TIME - Business

Instagram Is Doing Grave Harm to Our Generation. We Need Help to Stop It

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 02:26:21 +0200

Although Destinee was just 13 when she created her first Instagram account in 2012, she was late to the world of social media. She remembers standing in her best friend’s bathroom, posing in front of the mirror as her friend taught her how to take a selfie.

“Stand right here,” the friend said, grabbing Destinee’s arm. “Hold the camera up higher and put your hand on your hip.”

Destinee was wearing makeup that was too light for her dark complexion, and she struggled to keep her eyes open after applying too much of the thick black mascara she took from her friend’s mother’s makeup drawer. She posed anyway. She did not have a smartphone, so her friend loaned her an iPad to access Instagram.
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“Finally,” her friend said as Destinee tapped the button to create an account.

Like most young people, Destinee quickly learned how to use Instagram for social gain. If she used more than one filter she received more likes, and if she showed more skin, she received more comments. She was obsessed with increasing her engagement—likes, comments and shares—because the more she received, the more she felt she was positively perceived by her peers.

But after years of trying to reach Instagram’s impossible standards, she began to develop an overwhelming fear of rejection and uneasiness. She would stare at her screen for hours after uploading one picture, anxious about the reaction she would receive and whether people would approve of her.

Then, this month, at age 22, Destinee was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder—which is common among her peers. The tipping point, which made her seek help from her doctor, was an Instagram post she made about her grief after losing her father. She went back and edited the caption several times after posting it, each time trying to add a more optimistic tone—one that would be more likely to win approval from her followers. Her doctor told her the pressure she feels to present herself as someone other than her authentic self is the key factor to her diagnosis.

As two members of Generation Z, no one we know is doing well mentally, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from their Instagram posts, which usually show our friends only smiling. There’s an insurmountable pressure to perform.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Facebook knows Instagram can be mentally detrimental for teenagers and young adults. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” a Facebook presentation quoted by the Journal said.

Facebook also found young women have been diagnosed with eating disorders, anxiety, depression, or had suicidal ideations—all linked to their usage of Instagram. According to Facebook’s own study, reported by the Journal, 13% of British users and 6% of American users who reported suicidal thoughts traced the desire to harm themselves to Instagram. This study solidified years of anecdotal accounts of what we already knew: Instagram is killing us.

Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram, told the Journal that mental health such as anxiety is not an Instagram-specific problem, rather it is a “societal problem” with no “silver bullet.”

Meanwhile, Facebook’s business model is to monetize user information and maximize profit over privacy, and it has no incentive to change. How many teenagers and young adults have to be diagnosed with anxiety, depression or an eating disorder before social media platforms take action?

As regular social media users who grew up online, this is what must be done:

First, Mark Zuckerberg and Mosseri must be held accountable for their misleading and vague responses to the media and Congress. Earlier this year, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rogers asked Zuckerberg for the company’s internal research about the mental health effects Facebook and Instagram can have on young people. Facebook failed to provide the data.

Second, Congress must provide social media users with a platform to discuss the side effects of regular social media usage. Teenagers and young adults need a safe place to share their experiences and interactions with elected officials, even in a formal hearing.

Third, elected officials must understand social media is the main way that many young people socialize—especially after the pandemic, but it needs regulation. Deleting the apps is not an option for many young people; it has a social price that most are unwilling to pay. Users need effective regulation to help them protect themselves, such as banning targeted ads for kids and teens, safeguards to restrict the collection of user data, and tools to stop endless scrolling.

Destinee had her wake-up call when she sought treatment for her anxiety disorder. She is learning to develop a healthier relationship with social media.

These revelations must be a wake-up call for our entire generation—and the people who have the power to force change.

Here’s Why Companies Aren’t Fighting Biden’s Employee Vaccine Mandate

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 00:00:39 +0200

President Biden met last week with business leaders to inspire others to require their employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. His recent guidelines—that all companies with more than 100 employees mandate vaccination or weekly COVID-19 testing—caused a stir among workers claiming that it infringes upon their rights to medical freedom.

The mandate would potentially affect 80 million private-sector workers. All told, about 64% of the nation’s 157 million-member workforce could be mandated to be vaccinated or regularly tested. While the $14,000 penalty for companies that don’t comply, along with the requirement to provide paid time off for employees to get vaccinated or tested regularly, place a burden on companies, few so far have refused to participate.
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One reason: less than 2% of the nation’s private businesses actually qualify.

While large companies such as Walmart, Amazon, FedEx, and Target employ hundreds of thousands of Americans each, over 98% of U.S. companies are small businesses that employ under 100 people, with a total of nearly 43 million workers. And some of those large companies already had vaccine mandates in place. CVS, for example—one of the largest employers in the U.S.—announced an employee mandate on Aug. 23. Google, another major U.S. employer, announced a worker vaccine mandate in July. Deloitte and McDonald’s have also issued mandates.

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With the mandate, the Biden administration seems focused on increasing vaccination numbers without placing undue burden on the country’s many small businesses. In fact, in the midst of a labor shortage, the nation’s small businesses could see a windfall of job applicants if workers leave larger companies that will require them to get vaccinated.

With OSHA’s final ruling on the mandates forthcoming, it remains to be seen how workers will react to the changes being enforced. But U.S. business leaders seem to be in agreement: this won’t be bad for business.

Who’s Afraid of Peter Thiel? A New Biography Suggests We All Should Be

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 18:40:23 +0200

Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel is famous for destroying media outlets, not paying taxes, and being a conservative tech billionaire. A new biography, The Contrarian, suggests that he is after more than riches. TIME chatted with its author, journalist Max Chafkin.

Why should we care about Peter Thiel, apart from the fact that he is another rich tech billionaire and they’re all weirdly fascinating?
I think that Peter Thiel is secretly the most important person in Silicon Valley. He’s this behind the scenes player, who is behind so many of the really important things that have happened over the last two decades. Obviously Facebook is one of the world’s largest companies; a lot of people think it’s uniquely bad for the world. And a lot of people are super skeptical of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO. And of course, Thiel is behind Facebook. He was the first outside money in the company. He is also the person who basically set up Mark Zuckerberg to be Mark Zuckerberg and turned him into this imperial CEO, who is now, arguably more powerful than a lot of world leaders.
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A lot of people are really excited about cryptocurrency and you can connect it back to to PayPal, which is the company that Thiel co-founded in the late 1990s with an explicitly libertarian ethos. There’s this aspect of crypto-world now, where people are really excited about the idea of taking power away from institutions and governments and that’s something that Thiel and his libertarian brethren that were starting that company were really interested in. It’s not something that happens accidentally.

Do you see Thiel as dangerous?
It’s really important that we understand the ideology of Silicon Valley. Five of the top 10 companies in the world are tech companies. They exert an enormous cultural and economic influence over our lives. Those companies have been really successful at telling a story about the world and their place in the world: we’re just trying to make the world a better place. Thiel comes with a very different perspective. He comes out of activist conservative media. I think it’s really important that we explore the ideology of what somebody like Peter Thiel believes. When you start peeling back the layers, what you find is this very out-there political and economic philosophy that I think is a little bit scary.

What do you find scary about his economic and political philosophy?
It’s bordering on fascism. Thiel taught this class at Stanford and then turned it into a book called Zero to One. He talks about how companies are better run than governments because they have a single decision maker—a dictator, basically. He is hostile to the idea of democracy. That’s pretty scary when you consider the role the companies that he’s been involved in play. Facebook, I’d say is the most influential media entity in the history of humanity, but he also has a major stake in several defense contractors, including SpaceX.

He would explain it as belief in efficiency and results, right? He would not say, ‘I don’t think everybody has the right to vote.’
There would be some rationale and in fact, at various times he’s walked back things he said. His whole thing is being slippery, but I think when you look at the body of what he’s done and the things he’s been involved with, that’s the picture that emerges.

A lot of people were very surprised that this nerdy, gay, Californian son of immigrants techpreneur decided to support Donald Trump’s presidency. Was it just the pure I’m going to shut down government aspect of Trump’s policies that he liked?
If you look at his convention speech—which I think was a really good speech—he talks about Trump as this guy who’s gonna shake things up, who’s going to remake government, so I think that’s one part of it. The other part of it is, Thiel is very committed to the idea of being able to say the unpopular thing. That’s a core part of what Trump was. I also think that Thiel is a really savvy investor and he correctly diagnosed that Trump had a pretty good chance of winning and that there wasn’t a lot of downside to betting on him.
He didn’t formally endorse Trump during the 2020 election, but if you look at the candidates he’s [now] supporting, they’re Trumpers: J.D. Vance, who’s running for Senate in Ohio was an employee of Peter Thiel’s and an investor in his fund. Before announcing that he was gonna run for Senate, Vance said that he was wrong in 2016 to oppose Trump, and around the same time, he got this $10 million dollar donation from Thiel to his super PAC. Another candidate that Thiel is supporting in the coming cycle is Blake Masters, who is literally an employee. He runs Thiel’s foundation.

Did Thiel get blowback about the January 6th attack on Congress?
I think certainly his reputation in certain corners of the establishment has suffered. But I don’t think he really cares about the blowback; he seems to really take pleasure in that.

Do you have a guess at his net worth?
There’s an estimate of $6 billion, but I have talked to people who think actually quite a bit higher than that. One reason is that he has been incredibly adept at finding clever ways to limit his tax exposure; those investments in Facebook, in Palantir, and some others were made through this investing vehicle known as a Roth IRA that was originally intended for middle class taxpayers. Through some very clever tax planning, Thiel has managed to stash up billions of dollars in this tax-free account.

When that story [that he used Roth IRAs to massively lower his taxes] broke, there was an outrage that somebody who had made so much money in America was not contributing to the national purse. Do you think he cared?
Some of the ideology that motivated PayPal, and that motivates a lot of this crypto stuff that has happened since, is all about going beyond nations. It’s about this idea that individuals should have more power than nations and should be able to basically do whatever they want. It’s about undermining the national interest and making sure they don’t contribute to it.

Do you see Thiel as an outlier among his tech brethren, or as an exemplar?
The conventional wisdom is Thiel is an outlier; he’s like the one conservative guy in this relatively liberal industry. I think that is basically wrong. Many of the things that he believes are reflected in the actions and behavior of many of his peers. Yes, they may have some disagreements. Many of his peers may vote for Democrats. But the idea that companies should basically be able to do whatever they want, that democracy isn’t the most important value, these things are reflected in the decisions and actions that many Silicon Valley companies are making, even Silicon Valley companies that are run by ostensibly liberal progressives.

In the beginning of the book, you paint a portrait of Thiel as a bullied child. Other kids put For Sale signs in his yard and then asked when he was leaving and so on. Was that the cradle of his reactionariness?
I think he was bullied as a child. And I think that it’s not surprising that somebody who maybe had a tough time navigating a place like Stanford would develop a strong revulsion to the idea of universities like Stanford and would undertake a project to replace or critique these universities. Thiel famously funds a fellowship where he encourages promising young people to start companies instead of going to college and he’s been a prominent critic of colleges. But he’s only a halfway critic. He says in a thousand different ways that Stanford is worthless, but he keeps teaching classes at Stanford. He keeps hiring Ivy League graduates.

Most of your sources are anonymous. Why do you think people who spoke to you spoke to you?
Thiel’s pretty unique in that he was involved in this elaborate and secretive litigation campaign that resulted in the destruction of a pretty substantial media outlet when he secretly funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media, which resulted in this roughly $100 million dollar judgment. So I would talk to people and they would be like, ‘I’m a little afraid of him.’ I wouldn’t really know what to say because I think there’s actual reason for people to be afraid of Peter Thiel.

Are you personally worried?
I’d be lying if I said that Thiel’s litigation against Gawker didn’t weigh on me and I think you’d be foolish to not think about that. That said, it’s not productive to be afraid.

Thiel has been right a lot. I wonder if there’s a bit of you thinking, ‘If he’s been right about these things, what should I be looking for now?’
Recently, he gave a speech where he dissed bitcoin, which was a weird thing. If somebody who played a big role in the beginning of digital money is suddenly saying that maybe crypto is bad for the interests of the United States, we should pay attention. There’s an extent to which he’s a great prognosticator, a great futurist. But he’s also a marketer of himself and he’s been very good at accentuating the calls that have been right and and playing down the calls that have been wrong.

You note that he has funded two senators—Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley—and is now funding two more candidates. Do you worry he’ll wield outsized power over government?
I have to say I worry less about the grandstanding of a handful of senators connected to Thiel than I do about the effect of Thiel-ism on the culture. When you combine the hostility to democracy and institutional norms with the bankroll of a billionaire you can potentially do some damage.

This conversation has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.

Apartment Construction Is Increasing Fast. That’s a Good Sign

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 18:00:55 +0200

(WASHINGTON) — U.S. home construction rebounded a better-than-expected 3.9% in August with the strength coming in apartment construction.

The August increase left home construction at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.62 million units, 17.4% above the pace of a year ago, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Housing starts had fallen 6.2% in July.

The August strength came in a 21.6% jump in construction of apartment units which offset a 2.8% fall in construction of single-family homes.

Applications for building permits, a good sign of future activity, rose 6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.73 million units. However, with demand still strong and homes for sale still in short supply, the outlook for housing construction remains solid for the rest of this year.
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“Higher input costs and shortages remain headwinds for builders. But still-low inventories should be a positive for activity as these constraints ease,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics.

Construction activity was up in all parts of the country except the West, which saw a 21.1% decline Construction surged 167.2% in the Northeast but that jump came after a 54.4% plunge in July. Construction starts were up 11.4% in the Midwest and 1.4% in the South.

A monthly survey of builder sentiment by the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo showed sentiment inched up to 76 in September, ending a three-month decline. The index remains far below the record reading of 90 last November.

“The single-family housing market has moved off the unsustainably hot pace of construction of last fall and has reached a still hot but more stable level of activity,” said Robert Dietz, chief economist for the home builders.

The U.S. Is Losing the Global Race to Decide the Future of Money—and It Could Doom the Almighty Dollar

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 13:00:50 +0200

In cities across China, the country’s central bank has begun rolling out the e-renminbi—an all-digital version of its paper currency that can be accessed and accepted by merchants and consumers without an internet connection, credit or even a bank account.

Already having conducted more than $5 billion in e-renminbi transactions, China has opened its digital currency up to foreigners. Next year, when Beijing hosts the Winter Olympic Games, authorities are expecting to let the world test drive its technological achievement.

The U.S., by contrast, is having trouble even concluding its multi-year exploration into the possibility of an e-dollar. In fact, an upcoming Federal Reserve paper on a potential U.S. digital currency won’t take a position on whether the central bank of the United States will, or even should, create one.
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Instead, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in recent testimony to Congress, this paper will “begin a major public consultation on central bank digital currencies…” (Once planned for July, the paper’s release has since been moved to September.)

Once the world leader in digital payments and technological innovation, the U.S. is being outpaced by its top global adversary as well as much of the industrialized and the developing world.

The Bahamas recently announced the integration of its digital Sand Dollar into a stock exchange, while Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa are moving forward with the world’s first cross-border central bank digital currency exchange program led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which is known as the central bank of central banks.

Such developments have been somewhat outshined by El Salvador’s recent decision to make bitcoin a legally accepted currency, which few expect to make significant impact in the payment space. But outside of the cryptocurrency space, nations around the globe are making significant strides in the development of the digital future of money — supported by governments and backed by powerful central banks.

Leadership in this space will have implications for more than just payments: geopolitical ambitions, economic growth, financial inclusion and the very nature of money could all be dictated by who leads the charge and how.

“I don’t think the U.S. is aware there is a race”

Digital currencies are the next wave in the “evolution of the nature of money in the digital economy,” Hyun Song Shin, economic adviser and co-leader of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements, tells TIME.

As more of our world migrates from physical brick-and-mortar to wireless and cloud-based, the way we pay for things is changing as well. A central bank digital currency would operate just like cash, but instead of having to carry it in a physical wallet or put it into a bank account, it would be stored and accessed digitally. Not only could U.S.-backed digital currency facilitate easier, modern banking, it could prove vital in protecting American international influence.

Late to the party, the U.S. is “stepping up its research and public engagement” on digital currencies, the Federal Reserve says, including forming working groups on cryptocurrency and other kinds of digital money, and experimenting with technology that would be central to producing a digital dollar. The Fed’s regional Boston branch is overseeing these efforts with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on what’s known as Project Hamilton.

But the path towards a digital U.S. dollar has met many challenges, skeptics and outright opponents. All while China, and other countries, push forward.

Lagging behind the world

Just how far behind is the U.S. in the development of a central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC)? According to global accounting firm PwC’s inaugural CBDC global index, which tracks various CBDCs’ project status from research to development and production, the U.S. ranks 18th in the world. America’s potential efforts trail countries like Sweden, South Korea and China but also countries like the Bahamas, Ecuador, Eastern Caribbean and Turkey.

China, with its government’s hyperfocus on maintaining control and overseeing data, has been working to develop a CBDC for almost a decade.

And the U.S. is probably not close to catching up. Analysts like Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff, who study monetary policy and digital currencies, estimate that the U.S. could be at least a decade away from issuing a digital dollar backed by the Fed. In that time, Rogoff argued in an op-ed earlier this year, the modernization of China’s financial markets and reduction or removal of its currency controls “could deal the dollar’s status a painful blow.”

China has already largely moved away from coin and paper currency; Chinese consumers have racked up more than $41 trillion in mobile transactions, according to a recent research paper from the Brookings Institution, with the lion’s share (92%) going through digital payment processors WeChat Pay and Alipay.

“The reason you could say the U.S. is behind in the digital currency race is I don’t think the U.S. is aware there is a race,” Yaya Fanusie, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a former CIA analyst, tells TIME in an interview. “A lot of policymakers are looking at it and concerned…but even with that I just don’t think there’s this sense of urgency because the risk from China is not an immediate threat.”

Not only is the U.S. running significantly behind in the development of a CBDC, we are trailing the rest of the world in digital payments broadly.

Kenya, for example, has almost fully digitized its economy through its digital currency and payment system MPESA, making transactions free and almost instantaneous. India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) allows users to transfer money instantly between bank accounts with no cost. Brazil’s PIX facilitates the transfer of money between people and companies in up to 10 seconds.

All of these programs work through and are overseen by the countries’ central banks rather than commercial banks or other private companies.

What’s holding the U.S. back?

Critics argue CBDCs are simply a solution in search of a problem and potentially harmful. Many see support from the banking sector as vital to the success of a digital U.S. dollar, however commercial banks in the U.S. have taken a largely adversarial stance.

“The proposed benefits of CBDCs to international competitiveness and financial inclusion are theoretical, difficult to measure and may be elusive,” the American Bankers Association said in a statement at a recent congressional hearing on digital currencies. “While the negative consequences for monetary policy, financial stability, financial intermediation, the payments system, and the customers and communities that banks serve could be severe.”

The Bank Policy Institute, which lobbies on behalf of the country’s largest banks, went so far as to argue that neither the Fed nor the U.S. Treasury even has the constitutional authority to issue a digital currency.

Commercial banks dominate the U.S. financial system to such a degree that unraveling them would be ostensibly impossible, experts say, they also would be a powerful adversary. Former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins notes banks have clearly seen the writing on the wall.

“Banks are centralized middlemen with respect to financial transactions,” Prins, author of Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged The World, tells TIME. “The more popular cryptocurrency or digital currency becomes, the fewer profits the banking system can reap from traditional services and verification methods that allow them to hold, take or use their customers’ money, and the more financial power they stand to lose as a result.”

Even disruptive financial technologies like PayPal, Venmo and Zelle work through the banking system, rather than around it, thanks in large part to the banks’ power.

Central bankers also generally have concluded that commercial banks are a necessary piece of a potential CBDC ecosystem, thanks to their pre-existing regulatory guardrails and ability to move money.

Top policymakers at the Fed, including influential Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles, have joined the banking industry in arguing that a digital dollar “could pose significant and concrete risks” and that the potential benefits “are unclear.”

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said in August he was “skeptical that a Federal Reserve CBDC would solve any major problem confronting the U.S. payment system,” in a recent speech he titled “CBDC: A Solution in Search of a Problem?”

Further, there’s no central U.S. authority with direct oversight or responsibility for any of this.

In addition to the Fed, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of Thrift Supervision, Financial Stability Oversight Council, Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council and the Office of Financial Research would all have some stake in the development of a digital currency backed by the central bank, to say nothing of state and regional authorities.

“The U.S. has an active congressional debate, which is beneficial and very important,” Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard tells TIME in an interview. “But the U.S. also has a diffusion of regulatory responsibility with no single payments regulator at the federal level, which is not as helpful. That diffusion of responsibility is part of what creates the lags that our system is working through.”

None of this exists in China where the Chinese Communist Party oversees the central bank, commercial banks and their regulators and is unconcerned with privacy.

How a downgraded dollar could hamstring U.S. influence

An American CBDC could have lasting geopolitical impact and curb a longstanding international effort to reduce reliance on the mighty U.S. dollar.

“Why we should care about this is that the U.S. financial system is not intrinsically dominant,” Fanusie says. “Other countries, both allies and adversaries, are sincerely interested in finding ways to decrease their dependence on the dollar.”

With the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve and primary funding currency, the U.S. can restrict access to funding from financial markets, limit countries’ ability to sell their natural resources and hinder or block individuals’ access to the banking sector.

“Other countries, both allies and adversaries, are sincerely interested in finding ways to decrease their dependence on the dollar”

While dollar dominance has rankled much of the world for decades, there has been no suitable replacement for the U.S., with its massive economy, sophisticated banking system and sprawling international presence.

China is in the midst of a long-term push to simultaneously grow its financial markets and internationalize its currency. Both have the end goal of allowing China and its allies to limit the ability of the U.S. to enforce its will through economic actions like sanctions.

Fanusie wrote in a January report that being the first major economy to roll out a digital currency is “part of China’s geopolitical ambitions.”

However, the renminbi will not become the world’s reserve currency — at least, not any time soon. But what China has done by being in the forefront of CBDC development is put itself in position to take the lead on development and implementation of rules and regulations for digital currencies on a global scale.

“While America led the global revolution in payments half a century ago with magnetic striped credit and debit cards, China is leading the new revolution in digital payments,” writes Brookings’ economic studies fellow Aaron Klein.

Why should central banks offer digital currencies?

Over the past decade, digital currencies, including cryptocurrency and “stablecoins,” have sprung up like weeds. Some purport to be just as safe as dollars, but are backed by questionable assets. In a crisis regulators worry they could fluctuate wildly in value or lose their value altogether.

Having central banks, which are responsible for the printing and circulation of coins and paper money, issue digital currencies is in part a reaction to this private sector activity, Shin says, “accelerated by the potential encroachment of private digital currencies, and the need to preserve the role of money as a public good.”

“The status quo is not an option”

Notably, a U.S. digital currency could provide benefits to everyday people. It could increase financial inclusion and fix flaws in current payments systems, Shin adds, citing findings of a recent BIS study.

For example, transferring money between U.S.-based bank accounts, even those held by the same person, can take days. The process can be even longer when crossing international borders. Credit and debit card transactions similarly don’t settle for days and come with significant fees for merchants, who sometimes pass them on to customers.

CBDCs could grant universal access to the banking sector and quickly facilitate the distribution of paychecks and government funds, reducing the need for costly bank workarounds like check cashing and payday loans.

Championing CBDCs

Brainard has been pushing the Fed to move on a digital currency for years, but there was little urgency from others at the Fed or in Congress. Companies developing their own currencies, consumers investing in cryptocurrency and the COVID-19 pandemic making paper notes anathema to many Americans changed that.

Before COVID-19, Facebook’s Libra project (now known as Diem) showed lawmakers and central bankers the potential for a private company to step in and fill the void by effectively minting its own currency that could be spent by users around the world.

“The status quo is not an option,” Diem co-creator David Marcus said at the International Monetary Fund’s 2019 fall meeting. “Whether it’s Libra or something else, the world is going to change in a profound way.”

Brainard, for one, has taken notice.

“My own thinking is that stablecoins and related private sector initiatives are moving very rapidly, which makes it incumbent on us to move more rapidly,” she tells TIME. “That is why I have been pushing to advance outreach, cross-border engagement, and policy and technology research for several years now.”

So-called stablecoins — unregulated digital currencies created by private companies that purport to represent dollars but are completely unregulated — have become a significant worry for lawmakers and shown the importance of considering tying currency to a central bank.

“It’s getting harder and harder for community banks to compete for new customers when big tech companies can afford to spend billions on marketing and technology,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, tells TIME. “But many of these new ‘fintech’ products don’t come with the consumer protections, federal backing or customer service and relationships with the community that small banks and credit unions provide.”

During a hearing on digital currencies in June, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, compared stablecoins to worthless “wildcat notes” that were issued by speculators in the 19th century.

Her expert at that hearing, Lev Menand, an Academic Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, went further in his testimony, calling stablecoins “dangerous to both their users and … to the broader financial system.”

With private companies pushing deeper into the digital currency space, rival countries seeking to seize leadership and a public that is moving further away from physical currency, the U.S. is facing a world in which it may not control or even lead the world’s payment systems.

That would make the future of money look very different from the past.

Twitter Agrees to Pay $809.5 Million Settlement in Shareholder Class Action Lawsuit

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 23:27:52 +0200

Twitter Inc. agreed to pay $809.5 million to settle a shareholder class action lawsuit that accused the social media company of painting an overly rosy picture of its future.

The suit, originally filed by Twitter shareholder Doris Shenwick, claimed executives misled investors over the company’s growth prospects in November 2014, promising an increase in monthly active users to 550 million in the “intermediate” term and more than a billion in the “longer term.” The company failed to deliver on either estimate and concealed that it had no basis for those projections, according to the complaint.

The suit was filed in federal court in San Francisco in 2016, the year after the company’s stock took a nose dive after executives revealed the platform’s sluggish growth. After five years of litigation, the case had come down to three allegedly misleading statements made by Twitter executives concerning the growth of the platform. A trial set for Monday was postponed Friday ahead of the settlement.

The proposed settlement concludes without any admission of fault or wrongdoing by Twitter, according to a statement by the company on Monday. In its defense, Twitter had denied that its executives lied or knowingly made misleading statements. It also rejected the idea that statements by former chief financial officer Anthony Noto and former chief executive officer Dick Costolo caused the stock price to fall.

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment on the agreement.

Under the pact, Twitter intends to use cash on hand to pay the settlement amount in the fourth quarter and expects to record a charge for the settlement during the third quarter of 2021.

The case is In re Twitter Inc. Securities Litigation, 16-cv-05314, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

–With assistance from Erik Larson and Chris Dolmetsch.

Biden Administration Announces Plan to Protect Outdoor Workers From Extreme Heat

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 19:55:07 +0200

(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is moving to protect workers and communities from extreme heat after a dangerously hot summer that spurred an onslaught of drought-worsened wildfires and caused hundreds of deaths from the Pacific Northwest to hurricane-ravaged Louisiana.

Under a plan announced Monday, the U.S. Departments of Labor and of Health and Human Services as well as other federal agencies are launching actions intended to reduce heat-related illness and protect public health.

White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy called heat stress a “silent killer” that disproportionately affects the poor, elderly and minority groups. While not as dramatic as wildfires or hurricanes, “heat stress is a significant, real threat that has deadly consequences,″ McCarthy said in an interview.
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“Many people don’t recognize that heat stress is a real physical problem until it’s too late for them,″ she said.

The effort to address heat stress comes as President Joe Biden is working with world leaders to hammer out next steps against rapidly worsening climate change.

A June heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, exacerbated by climate change, caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of emergency room visits for heat-related illnesses, In Louisiana, more than a million people, including the entire city of New Orleans, lost power when Hurricane Ida struck on Aug. 29. At least 12 of the 28 Ida-related deaths in Louisiana were caused by heat, according to the Louisiana Health Department.

As part of the administration’s plan, the Labor Department is launching a program to protect outdoor workers, including agricultural, construction and delivery workers, as well as those working indoors in warehouses, factories and kitchens. Farm and construction workers are at greatest risk of heat stroke and other problems, the White House said, but other workers lacking climate-controlled environments also face risks.

“Rising temperatures pose an imminent threat to millions of American workers exposed to the elements, to kids in schools without air conditioning, to seniors in nursing homes without cooling resources, and particularly to disadvantaged communities,” Biden said in a statement.

“As with other weather events, extreme heat is gaining in frequency and ferocity due to climate change, threatening communities across the country,” Biden added, citing National Weather Service data that extreme heat is now the leading weather-related killer in America.

Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, is set to issue a new rule on heat illness prevention in outdoor and indoor work settings and will focus interventions and workplace inspections on days when the heat index exceeds 80° F (26.7 degrees Celsius). The White House called the rule a significant step toward a federal heat standard in U.S. workplaces and said officials will expand the scope of scheduled and unscheduled inspections to address heat-related hazards.

The administration also will expand its Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, to add programs to address extreme heat, the White House said. The program traditionally focuses on providing heat during winter weather, but also offers help with purchasing air conditioning units or paying electric bills for cooling assistance. Those programs will be expanded, and officials will conduct targeted outreach to ensure at-risk households are in a safe temperature environment, McCarthy said.

The administration is expanding the use of schools and other public buildings as cooling centers.

“School cooling centers save lives,” McCarthy said. “They are opportunities for people in every community to actually find relief at a time when they need it most.”

She urged communities to implement programs such as “adopt a senior citizen” to conduct wellness checks, making sure that elderly residents are drinking fluids and not overheating. “That kind of personal touch is going to be the difference between an individual living longer and those that are passing away, basically unrecognized in their own homes,” McCarthy said.

The Biden administration has taken steps since its first days in office to tackle climate change.

Biden on Friday announced a pledge with the European Union to cut climate-wrecking methane leaks. Increasingly grim findings from scientists conclude that the world is nearing the point where the level of climate damage from burning oil, gas and coal becomes catastrophic and irreversible.

Those accounts “represent a code red for humanity,” Biden said Friday, citing a recent U.N. report that Earth is getting so hot that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent.

“We have to act, and we have to act now,” Biden said, evoking the “damage and destruction” he has seen in the United States, massive flooding in Europe and other global damage from the warming climate as natural disasters increase in number and severity.

In the past few weeks, Biden has visited California, where firefighters are battling larger, fiercer and deadlier wildfires almost year-round, as well as the northeastern U.S. and Gulf Coast, where Hurricane Ida and its flooding killed scores of people.

As part of the new effort, the administration is focusing on urban “heat islands” where temperatures in cities with fewer trees and higher pavement concentrations can be higher than in surrounding areas. The problem can be more severe in neighborhoods affected by discriminatory practices that deny services to residents of certain areas based on their race or ethnicity, the White House said, citing a recent analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency showing that severe harms from climate change fall disproportionately on minorities and underserved communities.

The administration will expand urban forestry programs and other “greening” projects to reduce extreme temperatures and heat exposure, the White House said. The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, is launching a series of prize competitions focused on strengthening the nation’s resilience to climate change. The first competition will focus on new ways to protect people at risk of heat-related illness or death during extreme heat events or in connection with other disasters.

Thinking of Investing in a Green Fund? Many Don’t Live Up to Their Promises, a New Report Claims

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 16:51:28 +0200

The number of green investment funds is skyrocketing, but many are investing in companies that aren’t aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. That’s according to a report published on Aug. 27 by InfluenceMap. The London-based climate change think tank accused the majority of green funds of falling short.

InfluenceMap assessed 723 equity funds—with over $330 billion in total net assets—marketed using environmental, social and governance (ESG) claims and climate-related key words.

It concluded that more than half of the climate-themed funds, which describe themselves with phrases like “low carbon,” “energy transition,” and “clean energy,” fall short of the vision laid out in the Paris treaty. Adopted in 2015, the pact calls on countries to do their best to reduce emissions to keep global temperatures to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels—and preferably no more than 1.5°C—in the hopes of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change.
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More than 70% of the funds with broader ESG goals are also misaligned with global climate targets, according to the think tank. Such funds take ethical criteria into account besides environmental factors. As well as the greenhouse gas emissions of a company, for example, they might also consider how it treats its employees and the diversity of its board.

The report looked at company shares that asset managers held in their portfolios and considered how compatible the planned operations of those companies were with limiting warming to below 2°C (for example, by assessing how many electric, hybrid and internal combustion engines an automotive company might produce). It found a large discrepancy between them.

“There exists a wide variability in the market and the InfluenceMap report shines a bright light on that lack of ESG standardization,” says Nina Seega, the research director for sustainable finance at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

The report also alleged shortcomings in the ESG funds of some of the world’s largest asset managers, including UBS Group AG and BlackRock, Inc., whose CEO Larry Fink has promised to put sustainability at the core of how the company invests. It claimed some climate-themed funds had holdings in the fossil-fuel industry, including a BlackRock “fossil fuel screened” fund, and a State Street Corporation “fossil fuel reserves free” fund, which held shares in Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66—”two of the world’s most egregious fossil fuel lobbying companies preventing policy-based climate action, according to InfluenceMap’s research on corporate lobbying on climate change policy.”

This latest analysis adds to a chorus of concerns over “greenwashing”—the practice of claiming spurious environmental benefits—as worry over climate change intensifies . Assets in ESG funds soared to over $1.7 trillion in 2020, according to the industry tracker Morningstar.

A report published by the Economist in May found that some of the world’s biggest ESG funds are “stuffed full of polluters and sin stocks.” U.S. and German authorities launched an investigation last month into Deutsche Bank AG’s asset-management arm DWS Group, after a former executive alleged that the firm overstated the environmental credentials of some of its products. (DWS Group rejected the allegations).

BlackRock’s former CIO of sustainable investing, Tariq Fancy, accused the financial world of greenwashing in a March op-ed in USA Today. “In truth, sustainable investing boils down to little more than marketing hype, PR spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community,” he said.

A BlackRock spokesperson told TIME that the InfluenceMap analysis contained “gaps” and did not include several of its funds, including the Paris-aligned Climate ETFs. BlackRock has also “developed a wide variety of sustainable strategies that support clients in achieving their investing goals, including strategies that reduce exposure to fossil fuels to strategies that that incorporate climate alignment,” the spokesperson said via email.

Olivia Offner, a spokesperson for State Street, said: “To meet differing investor needs and risk profiles, we offer a range of ESG strategies, including funds aligned to the Paris Agreement, and funds that meet climate objectives in other ways.”

InfluenceMap acknowledged that some funds were outside the scope of its research, and said it only assessed funds within certain parameters set out in the report.

Scrutiny of green funds is increasing

The global asset management industry stands at more than $100 trillion, and many of the world’s largest asset managers have set climate targets: 128 asset managers with $43 trillion in assets have signed the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, committing to supporting the goal of net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.

“ESG funds can make a really meaningful impact by reallocating capital away from companies that refuse to be part of the transition to the net zero economy,” says Nick Robins, a professor in practice for sustainable finance at the London School of Economics (LSE). “Using the investor voice to press for change in business practices and policy frameworks is crucial so that we get the system change we need.”

Daan Van Acker, the analyst at InfluenceMap who wrote the report, says that he believes there should be a more consistent approach to branding and the marketing language of ESG funds. “It can be quite difficult for investors to accurately be able to analyze whether a fund corresponds to their investment goals,” he says.

Regulators across the world are already cracking down. The European Union implemented an ambitious rule in March. Known as the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), it seeks to enhance transparency on just how sustainable financial products actually are.

Europe is ahead of the U.S. and Asia in its regulation, but authorities elsewhere are also making changes. Hong Kong’s financial regulator is enhancing disclosure requirements for ESG funds, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) formed a task force early this year to investigate potential misconduct related to companies’ sustainability claims.

“Many funds these days brand themselves as green, sustainable, low-carbon, and so on,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on Sept. 1 in a speech delivered to the European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. “I’ve directed staff to review current practices and consider recommendations about whether fund managers should disclose the criteria and underlying data they use to market themselves as such.”

Despite the challenges, experts say that the proliferation of green funds is a good thing.

“I do think greenwashing is prevalent in the fund industry,” says Dragon Tang, a professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong’s Business School. “Most fund managers cannot just become ESG experts overnight. Many of them are also not truly committed to long-term environmental and social benefits,”

But he adds: “While I think it is paramount to guard against greenwashing, I am glad to see the current wave of support for ESG. Some funds may intend to greenwash, but then they may change and really do go green.”

Why Apple’s Health App Could Be the Sleeper Hit of iOS 15

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 16:43:09 +0200

When Apple’s iOS 15 goes live Monday, it will come with the usual bevy of software upgrades meant to enhance slightly older iPhones while also laying the groundwork for the Cupertino, Calif. company’s next generation of devices. While most of the tech world will be focused on the headline changes, like a long-overdue overhaul of the default Weather app that centers more useful information, iOS 15 also introduces some major new health features, including new trend analysis and notification abilities, data sharing features, first-of-their-kind health metrics and more.

“Since 2014, the Health app’s mission has been to help you make sense of your own health data, and making sure it’s private and secure, all in one place,” says Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s VP of Health. “And what you’re going to see on Monday with iOS 15 is that the Health app really comes full circle.”
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Via the Health app, iPhones have long been able to store users’ health data, whether it’s collected by the handset itself, an Apple Watch, or a compatible third-party device. But iOS 15 brings two new features to the Health app meant to make that data easier to share with others. The first allows iPhone users to share their health metrics with their loved ones, so that, for instance, an adult son or daughter can keep tabs on their parents’ wellbeing, and get an early heads up if anything seems amiss. The second allows easier sharing of users’ health data directly with their physicians.

When it comes to sharing health data, there are obvious privacy concerns at play that will likely be top of mind for many right now, given that Apple recently had to patch a majority security vulnerability in iPhones and other devices. But Desai says Apple has taken steps to ensure users’ personal information is kept secure—the company doesn’t have access to shared data, for instance, and all shared information is end-to-end encrypted. Furthermore, activating the sharing-between-loved-ones feature requires approval from both parties involved, and people can choose which specific kinds of data they want to share while keeping other metrics to themselves. Apple was also careful to design the data in a way that’s helpful, rather than overwhelming, for physicians and other medical workers.

“We wanted to make sure that we could present the information [to health practitioners] in a really easy-to-understand, beautiful way that is easily glanceable and should not take more than a few seconds for an individual to process,” Desai says. “There were times when we were designing the dashboard, if something was too complicated, a lot of us would often say, ‘okay, that’s not going to work, because that’s going to make me think about it two times.’ And that’s taking away precious physician-patient time, [which] we didn’t want to do.”

Also included in the revamped Health app: an entirely new health metric called Walking Steadiness, which uses the iPhone’s built-in sensors to track owners’ balance, strength and gait, and can alert users if they’re at risk of falling. The app also includes exercise tutorials designed to help those who need to boost their steadiness to help prevent falls, which can sometimes lead to serious injury. The feature, Desai says, came about via data from Apple’s heart study, which included more than 100,000 participants.

“This feature is an example of research and science really coming together,” Desai says. “When we started our journey in health, we wanted to make sure that we were partnering with the medical community and science and providing actionable recommendations that can really empower an individual with timely information. And so Walking Steadiness, in our view, really has the potential to increase awareness amongst many who may not know that they may have a problem, and potentially proactively indicate that there are some things that you could start working on.”

The Health app is, of course, most powerful in combination with the Apple Watch or other wearable devices, which track metrics—like heart rate, blood oxygenation and more—that the iPhone can’t monitor on its own. But some of the new features in iOS 15, including the new Walking Steadiness metric, don’t require a secondary device, making them accessible to a wider audience at a relatively lower cost of entry. When asked whether Apple would ever consider opening up these Health features for use on non-Apple devices, given their potential to help improve people’s lives and well-being, Desai said that Apple doesn’t comment on future features, but added that it’s “always open to learning about more opportunities for us to consider.”

Overall, Desai says, Apple hopes that the new features can offer a “look at your health in a longitudinal way.” “For health, too often, it’s episodic moments of interaction,” she says. “We really want to start having the conversation and change the conversation around being proactive and preventative about your health, and we’re hopeful these sharing features will start a conversation about proactively noticing changes in trends over time.”

These Children Are U.S. Citizens. They Need Help, But They Can’t Get the Child Tax Credit

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 14:32:52 +0200

Ivan, just 6 months old, bounces in his baby rocker as a Spanish-language cartoon plays on TV. The living room is small but full, dominated by a tree branch with plastic red blossoms that Ivan’s mother, Sara, made. She asks her 9-year-old daughter, Luz, to leave the room. She’s about to explain something she doesn’t want her daughter to ever think about again: the event that set off a chain of other events that led to them ending up in southwest Detroit with no money, no way to get around and no identification papers. Without those papers Ivan can’t qualify for any of the assistance the U.S. government provides for its citizens, because they can’t prove he—or they—exist.
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Sara, 27, and her daughter came to the U.S. from the Michoacán region of Mexico, under the asylum program. The father of her daughter, she says, had started selling and using drugs, and one night beat her while their daughter was in the home. They escaped to her relatives’ home, but her husband, concerned that she would report him to the police, monitored her every move. “I just stepped out of the house and he was there,” she says, in Spanish. “So I couldn’t do anything.” Fearing she was endangering her family if she stayed, she fled to the Arizona border, where she was granted provisional asylum, had her passport and all her identification papers taken, was put in an ankle monitoring bracelet and sent to live with a cousin in Chicago. (TIME has agreed to use only the first names of the women in this story, to protect their safety.)

In order to get a Mexican passport for her daughter, to complete the asylum requirements, Sara needed a signature from the girl’s father. When she tried to obtain that in 2019, she discovered he had been murdered. She was told by her state-supplied immigration lawyer that with her husband’s demise, she was no longer in danger, and therefore her asylum case was closed and she needed to return to Mexico. Sara says her family warned her, however, that her husband’s brothers had been killed too, along with one of their wives, and his sisters were now seeking asylum. She cut off her ankle bracelet and fled from Chicago to Michigan with a new boyfriend, also Mexican, also in the U.S. without documents. (TIME has confirmed her account with relatives in Mexico.) A year or so afterwards, they had a son.

For the last three months, millions of U.S. families have gotten a payment of up to $300 for each child in their home from the Internal Revenue Service. There will be one each month until the end of 2021. They are advance tax credits, part of a new program by the Biden Administration touted as the boldest attempt in decades to try to help impoverished families, especially those for whom the pandemic had taken a very harsh toll. Every American citizen child qualifies for this benefit, even those from what is called “mixed status” families—those with some undocumented members. This is a reflection of the twin beliefs that (a) vulnerable children should be helped, no matter their circumstances and (b) that raising children out of grinding poverty is good for the long term economic growth of any country. Children are also the mostly likely age of American to be in poverty. A new Census Bureau report found that 44% of American children experienced at least two consecutive months of poverty between 2013 and 2016, even before the pandemic.

Almost immediately after the first payments landed, the US Census Bureau’s monthly Pulse survey detected a drop in “food insufficiency”—the fancy term for people not having enough to eat—and in its measurement of people finding it hard to pay their weekly bills. Instead of 11% of kids going hungry, only 8% were. The improvement was only evident in homes with children, which means that the CTC payments were likely the cause. “There’s been no other social program that has reached this many families this quickly in the history of the country,” says Luke Shaefer, a professor of Social Work and the Director of the Poverty Solutions Center at the University of Michigan, and the co-author, with Kathryn Edin, of the seminal work on American poverty, $2 a Day. In 2018, the two of them, with other scholars, co-authored a paper recommending monthly cash payments, which is seen as one of the bases for the current administration’s program.

Because Ivan was born in the U.S., his family qualifies for the credit, money that would help them find their footing, and move out of the unstable financial situation in which they live. But they didn’t get it. They are just one example of an extremely vulnerable household that has not been reached by the new program. The reasons are not novel. An analysis by the Urban Institute in 2019 found that a quarter of people living in poverty do not receive support from any government program. Welfare programs have always suffered from “last mile” issues: a legion of obstructions between the funds available and the families who need them. In many ways, the distribution of the CTC is offering an object lesson in the obstacles America faces when helping its poorest citizens.

Cutting child poverty, for some

In order to survive, Sara and families like hers live in a kind of nether world of informal economies and networks. Apart from her daughter’s bilingual public school, the household has almost zero contact with any institutions, government or otherwise. It’s necessary for them to be as invisible as possible to the authorities. Ivan’s dad is ferried to and from work with other laborers in a bus. He is paid in cash. They have a car but cannot drive anywhere because they do not have regulation license plates, and cannot afford to be pulled over. Sara’s biggest nightmare is being separated from either of her children; the American one, who is legally allowed to abide in the U.S. whatever happens to his mother, or the Mexican one, who might be separated from her, were Sara to be detained.

It’s not like they don’t pay any taxes: many undocumented workers do. Magdalena, who lives in the Bronx, New York, has paid tax at her job in a grocery store for years. She has four children aged from 2 to 15, all born in New York City, after she escaped across the border 17 years ago. Her children need school uniforms and books, but she can’t afford those as well as the rent on her wages now that she is working part-time because her childcare was very limited during the pandemic. She can barely even cover the childcare she has. The CTC would pay her family $1100 a month, but she cannot figure out how to get it.

“What we’re doing so far is not perfect,” says Shaefer. “There are people who are being left out.” Because it’s a tax credit, the money is sent to people who have filed taxes, and it has taken a little while for that news to filter out and for people to get their paperwork in order. “The second problem stems from residential complexity and bank account instability that are common among low-income people,” he says. Families who have recently moved to a shelter or started doubling up with other family members, or those whose bank balance went into arrears or were overwhelmed with bank fees might find that the money has been directed to an old address or closed bank account. “That’s something,” says Shaefer, “That is still going to require a lot of work.”

Some critics note that the methods the government is using to distribute funds are long overdue for an update. “It’s just a generation after generation after generation of doing aid through the same large not very nuanced poverty administration systems,” says Tyler Hall, director of communications at GiveDirectly, a non profit that helps donors give simple cash to people in need. Because the administration opted to give the money via the IRS, a large amount of money was sent out widely and very quickly, but not necessarily very accurately. “Prioritizing operational considerations and ease of access stymies a number of the administration’s best ideas,” says Hall.

Before the first payment, the government set up a website for folks who had never paid tax so they could still claim the money. But it was loaded with bureaucratic language and not mobile friendly, even though phones are much more widespread in low income communities than computers. As the second payment rolled around, the administration, with the help of Code For America, set up a different website, which is due to go live in “the next few weeks,” according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Critics also claim the credits were poorly advertised, utilizing services like Twitter and eschewing old school methods like radio advertisements and mailers, which tend to be where those whose lives are more precarious get their information. And Rosario Alzayadi, a fieldworker with the Detroit agency Starfish, says once she finds these stricken families, it takes a while to build their trust. “When we go to the homes, we kind of see what’s going on,” she says. “But sometimes it takes us a long time to know the family needs.” Many of her clients were unaware they are eligible for reduced-cost internet access, for example, or that even if they’re undocumented, they can still file taxes, and thus become eligible for benefits for their American born children, among others. “Unfortunately,” notes Hall, “the vulnerable will always be the hardest to reach.”

Families need more time, experts say

Until the pandemic, Sara worked in light construction, but now she stays home. The couple has bought one of Detroit’s many derelict homes, which can cost just a few thousand dollars, and are renovating it themselves. A social worker who is trying to help Sara’s American-born son qualify for the CTC through his father, is gamely dealing with a legion of setbacks. His Mexican passport has expired, the nearest consulate moved from downtown Detroit to Madison Heights, a three hour round trip by public transit. If he can get an appointment (consulates are backed up), and figure out how to travel there (the social worker says she is asking one of her siblings to drive them), get a day off work (his job offers none), and get enough forms of ID to qualify for a passport, it’s possible he can also get a ITIN, a taxpayer number. If he can then wade through enough forms to file a tax return, and get his son’s American birth certificate, Ivan may eventually qualify for some federal help. That’s if the program lasts beyond the end of the year.

In some ways Sara is among the lucky ones. He family unit is stable. She dreams of being an interior designer and cabinet maker. Maria, another mother in Michigan with three American-born children under 5, cannot afford those dreams. She and her children’s father do not live together, but he currently pays the rent. Even if all the obstacles to getting the CTC could be overcome, it’s not clear who would get the money. Maria, 26, who first came to the U.S. with her mother to escape the violence of her father, she says, has no work and is reluctant to search for any, because she has no childcare or transport. So she stays home all day, venturing out only occasionally to take the children on the long walk to the nearest grocery store for food, and worries about her elderly mother, who returned to Mexico after her father died and whose health is frail.

Despite the program’s shortcomings, Shaefer, the poverty researcher, sees the advanced CTC as a profoundly important development. “I’m just incredibly excited that we have the scaffolding in place, that I think we can continue to improve,” he says. “It’s unprecedented in history that we would have a program that went out to this many families. And the initial evidence is really strong that it’s working in the ways that we think it should be working.”

One side benefit Shaefer and other researchers were hoping for is that more families would come out of the shadows, so that they could be reached by social service agencies. The lure of free money is pretty strong, and Sara and other families seem committed to figuring out how to get themselves documented. The IRS is not allowed to share information on the families with other government agencies, whether it’s ICE or Medicaid, but activists hope that the interaction will help them gain some trust in government institutions. Alzayadi, the social worker, says she was inspired to work undocumented families, because as a young mother of four, a home visitor found her, encouraged her to put her situation to rights and showed her the steps she needed to take to get help.

In an encouraging sign, a larger number of families applied for and received the August payment than the 35 million who got July payment. One of the unanticipated side effects of the CTC payments might be that it may entice those who have been difficult for social services to reach and the safety net to catch, to finally reach out for some help. —with reporting by Pablo Muñoz-Hernandez

Tim Cook on the ‘Basic Human Right’ of Privacy and the Technology That Excites Him the Most

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 12:50:52 +0200

(To receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and business decisionmakers, click here.)

This week’s interview was conducted by John Simons, Executive Editor at TIME.

Can you imagine people were worried about this guy?

Prior to taking over officially as CEO of Apple from co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011, Tim Cook was known in tech circles as a quiet tactician, skilled at driving operational efficiency. But at the time, many pundits worried that Cook wouldn’t be able match his predecessor’s charisma and carnival-barker showmanship.

Those doubts have faded with every new height the company hit, and Apple’s investors certainly have few complaints. Their shares have ballooned more than 1,000% since Cook took over, and the iPhone maker surpassed oil giant Saudi Aramco this year to become the world’s most valuable company.

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Still, Cook insists it’s not just about the numbers. In an interview with TIME, he said that it’s important for Apple to lead not only in innovation, but also in efforts to make the world a safer, more equitable place.

The past year hasn’t been an easy one for the world’s most valuable company. In September alone, critics knocked Apple’s recently revealed iPhone 13 for being too iterative, a federal judge ordered the company to substantially change its App Store as part of an antitrust lawsuit brought by Fortnite maker Epic Games, and it delayed software aimed at fighting child pornography after privacy experts raised concerns about the company’s plan to scan users’ iCloud accounts for illegal content.

Cook played a starring role in App Store courtroom proceedings, defending the company on the witness stand, in part by arguing that Apple excludes rival app stores from the iPhone not to garner additional revenue, but to ensure user security. “We’re not thinking about the money at all, we’re thinking about the user,” he told the judge in an Oakland, Calif., courtroom in May.

Those words—“…not thinking about the money”—would surely illicit groans and eye-rolls coming from any other millionaire CEO, but uttered by Cook, with a good dose of serene Southern charm, they have potential to melt anyone’s icy skepticism. In our 2021 TIME100 issue, Phil Knight, co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, confirms that the Cook we see in public is the same man behind boardroom doors. Knight praises Cook’s wisdom and good judgement, writing: “What separates the good from the great are intangibles such as character, compassion, courage—adjectives that apply to Tim.”

Those qualities helped Cook earn the honor of being selected as a 2021 TIME100 honoree—and they were all on display when I spoke with Cook recently about his thoughts on leadership, corporate values and the tech that really excites him.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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You just hit a big milestone recently, a decade as chief executive. Have you changed the way you manage in that time? Have you learned anything new in your role as CEO?

Maybe the top thing I’ve learned is that, I still have so much more to learn. I learned very quickly to remember that I had two ears and only one mouth, and to listen very carefully to people that I’m surrounding myself with, because I have some of the best and brightest people around me. And they’re smarter than I am. And we’re able to solve some really big issues and big problems by working together.

The pandemic itself in this last 18 months, has taught me that we’re not always in control of our destiny. We have to adapt and be flexible and agile, and move and learn very quickly. If you were to have told me 18 months ago, that we would still be sitting here today, I would never have guessed all the things we did accomplish over that course of time.

It’s become very popular among CEOs to talk about something called stakeholder capitalism–companies committing to doing better by their workers, by their customers and by the environment. Apple has been talking about these issues for a long time. Do you think it’s important now, for companies and for business leaders, to be upfront about where they stand on political and social issues?

Our values are infused deeply into the company. And so, as you point out, we’ve been talking about the environment for decades. Our goals have changed, and the activities have changed around those. They’ve gotten much bolder. But we’ve always cared deeply about the environment. We’ve always cared deeply about workers. We’ve set the highest standards for workers in our supply chain, of anybody in the industry. We’ve always cared deeply about our employees. They’re my most important constituency.

We’re in a period of time where some of the biggest problems of the world, like climate change as just one example, this is not going to get solved solely by government. This needs other constituencies and other stakeholders to move in the same direction and have public/private partnerships. Diversity and inclusion, racial equity and injustice, these are all things that we need the whole of society moving forward on.

And so, I think it’s more important than ever. I think more people expect it today as well, and I applaud that. I’m glad that our customers are expecting it, our employees are expecting it. And I see that happening across the industry and in many other industries. And I think it’s great for society in general.

How do you ensure that Apple is at the forefront of the latest ideas in those areas and stays part of the public conversation?

We pride ourselves in innovation. We’re always challenging ourselves to up our ante in environment, as just one example. If you look at[…]our journey on environment, we started with eliminating toxics. Years later, we ran our company on 100% renewable energy, being carbon neutral as a company. And now we’ve set a much bolder objective by 2030, to have our entire carbon footprint go away. This is not only the part within our company which we control today, but also our supply chain, and also our product usage at our customers. This is an incredibly bold objective. And we evolve and set these more bold and ambitious objectives, as time goes on.

Why do you feel like it’s important for Apple to remain a part of the public conversation around issues of equity, the environment and so on? Is it important for the business? Is it important for just the general image of the company?

It’s nothing to do with image and so forth. It’s about, we’re a collection of people in Apple that want to change the world for the better. We want to leave the world better than we found it. And to do that, you have to be a part of the conversation in areas where the policies of government intersect with your values. Racial equity and justice is a part of that. Diversity and inclusion is a part of that. Environment is a part of that. Supplier responsibility, is a part of that.

All of these things are key, in terms of the way that we present ourselves. And probably more importantly, we can be a ripple in the pond on these things. So, we can create a change that is much broader than any of us could individually do ourselves. If we stop changing the world or are stopped trying to put our ding in the universe, so to speak, I don’t think people would want to work here anymore.

Where do you think your personal comfort level with espousing these issues comes from? This is not something you learned in business school.

Yeah. You’re exactly right. There was no course on this, at least, at the time I was in business school. I’m not sure I can totally answer your question, but I think it’s rooted in the way I was brought up. In what I saw going on at the time I was being brought up.

Martin Luther King was killed in 1968. I was 8 years old at the time. There were all kinds of racial equity and justice issues in the environment at that time. As I got older and understood the environmental issues, you don’t have to look beyond yesterday or the day before to see the latest storms and the latest floods and the devastation that it’s causing. And it’s causing it disproportionately to people in need. So, I think all of these things. And of course, my background as a gay American, as well, has a lot to do with that. You learn to speak up about these things.

Let’s jump to a bit of technology talk. Apple recently made privacy a big part of the sales proposition for buying the company’s products. Why is this an important push—and should we expect to see more, along these lines?

Well, we believe privacy is a basic human right. It starts with that. And we believe that privacy is one of the most consequential issues of our time. I mean, it’s right up there, near the top of the list of things. And we see every day, people’s privacy being taken for granted, and them losing control. And we’re all about giving the user transparency and control.

We’ve come out with so many different features over time. This year we came out with application tracking transparency. Where, if apps want to track you across apps, they have to get your permission. It sounds really simple, but it’s pretty profound in terms of how the internet actually works. We came out with a privacy “nutrition label” for the app store, where an app has to describe what information they’re collecting and why they’re collecting it. Again, it sounds simple, but it’s a profound change. We’re working for the user. It’s not about a marketing slogan or a way to sell things. It’s a core value of ours.

Beyond Apple, just looking out there on the technology landscape, what excites you about innovations that you’re seeing today?

I get really jazzed about AI. AI today is in a number of products that you don’t really think about.

If you just take, from us, from the way that we’re recognizing your face, to your fingerprint. The way that we’re grouping photos together, the way that Siri works. I mean, AI is everywhere. And I see that we’re at the very early stages of what it can do for people and how it can make people’s lives easier.

I am really stoked about [augmented reality], and what AR can bring. And the overlay of the virtual world with the real world. But in a way that is not distracting from the physical world and your physical relationships. But enhancing your relationships, enhancing your collaboration.

Is that what some people are calling the metaverse?

There’s clearly different words out there; I’ll stay away from the buzzwords. We just call it augmented reality. But I am super excited about these things. I believe that technology can do so much good in the world. And of course it depends on the creator, and whether they thought through the ways it can be used and misused.

But mainly, I am so optimistic about all the things that can happen in our lives that free up time for more leisure activities and other things that we want to do in life.

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China Formally Applies to Join Asian Trade Deal That Donald Trump Abandoned

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 13:02:18 +0200

Beijing has applied to join an Asia-Pacific trade pact once pushed by the U.S. as a way to isolate China and solidify American dominance in the region.

China submitted a formal application letter to join the deal, known officially as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to a statement late Thursday in Beijing.

The treaty was originally envisioned by the U.S. as an economic bloc to counterbalance China’s growing power, with then-President Barack Obama saying in 2016 that the U.S., not China, should write the regional rules of trade. His successor Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2017, with Japan leading the revised and renamed pact to a successful conclusion the following year.
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The application is certain to spark a reaction from Washington, where a number of lawmakers had already expressed concern about China’s efforts to join. There have been no signs from the administration of President Joe Biden that it’s interested in rejoining the deal.

The application is the result of months of behind-the-scenes discussions after President Xi Jinping said in 2020 the nation was interested in joining. China is the second country to apply to join the 11-nation deal, after the U.K. asked to become a member earlier this year.

“It’s a perfectly rational calculation by the Chinese leadership,” said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. “Given how the Chinese market is driving the economic recovery, their cards will never be this strong again. Or rather, the cost of rejecting China’s application will never be this high.”

Diplomatic Disputes

The application underlines the increasingly complicated geopolitical situation in Asia, where China is the dominant economy and main trading partner for many, but competition with the U.S. is getting worse. Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and Japan are CPTPP members and close allies of the U.S., but along with China they’re also members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which was successfully negotiated last year.

Military and diplomatic tensions between China and Japan, the largest economy in CPTPP, have been increasing due to China’s increased military presence around islands that both nations claim as their own, Chinese threats to Taiwan, and other factors.

Regarding China’s application, “Japan must look properly at whether it is ready to reach the high level of TPP,” Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu said in Tokyo Friday. “We will confer with other member countries and deal with this, taking into account strategic issues,” he said, adding that the U.K.’s application would be dealt with first.

Taiwan had also expressed interest in joining CPTPP and had been talking with members of the group, with some Japanese ruling party lawmakers last month supporting Taiwan’s entry. However, the Chinese application will complicate that as Beijing opposes Taiwan joining any international organization or group.

Taiwan will continue to talk to the members and will apply when there is consensus, the island’s Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua told reporters Friday in Taipei. China’s surprised the CPTPP members with it’s sudden bid, according to Wang, who said there were concerns whether China could meet the deal’s high standards.

Tensions with Australia

The bid from China to join CPTPP was made less than a day after Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. announced they would form a more cohesive defense arrangement to offset China’s rising military prowess. China attacked that agreement, but it will now need to negotiate with Australia and probably the U.K. about CPTPP accession.

Any talks won’t be simple—China and Australia are already in the midst of an economic and trade dispute, which has seen Beijing apply tariffs or block billions of dollars of Australian exports, despite the two nations having a free-trade agreement. Still, China last week publicly lobbied Canberra for its support to join the deal.

Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan said Friday that all 11 member nations would need to be in agreement for negotiations to start, and pointedly noted China would have to talk directly to the other nations. Australia ministers haven’t talked to their Chinese counterparts since early last year, and Tehan is still waiting for a response to a letter he sent Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in January.

After China’s application was submitted, Wang had a follow-up call with his counterpart Damien O’Connor of New Zealand, which is the depositary nation for the agreement.

“China will, according to procedures of CPTPP, engage in necessary consultations with members,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian said in Beijing. “On the basis of the conclusion of RCEP, China’s accession to CPTPP will be beneficial to the Asia-Pacific regional economic integration process.”

Canada is another CPTPP member that’s in a dispute with China, with one Canadian citizen jailed for 11 years and another still awaiting sentencing in cases that are seen as linked to the arrest in Canada of the daughter of the founder of Huawei Technologies Co.

A number of members of Congress have been calling for the U.S. to either rejoin the CPTPP or to be more active on trade diplomacy in the region. However, the Biden administration hasn’t announced any concrete trade policies for the region, although there are reports it’s discussing a digital trade deal covering Asia-Pacific economies.

“The future of technology, trade and defense is either going to be led by the Chinese Communist Party or by the United States and our allies,” U.S. Senator Ben Sasse said in response to the news. “If China sees the value in building alliances across the Pacific, why can’t the United States? Let’s get back into a position of leadership instead of retreat.”

Trade Rules

A former U.S. trade official said China’s membership in the group isn’t assured given its trade regime and direction toward more central control of its economy.

“It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see how they could embrace the CPTPP rules governing state-owned enterprises, labor, e-commerce, the free flow of data, among others, as well as comprehensive market access commitments,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former acting deputy U.S. Trade Representative.

Japanese Finance Minister Aso Taro also expressed doubt that China could meet the requirements.

“Is China in a state where it can join?” Aso asked Friday in Tokyo. “From the perspective of the 11 nations that will be accepting new members, right now we’re just at the point of asking ‘are we going to do this? Really?’”

Others were more confident China will be successful.

“In the long term, they will be able to work out some of the differences, especially as these countries realize that China is going to be the biggest market for them and the U.S. is not going to join anytime soon,” said Henry Gao, associate professor of Law at Singapore Management University, who has written extensively on Chinese law and the World Trade Organization.

But it won’t happen anytime soon, he said, as “the accession process would probably drag on for a couple of years.”

The U.K. applied to join first and is seeking to conclude talks to join by the end of 2022, the former British trade secretary said in August.

The CPTPP ranks third among the largest free-trade agreements behind the $26 trillion Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the $21.1 trillion U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. China’s addition to the CPTPP would make it the most valuable free-trade agreement ever signed.

The 11 signatories of the CPTTP have combined economic value worth about $13.5 trillion, or about 13% of global gross domestic product.

—With assistance from Isabel Reynolds, Yuko Takeo, Cindy Wang and Philip Glamann.

I Tried Lab-Grown Fish Maw. Here’s Why It Could Help Save Our Oceans

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 11:30:29 +0200

I’m an avid surfer and a certified scuba diver, and spending so much time in the water means that I’m keenly aware of the impact that human activity is having on the ocean ecosystem. It sometimes feels like it’s more common to see plastic bags in the water than sea life.

So, I was excited this week to try lab-grown fish—a new product that could help address at least one major problem facing the world’s oceans: over-fishing. Hong Kong-based Avant Meats offered a public tasting of cultivated fish, which its scientists had grown in their laboratory using the cells of real fish.
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Startups around the world are racing to raise money to commercialize cultivated animal protein—ranging from beef to kangaroo. While lab-grown beef might help offset carbon emissions and reduce animal cruelty, the rollout of cell-based fish protein, shellfish and other seafood could be an important innovation to protect the ocean’s incredible biodiversity.

One of ‘four treasures’ of Chinese cuisine

Avant Meats has a unique approach to its lab-grown seafood business. Not content to just mass-produce lab-grown fish fillets, it has focused on developing prized delicacies, especially fish maw. Fish maw, sometimes referred to as the swim bladder, is an organ that helps a fish control its buoyancy. It’s considered one of the “four treasures” of Chinese cuisine. (The others are abalone, sea cucumber and shark’s fin, the consumption of which has caused shark populations around the globe to plummet).

“We are the first company working on cultivated fish in Asia,” says Carrie Chan, the co-founder and CEO of Avant Meats. “We wanted to do something very emotionally connected with the people in this part of the world.”

Aria Chen and Abhishyant Kidangoor–TIMEAvant Meats fish maw in a soup on Sept. 14, 2021.

Fish maw is mostly eaten on special occasions; I tried it years ago at a friend’s wedding banquet dinner. Fish maw itself doesn’t have a strong flavor. Instead, it tends to pick up the flavors it’s cooked in. The yellow croaker fish maw in the soup chef Eddy Leung had prepared for us on Tuesday tasted similar. It had a spongey, chewy texture.

“The texture is similar to the real fish maw before it’s cooked…It is sticky, it has gelatin,” says Leung. “But when you eat it, it doesn’t yet have the kind of stickiness the real ones do.”

Avant Meats also let us sample a cultivated fish fillet, derived from a grouper. As a former vegetarian, I’m still squeamish about eating living things. But I didn’t feel guilty about eating meat that was never actually a living, swimming fish. The fillet tasted like the real thing, but it still has a way to go. Instead of flaking like real fish, it had a starchier consistency, more like gnocchi.

To make the food we tried, the company took cells from a real fish, fed them nutrients and incubated them until they began to replicate. Some of those cells were then placed on what’s called scaffolding—plant-based materials that give the cells shape as they grow.

Scaling up production, scaling down cost

One of the biggest challenges facing cell-based companies is that, like most new technological developments, it’s really expensive to produce.

It initially cost Avant Meat around $900 to produce a pound of lab-grown fish. The company has already brought its cost down to about $70 per pound, and Chan believes Avant can reduce its costs to $14 to $18 per pound in the next 12-18 months as production scales up.

“The key is: Can you produce enough fish from cellular production that you displace wild capture or traditional or conventional farmed fish?” Arlin Wasserman, the founder of the sustainable food consultancy Changing Tastes, tells me.

This is where focusing on fish maw and other high-end ingredients could make lab-grown seafood economically viable faster. A bowl of fish maw soup in a nice restaurant in Hong Kong costs around $30, while braised fish maw at the city’s three Michelin star Lung King Heen restaurant costs around $470.

Over-fishing crisis

If cell-based seafood takes off, it will be good news for the world’s oceans. More than 30% of stocks are now being fished at biologically unsustainable levels, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Massive quantities of unwanted fish and other creatures like sea turtles and dolphins are accidentally captured while fishing for species meant for human consumption.

Fish maw has had especially devastating ripple effects. The swim bladder of the totoaba fish, native to Mexico, is especially prized; it’s sometimes referred to as the “cocaine of the sea” for its astronomical prices. Totoaba fishing was banned in 1975, but illegal gillnets are still common. They also ensnare vaquitas, the world’s smallest porpoise. Now, it’s estimated that there are only nine vaquitas left in the world.

Avant Meats’ innovation could help relieve the pressure that growing demand for rare delicacies has put on ocean habitats all over the world. Texture aside, I’m excited to see cell-based meats getting closer to becoming a reality.

Avant Meats’ concept will be put to the test very soon. At a time when most companies are still working to bring their products to consumers, Avant Meats plans to sell its first products to the public sometime next year. The company is also working on a fish-based ingredient to be used in skincare products, and it plans to branch out into other meat, including sea cucumber, soon.

—With reporting by Aria Chen / Hong Kong

Why the Fate of Troubled Property Developer Evergrande Group Is Posing a Huge Headache for China

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 08:09:03 +0200

When Chinese home-buyer Zhiwei decided to purchase a luxury apartment at a development named Australia Villas back in 1997, it was billed as the apex of affluence.

Located outside China’s southern megacity Guangzhou, the sprawling complex was to have 292 buildings, including a gymnasium, spa, cinemas, and a private school. Boutiques and restaurants would dot its 2,000 acres, sales staff said. Impressed, Zhiwei stumped up $21,000—a huge sum 24 years ago, when the average annual disposable income in China was less than $650.

But things quickly went awry. The developer went bust in 2001 leaving most homes unfinished. Buyers with means swallowed the loss, but those without anywhere else to go, like Zhiwei, to go were forced to move into the concrete shells of their unfinished homes, living without gas, electricity and, in some cases, even windows.
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“The whole area is thick with weeds, you can sometimes see snakes slithering on the sidewalk, and outdoors we are savaged by swarms of mosquitoes,” says Zhiwei, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of jeopardizing ongoing negotiations with the developer and local government. “As the houses are unfinished, we can’t even get [approval] to sell them.”

Two decades on, many people still live amid the vine-entangled, mildewed structures, planting vegetable gardens and rearing chickens on what were supposed to be ornamental lawns. More than 2,000 homeowners like Zhiwei are still waiting compensation. “After fighting for our rights for more than 20 years, many owners are getting old, and even the youngest have been retired for several years,” she says.

And yet this cautionary tale has had no impact China’s gangbusters real estate market, which today remains the world’s biggest. In the year ending June 2020, about $1.4 trillion was invested in Chinese housing, even allowing for a fleeting dip due to the pandemic. That dwarfs the $900 billion invested in real estate at the peak of the U.S. property boom of the 2000s. Today, real estate makes up 29% China’s GDP.

But alarm bells rang this week, with the news that the world’s most indebted real estate developer, Evergrande, is struggling to make loan payments on its more than $300 billion in liabilities—a sum roughly equivalent to the public debt of Portugal. On Tuesday the firm, based in the southern city of Shenzhen, said it was under “tremendous pressure” and warned there was no guarantee that it would be able “to meet its financial obligations.”

That was crushing news for the roughly 1.5 million people who have put deposits on Evergrande homes that have yet to be built.

NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images Police officers survey people gathering at the Evergrande headquarters in Shenzhen, China on Sept. 16, 2021, as the Chinese property giant said it was facing “unprecedented difficulties” but denied rumors that it was about to go under.

What impact could Evergrande have on China’s financial system?

Fearing a fate like Zhiwei’s, scores of furious protesters besieged Evergrande’s headquarters this week in a show of public discontent not usually tolerated under China’s strongman, President Xi Jinping. Some even shared photos online of the family graves of Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan, located at his ancestral home in the central province of Henan, exhorting people to go and vandalize them.

Analysts are concerned. “Evergrande’s collapse would be the biggest test that China’s financial system has faced in years,” Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a Sept. 9 briefing note.

Not only would a collapse be catastrophic for investor confidence, it would also reflect poorly on the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Under President Xi Jinping, the CCP has sought to rein in excessive wealth, reduce market risks and lower income inequality through a new campaign for “common prosperity.” But Evergrande—one of China’s largest corporations—is a problem that has worsened under Xi’s watch.

The burning question is whether he will allow Evergrande to fail, potentially unleashing ripples of financial turmoil and further protests. At the very least, “Financial issues at the group are likely to cause contagion effect in the banking sector,” Angus Lam, a senior economist at IHS Markit, tells TIME by email.

Yue Yuejin, research director for the E-House China research institute, says that unless there is social unrest “simply bailing out the enterprise wholesale will not happen.” But “there may be possible interventions such as the introduction of strategic investors or active coordination of asset sales.”

It’s precipitous fall for Evergrande, which until recently was China’s second largest developer with nearly 900 competed commercial, residential and infrastructure projects. It had grown extremely bloated, swelling to some 200,000 staff as it made a bizarre array of loss-making forays into bottled water, electric vehicles and other sectors. It also invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its own soccer team.

Hui, who founded the firm in 1997, was listed as China’s third-richest man by Forbes last year, but his wealth has plummeted in recent months. Evergrande’s shares have nosedived 81% since the beginning of the year, with the current crisis prompted after a series of downgrades of its bonds.

Investors are growing increasingly jittery that a collapse could spread to other property developers, revealing systemic vulnerabilities. Each year, China builds about 15 million new homes—over five times those in America and Europe combined—yet a quarter of the current stock already lies empty, with forests of unoccupied tower blocks ringing many second and third-tier cities. In 2021, Chinese developers were exposed to more than $100 billion in bond repayments, while 10% of outstanding bank loans to non-financial clients globally have been made in China’s property sector. According to court filings, 228 real estate firms went bust in China during the first half of 2020 alone.

Liu Junfeng/VCG via Getty Images)YICHANG, CHINA – SEPTEMBER 14: The construction site of an Evergrande housing complex is pictured on September 14, 2021 in Yichang, Hubei Province, China.

Is Evergrande’s collapse inevitable?

The crisis does not stand to be anything like as bad as America’s 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis. A key feature of China’s property market is that many buyers pay the full price upfront rather than relying on mortgages. Of course, buyers may now be much less likely to trust real estate firms with such large sums, but defaults shouldn’t lead to the snowballing effect that the U.S. experienced.

There are also some positives when it comes to China’s housing market. Whereas affluent Chinese once wanted to invest overseas, they now see China as a safer bet than foreign nations still in the grip of the coronavirus. Demand for new homes in good locations is so high prospective buyers must enter lotteries for the right to purchase one, with odds at some sought-after developments as low as 1 in 60. Social attitudes also place a strong emphasis on home ownership, with 81% of Chinese believing that buying a home is a must before marriage.

But the next few days will be critical. Evergrande has quarterly debt interest payments due Monday and bond interest payments Thursday as well as various suppliers waiting. Instead of cash, a $34 million debt to a paint supplier is reportedly being repaid by apartments in housing complexes that won’t be finished until 2024. Such wheeling and dealing is hardly sustainable. Evergrande “always had a reputation for creative financing,” says Dinny McMahon, an analyst on China’s real estate market for the Trivium China analysis group.

Many ordinary Chinese are now wondering if they will pay the price. Around 78% of the wealth of urban Chinese is in residential property, versus just 35% for Americans, who prefer to invest in financial instruments and pensions. Were Chinese home prices to drop significantly in the wake of the Evergrande affair, it would shrink the primary assets of the world’s largest middle class, sending shudders around the globe.

Says McMahon: “Hedge funds a decade ago were telling me it’s only a matter of time before Evergrande topples over.”

IMF Managing Director Called Out on ‘Pressure’ to Boost China’s Ranking in Economic Report

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 00:11:06 +0200

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva was called out Thursday by the World Bank, her previous employer, for applying pressure to boost China’s position in a ranking of economies.

Georgieva said she disagreed with the findings, compiled by an outside law firm at the World Bank’s direction.

The World Bank found such serious ethics issues in its probe of the “Doing Business” report that it decided to abandon the series entirely, a statement released in Washington showed.

China’s position in the 2018 report, released in October 2017, should have been seven places lower—at No. 85 rather than remaining at 78—the World Bank said in a review released in December.
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“The changes to China’s data in Doing Business 2018 appear to be the product of two distinct types of pressure applied by bank leadership on the Doing Business team,” the World Bank said in a report Thursday. The bank cited Georgieva, along with an adviser, for “pressure” to “make specific changes to China’s data points in an effort to increase its ranking at precisely the same time the country was expected to play a key role in the bank’s capital-increase campaign.”

‘Disagree Fundamentally’

Georgieva served as chief executive officer of the World Bank prior to being chosen to succeed Christine Lagarde as head of the IMF, the development lender’s partner in the Bretton Woods system.

“I disagree fundamentally with the findings and interpretations of the Investigation of Data Irregularities as it relates to my role in the World Bank’s Doing Business report of 2018,” Georgieva said in a statement. “I have already had an initial briefing with the IMF’s Executive Board on this matter.”

Georgieva told the IMF board at a meeting Thursday before the news came out that the report was forthcoming, but that she was going to keep to her work as usual, according to people familiar with the matter.

While her alleged actions were taken while she was at the World Bank, they have been referred to the IMF’s ethics committee within the fund’s board of directors, the people said, asking not to be named as the deliberations were private. That panel consists of the chief IMF representatives — known as executive directors — from Brazil, France, Russia, the U.K. and an official representing the group of Iran, Morocco and Pakistan.

U.S. Reaction

The U.S. Treasury, which manages the country’s engagement with the IMF and World Bank, said it was reviewing the report. The U.S. has an outsize role in decisions at the Washington-based lenders because of the weight of its voting power. Many Republican lawmakers have opposed expanding support for the World Bank and IMF, and Thursday’s news could renew GOP criticism.

“These are serious findings and Treasury is analyzing the report,” Treasury spokesperson Alexandra LaManna said. “Our primary responsibility is to uphold the integrity of international financial institutions.” A National Security Council spokesperson later also said that the report was troubling, and that the administration was committed to upholding the integrity of institutions like the IMF.

Georgieva is expected to address the World Bank report at an all-staff meeting of the IMF on Friday, according to people familiar with the plans. An IMF spokesman said that that forum was previously scheduled to discuss IMF policy priorities ahead of the annual meetings of the fund and the World Bank next month.

The probe was produced by the law firm WilmerHale, which was retained by the World Bank executive board’s ethics committee—the body responsible for ethical matters involving board officials. The findings were shared with the World Bank’s executive directors Wednesday, and the board authorized their release.

Detailed Account

From mid-2017 to April 2018, World Bank management was “consumed with sensitive negotiations” over boosting the lender’s capital, and China at the time was “apprehensive” about how its ownership share would be recalculated as a result of that process, the WillmerHale report said.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, the institution’s top leader at the time, was overseeing the talks along with Georgieva, and both of them pointed in interviews to the tensions surrounding the process, WillmerHale said.

Against that backdrop, Chinese officials repeatedly told Kim and other top World Bank officials that the 2017 Doing Business report had failed to reflect China’s reforms, the report said. As it became clear that the draft 2018 report would show a drop in China’s ranking, staff discussed options including incorporating data from Taiwan and Hong Kong into the mainland’s rating, the report showed.

Georgieva, who in an Oct. 18, 2017, meeting represented that she was now overseeing the issue, ruled out incorporating Hong Kong data for political reasons. Georgieva asked a “Mr. Djankov” to guide the Doing Business report to final publication, and he worked with the unit to “identify changes to China’s data that would raise the country’s score,” the WillmerHale findings showed.

Georgieva’s Role

After searching for data points that wouldn’t also alter other country’s ratings — such as putting greater weight on major cities — officials concluded that adjusting China’s “legal rights indicator” was an “ideal vehicle” thanks to differing expert opinions on the effect of Chinese law, the report said. Tweaking the assessment helped China keep its prior ranking, and “Mr. Djankov” then authorized publication.

“Georgieva’s actions following changes to China’s data confirm her involvement,” the review found. WillmerHale cited her thanks, after the changes, to the senior director for Development Economics for “doing his ‘part for multilateralism,’” and her visit to the home of the Doing Business manager the weekend after the report was published to thank the manager for resolving the China problem, the report showed.

WillmerHale identified “no evidence” Kim had directly ordered illegitmate changes to China’s data, although the Doing Business manager said “it was clear that aides in President Kim’s office were acting on his behalf,” the report showed.

The Doing Business report plays a notable role in emerging markets, with governments often showcasing moves up in ranking in appeals for foreign investment. But the integrity of the ratings has been the source of heated debate in recent years. Paul Romer quit in 2018 as the World Bank’s chief economist after questioning changes to Chile’s order in the report.

The WillmerHale probe also looked at issues surrounding the ratings of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan.

“After reviewing all the information available to date on Doing Business, including the findings of past reviews, audits, and the report the bank released today on behalf of the Board of Executive Directors, World Bank Group management has taken the decision to discontinue the Doing Business report,” the World Bank said Thursday.

The IMF and World Bank have confronted a number of ethics issues over the years. Former French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the fund in 2011 after charges of sexual assault in a New York hotel room, which were eventually dropped. In 2007, Paul Wolfowitz, a top Pentagon official in the Bush administration, stepped down as head of the World Bank over his involvement in arranging a pay increase and promotion for his companion.

Lagarde, while leading the IMF, was convicted of negligence in 2016 by a Paris court over her handling of a multimillion-euro dispute during her time as France’s finance minister nearly a decade before. She didn’t face a fine or prison term, and went on to become the head of the European Central Bank.

—With assistance from Christopher Condon and Josh Wingrove.

Ford Adding 450 Jobs to Meet Demand for New Electric F-150 Truck

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 23:48:41 +0200

(DEARBORN, Mich.) — Ford Motor Co. plans to spend $250 million and add 450 jobs at three Michigan plants to meet demand for the new F-150 Lightning.

Ford already has taken more than 150,000 reservations for the new electric version of its immensely popular F-150 pickup truck, Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s president of the Americas, said during a news event Thursday.

“As the orders have been coming in, as the reservations have been coming in, it was just time for us to (increase) the capacity to meet that demand,” he said.

Galhotra made the announcement at the new Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in the automaker’s hometown of Dearborn, where the first pre-production trucks are being made.
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Ford provided tours of the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center to members of the media as well as government officials, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who said the facility “will be a place where the future is determined and built by the hard-working men and women of the UAW.”

Ford officials hope the F-150 Lightning will be the catalyst that hastens America’s transition from gasoline to battery-powered vehicles. The new truck, which will be available to customers by next spring, will be able to travel up to 300 miles (480 kilometers) per battery charge and carries a starting price of around $40,000.

Ford’s $250 million investment will create 450 hourly direct jobs, with most of those workers assembling the F-150 Lightning at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center. Workers at the Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti will assemble batteries, and the Van Dyke Electric Powertrain Center in Sterling Heights will increase its capacity to supply electric motors and electric transaxles for the Lightning.

The investment and added jobs will help increase production capacity to 80,000 trucks a year, Ford said.

“Electric vehicles aren’t a foofoo California car,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell of Dearborn said. “They are what real Americans drive.”

Instagram Makes Teen Girls Hate Themselves. Is That a Bug or a Feature?

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 18:06:11 +0200

The features within Instagram that cause teenage girls to develop negative feelings about their body image may be baked into the very core of the platform, researchers and former employees have said in the wake of new revelations that the company did not disclose what it knew about its impact on young users.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, has known for years that the platform is harmful to the mental health of many teenagers—particularly girls—but has kept internal research about the issue private, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Tuesday.
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In response to the Journal report, a bipartisan group of Senators said they would launch an investigation into what Facebook knew about Instagram’s effect on teenage users. Instagram said it was proud of the research, and that it is constantly improving how its app works to protect users from harm.

But researchers and former Facebook employees say Instagram’s problems may be inherent to the platform and therefore almost impossible to fix. “I think because Instagram is based on images, it is difficult to not make it an appearance-focused environment,” said Jasmine Fardouly, a research fellow at the University of New South Wales in Australia focused on social media’s impact on body image. “We may be able to reduce harm, but there will always be some ways that Instagram is harmful.”

Some also point out that Facebook’s interests as a company often conflict with the safety of its users. “We have to acknowledge the broader point that Instagram and other social media apps are designed to keep people using them for as many hours as possible, because that’s how they make the most money,” says Jean Twenge, author of iGen, a book about the first generation who grew up with smartphones and social media. “That means you’re going to have a collision between what’s good for mental health and what’s good for profit.”

The harmful impact of Instagram

An internal Instagram presentation from March 2020 seen by the Journal said that when 32% of teenage girls “felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.”

The Journal also found that Instagram research showed that, among teenage users who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced those feelings to their use of Instagram. Researchers found that young women’s self image was especially badly affected by making comparisons between themselves and what they viewed on the platform.

But in Congressional testimony in March 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated to lawmakers that research had shown that social media apps had “positive mental-health benefits” when used to connect with others.

According to researchers, platforms like Instagram can contribute to body image issues and depression because humans have an innate desire to compare themselves to others.

“People have always wanted to present the best version of themselves to others,” says Fardouly. “It’s just that on social media people often present a very enhanced, unrealistic version of their appearance.”

But social media apps like Instagram exacerbate that problem for a segment of the population that is already prone to making these comparisons, some experts argue. “[It] could just be that a system that encourages visual sharing unintentionally creates a prestige economy that is detrimental to the vulnerable,” said Samidh Chakrabarti, a former high-ranking Facebook employee focused on fixing the structural issues with the platform, who recently left his role at the company, in a tweet.

That’s an “important distinction” to the assumption that Instagram’s problems stem from simply trying to maximize profit at all costs, Chakrabarti argued, because it points to something deeper, at the very heart of what makes Instagram what it is and “suggests different (and harder) remedies.”

How Instagram could address the problem

Research shows that when users are presented with a more diverse range of appearances, backgrounds, and body shapes and sizes on social media, there can be a positive impact on their mental health and body image, according to Phillippa Diedrichs, a leading body image researcher who said she has carried out paid consulting work for Instagram.

Diedrichs said that in her consultations with Instagram, she looked at how the company could “embed some of those findings into the design of the app.”

“It’s things like: how do you make it easier for users to find content that can be beneficial for wellbeing, or be directed to that content?” she said in an interview with TIME. “If you notice that users are engaging in behaviors or viewing a lot of content that might be potentially harmful to them, how might you nudge them to say, hey, we’ve noticed that you’re looking at this, you’ve been spending a lot of time looking at this, would you like to look at something else?”

The changes, Diedrichs said, are a work in progress and have not yet been launched.

Instagram said in a blog post on Tuesday that its internal research shows social media usage can be beneficial as well as detrimental, and said that it is working on structural changes to its platform to counteract how it contributes to negative body image issues.

“One idea we think has promise is finding opportunities to jump in if we see people dwelling on certain types of content,” the blog post said. “From our research, we’re starting to understand the types of content some people feel may contribute to negative social comparison, and we’re exploring ways to prompt them to look at different topics if they’re repeatedly looking at this type of content. We’re cautiously optimistic that these nudges will help point people towards content that inspires and uplifts them, and to a larger extent, will shift the part of Instagram’s culture that focuses on how people look.”

A Facebook spokesperson added that other measures the company is considering include allowing users to set reminders that pop up after a period of time they choose, and take a break if they’ve been on the app for a while.

Independent researchers said such changes may improve the platform’s worst excesses. “Potentially, if there was more diversity incorporated into those algorithms, it might be helpful,” said Fardouly, who does not have a professional relationship with Instagram.

Hitting the bottom line

Other stories published by the Wall Street Journal this week revealed that Zuckerberg said he would not approve changes to reduce the spread of false content on Facebook’s News Feed if those changes would also reduce user engagement.

The revelation is the latest example of Facebook rejecting or paring back measures that would benefit the safety of users, or the health of democracy more broadly, if they have a negative impact on the company’s profits.

There is the added issue that much of the content that can worsen body image perception for young women—such as images of ultrathin swimsuit models—comes from paid advertisements that make up the bulk of Facebook’s income, as opposed to organic content that can be down-ranked in people’s feeds without Facebook taking a direct financial hit.

As such, some experts are skeptical that Instagram will ever fundamentally change.

“I can’t see how it would have much of an impact to tweak Instagram so that people still spend four hours per day on the app, but an hour on more diverse content,” said Twenge, the author of iGen. “If we’re gonna do any kind of intervention with a teen girl, it’d probably be a lot more productive to tell her: people are making money off of every minute that you spend on this app.”

From Instagram’s Toll on Teens to Unmoderated ‘Elite’ Users, Here’s a Break Down of the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Revelations

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 22:04:16 +0200

A series of investigative reports being rolled out by the Wall Street Journal is putting a spotlight on the behind-the-scenes actions of Facebook. Ranging from rule exemptions for high-profile users to Instagram’s toll on teens’ mental health, the Journal‘s “Facebook Files” expose internal Facebook research that appears to show just how knowledgable the company was of the platform’s “ill-effects.”

The Journal’s reports, three so far, are based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management. They reveal that the company has allegedly failed to fix numerous problems that it’s long known about, and in some cases made them worse.
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“Time and again, the documents show, Facebook’s researchers have identified the platform’s ill effects. Time and again, despite congressional hearings, its own pledges and numerous media exposés, the company didn’t fix them,” the Journal reports. “The documents offer perhaps the clearest picture thus far of how broadly Facebook’s problems are known inside the company, up to the chief executive himself.”

Here’s what to know about the Journal‘s ongoing revelations about Facebook.

The XCheck program

Due to an internal program known as “cross check” or “XCheck,” high-profile Facebook users are exempt from some or all of the platform’s rules, according to the debut installment of the “Facebook Files.”

Published Monday, the Journal‘s inaugural report examines how the program, originally intended to quality-control actions taken against “elite” users like celebrities, politicians and journalists, has actually allowed these users to avoid moderation. Reportedly, those protected are either “whitelisted,” meaning they aren’t subject to enforcement actions from Facebook, or allowed to post rule-violating content pending subsequent review by Facebook employees. However, according to a 2019 internal document reviewed by the Journal, less than 10% of the posts flagged to XCheck were actually reviewed.

The program reportedly protected at least 5.8 million people as of 2020, including former President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Candace Owens, and has allowed misinformation, harassment, calls to violence and revenge porn to remain on the platform.

“We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” a 2019 internal review reportedly read. “Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences.”

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told the Journal that criticism of XCheck is warranted and that Facebook has been working to address the problems with the program, which is meant to “accurately enforce policies on content that could require more understanding.”

Instagram’s toll on teens’ mental health

Facebook, which owns Instagram, has known for years that the photo sharing platform is harmful to the mental health of a significant percentage of young users, and particularly teen girls, according to a Journal report published Tuesday.

Citing internal studies that Facebook conducted over the past three years, the report details how the company downplayed its own research on negative effects that Instagram has on the millions of young people who make up nearly half of its user base, ranging from eating disorders to depression to suicidal thoughts. One internal Facebook presentation reviewed by the Journal, showed that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the issue to the photo-sharing app.

The report states that Facebook’s own research found that teenage girls are particularly susceptible to the mental toll of Instagram, where highly filtered and edited photos promoting unrealistic and often unattainable body standards run rampant. In a 2019 presentation, researchers said that Instagram makes body image issues worse for one in three teen girls. A presentation from the following March, reviewed by the Journal, reported that 32% of teen girls who felt bad about their bodies felt worse when they looked at Instagram.

“Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves,” one slide read.

But that doesn’t mean that teen boys don’t also suffer mental health consequences from Instagram use. Facebook’s research reportedly showed that 40% of teen boys experience the effects of negative social comparison while using Instagram, while 14% of boys in the U.S. said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves.

Despite these findings, Facebook never made its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who asked for it, the Journal reported. Researchers also found that some of the features that play a key role in Instagram’s success and addictive nature, like the Explore page, which serves users curated posts based on their interests, are among the most harmful to young people. “Aspects of Instagram exacerbate each other to create a perfect storm,” the research reportedly said.

In response to a request for comment on the Journal‘s report, an Instagram spokesperson pointed TIME to a Tuesday blog post stating that while the story “focuses on a limited set of findings and casts them in a negative light,” the company stands by the research as it “demonstrates our commitment to understanding complex and difficult issues young people may struggle with, and informs all the work we do to help those experiencing these issues.”

The Journal goes on to say that Instagram’s research mirrors external research that “the effects of social media on people’s well-being is mixed” and that “[s]ocial media isn’t inherently good or bad for people. Many find it helpful one day, and problematic the next. What seems to matter most is how people use social media, and their state of mind when they use it.”

The Journal‘s report comes in the wake of Facebook reaffirming its intention to continue with the development of an Instagram for kids under 13 despite pressure from lawmakers to abandon the plan.

When asked about the connection between children’s declining mental health and social media platforms at a May congressional hearing, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the research isn’t “conclusive.”

An algorithm that rewards divisive content

When Facebook overhauled its News Feed algorithm to promote “meaningful social interactions,” in 2018, it instead resulted in a system that amplifies divisive content on the platform, the Journal reported Wednesday.

While Zuckerberg said the goal of the change was to “strengthen bonds between users and to improve their well-being,” Facebook staffers reportedly warned that the algorithm’s heavy weighting of reshared material was pushing polarizing and false content that drew outrage, and therefore more comments and reactions, to the forefront of users’ News Feeds.

“Misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares,” researchers said in an internal memo reviewed by the Journal.

Zuckerberg also reportedly resisted some proposed fixes to the issue, like eliminating a boost the algorithm gave to content most likely to be reshared by long chains of users, out of concern that it would lead to decreased user engagement.

In response, Lars Backstrom, a Facebook vice president of engineering, told the Journal that any algorithm can promote harmful content and that the company has an “integrity team” working to mitigate these issues. “Like any optimization, there’s going to be some ways that it gets exploited or taken advantage of,” he said.

DoorDash Files Suit Against New York City Over Order Privacy

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 18:58:10 +0200

DoorDash Inc. sued New York City over a law that forces third-party food delivery services to share customer information, in what the company says is a “shocking and invasive intrusion of consumers’ privacy.”The law requires companies that provide eateries with online order and delivery services to share monthly information with restaurants who request the information on customers who have placed orders, including names, phone numbers and email addresses.DoorDash filed its lawsuit Wednesday in a Manhattan federal court less than a week after joining Grubhub Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc.’s Uber Eats in a suit over a 15% limit the city placed on commissions charged by delivery services. In the earlier complaint, the companies said the law is “nothing more than unconstitutional, harmful, and unnecessary government overreach that should be struck down.”The measures imposed by the city are part of a package of bills aimed at regulating the food-delivery industry, which faced scrutiny during the pandemic as their business skyrocketed when restaurants were forced to close their dining rooms.In the latest suit, DoorDash says the information-sharing law “imposes virtually no restrictions” on what restaurants can do with the data and doesn’t require eateries to secure the information once they receive it.DoorDash said the law undermines the privacy of city residents who trust companies like it with “sensitive personal data that they would not entrust to small businesses that do not have similar robust data safety and security protocols.”
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When diners go to restaurants in person, they don’t expect to have to disclose “the kind of sensitive personal information that the ordinance requires DoorDash to disclose,” the company said. “Customers will face a serious risk of harm from their personal data being shared with every restaurant that fulfills their order on DoorDash’s platform.”

DoorDash is asking a federal judge to issue an order blocking the bill from going into effect, saying it was enacted to reduce DoorDash’s profitability and “to allow restaurants to free-ride on DoorDash’s confidential, commercially valuable data.”

The company said the city’s ordinance is likely to backfire.

“Restaurants will use DoorDash’s trade secret data to compete directly with DoorDash, forcing DoorDash to modify its services in a way that will result in fewer resources being offered to restaurants, fewer earnings opportunities for delivery couriers, and fewer choices for New York City customers.”

The city’s Law Department didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the suit.

The case is DoorDash Inc. v City of New York, 21-cv-7695, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

President Biden to Meet With Business Leaders Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 16:07:07 +0200

President Joe Biden was meeting Wednesday with the CEOs of Walt Disney and Columbia Sportswear, and other business executives and leaders to discuss his recently announced vaccine requirement for companies that employ at least 100 people.

The White House meeting comes less than a week after Biden announced that the Labor Department is working to require businesses with 100 or more employees to order those workers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, or show a negative test result at least weekly.

Some 100 million workers would be subject to the requirement, Biden said. The Labor Department is working to issue an emergency rule to implement the mandate.
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Biden announced the new mandate and several other steps last Thursday as part of a tougher effort by the administration to curb the surging delta variant of the coronavirus, which is responsible for sharp increase in U.S. infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Just over half, or 54%, of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, data show.

Announcing the new steps last week, Biden sharply criticized the tens of millions of people who remain unvaccinated, despite the fact that the shots are free of charge and widely available.

“We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said.

The business leaders and CEOs Biden is meeting with at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex, either have put in place vaccine requirements or are working to implement such rules, the White House said.

Some business groups, including the Business Roundtable, welcomed the president’s announcement, while some Republicans accused Biden of overstepping his authority and have threatened to sue the administration over the vaccine mandate.

Numerous corporations, including Amtrak, Microsoft, United Airlines and Walt Disney issued vaccine mandates for their workforces before Biden’s announcement last week.

Also scheduled to attend Biden’s meeting are representatives from health insurer Kaiser Permanente, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream and Louisiana State University.

Josh Bolten, president and CEO of the Business Roundtable, was also scheduled to attend. The Roundtable represents more than 200 businesses that employ some 20 million people. Last week it issued a statement welcoming Biden’s announcement.

“America’s business leaders know how critical vaccination and testing are in defeating the pandemic,” Bolten said in a statement.