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

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

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

• Coronavirus – latest US updates
• Coronavirus – latest global updates

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.

We celebrate VE Day with the need to forge new trading relationships and with the grotesque economic burden of the coronavirus

• See all our coronavirus coverage

In making his landmark post-Brexit speech in February under Sir James Thornhill’s baroque painted ceiling in the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, Boris Johnson believed he had found the perfect setting to paint his own picture of Britain charting a new course as a free-trading, independent, open and liberal nation.

Like the painting above him, eulogising the triumph of William and Mary over the popish and tyrannical French, Johnson’s speech was an optimistic and patriotic piece of work. It offered a distinctive vision of British prosperity and diplomatic superiority.

For his latest drama, Corneliu Porumboiu revived a language unique to the valleys of La Gomera in the Canary Islands; a steep learning curve for his actors – and our writer

Try to imagine the least film-noir scene possible and you might come up with a group of five-year-olds learning to whistle. It is late morning, pre-lockdown, in a classroom at Nereida Díaz Abreu school on La Gomera in the Canary Islands, and the teacher – a bent knuckle crammed in his mouth – is relaying instructions in a piercing, swooping, set of whistles. The kids look quizzically skywards, then collapse in hysterics, although most eventually nail it.

“Touch your left ear with your right hand,” the teacher reiterates in Spanish.

Related: The Whistlers (La Gomera) review – thrilling Romanian corrupt-cop noir

We say to the kids: when you go to Tenerife and say you’re from La Gomera, people will ask you if you can whistle

Her freaky, filthy tracks frequently break the internet – most recently with a guest spot from Beyoncé – but the Houston rapper won’t let the internet break her

• ‘We do what we want, for ourselves’: why it’s a golden age for women in rap

Given that her lyrical prowess has made her one of the hottest rappers in the US, it’s hardly surprising that Megan Thee Stallion is good at anecdotes. We’re talking over Zoom – Megan looking impeccably high-glam, worthy of a Real Housewives reunion – as she regales me with how she ended up recording a remix with her idol.

“I got a call: Beyoncé wants to do a remix to Savage,” she says, shaking her head with disbelief. “And I was like ... what? Shut up. Shut up. You’re lying. Beyoncé don’t want to get on nothing with me. Come on, it’s me! I know I’m Megan Thee Stallion, but dang!”

I can’t be mad at the next girl for wanting to be the best. Why can't we both agree that we bad?

(New Deal)
With his fourth solo album the acclaimed producer faces down the confusion of modern life with intoxicating calm

Blake Mills has picked up Grammy nominations for his production work on Laura Marling’s Semper Femina, John Legend’s Darkness and Light and Perfume Genius’s No Shape. However, the fourth solo album by the 33-year old Californian former touring guitarist should turn the spotlight towards his own work. Mutable Set is intended as a “soundtrack to the emotional dissonance of modern life”. Themes range from precious people and experiences to disappointment and isolation, though this isn’t conventional singer-songwriter fare.