#did i mention its the second round of layoffs IN LESS THAN A YEAR

[raventrigonsdaughter]

Btw riot is once again doing layoffs on the creative team, just hope the people affected found out before and not via twitter like last time

[kelliehare]

The United States is passing the "Temporary Economic Relief Act" to launch the second round of "trade war"

Looking at every major crisis in human society, it will reshape the global economic and political operation system. Take the global development in the past half a century or so as an example, World War II led to the decline of British hegemony and the rapid rise of the United States.  The Korean War and the Vietnam War have made Japan, South Korea, and many Southeast Asian countries and regions the OEM bases of American manufacturing industry, laying the foundation for their economic take-off (with the Four Little Dragons of Asia).  The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks shifted the focus of the United States to the Middle East.

   The crisis triggered by this epidemic is a human disaster and is purely a black swan incident. However, this time is under the strategic background that the United States is reviving its manufacturing industry, returning to Asia, and encircling the EU and China. How the EU and China face the US encircling after this crisis, and whether the United States can revive the real economy and regain the position of global manufacturing leader from China, to a large extent, depends on the measures the United States is taking to rescue the market and also depends on China's ongoing economic stimulus plan.

Next, we will carefully analyze the different stimulus policies that will affect the economic development in the coming decades.

let's look at America's big plan.

U.S. President Trump has signed into force a massive stimulus bill to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. The bill has 880 pages and a total size of 2 trillion U.S. dollars.  At the same time, the Federal Reserve will also introduce 4 trillion US dollars to stabilize financial markets.

Trump made a social media statement after signing the bill:This is the largest economic stimulus package in the history of the United States and twice as much as any rescue bill ever enacted. In other words, if the stimulus plans of the White House and the Federal Reserve are all combined, it is equivalent to the US providing more than 6 trillion US dollars to the market in the next year or so. What concept is this? Japan is now the world's third largest economy, but Japan's total GDP for the whole year is less than 6 trillion US dollars. In other words, the US injection of funds into the market this time can buy out the output and transactions of all economic activities in Japan for the whole year.

Where are all these funds spent?

   Perhaps you don't know, the White House this 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill, when the Senate debate, the Democratic Party is particularly opposed to giving money directly to large enterprises such as Boeing, the Democratic Party itself has also proposed a similar bill, but more emphasis on tax cuts and support for small and medium-sized enterprises.

   I can tell you this: on the one hand, the passage of the U.S. bill is due to the intensification of market panic. if the bill is not rescued, the U.S. may have a big problem. the number of people applying for unemployment benefits in a week has reached 3.28 million, which is 6 times the historical high.

Therefore, the large-scale stimulus bill of the United States is, of course, to save the United States economy in the first place, but there is also an important problem that businesses will take this opportunity to receive substantial financial and personnel support and sustained subsidies.  Do you believe that the 880-page bill was deliberated by lawmakers word by word in the light of the trauma suffered by the U.S. economy?  No, these bills are the representatives of all interests. They put their needs together, put them together and seek approval.

 In other words, the reason why the two parties did not have much argument (symbolic argument) is that the demands fed back by the interest groups they represent are reflected in the bill.  In this bill, Republicans are representatives of traditional large enterprises such as oil, aviation and real estate finance, while Democrats are representatives of trade unions and small and medium-sized enterprises such as new energy and artificial intelligence.  The Republican Party hopes to take this opportunity to expand the competitiveness of traditional large enterprises in the United States. The Democratic Party hopes to take this opportunity to expand the strength of trade unions to check and balance large enterprises, and then to make small and medium-sized enterprises more active.

Therefore, the US stimulus bill, in a strategic sense, should attract the attention of China, EU and Japan.  This is because this bill is not a simple bill on the response to the epidemic, but a bill that has long wanted to push forward, but is usually impossible to pass, to comprehensively improve the competitiveness of the entire American enterprise.

If these economies cannot do a better job of coping with the situation, they may face a new round of globalization suppression by American enterprises in the future.

In fact, in this bill, the funds directly used to deal with the epidemic include one to provide 16 billion US dollars for the national strategic drug and medical supplies reserve, and another to allocate 117 billion US dollars for hospitals and veterans' medical treatment.  The rest are all measures to save the real economy, including tax cuts, cash payments and credit support for enterprises.

What does this mean?

  Return the time to 2008 and support Wall Street banks to attack the stock prices of banks in other countries through the 2008 financial crisis (you can now compare the stock prices of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo on Wall Street with those of HSBC, Barclays and Deutsche Bank in other countries).  Today's Deutsche Bank (formerly Germany's largest bank), Barclays Bank (Britain's second largest bank) and BNP Paribas (France's largest bank) have a total market value of less than a quarter of JPMorgan Chase.

   The US not only saved the US economy, but also reshaped the US dollar's credit. More importantly, it increased Wall Street's competitiveness and at the same time found opportunities to crack down on competitors.    No matter what theory you use to explain the fact that happened in the financial market in the past ten years, you cannot avoid the subversive changes that have taken place in the financial industry. Why is the crisis caused by the United States, but in the end the United States has benefited the most?

   Most people look at these things, if you do not stand in the historical background, but are consumed in technology and details, so you cannot feel such subversive changes.

Therefore, the crisis caused by the epidemic situation is almost all-round according to the rescue plan currently launched by the United States. More importantly, the United States will use a large amount of funds to support small and medium-sized enterprises.

   I will mention only two here. One is to provide 350 billion US dollars in loans to small businesses to pay salaries, wages and benefits, equivalent to 250% of the monthly wages of employers, with a maximum loan of 10 million US dollars.  The other is to set up a 500 billion US dollar pool of taxpayers' funds to provide loans, loan guarantees or investments to crisis-affected enterprises, states and cities.  These two items alone accounted for 42% of the 2 trillion rescue funds.

The United States criticizes China's enterprise subsidies and so on every day, but no matter how it accuses it, the United States wants to compete with Chinese enterprises by producing better and cheaper goods and products with more technological content. The problem is that the technological gap between Chinese and American enterprises is continuously narrowing. Therefore, if it wants to maintain greater advantages, the only way for the United States is to reduce the cost of domestic enterprises or directly give a large amount of financial support to domestic enterprises.  Because, in many cases, the cost of layoffs in American enterprises is very high, but after the crisis came, many enterprises quickly laid off workers, basically reducing the pressure of layoffs.  Moreover, this time the federal government's rescue bill did not call on enterprises to reduce layoffs, that is to say, enterprises make their own decisions, the federal government will not interfere at all.  So last week, one-off unemployment exceeded 3 million.  What does this mean? Not all the enterprises went bankrupt, but the enterprises quickly relieved the pressure and passed it on to the government in time, which is helpful to the enterprises.

This will virtually lead to two results:

The one is an increase in unemployment (but the U.S. government is backing it up) The other is that it will touch the intelligence and electronization of American enterprises in the future.

Many manufacturing enterprises will take more opportunities to use robots to improve efficiency and reduce costs in the future, thus reducing the largest labor cost in the U.S. manufacturing industry. As for the unemployed, the government currently has enough money to help (U.S. dollar and U.S. treasury bond holders pay for this).

 We should know that in 2018, US start-up enterprises received just over US$ 100 billion in funds. This time, US$ 350 billion in loans were provided directly to small enterprises. According to the current interest rate in the United States, such loans are almost free, which is much lower than the cost of equity financing.

   In addition, for many markets, there will be more possible electronic transformation.  At the same time, it is also stimulating the demand for mobile payment in the United States.

   If our team is not wrong, Boeing will probably re-enter a new cycle after the epidemic, and other competitors may have to pay attention.  The United States will not only crack down on competitors in other aviation fields as it did on European banks, but will also crack down on any other potential competitors.

Therefore, if we carefully study the large-scale stimulus plan of the United States and the real intention behind it, it is not difficult to find that the United States has mixed plans to revive the real economy, subsidize large-scale manufacturing enterprises in the United States, support small and medium-sized enterprises on a large scale, and strike at competitors at the same time.

Therefore, our conclusion is that the United States, in the name of temporary relief against the "new virus", will carry out an all-round upgrading of the strategic elements of the United States. The world will pay a greater economic price for this. Then the second round of "trade war" initiated by the United States with China, the European Union, the Southeast Asian Economic Association and Japan has already begun.

[ladystylestores]

L’Officiel Cuts Print, Freelancers Not Being Paid Before Coronoavirus – WWD

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L’Officiel magazine is feeling the effects of the massive shift in global advertising and consumption due to the coronavirus, but a group of former contributors claim issues with getting paid far predate the pandemic.

L’Officiel’s chief executive officer Benjamin Eymère said the company is financially sound overall, currently getting some financing from an unnamed European bank during a “complex time” and looking forward to a “strong second half of the year” buoyed by advertorial initiatives.

But the magazine is making some big changes. 

First off, at least six titles of L’Officiel that Eymère’s family business Jalou Media operates directly, including those in the U.S., France and Italy (with another three editions planned for this year), are drastically reducing print frequency. While nearly all L’Officiel titles are currently published either eight or 10 times a year, Eymère said all women’s titles are going down to a quarterly schedule and all men’s titles to only twice a year.

“We’re aligning in all countries,” Eymère said.

That doesn’t include the roughly 25 titles operated by licensees, but the ceo said he’s “pushing them to reduce the amount of print,” while focusing more on social and digital content. That’s the plan for content of directly operated issues, and Eymère said he’s projecting an 80 percent increase in traffic this year and an increase to 40 million in total social media followers from a current 20 million.

“The idea is to keep the print collectible,” Eymère added, noting this is part of a new editorial strategy under Stefano Tonchi, who joined L’Officiel earlier this year in a global editorial role.

Eymère was happy to share audience projections, but declined to share any forecasts on revenue or cash flow for the year. He did allow that the company has some cash on hand because of a successful 2019 and an earlier round of funding in the U.S. The company is backed in the U.S. by Global Emerging Markets, or GEM, and investment group run and founded by Christopher Brown. L’Officiel in the U.S. operates out of the GEM offices in New York. 

He also rejected claims that the publication has cut all of its freelancers in response to the coronavirus fallout, a move, along with furloughs and pay cuts, made by numerous other publications. But he admitted L’Officiel will be using far less freelance work given the reduction in print frequency. Eymère also said there have been “no layoffs to permanent staff” and that L’Officiel has even recently hired its first chief financial officer in France and Switzerland, Jean-Phillipe Amos. 

It seems the company needs a chief financial officer as it’s dealing with numerous claims of unpaid work. Many previous L’Officiel freelancers in the U.S., France and Switzerland, and even a few who were effectively on staff for a time, say they are trying to get paid for work they did in 2019, and even the year before. 

WWD has learned that at least 20 contributors, mainly writers and photographers whose work was published in late 2018 through late 2019, have gone unpaid, with multiple requests for payment to senior staff and executives going generally unheeded. Some of the contributors seeking payment were on the masthead for a time and others were treated as normal staff would be, working full-time hours and having to request days off. But all were only given 1099 tax forms to fill out, meaning they were employed as freelancers.

In all instances of nonpayment, initial assurances of payment, sometimes from as high up chief revenue officer Erica Bartman, turned into radio silence. In at least one instance in Europe, a staffer turned contributor last year filed a legal action in an effort to collect what he claims to be owed. It’s ongoing. In the U.S., a group of roughly a dozen freelancers has started to work with the National Writers Union in an effort to get paid. New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs, which covers labor policy, also confirmed that it’s received a number of complaints about L’Officiel over the last year regarding nonpayment, but attempts to contact the company and resolve the complaints have been so far unsuccessful.

“We’re taking another look to see if there are other options,” a deputy commissioner with the DCA wrote in a statement.

As a group, past L’Officiel contributors in the U.S. alone claim to be owed just under $30,000. Overall, contributors claiming they are owed money have outstanding invoices ranging from around $1,000 to upward of $5,000 and, in one instance, a former contributor is owed more than $10,000.

Of the half dozen contributors WWD spoke or e-mailed with (certain of whom were allowed to discuss the situations of other contributors also trying to get paid) their stories were largely the same. They were assigned work by L’Officiel editors which was published; a 60-or 90-day period passed (a typical time frame for freelance payment at any publication) in which they received no payment; they spent the next several months, up to the present, unsuccessfully contacting leadership in hopes of getting paid. In the U.S., editor in chief Joseph Akel left last fall. Some contributors said he tried to get people the money they were owed, but ultimately failed.

Sasha Frere-Jones is one of the former L’Officiel contributors to have gone unpaid for work he did early last year. He started to contribute to the publication in 2018 under Akel, and had no trouble getting paid until 2019.

“I’ve worked for a lot of people, including people who I don’t like or even respect, and they pay their people,” Frere-Jones said. “This situation is not normal.”

After getting the NWU involved late last year, L’Officiel leadership is said to have initially agreed to a payment schedule for owed U.S. contributors, meaning the publisher would pay off its debt to them in installments because it couldn’t do so upfront. The agreement was revoked as soon as the coronavirus took hold, with the company citing related financial disruptions.

Eymère did not deny at any point that L’Officiel contributors have gone unpaid, but he claimed the situation at hand was not unusual, even after being pushed on the notion that the situation was still “being addressed” as people who worked for his company have waited a year or more to get paid. Even as he said L’Officiel on the whole is “properly financed and has great profit potential in the future.”

“In any business, there’s often a delay in payment for an invoice, it also depends on the reality of the execution of the job,” Eymère said. “This is a normal process you know, and we’re addressing every invoice we have. With corona[virus], sometimes it’s taking more time to address.”

Frere-Jones strongly disagreed with idea that this should be accepted as normal practice. “The idea that this is ok, that this is the normal course of business, it’s not.”

Indeed, in other instances of publications not paying contributors well past the date they were owed, it’s been a sign of severe financial straits. As previously noted, Eymère stressed repeatedly that this is not the case at L’Officiel, saying the company has money coming in and a positive outlook. 

Frere-Jones’ goal in fighting for payment is not about the money at this point, as he admits he’s owed less than many other people that have worked for L’Officiel.

“At this point, I’ve actually given up on seeing the money I’m owed,” Frere-Jones said. “I just don’t want this to keep happening to other people.”

Another contributor owed money for more than a year struck a similar tone. The contributor had actually given up trying to get paid, but after realizing there were so many others in the same position decided to get on board again.

“For me, it’s less about getting paid and more that I don’t want anyone in my industry to work with them and have to go through what I’ve gone through,” the former contributor said. 

The contributor noted that there is the possibility of a class-action lawsuit through the NWU, should L’Officiel continue holding out payment. But the likelihood of people actually walking away from that with what they’re owed is almost nonexistent, the contributor noted.

As for what recourse former contributors have to get paid for past due invoices, Eymère’s advice is to make sure they have a “validated invoice,” so the company can be sure they’re seeking payment for the work assigned. Then they should contact senior editorial staff with their past invoices. All those seeking payment say they have invoices and have contacted senior staff and executives about nonpayment, repeatedly. Eymère did not deny that some people have waited a year to be paid, but said in these instances “It may be a case of proper commission being discussed.”

“This is the normal course of business, but we’re addressing each invoice,” Eymère said.

Under the Freelance Isn’t Free law, adopted in 2017 in New York City, where L’Officiel U.S. is based, freelancers are entitled to payment, in full, within a contractually agreed upon period. If there was no specifically agreed upon time frame for payment, a publisher has 30 days to pay. No former L’Officiel contributors who WWD spoke to agreed to wait an indefinite period for payment.  

In explaining his position, Eymère mentioned the difficulties in keeping track of magazine operations in 30 countries, which — until the recent decision to limit print and related freelance work — averaged 1,500 freelance assignments a year. That equals about four freelance assignments per issue, per month.

He also pointed to changes in staff over the last year, leaving newer hires to have to start rectifying invoices for work they didn’t assign. This was also part of the reasoning the NWU group is said to have gotten initially from the company on why freelancers had had so much trouble getting paid.

“We’re trying to reconcile the old and new staff,” Eymère said. “But the board of the company, shareholders and management are very clear on the fact that everything that is not paid will be addressed in a timely manner.”

For More, See:

Endeavor Culling 20% of Staff From WME Agency

Fashion P.R. Agencies Keep Culling Staff Amid Coronavirus Fallout

L.A. Times Furloughs Non-Union Workers, Cuts Senior Staff Pay

AMI Cuts Staff Pay by Nearly a Quarter, Citing Coronavirus

Playboy Magazine Ceases Print Edition After 66 years

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