Eurovision is good business (and good politics too)

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a rocking ride through Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here. The best event a city can host is the Ol [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a rocking ride through Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - The best event a city can host is the Olympics [Eurovision song contest](. - The hottest trend in town is Bitcoin Metaverse [Artificial Intelligence](. - A failure to increase the US debt ceiling would be catastrophic [plain sailing](. Who the Hell Is Edgar? Austria’s entry for this year’s Eurovision song contest is a song about being possessed by the ghost of 19th-century author Edgar Allen Poe. The track, [performed by Teya & Selena](, is an uptempo slice of synth-powered silliness that’s numbingly repetitive, annoyingly inane — and completely addictive. Needless to say, it’s made it to the Eurovision final, which will be held in Liverpool this weekend. (For readers unfamiliar with the questionable delights of the song competition, in which national acts compete to win the phone-in votes of a staggering 160 million viewers or so, I direct you to the 2020 movie [The Story of Fire Saga](, starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams.) For Howard Chua-Eoan, Eurovision is “[all costumes and camp, dancing and pyrotechnics](.” It’s also incredibly lucrative on a cost-revenue basis. Turin shelled out just $13 million to host last year’s event, a thousandth of the $13 billion Tokyo spent on the 2020 Summer Olympics, with the northern Italian city reaping about $90 million in tourist revenue. “Those may be humble amounts in the larger scheme of global events, but it’s still better than being in the red,” Howard notes. “Budget deficits and debt haunt the cities that host the Olympic Games.” Ukraine was last year’s winner with Stefania, a rap-powered folk anthem performed by Kalush Orchestra. A shouted appeal during the performance from an orchestra member to “help Ukraine and Mariupol,” at a time when the besieged Ukrainian city was just days away from falling to the Russians, helped to “buffer the news of the city’s eventual capture,” Howard writes. Russia itself has been banned from the competition after the invasion. “Hopefully, one day soon, the war will end and Russia will be allowed back,” Howard says. “But it will take more than lipstick on a Putin for it to win redemption. “ Even the Stock Market Is Powered by AI These Days If it wasn’t for the investing frenzy surrounding artificial intelligence that’s powered rallies for chipmaker Nvidia Corp. and tech giants Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc., the US stock market would be down for the year, argues Societe Generale SA strategist Manish Kabra. For a while, Bitcoin was the phenomenon every company wanted to be associated with. The Metaverse, which Mark Zuckerberg called the “next frontier” when he renamed Facebook as Meta Platforms Inc. in 2021, had its 15 minutes of fame. Now, argues John Authers, AI [leads the zeitgeist](. Earlier this week, Alphabet made its AI chatbot Bard widely available, and said it plans to embed the technology into other products such as Gmail, Maps and Docs.[1](#footnote-1) “In the space of a few trading hours, the company has since gained $122 billion dollars, a sum equivalent to the entire market capitalizations of Starbucks Corp. and Intel Corp.,” John notes. “Such a staggering gain illustrates the relentless appetite surrounding AI. And Wall Street investors are feeding it.” Alphabet also introduced a refreshed version of its Google search engine incorporating AI, which will generate a single answer to queries that will sit above the usual search results of ads and links. For Parmy Olson, that change [poses a big risk to the advertising model](that Google relies on to generate clicks and revenue, since users are likely to rely on the summary rather than scrolling through the citations published alongside. “There is, after all, a reason for the joke that the best place to store a dead body is page two of Google’s search results,” Parmy writes. “Most people can’t be bothered to keep searching beyond the first list of links. The price could be the ire of advertising customers if Google’s AI search becomes so good that users stop clicking around on links. It could also risk eroding the trust of consumers if the tool starts generating too many erroneous answers.” Telltale Charts If Congress fails to raise the US government’s debt ceiling by June 1 —  when the Treasury Department expects to run out of cash to pay the nation’s bills — Moody’s says financial markets will be “upended” and the White House estimates the stock market could halve in value, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon calls a US default “potentially catastrophic” for global financial markets. “It’s hard to find anyone who disagrees with that sentiment — [except markets themselves](,” notes Nir Kaissar. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is trying to reset relations with Hong Kong as part of a wider rapprochement with China. His motivation stems more from economics than politics, argues Matthew Brooker. “UK exports to the nation jumped 38% last year,” he writes. “With gross domestic product flatlining in the second half and a likely general election next year, [this is a source of growth that Sunak will be loath to put at risk](.” Further Reading [Elon Musk’s new Twitter CEO]( won’t change who calls the shots. — Dave Lee Rockfish can teach us [how to live longer and healthier](, provided we don’t eat them all first. — Faye Flam The Bank of England has made progress in curbing inflation, but [the UK government must play its part](. — Mohamed A. El-Erian Pakistan faces [another lost decade]( as the army takes on Imran Khan. — Mihir Sharma What banking crisis? Finance executives are betting on [a Paris renaissance](. — Lionel Laurent Revlon has an opportunity to help [reimagine what it means to get older]( in a new era of femininity. — Leticia Miranda [The legacy of Andrés Manuel López Obrador]( is threatened by Mexico’s top court. — Juan Pablo Spinetto [Joseph Biden shouldn’t let Chad become another Sudan](. — Bobby Ghosh [The board of UK supermarket Tesco]( must face questions about its chair head on. — Andrea Felsted ICYMI [A $95 billion windfall]( has shipping tycoons splurging before the party ends. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a rival candidate to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, [accused Russia of meddling](in this weekend’s Turkish election.  How [an aging armada and mystery traders]( are keeping Russian oil afloat. First-class cabin makeovers by airlines are giving the rich [hotel rooms in the sky](. Kickers [Dolly Parton dropped World on Fire](, the first single from her forthcoming rock album Rockstar, which will feature duets with Debbie Harry and Sting and cover versions of Queen’s We Are the Champions and Prince’s Purple Rain. [A basketball-slinging dog on TikTok](has correctly predicted the first five games of the series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors. The 100 residents of the Swiss village of Brienz have been ordered to evacuate because [2 million cubic meters of rock]( could break off the mountainside above it within days. Rapper Jay-Z is seeking to open [a New York casino]( at the top of a skyscraper in Times Square. Notes:  Please send lifeboats and feedback to Mark Gilbert at magilbert@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. [1] Bloomberg [has announced]( its own language model for finance. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? 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