5 things to start your day

[View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Biden battles to save his economic agenda, it’s Big Tech earnings season, and Covid-Zero ambitions get another reality check. Battle lines  As ever, President Joe Biden and the senior Democratic leadership are busy trying to clinch a politically palatable -- scaled down -- version of his economic agenda, with a trip to Europe later this week intensifying the pressure. Underscoring the urgency, Biden [met](Sunday with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin, who has deployed his powerful vote in the 50-50 Senate to impose a big reduction in the original $3.5 trillion plan for social spending and climate-change measures. The latter is an especially thorny issue given the upcoming [global climate conference]( in Glasgow. Democrats are aiming to include strong climate change provisions to meet Biden’s goal of a 50% cut in U.S. greenhouse gases by 2030. Big tech With a Bank of America Corp. survey suggesting once again that the most crowded trade on Wall Street is long tech stocks, [investor conviction]( will get a big test this week. The five largest U.S. technology companies are set to report earnings, with Facebook Inc. kicking off proceedings -- maybe for the last time bearing its famous name ahead of a possible [rebranding](. Among the issues investors are looking out for: How much Apple’s revamped privacy policy is impacting the adverting business. Overall, investors are largely bullish on big tech stocks delivering on their revenue and growth promises despite high valuations, with the Nasdaq 100 Index just 2% below records. In other tech news, PayPal Holdings Inc. said it currently isn’t pursuing an [acquisition]( of Pinterest Inc., ending days of speculation over a potential $45 billion deal. Endemic China is battling to contain a virus [outbreak]( caused by the delta variant from overseas, despite low reported case numbers. The country -- effectively the last in the world to pursue a Covid-Zero [policy]( -- locked down a county in Inner Mongolia, while Beijing has all but banned entry by people arriving from anywhere that’s reported locally transmitted cases. In other virus news, top U.S. health officials signaled confidence that children aged 5 to 11 will begin getting [Covid-19 vaccines](by early November. The Pfizer vaccines will likely be given at pediatricians’ offices rather than at pharmacies or large sites. Markets steady There are quiet vibes in global trading, with the notable exception being the fresh overnight slump in the Turkish lira amid the diplomatic [spat](. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is down 0.1% while Japan’s Topix index closed 0.34% lower. In Europe the Stoxx 600 Index was flat at 5:54 a.m. Eastern Time. S&P 500 futures were slightly up, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.655%, oil was [$84 a barrel]( and gold rose. Coming up... With inflation dominating Wall Street chatter, all eyes will be on the Chicago Fed National Activity Index for September at 8:30 a.m., followed by the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Activity for October two hours later. Treasury will sell $54 billion three-month and $48 billion six-month bills at 11:30 a.m. Aside from Facebook’s after-the-bell results, corporate earnings include Kimberly-Clark Corp., Restaurant Brands International Inc. and Brown & Brown Inc. Biden is expected to continue to pitch his economic agenda. What we've been reading Here's what caught our eye over the last 24 hours. - Alibaba has lost $344 billion in world's biggest [wipeout](. - Shiba Inu [falls]( from records after Musk reveals his crypto buys.  - Behind China’s rising [emissions]( are hundreds of hidden polluters. - Twitter suspends GOP [lawmaker](for misgendering Biden appointee. - Trump’s tech SPAC could make him billions with meme-stock [frenzy](. - How Saudi Arabia is planning to reach [net zero]( by 2060. - The most powerful space [telescope](ever will look back in time. And finally, here’s what Joe’s interested in this morning Over the weekend, [Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that hyperinflation is happening]( and that it's going to change everything. Of course, nobody really knows what he meant or why he said it. One guess is that he's long Bitcoin and it's a good thing to tweet for pumping his bags. Who knows. Also tech types seem to be obsessed with the dollar and monetary policy these days for reasons that aren't clear. Obviously the U.S. is seeing inflation these days that's been higher than in the past, but it's hardly hyper. But then someone will point out this chart of the so-called money supply (or some variant) as their trump card, and show that yes, there really is hyperinflation happening already. Fans of Austrian economics, in particular, are fond of this definition of inflation, that it's not about the price of goods, per se, but the volume of dollars. But anytime I see a chart purporting to show an amount of dollars, my thought is always the same "who cares?". The only reason we should care about any of this stuff is if prices are rapidly getting more expensive. If suddenly there were a huge increase in dollars everywhere, but prices didn't move much, it wouldn't matter. If the price of bread went nuts, it would be very bad. So a chart of the money supply tells us nothing that the inflation chart itself doesn't. And yes, there's no denying that inflation itself has been elevated relative to recent history, but again it's not hyper, and really it's not that wild if you zoom out even just a little. The year-on-year change in headline CPI remains nowhere close to what we saw in the 1970s, and there were even times throughout the 80s where the numbers were higher. Speaking of the 70s, [on the latest Odd Lots](, we spoke with Dan Alpert, a managing partner at Westwood Capital, [and the author of a new paper]( that attempts to debunk the idea that a 70s-style inflationary spiral is coming anytime soon. As he sees it, quantitative ideas about money (such as the one above) have been debunked, and there remains plenty of actual capacity in the economy (domestically and abroad). All the bottlenecks and sources of pressure are in the moving of goods, he says, rather than their actual production. Find it on iTunes [here](. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Twitter [@TheStalwart]( 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. Follow Us 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 - Americas newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](