FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2020 B1
YTECH ECONOMY MEDIA FINANCE
3 ENVIRONMENT
As climate change raises sea
levels, storm surges and high
tides will likely push farther
inland, researchers say.
7 WHEELS3-D printers are already
creating precision parts forracecar teams. Can the major
automakers be far behind?12 SPORTSMembers of the Phillies
organization are positive forcoronavirus, meaning more
disorder in M.L.B.’s schedule.WASHINGTON — Republicans want
to replace a weekly bonus check
for the unemployed with a new
system that offers 70 percent of
the wages workers were earning
before they were laid off. Experts
say it would be a difficult switch to
pull off and one that would disad-
vantage lower-wage workers.
There are 53 unemployment
systems across the United States
and its territories, all of them in-
undated with record numbers of
unemployment claims, and they
all have different ways of calculat-
ing and handing out benefits.
As of now, they all dispense
their normal unemployment
checks, which vary based on the
state and how much a worker was
earning over a certain period be-
fore losing his or her job. For the
last several months, states have
been adding $600 per week from
the federal government on top of
those benefits because of the coro-
navirus pandemic.
Republicans want to transition
the system to a uniform enhanced
benefit for every unemployed
worker in the country — one that
equals 70 percent of what workers
were earning immediately before
they were laid off. That would re-
quire states to implement a new
way of calculating past wages,
and to adjust benefit checks ac-
cordingly, at a time when they
have been overwhelmed with themore straightforward task of pro-
cessing and paying out a deluge of
unemployment claims.
It could take months to pull that
switch off in every state.
“You’re asking for a varying
amount of changes in these state
governments,” said Kathryn Anne
Edwards, an economist at theRAND Corporation who studies
unemployment benefits. “Some of
them are going to be faster than
others. Because the story of un-
employment benefits is always,
always going to be the story of dif-
ferences between states.”Jobless Payment Change Could Take Months
There are 53 unemployment systems across the country; each has a different way of calculating benefits.NATI HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESSBy JIM TANKERSLEY
and TARA SIEGEL BERNARDCONTINUED ON PAGE B616
Number of states that have fully
updated jobless insurance systems.
Grilled
Lawmakers,
Big Tech
Turns Up the Gaslight
by
WASHINGTON — Pacific Invest-
ment Management Company
runs a hedge fund registered in
the Cayman Islands, a common
structure for avoiding certain U.S.
taxes. But when a profit opportu-
nity arose from the ashes of Amer-
ica’s coronavirus crisis, that inter-
national location did not stop it
from seizing the moment.
The Federal Reserve opened a
highly anticipated emergency
lending program in June, a re-
vamped version of one that
handed sophisticated investors
double-digit returns during the
2008 financial crisis. The 2020 ver-
sion is backed by congressional
funding, and the rules stipulate
that only American companies
can participate as borrowers. For
Pimco’s offshore fund, there was
an easy way to still benefit.
The offshore fund is invested in
an entity registered in Delaware
and tied to the larger firm, which
is based in Newport Beach, Calif.
That entity, which investment
managers can use to make trans-
actions, also has backing from theDespite Rule,
Global Firms
Make Money
Off U.S. Pain
By JEANNA SMIALEKCONTINUED ON PAGE B6OAKLAND, CALIF. — A day after law-
makers grilled the chief execu-
tives of the biggest tech compa-
nies about their size and power,
Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and
Facebook reported surprisingly
healthy quarterly financial re-
sults, defying one of the worst eco-
nomic downturns on record.
Even though the companies felt
some sting from the spending
slowdown, they demonstrated, as
critics have argued, that they are
operating on a different playing
field from the rest of the economy.
Amazon’s sales were up 40 per-
cent from a year ago and its profit
doubled. Facebook’s profit
jumped 98 percent. Even though
the pandemic shuttered many of
its stores, Apple increased sales of
all its products in every part of the
world and posted $11.25 billion in
profit. Advertising revenue
dropped for Alphabet, the laggard
of the bunch, but it still did better
than Wall Street had expected.
“The strong continue to get
stronger,” said Dan Ives, manag-Lean Times,
But Fat City
For the Big 4
Of High Tech
CONTINUED ON PAGE B4By Daisuke Wakabayashi, Karen
Weise, Jack Nicas and Mike IsaacWhen Mark Zuckerberg appeared in
front of Congress two years ago, the
Facebook chief executive’s memorable
retort to a clueless questioner was
“Senator, we run ads.” After Wednes-
day’s marathon appearance by Mr.
Zuckerberg and three other tech titans
at a House hearing on competition in
the tech industry, a more fitting quote
might be “Congresswoman, I’m not
sure what you would mean by ‘threat-
en.’ ”
That was Mr. Zuckerberg’s evasive
answer to a question asked by Repre-
sentative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat
from Washington, about whether Face-
book had ever threatened to squash
smaller competitors by copying their
products if they wouldn’t let Facebook
acquire them.
It was a good question with a clear-
cut answer. Facebook’s copy-and-crush
approach has been well documented for
years, and Ms. Jayapal brought even
more receipts — previously undisclosed
messages in which Mr. ZuckerbergKevin Roose
THE SHIFTCONTINUED ON PAGE B4PABLO ROCHATBD