| Plus: An interview with Mark Carney | |
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| Welcome to the weekend! One year ago, we launched Bloomberg Weekend to make the most of the two days a week when time feels more elastic. Exploring new ideas might happen on your laptop over coffee, on your phone at a kid’s football game, or in your ears on a long walk. That flexibility is why we’re expanding the Weekend Interview into a new podcast: The Mishal Husain Show. Mishal’s conversations with notable people will delve into the exercise and limits of power, the ways the world is changing, and how we seek joy in even the most chaotic of times. You can listen to the first show, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, on Bloomberg.com, iHeart, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (You’ll still find the annotated interview on Bloomberg.com and in our app.) As always: Don’t miss this week’s Pointed quiz (what were “spinners” in Blade Runner?), Alphadots word puzzle (“where people often go for a spin”), and Forecast newsletter (tomorrow’s is all optimism). For unlimited access to Bloomberg.com, please subscribe. And thanks for reading. | |
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| A year ago, Canada’s Liberals looked on their way out. Then Donald Trump returned to the White House, reviving talk of Canada as the “51st state” and turning economic interdependence into a liability. In that climate, political newcomer Mark Carney — twice a G-7 central bank governor — led the Liberals to a minority win. Seven months later, Carney tells Mishal Husain he’s been surprised by the relentlessness of the job and the fluidity of relationships with world leaders. But those relationships are key to his ambitious goals: diversifying the economy, cutting emissions, backing Ukraine and preserving favorable trade terms with the US. | |
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| Carney might enjoy a chat with Xi Jinping, who knows plenty about US trade brinkmanship. For years, China has hinted it could wield its dominance in rare earths — vital for goods like smartphones and EVs — as leverage. In 2019, People’s Daily was blunt: “Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” That standoff escalated last week when Beijing unveiled export controls that effectively give Xi a veto over anything containing Chinese rare earths. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it a “bazooka” aimed at supply chains. But China sees the move as mirroring tactics the US used to cement its postwar supremacy, Daniel Ten Kate writes. | |
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| Rare earths are tiny minerals at the center of a fight for hard power. But other metals — nickel, bronze, copper — have long been cast into statues that project a different kind of strength. After the removal of Confederate memorials and other disfavored statues, a new class of monument builders wants to create tangible symbols of Western power in the US. Their visions are big — a 450-foot Prometheus, a 650-foot George Washington — and inspired by what one calls “symbols of patriotism and excellence and strength and transcendence and power.” In today’s culture wars, Sophie Alexander writes, monuments are a proxy for the shifting Overton window. | |
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| Whether it’s diversifying your country’s economy, beating the US, or building a 450-foot tribute to a Greek god, it’s good to have goals. Performance goals focus on external standards, comparisons to others, or extrinsic rewards: Close more deals than your colleagues, get a 15% bonus. These can drive ambition but often lead to stress. Avoidance goals — don’t eat the donut — are powered by fear, not joy. But mastery goals celebrate learning for its own sake. When Sarah Green Carmichael set out to reach all the peaks in Alfred Wainwright’s guide to the Lakeland Fells, the mastery goal helped her with commitment, intention and heart. | |
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| Japan
In a dim warehouse in Kojima, the heart of Japan’s denim industry, the deafening clatter of looms doesn’t faze 79-year-old Shigeru Uchida. Five decades at the machines have stained his fingertips blue and honed the intuition needed to keep the aging equipment alive — skills few young people are learning. Prized by fashion houses like Dior and worn by celebrities, Japanese denim is booming. But Kojima’s aging workforce threatens the tradition behind this globally coveted fabric.  Photographer: Fred Mery/Bloomberg France
Minutes after his conviction last month, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy stood before cameras in a Paris tribunal, declaring, “This injustice is a scandal.” On Monday, he quietly returned for a closed-door meeting where prosecutors set the date for his five-year sentence for criminal conspiracy tied to Libyan campaign funds. Sarkozy’s sentencing is “a thunderclap” for an already fragile political system. The French are the most distrustful of politics in Europe — just 26% say they have any trust — and faith is slipping further.  Photographer: Julien De Rosa/AFP/Getty Images | |
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| This year’s economics Nobel comes with a warning for the US. The country once led on innovation and creative destruction, but corporate consolidation, culture wars and restrictive academic and immigration policies now threaten the openness that made that possible. The K-shaped recovery went pear-shaped. After the pandemic, it described a world where white-collar workers thrived while blue-collar ones floundered. A few years later, sectors from auto loans to airlines are emblematic of the sharpening split. But is it a bad thing? A self-driving car is the best way to get to work. There’s something fundamentally American about the freedom to drive. But after a week of Waymo rides, Bloomberg’s car columnist found it better for commuting and chores; even ride-share platforms suddenly looked outdated. | |
Famine’s Long Shadow | | “Once you start thinking about vulnerability, you end up in the womb.” | | David Baker Physician | | In the winter of 1944–45, a Nazi blockade starved the western Netherlands, cutting rations to under 800 calories a day. Tens of thousands died, but the Dutch Hunger Winter’s deeper toll emerged decades later: Babies exposed in utero faced higher risks of heart disease, diabetes and mental illness later in life. As famine grips Gaza and Sudan, those lessons feel urgent. Every pregnancy and childhood shaped by hunger risks becoming tomorrow’s burden of disease. | | |
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