5 things to start your day

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( Democrats get back to stimulus work, U.S. energy crisis deepens, and more signs the pandemic is slowing. Stimulus Democratic party lawmakers are quickly putting the [impeachment trial]( behind them as they get back to the business of designing a stimulus package that will pass the Senate. With time short ahead of the ending of key benefits from the last round of pandemic relief on March 14, provisions such as the $15 federal minimum wage requirement [will require delicate handling](. President Joe Biden is planning public events this week, including a town hall event in Milwaukee later today, to refocus the country on fighting the pandemic and to gather support for his economic plan. Deep Freeze The unprecedented cold weather which has broken daily temperature records in hundreds of places in the southern United States is [crippling power systems](. Nearly 5 million people are without electricity with no end in sight as the [freezing conditions]( are forecast to continue through tomorrow. Oil refineries and gas production in the region are badly hit, while pipeline operators have declared force majeure, helping to push spot prices to "[crazy](" levels. President Biden approved an emergency declaration for Texas, making more federal resources available to the state. Paid Post What's the most effective way to [learn math, science, and computer science](? Research shows that active learning works best. [Brilliant]( offers interactive visualizations and problem-solving to help you build mastery. Join 8 million+ people on Brilliant today, and get [20% off an annual subscription](. Brilliant Vaccine The signs from the U.S. on the progress of the pandemic continue to be hopeful, with Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations [dropping dramatically]( with almost [12% of the population]( receiving at least one dose of a vaccine. In the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson is drawing up plans to gradually ease curbs, saying he wants the current lockdown [to be the last](. Hong Kong is relaxing social distancing rules from Thursday, while a study in Israel showed a [94% drop in symptomatic cases]( among those who had received two doses. Markets slip There's no obvious threat out there today to derail the longest run of stock gains in 17 years. Overnight the MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.6% while Japan's Topix index closed 0.6% higher. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was had risen 0.1% by 5:50 a.m. Eastern Time with energy stocks the best performers. S&P 500 futures pointed to a [strong start to the trading week](, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.243%, [oil rose]( and gold gained. Coming up... Empire Manufacturing for February is at 8:30 a.m. December TIC flow data at 4:00 p.m. Fed Governor Michelle Bowman, Kansas City Fed President Esther George, Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly all speak later. Hedge funds disclose their investments in 13f filings. CVS Health Corp., Palantir Technologies Inc. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. are among the companies reporting results. What we've been reading This is what's caught our eye over the weekend. - Odd Lots: How Monster Beverage shares [soared 100,000%]( in the last 20 years. - JPMorgan's barometer says markets are the [most complacent in two decades](. - Nikkei approaches [bubble-era highs]( after breaching 30,000 level. - The world will [pay more for meat]( as food inflation deepens. - Big oil invests in startup that [drills for clean energy](. - What happens when a city's largest employer goes "work from anywhere." - Scientists narrow down the "weight" [of dark matter](. And finally, here’s what Joe's interested in this morning The quickest way to go crazy is to argue about inflation on the internet. If you state that it's mild, then someone will respond with some made up index that shows we're already in hyperinflation. Point out how the methodology on that index is garbage, and they'll switch to talking about "asset inflation." Point out how the concept of asset inflation is nonsensical, since the goal is to measure the cost of living and stuff like stocks and baseball cards aren't part of living costs, and they might respond with [a version of this chart](. It shows that in fact some goods, like medical care, are going up for very fast even if not all categories are rising. Of course this chart doesn't mean that much. Any index is going to have some components that are up a lot and some that are down a lot. The average is the average. The point is, if someone is ideologically committed to the existence of rampant inflation, there's no convincing them otherwise. Still, by the time the conversation does turn to this chart, we're at least getting somewhere and dealing in the land of facts. I was recently listening to [Naufal Sanaullah](, Chief Macro Strategist at Eia Alpha Partners on the [Infinite Loops podcast]( hosted by [Jim O'Shaughnessy](. Anyway, around the 11-minute mark they talk about inflation, and where it's showing up, and Sanaullah put it really well. There's this dynamic of demand-driven inflation and monetary inflation... (but) the only real inflation we've seen in America is "grift dynamics" -- these are artificially imposed supply constraints across the board from housing to education to childcare. Tightening interest rates or raising taxes, that doesn't fix these inflations. These are supply-driven inflations. In other words, if you look at the above chart where the inflation is, it's all broken markets. The characterization of "grift dynamics" is perfect, because then instead of just talking about raising interest rates to control price pressure in these categories, we can talk about fighting the grift. Fighting centralized entities that make obscene profits in broken markets. So if, say, we're talking about education costs, people on the left can talk about providing more funding to public colleges to make them cheaper to attend. And conservatives can criticize the Ivy racket. And Silicon Valley libertarians can say everyone should just go to YouTube College. But the point is, regardless of your ideology, everyone's talking about the actual problem. Same with medical care. On the left, people might argue for some centralized buyer and price setter of medical goods. And on the right, maybe there will be demands for total deregulation of the markets. But again, at least it's discussing the actual issues -- what is it about our healthcare system that makes it so expensive -- as opposed to posting a chart of the M2 money supply and then imagining that that has something to do with the top half of the above chart. All that being said, it is theoretical that at some point in the future, actual inflation in the form of sustained general price increases that erode our purchasing power could emerge. And of course this is of great concern to the Fed and holders of Treasuries. And there's been a lot of discussion of this kind of inflation lately, with the economy recovering and the administration set to spend more on relief and stimulus. So on this, [read Skanda Amarnath and Alex Williams at Employ America](, on the three types of inflation, and what to watch out for in the months and years ahead. Joe Weisenthal is an editor at Bloomberg. Like Bloomberg's Five Things? [Subscribe for unlimited access]( to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close.  Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](.  You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Five Things newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022