Let’s try to make sense of that $600,000 rock NFT

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an NFT rock of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - Ridiculous [NFTs are a canary in the market]( coal mine. - The [Fed is making inequality worse](. - Millennials are [spending too much on friends’ celebrations](. - Europe’s economy [may have the last laugh](. Between an NFT Rock and a Hard Place For a while in 1975, the hottest toy in America was the Pet Rock. It was a rock you treated like a pet. It cost $4, or about $20 in today’s money. It was ridiculous. But it made its creator rich and maybe helped people forget about Vietnam and Watergate for a bit. Recently Justin Sun, CEO of the crypto platform TRON, bought a digital picture of a rock. It cost $611,170, or $3.1 million in 1975 money. It’s ridiculous. Here’s a picture of the picture of the rock he bought, which you can have for free, as a treat: That’s a pretty neat picture of a rock, I guess. But when society collapses, any Pet Rock will be much more useful, not only as a companion but also as, say, a self-defense device or a makeshift wheat mill. Lots of uses for rocks, when you think about it. That picture of the rock will be gone forever. People paying the median price of a California home for an NFT of a rock may not be a societal crisis. Justin Sun got some relatively cheap publicity for all his crypto what-nots. But it is a honking red-light [alarm that something may be badly out of whack with our markets](, warns Jared Dillian. One possibility: There’s too much money sloshing around out there with nowhere to go, so people feel free to blow it on pictures of rocks. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Beanie Babies bubble expanded and burst more or less in sync with the dot-com bubble 20 years ago, Jared writes. The world’s premier money-pumper is the U.S. Federal Reserve. It meets this week to talk central-bank shop. One of the topics on its agenda is wealth inequality and what to do about it. Lisa Abramowicz has a suggestion: [Stop giving so much money to rich people](. The Fed’s jello-soft monetary policy keeps markets grossly inflated. This favors the wealthy but doesn’t seem to help the economy or the less-wealthy when all the money is tied up in bonds and pictures of rocks. Every little bit helps, the Fed might argue, and the economy is still far too shaky to end stimulus now, especially with the delta variant of Covid surging everywhere. But [it could at least start dialing back the quantitative easing](, writes Bloomberg’s editorial board. QE is the wrong medicine for what ails the economy now and limits the Fed’s policy options if the economy should suddenly boom. Although it could always start buying pictures of rocks. Bonus Inflated-Asset Reading: Cheap federal loans [won't help first-time homebuyers compete]( with Wall Street. — Conor Sen You Don’t Have to Go to That Wedding For years, millennials have been scolded that their coffee and avocado-toast habits are financially [ruinous](. It turns out the real financial ruin was the friends they made along the way. Because all of those friends keep getting married and having babies and revealing genders and doing other things that demand your presence, and also presents. And all of that stuff costs a lot of money, writes Erin Lowry, [enough to load many millennials with even more debt](. And it’s only going to get worse next year, or in 2023, or whenever Covid finally releases us from limbo. But there are ways to celebrate your friends’ big life events without going broke, Erin writes: For example, did you know you don’t have to be in, or even go to, every wedding? Telltale Charts Europe’s economy, perpetually the Jan Brady to the Marcia and Cindy of the U.S. and U.K., is [finally getting its moment to shine](, writes Marcus Ashworth. Best Buy had a pretty good pandemic, but it [couldn’t keep up that kind of online sales growth forever](, writes Tae Kim. Now it seems to be payback time. Further Reading Recall elections are bad, and [California’s recall election is especially bad](. — Jonathan Bernstein [Nobody should think the Taliban cares]( about helping the Afghan people or its own standing in the world. — Bobby Ghosh The [press isn’t being unfair to President Joe Biden]( about Afghanistan. — Ramesh Ponnuru State visits are nice, but the U.S. needs concrete action to [reassure its Southeast Asian partners](. — Ruth Pollard The Kremlin is [pulling out all the stops to win a parliamentary election]( to bolster Putin’s legitimacy. — Clara Ferreira Marques Hedge funds should [use their newfound popularity to lock in]( investors. — Matt Levine ICYMI Biden [stuck to the August 31 deadline]( for Afghanistan withdrawal. Nancy [Pelosi and moderate Democrats struck a deal]( on infrastructure. The [best places to buy a house]( are in Texas, apparently. Kickers [Foxes use magnetism]( to find prey. Many [cultures still speak in whistles](. The [case for agnosticism](. RIP [Charlie Watts](. Notes:  Please send hot dogs and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like Bloomberg Opinion Today? [Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more](. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth 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 Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022