【推荐2】Dow (道琼斯指数) closes below 20,000, wiping out nearly all the gains of Trump’s presidency (总统任期)

Stocks nosedived (暴跌) on Wednesday following the fourth trading halt (跌停) in two weeks, with Wall Street spooked (惊吓) by the deepening economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump earlier in the day announced that U.S. and Canada will block “non-essential (不必要的) traffic” from traveling across the northern border (边界) to control the disease’s spread.

The Dow fell 1,335, or 6.3%, to close at 19,903. Earlier in the day, stocks tumbled more than 10%, triggering (导致) the market’s “circuit breaker” that halts trading for 15 minutes. Trading is stopped when stocks decline by 7%, 13% or 20% in a single session. The broad-based S&P 500 fell 5.2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq slumped 4.7%.

“Markets were quick to give back Tuesday’s gains, with equities (股市) returning to a sea of red,” TD Securities analysts said.

Wednesday’s slump wipes out roughly three years of stock market gains, with the Dow closing below 20,000 for the first time since 2017. On January 20, 2017, the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the index closed at 19,827. The S&P 500, which ended Thursday at 2,398, is just 227 points above its level when Mr. Trump formally took office.

The decline is noteworthy for its speed, with the losses mounting over the course of four weeks. The Dow had hit an all-time record on February 12, a little over a month ago, with the S&P and Nasdaq peaking a week later.

The widening pandemic, which has led to at least 109 deaths in the U.S., is prompting cities and states across the U.S. to order residents to stay home and to shut restaurants and bars and other gathering places. Those measures are spiraling through the economy,leading to layoffs and sharp declines in revenue for many consumer-focused businesses. The U.S. is likely already in a recession, according to Oxford Economics.

“We now see a severe global recession occurring in the first half of 2020,” Deutsche Bank’s economists wrote in a research note. “The quarterly declines in GDP growth we anticipate substantially exceed anything previously recorded going back to at least World War II.”

【推荐3】If you’re gathering your teenage kids in the living room to watch “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” on Disney+, just know there’s a good chance they’d rather be playing “Fortnite”, a popular game.

That could totally be the case according to a new study from a consulting firm in Deloitte, which analyzed the generational divide in at-home entertainment.

The study, based on an online survey of more than 2,000 consumers, showed preferences are changing rapidly between millennials and the younger generation when it comes to how they want to spend their leisure time.

For Gen Z, defined as those born from 1997 to 2007,video - whether movies or television shows - is not a priority, the study found. 26% of Gen Zers in the survey said playing video games as their favorite entertainment activity, compared to 14% for listening to music, 12% for browsing the Internet and 11% for engaging on social media. Only 10% said they would rather watch a movie or TV show at home.

That compares to millennials (born 1983 to 1996),18% of whom chose watching movies and TV shows as their preferred mode of entertainment. Video games were the the entertainment option of choice for 16% of millennials.       

“Gen Z would much rather spend time gaming, listening to music or using social media,” Jana Arbanas, entertainment leader at Deloitte, said. “That was a really alarming contrast that we saw relative to the shift that's happening and how Gen Z will impact this industry.”

“Millennials took the behaviors they developed as teenagers, and they've taken them forward into their early 30s, and so if Gen Z is anything like that, their behaviors may change slightly, but I don't see a complete aging out of their behaviors,” said Kevin Westcott, technology, media and telecom leader.

【推荐1】Just five one-hundredths of an inch thick, light golden in color and with a perfect “saddle curl,” the Lay’s potato chip seems an unlikely weapon for global domination. But its maker, Frito-Lay, thinks otherwise. “Potato chips are a snack food for the world,” said Salman Amin, the company’s head of global marketing. Amin believes there is no corner of the world that can resist the charms of a Frito-Lay potato chip.

Frito-Lay is the biggest snack maker in America, owned by PepsiCo. and accounts for over half of the parent company’s $3 billion annual profits. But the U.S. snack food market is largely saturated, and to grow, the company has to look overseas.

Its strategy rests on two beliefs: first a global product offers economies of scale with which local brands cannot compete. And second, consumers in the 21st century are drawn to “global” as a concept. “Global” does not mean products that are consciously identified as American, but ones that consumers-especially young people-see as part of a modern, innovative world in which people are linked across cultures by shared beliefs and tastes. Potato chips are an American invention, but most Chinese, for instance, do not know that Frito-Lay is an American company. Instead, Riskey, the company’s research and development head, would hope they associate the brand with the new world of global communications and business.

With brand perception a crucial factor, Riskey ordered a redesign of the Frito-Lay logo. The logo, along with the company’s long-held marketing image of the “irresistibility” of its chips, would help facilitate the company’s global expansion.

The executives acknowledge that they try to swing national eating habits to a food created in America, but they deny that amounts to economic imperialism. Rather, they see Frito-Lay as spreading the benefits of free enterprise across the world. “We’re making products in those countries, we’re adapting them to the tastes of those countries, building businesses and employing people and changing lives.” said Steve Reinemund, PepsiCo’s chief executive.

【推荐3】The world's consumption of fashion is huge. To give just one example, the European Union imported almost 29 billion worth of clothing in 2015. As consumption has risen, prices have fallen. Today, a hand-finished shirt may cost as little as five euros. To make clothes at these low prices,companies have to keep costs down. One way they do this is by using offshore production, that is, to outsource(外包)the production to developing countries like Egypt or Cambodia,where workers are paid much less than in developed countries.

Some experts, like the economist David Schneider, say that outsourcing benefits local economies by providing jobs at higher wages than local workers can make by working in agriculture.Supporters also point out that people in developing countries often line up to take jobs in multinational factories. While this is true, one study of 15 countries found that textile workers earned less than 40 % of the money they needed to live on each month. In some countries, this figure is even lower. Also, most workers are paid by the piece. This means they might earn only a few cents for making a dress which sells for hundreds of euros in Europe. Such low wages are wing and unfair.

Supporters of outsourcing also claim that overseas factories have become safer and more moral in recent years. But working conditions in many offshore factories remain uncomfortable and unsafe.Worker protection laws often don't exist or are not followed. As a result, workers are exposed to chemicals, dust and unsafe levels of noise from sewing machines, Moreover, factory buildings are often unsafe, and horrible accidents happen.

In conclusion, although supporters of outsourcing provide a number of convincing arguments, in my opinion, these do not justify the low wages and dangerous conditions found in many overseas factories. If multinationals are going to continue to benefit from low production costs by using overseas suppliers, I believe they should contribute a much larger share of their massive profits to correcting these problems and improving social conditions in the countries where they are located.