The Treasury cannot afford to spend £10bn a month indefinitely, but a cliff-edge end to Covid-19 wage subsidies is not the answer

What’s the safest way for Rishi Sunak to wind down his wage-support furlough scheme? Well, start by finding the correct language. The imagery in the current political talk about “weaning” businesses off an “addiction” is absurd.

When the chancellor introduced the coronavirus job retention scheme on 20 March, he said it was to “protect, as far as possible, people’s jobs and incomes”. There will be trouble if, less than two months later and with lockdown still in place, companies and their workers are portrayed as needy infants or addicts who should know better.

We urgently need a fairer tax system so that rich people like me help solve the fallout from coronavirus, not just profit from it

• Gary Stevenson is an economist and former interest rate trader

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I made my first million the year Greece went under. I was 24 years old at the time.

I’d attended a presentation given by one of Citibank’s senior economists, in which he explained that government debts of the world’s major economies had grown to dangerous levels, and were continuing to grow. He warned that markets could stop lending to some of these governments, forcing a devastating round of austerity on to already battered economies.

If we repeat 2008, buying a house with one’s own wages will be a thing of the past

Related: Don't expect a snapback for the UK economy after lockdown is lifted | Larry Elliott

Pace of layoffs tests states’ unemployment benefits fund as 33m jobless Americans make claims in past seven weeks

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Another three million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as the coronavirus pandemic continued to exact its terrible toll on the US jobs market.

More than 33 million jobless Americans have now made claims in the past seven weeks.

Oil price rises and shares end week on a high despite growing economic damage from coronavirus pandemic

Global markets rose on Friday despite mounting economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic, as tensions eased between the White House and Beijing.

Share prices on Wall Street and in Europe ended the week on a high amid rising hopes that lockdown measures could be lifted soon to reboot growth and that a full-blown global trade war could be averted.

Related: US Nasdaq index recovers all of 2020's losses triggered by Covid-19