Weekend Edition: “To get rich is glor ious”

Welcome to the weekend!

It’s been another busy week in US politics, with Donald Trump’s Cabinet taking shape and a Department of Government Efficiency in the works. Donald Trump Jr. won’t be a part of either (he’s joining a venture capital firm) and neither will Jamie Dimon (he doesn’t want a boss anyway). Trump may also kill a $7,500 tax credit for electric cars, but this week’s most-read story suggests drivers are still EV-curious: Honda’s Prologue Is Quietly Creeping Up on Tesla.

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For decades, amateur stock pickers gathered daily on a street corner in Shanghai to swap tips and market gossip. The 2015 market crash quieted the confab, and Covid killed it. But now the stock salon is back, thanks to a stimulus-fueled rally that started in September. Investors’ philosophies run the gamut — one won’t hold a losing stock for more than three days. But critics say their approach is more roulette than reasoning, and warn that too much speculation will make it hard for China to turn its $10 trillion stock market into a source of wealth and funding.

Roulette-like risks are familiar to soldiers in Ukraine, where a drone arms race with Russia has made hiding on the battlefield almost impossible. Today’s drone warfare is markedly different from earlier conflicts where US pilots guided a lone $30 million Reaper drone to hit a desert target hundreds of miles away. Now drones are cheap and lightweight, and hundreds of manufacturers have sprung up to meet demand.

Some threats are subtler than artillery fire. At the Oxford Bookstore in Kolkata, manager Abhijit Hela says it would be a “big risk” to sell Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, even though a court recently ruled that a 1988 import ban is no longer valid. (In a Rushdie-esque twist, the government can’t locate the original customs notification.) The decision is cold comfort for booksellers used to authorities banning works considered inflammatory.

Could AI Kill the Career Ladder?
In 2023, OpenAI published an analysis of ChatGPT’s ability to perform thousands of tasks across more than 1,000 occupations. When Molly Kinder and her colleagues analyzed the data, they found a consequential trend: Entry-level knowledge jobs are easier to automate than those done by their supervisors.

Did a Bank Run Kill Credit Suisse?
After social media sent Credit Suisse into a tailspin, bankers and the authorities that regulate them started fretting over the impact of the internet on financial stability. But hindsight makes clear how employees’ scandalous behavior is what really brought Credit Suisse to its knees, writes Meltdown author Duncan Mavin.

Trump could catalyze change in Europe.
For all of Trump’s claims that Europeans boosted their economies at the US’s expense, the truth is that the US has left the EU in the dust, write Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait and Opinion columnist Adrian Wooldridge. Europe’s best revenge would be to treat Trump’s election as a spur to solving its problems.

Globalization doesn’t need the US.
The US president-elect has vowed to impose an array of tariffs upon entering office, calling them “the greatest thing ever invented.” If those policies come to pass, countries around the world won’t necessarily trade less, says Bloomberg Economics’ Maeva Cousin. They’ll just trade less with the US and more with each other.

What we’re telling our bickering kids: I’m not choosing sides! On US-China relations, neither is Brazil. The country has long looked to the Atlantic for commerce, but is now increasingly exploring infrastructure projects with China.

What we’re pondering: Wealth and the White House. After helping bankroll Trump’s campaign, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk could reap rewards from federal spending and deregulation, while disrupting industries and amassing profits.

What we’re re-watching. It Follows. As FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam tries to chart a new path for the logistics giant, its legendary former CEO, Fred Smith, is watching over his shoulder — and possibly positioning a son to take over.

What we’re worrying about: Between 1946 and 2021, there were more than 500 wars worldwide. Just a quarter of those conflicts ended through peaceful negotiation, and 40% never ended at all.

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