on inclusion. The work they put into this report is admirable, and includes data which helps confirm where underrepresented talent is lost or excluded, and what to do about it. Releasing the report is one in a series of commitments the firm as made to increase representation among its ranks, Fortune will be continuing to report on the substantive changes that they’re already making.
Fortune
On background
Rembering the Chicano Moratorium The Los Angeles Times has published special coverage of the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium, a peace march that turned violent. Their lede is so good, I couldn’t bear to touch it: “On Aug. 29, 1970, more than 20,000 demonstrators marched through East Los Angeles for the National Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. But the protest for peace devolved into conflict between demonstrators and sheriff’s deputies. By day’s end, hundreds were arrested and trailblazing Latino journalist Ruben Salazar was dead.” Did you learn about this in school?
Los Angeles Times
Addressing violent events: Best practices for teachers and parents It’s a nightmarish conundrum. Talk about what’s happened and risk frightening children. Don’t talk about what’s happened and risk normalizing terror, or worse, teaching kids that they can’t talk about difficult or scary things. Facing History, a nonprofit educational and professional development organization has a guide to help you sort out your own feelings on the issue, designed specifically for terroristic violence aimed at people based on their identity. It offers good advice on declaring and maintaining safety in the classroom, a method for unpacking the nature of hate crimes, and a discussion on healthy community responses. One question they recommend for students about media consumption works for everyone else, too: “How can you stay informed about the event while at the same time ensuring that you are taking care of yourself and your peers?”
Facing History
Attack of the (tasteless) racist tomatoes We’ve already explored the racist history of swimming, square dancing, and prom. So, what gives with the tomatoes? Well, the majority of tomatoes Americans consume are in sauces, ketchup and other products. Those are mostly picked by machine. And a new type of thick-skinned tomatoes had to be bred in order for the fruit to survive the rigors of a mechanical tomato harvester. Now, the harvester was developed not for efficiency, but to rid agriculture of the need to use Mexican farm workers, who had been welcomed into the country into the 1940s to fill the labor gap left by Japanese internment camp detainees, or others serving overseas or in the war effort. In addition to tasteless tomatoes, the desire to excise Mexican workers spawned Operation Wetback, the Eisenhower Administration’s violent mass deportation initiative.
Cracked
raceAhead is edited by Aric Jenkins.
Today's mood board
Jackie was a legend on AND off the field. #Jackie42 via @MLB


fortune--2020-08-28--Own Apple Powerbeats 2 earphones? Here’s how to claim your share of a $9.75 million settlement

A woman spread COVID to 27 customers at a Starbucks .
Its mask-wearing employees escaped infection

Owners of Apple’s Beats-branded Powerbeats 2 earphones may be able to get some cash from a proposed $9.75 million legal settlement.
Customers who bought a pair of the earphones before Aug. 7, 2020 qualify. Only people who purchased them from an official retailer—that excludes eBay-style secondhand resellers—are eligible.
To receive an award, people must file a claim form online here or submit a downloadable form through the mail.
Some customers may have already received a personalized notice of the settlement, via mail or email, alerting them of their options. The notices should include a “claim identification number” and a “confirmation code,” which can be entered here.
The deadline to file a claim—online or postmarked—is Nov. 20, 2020.
Head-phoniness
The class action lawsuit, filed in 2017, accuses Apple of falsely advertising a “shoddy” product. The plaintiffs allege that the headphones “contain a design defect that causes them to stop retaining a charge.” Apple is also accused of deceiving consumers about the headphones’ durability and sweat-resistance. And further, the company is said to have replaced any earphones returned through its one-year warranty program with products that contained the same flaws.
“Apple continues to promote and market its faulty Powerbeats, and continues to profit handsomely from their sale,” the lawsuit said. “In so doing, Apple has defrauded the public and cheated its consumers.”
As part of the proposed settlement, Apple has denied any wrongdoing. The two parties agreed to the settlement to avoid dragging out the litigation.
The presiding court in California’s Santa Clara County gave preliminary approval to the deal. The court must deliver its final approval on Jan. 21, 2021, at which claimants can air any objections.
Beats to the punch
To how much money will everyone be entitled?
As is the case with most class action lawsuits, a large portion is set aside for the lawyers. Legal fees and administrative costs are expected to consume, roughly, $3.7 million. The remaining amount will be split between applicants, so the ultimate payout will depend on how many people apply.
The maximum payout for any individual is $189.
The proposal uses a point-based system to earmark funds for claimants. The system awards more points to people who supply more evidence in support of their claim, such as proofs of purchase and records of warranty repairs or replacements. (For a detailed description, see pages four and five of the proposed settlement here.)
Assuming 75,000 people submit a claim and they show, on average, one proof of purchase, one record of warranty repair or replacement, or both, each will receive about $80 apiece. If 150,000 people apply under the same conditions, each will receive about $40.
Any leftover funds are set to go to the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.
Powerbeats 2 cost $200 when they debuted in 2015.
A battery of lawsuits
This isn’t the only class action lawsuit Apple is settling.
As part of another case, Apple fessed up to intentionally slowing down people’s iPhones, including many models in the iPhone 6 and 7 generations. The phones’ batteries were incapable of keeping up with the demands of the company’s frequent software updates.
People can file a claim for $25 as part of the proposed settlement here. The deadline to submit is Oct. 6, 2020.
Anyone who wishes to sue Apple independently of the class action lawsuit should not submit a claim, though that route also forfeits one’s claim to the payouts described above.


fortune--2020-08-28--How managers can recognize burnout remotely

Broadside writer Kristine Gill offers advice from managers on how to recognize burnout among staff, even when working remotely. Then, scroll on for job opportunities from HBO Max, Whole Foods, Penguin Random House, and more.
A few weeks ago, I was telling my mom about all the freelance writing I had to tackle that weekend when I started crying. My mom had been trying to tell me she thought I was overdoing it with side work, and this time at least, she was right.
I’m not alone. According to a study by O.C. Tanner, 79 percent of employees experience burnout, and women more so than men. Non-managers are also more likely than their bosses to feel the pressure.
It all got me thinking: Is burnout inevitable, or can we avoid it? And how can your manager help? I realized it all comes down to recognizing the symptoms of burnout in the first place. And amid a pandemic, that’s compounded with remote work. So I talked to a few managers and a therapist about how to recognize and curb this all-too-common workplace plague.
Know the signs
Most of us recognize the signs of burnout in ourselves, but it can be harder to recognize burnout in others. A snippy comment or a drop in productivity might easily be chalked up to an individual’s personality or skillset, so it’s important to dive deeper.
Camille Drachman, a therapist and trauma expert, works at Sierra Tucson, an addiction treatment center in Arizona.
“It can show up in poor work performance or morale, in our behavior and relationships,” she said. “And more specifically as fatigue, exhaustion, or employees calling out sick more often. People might be irritable or angry or have difficulty completing tasks. Cynicism is a really strong sign, and avoidance of dealing with difficult tasks or topics.”
Compounding our workloads and the stress of going remote, many are feeling unsafe at work, Drachman said, both in terms of their job stability amid layoffs and furloughs and with worries about contracting COVID from their workplace if they’re attending in person. In fact, a recent survey by FlexJobs showed that employees were three times as likely to report burnout now than before the pandemic.
“Burnout is already pretty common, and it’s going to be more widespread seven months into this,” Drachman said.
Get a pulse on the situation
Back in March when managers at Twilio, a cloud-based communications platform service based in San Francisco, were anticipating growing pains as their staff switched to remote work, they began to survey their 3,200 employees.
“This was all new then, and we heard people were experiencing high degrees of stress,” said chief people officer Christy Lake. “They were just not able to focus, and they were looking for help and support.”
The first company-wide survey was on the topic of wellbeing. Results were as predicted: Work-life balance had suddenly been upended.
Lake also started monitoring Slack more closely, seeing lots of communication about how everyone was trying to cope.
“It was helpful just having feet on the proverbial street,” Lake said.
By April, Twilio had unrolled a slew of resources: training for managers and employees on burnout, a new caregivers leave policy and no-meeting Fridays. And it all began with listening to employees.
Drachman said listening works on two fronts.
“It’s not only giving managers insight, it’s also helping employees feel heard,” she said.
Slack is one way to keep tabs. Ideally, your company already has a good culture of communication in place to make this effective. If you don’t use Slack, Lake suggests having small-group conversations with and without direct managers so teams can express their concerns among peers.
At Webprofits, an Australian digital marketing company, managing director Paul Sprokkreeff began a buddy check system, where each employee must meet with two other team members for at least 15 minutes once a week.
“The rules: no talk about work and no talk about COVID where possible,” Sprokkreeff said. “It’s about creating a space for personal only connections. Importantly, it also shares the responsibility and enables a peer-to-peer checkins to flag any individuals that need extra support.”
Keep in mind that even if you haven’t heard from staffers who say they’re experiencing burnout, the problem likely exists.
A March poll by Maestro Health showed 69 percent of respondents had suffered from burnout as a result of their job and Millennials more so at 74 percent compared to just 56 percent of Boomers. Media and healthcare workers experienced the highest levels of burnout.
Time off
If you’re like me, the first solution to burnout is time off. Of course, during COVID-19, travel is limited, and staycations aren’t as enticing with the world on pause. In fact, some employees are compounding their own stress by hoarding paid time off, saving it for a time when a vacation can feel like a true break or feeling guilty about using it when workloads have changed and increased.
That was case at Online Optimism, a digital marketing company based in New Orleans. Operations coordinator Sara Bandurian noticed that staffers weren’t taking their paid time off. Bandurian said her team is working on ways to encourage their staff of 23 employees to use their time off.
“People are more likely to feel guilty taking time off right now,” Bandurian said.
So when the company learned through their pets Slack channel that one of their employees had to put her dog down, they offered her a mental health day.
“We have unlimited sick days, so we gave her one of those paid days as a mental health day,” Bandurian said. “It was last-minute, unscheduled, and she just needed an extra day.”
You can do the same for your staff.
Sprokkreeff offered a company-wide mental health day at Webprofits this year, to much enthusiasm. Reflektive, a software management company, began a monthly company-wide mental health day, said Rachel Ernst, chief human resources officer.
And Lake’s company began a caregivers leave program. The program allows caregivers of any sort—those caring for children, spouses, parents—to take up to two weeks of additional paid time off as they juggle online learning for their children and a litany of errands that now interfere with their work-from-home life. Late in August, Twilio announced it would up that leave policy to four weeks and roll out a $500 stipend for caregivers now paying for tutoring, nannying, etc. And the leave policy is casual compared to normal paid time off.
“It’s very simple: You can just grab that code, connect with manager, and off you go,” Lake said. “It’s not as formal as perhaps a medical leave of absence where a third party is approving a leave request.”
The response has been great, Lake said, pointing to survey results. Employees said they’re better able to manage their work-life balance and that has reduced stress.
Drachman warns that severe burnout can’t be fixed with a simple three-day weekend. Instead, think of the recovery from burnout being equal to the time you’ve spent battling the symptoms. If you’ve been burnt out for a month or two, it might mean unloading and de-stressing over the next two months to get into a better mindset.
“That’s a good barometer,” Drachman said. “It’s going to be something like three-day weekends for a while.”
Change things up
Of course, time off isn’t the only solution to burnout. Sometimes, changing responsibilities, allowing for more flexibility, and decreasing your employees’ workloads can work wonders.
Twilio instituted no-meetings Friday following their surveys on wellbeing. The company-wide rule allowed for more heads-down work on Fridays and more flexibility for hours on that day.
“We knew the only way to provide some relief this way would be to do it from the top down,” Lake said of no one-off rules on a team-by-team basis. “It’s really helped to provide some calendar relief.”
At Online Optimism, interns have started working, providing a welcomed break for full-time staffers who can now unload some of their work, Bandurian said.
Folks at Talend, a software company based in Redwood City, Calif., began mental health seminars, and CEO Christal Bemont gave her personal cell phone out to all 1,300 employees to encourage them to reach out with any concerns related to mental health. She also began allowing employees to focus on passion projects, and said doing so made everyone more excited about their jobs and more eager to perform well.
“One of the passion projects is applying our software to help those on the front lines fighting COVID,” Bemont said. “Staff found this project particularly rewarding.”
Plus, you’ve likely heard of happy hours, trivia, and the occasional llama Zoom visit, but have you given it a shot?
Bandurian made it her mission to add these fun activities to the list, and upped the game by scheduling on-the-clock visits to a New Orleans art installation for staff. The exhibit accepts groups of six at a time. She also began sending bottles of champagne to employees who closed sales and deliverable baked-goods for staffers’ birthdays.
Learning from burnout
Ideally, as burnout subsides you’ll notice happier, more productive employees. Drachman said it’s important to check in to be sure. At Twilio, Lake has conducted follow-up surveys to get a good read.
But because burnout ebbs and flows, it’s important to continue to maintain the offerings put in place during COVID, once the pandemic ends.
“The thing we’ll take away from all of this is flexibility,” Lake said. “That’s the number one thing we’ve learned and heard. Focusing more on impact and outcomes and less on input and face time.”
Lake has a prediction too: She believes the COVID-19 pandemic will be the end of tech’s perk war as flexible work-from-home policies and childcare services take priority over in-office massages and kombucha on tap, aiming to help prevent employee burnout.
“Furthering the integration between work and life has positively impacted our staff,” she said.
— Kristine Gill
Making money moves
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shields is hiring a Fields Sales & Service Representative based in Macon, Georgia.
Arthrex is hiring a Product Marketing Manager based in Naples, Fla.
Florida Gulf Coast University is hiring a Registrar based in Fort Myers, Fla.
HBO Max is hiring a Head of Data, Insights & Planning, Latin America based in Miami, Fla.
Northrop Grumman is hiring a Mission Operations Engineer for Tactical Space Systems based in Dulles, Virginia.
Penguin Random House is hiring an Editor in Chief based in New York City.
PepsiCo is hiring a Senior Writer and Editor based in Purchase, NY.
Pinterest is hiring a Head of Global Marketing Insights based in Los Angeles, Calif.
The State of Utah is hiring a Director of the Office of Fairness and Accountability based in Salt Lake County.
Whole Foods Market is hiring a Business Integration Lead based in Austin, Texas.
Events and other opportunities
Sept. 15: Applications are due for GoSkills' female-founded business scholarship for high school- and college-aged women.
Sept. 29-Oct. 1: Fortune will host its Most Powerful Women Summit virtually.
Sept. 30-Oct. 1: The Network of Executive Women is hosting the NEW Leadership Summit 2020 in Dallas, Texas.
Oct. 14-16: TBEX North America 2020 will hold its summit in Lafayette, La.
Nov. 5: The annual Women in Negotiation Summit will be held in New York City. The daylong event empowers women through negotiation-skills building.
Nov. 16-20: The Women of Silicon Valley's Women in Tech World Series will take place virtually.
Want to share a hiring or networking opportunity from your organization or elsewhere, or just have feedback about The Broadside? Email Kristine Gill.


fortune--2020-08-28--Apple takes a huge step against Epic Games

Apple aid it terminated Epic Games’s App Store developer account in the midst of a legal battle over the iPhone maker’s in-app-purchase rules.
“We are disappointed that we have had to terminate the Epic Games account on the App Store,” Apple said in a statement. “We have worked with the team at Epic Games for many years on their launches and releases. The court recommended that Epic comply with the App Store guidelines while their case moves forward, guidelines they’ve followed for the past decade until they created this situation. Epic has refused.”
The Cupertino, Calif.-based technology giant said Epic has repeatedly submitted updates of its Fortnite video game that are “designed to violate the guidelines of the App Store.”
Apple added that this is “not fair to all other developers on the App Store and is putting customers in the middle of their fight. We hope that we can work together again in the future, but unfortunately that is not possible today.”
The decision means Epic Games will no longer be able to submit new apps or updates and that users playing Fortnite will no longer be able to make in-app-purchases. Apple said Epic has also directed users toward AppleCare to seek refunds.
Apple also said it isn’t terminating the account used for Epic’s Unreal Engine game development platform, complying with a recent court order.


fortune--2020-08-28--Biden campaign trolls Trump by snatching ‘Keep America Great’ website

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In its latest bid to get under the skin of President Donald Trump, the campaign of Democratic hopeful Joe Biden has purchased the web domain name of Trump’s sometime re-election slogan “Keep America Great.”
This means that anyone who visits keepamericagreat.com will not encounter cheery slogans and red hat merchandise, but instead a decidedly darker message.
The site operated by the Biden campaign features a “Promises Broken” slogan, and lists a variety of issues on which the President has allegedly failed to deliver. The top of the site features the following unflattering image:
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign told Politico, which first reported the story, “You can buy all the domain names you want, but Joe Biden can’t ever buy a way out of his 47 years’ worth of failure in elected office.”
Anyone can register a web domain for a few dollars but, if the domain is already registered, the would-be purchaser must either buy it from the current owner, or hope that the owner fails to re-register when the domain expires.
Ironically, the Trump campaign applied to trademark the slogan “Keep America Great” days after the President’s inauguration, but apparently failed to take the same steps to acquire the corresponding domain name. According to Alexandra Roberts, a trademark professor at the University of New Hampshire, the campaign has yet to get final approval for the mark by using it in commerce.
Current and prospective Trademark owners are entitled to take legal action against so-called “domain squatters” in federal court, or by filing for arbitration with an international body that oversees web names.
The Trump campaign, Roberts notes, might have a legal case for “cyber-squatting.” But the process is slow, and the outcome is uncertain in cases where someone has acquired a domain name for purposes other than shaking down the trademark owner for money.
Roberts notes the Trump campaign could argue that Biden’s team had sought the mark in bad faith or to damage Trump’s brand but that, for legal purposes, the outcome would be a toss-up. But practically speaking, there is little chance the Trump campaign will be able to wrest back the “Keep America Great” site before November’s election.
In the past, the Trump family has been aggressive in pursuing and defending its intellectual property. A recent example came in July when the President’s company—which Trump purportedly keeps at arms length from his political duties—filed to register “telerally” in the context of events.
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, owns numerous trademarks related to her fashion brands. In 2019, the government of China granted preliminary approval for five trademarks related to Ivanka Trump’s businesses—leading critics to suggest China had issued the marks as part of the larger negotiations with the U.S. over trade.
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:


fortune--2020-08-28--The S&P 500 just had a ‘perfect week’—which is making some investors nervous

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The bulls certainly prevailed this week.
The S&P 500 closed up higher every day this week, finally landing at 3,508 on Friday, up over 2% from Monday’s close—notching what experts like Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst of product management at S&P Dow Jones Indices, call a “perfect week.”
Since the index finally closed above its pre-pandemic high on Aug. 18, it has kept adding new gains. In fact, the S&P 500 booked a new all-time high on Friday for the sixth day in a row—”the longest such streak since six in a row in January 2018,” according to an LPL Financial research note Friday. Indeed, with one trading day to go left in August, it “would be the best August since 1986,” per LPL.
Those like Silverblatt are “amazed,” he told Fortune.
$SPX posts 5th new closing high in a row (19 new closings YTD & 143 from the Nov,’16 election), last seen for the 2018 opening (Jan 2-9), when it posted 6 in row; we crossed 3500 today (3501.38) for the first time, but didn’t close there (3584.55) pic.twitter.com/GCvE6hrBOb — Howard Silverblatt (@hsilverb) August 27, 2020
And all around, August was a record-breaker. “To start this month, … the first six days of August were higher,” LPL’s Ryan Detrick points out. Now, “We’ve had two separate six-day winning streaks in the same month—that’s never happened in the history of August,” he tells Fortune.
While it’s certainly no secret that the Fed has investors’ backs, on Thursday, chair Jerome Powell announced the Fed will now target inflation “that averages 2% over time,” sending stocks higher on the promise of lower rates for longer.
“Ultra-low interest rates make it rational for investors to pay more for a given dollar of equity earnings, justifying higher valuations,” Mark Haefele, UBS Global Wealth Management’s chief investment officer, wrote in a note Friday. Translation? Stocks may keep trekking ever-higher at even loftier price tags.
Red flags are waving
For Randy Frederick, Charles Schwab’s vice president of trading and derivatives, the markets right now can be summed up with one word: “Astounding,” he tells Fortune.
But this massive run-up, with markets booking new highs each day, is starting to look extreme.
The CBOE equity put/call ratio (which tracks the volume of options and is more short-term focused) is at 38 as of Friday—”which is just unheard of,” Frederick says. Essentially, “38 puts trading for every 100 calls whenever you’re at all-time highs and breaking [them] every day, that just doesn’t happen.” (He notes any ratio below 60 is “unbelievably bullish.”)
The upshot is that things have gotten “irrationally exuberant” as the market keeps going up while investors continue to become more bullish, Frederick notes. That should be a sign to investors that a pullback may be coming: Frederick suggests something to the tune of a 2% to 4% correction is “overdue.”
Meanwhile, although the VIX index (which tracks volatility) dropped on Friday, the index has risen over the past few days alongside the markets—something that normally doesn’t happen “unless the VIX is signaling a reversal to the downside,” Frederick points out.
While the markets this year have been anything but predictable, all told, “I’m kind of astounded by how bullish things have been and how long they’ve lasted, so I keep sort of waving the caution flags,” he says. “I’m not telling everybody to panic or sell out, but I’m saying, ‘Look, there are so many flags waving right now, caution, caution, caution.'”