Stop falling for Vladimir Putin’s charms

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a superposition of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here.Today’s Agenda Putin is toying with our heart [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a superposition of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - [Putin]( is toying with our hearts. - [The Fed]( just wants us to get along. - We love a [bonus season](. - [Microsoft]( has its head in the cloud. Vladimir Putin Is a Serial Dater In the modern world of dating, there’s a [certain type of dude]( who prides himself on his ability to slide into the DMs of every woman with a pulse. He’s got pre-dad-bod confidence and a willingness to disclose all of his Wordle scores, as long as it took him four tries or less. M&A might be his day job, but being mysterious and aloof is his lucrative side hustle. Not to go all [West Elm Caleb]( on you, but some of these indecisive men end up floating in this bubble of noncommitment indefinitely. You know the type: He’s fluent in astrology and listens to EDM … for fun. He recites French sonnets and summers in Saint-Tropez. He’s experimenting with veganism (except on Saturdays!), which is why he has four types of alternative milks in his refrigerator, three of them expired. He checks his crypto wallet religiously and has multiple pet names for his Roomba. He might be free tonight, but he’s drowning in work so he’ll text you later. Red flags abound! Vladamir Putin is most certainly not a nut-milk-drinking, rave-attending 25-year-old Manhattanite, but he sure is behaving like one. Andreas Kluth [calls the Russian president out on his mind games](, having deliberately created a crisis “in which everything is possible at once, and stays that way.” One minute it seems like he’s going to invade Ukraine; the next minute he claims that’s the furthest thing from the truth. Andreas calls this a “superposition,” which is just a fancy word for a man who doesn’t want to DTR: “Putin, with his KGB-trained mind, realizes that hacking perceptions in this way gives him power.” If Putin ends up *whispers* committing to invading Ukraine, Max Hastings says it would be “[an act of naked aggression](,” which is honestly so on brand it hurts. The worst part? “Many Westerners are rendered even more afraid by recognition that there is pathetically little they can do to stop him,” Max writes. It’s as if Putin is the world’s most contrived serial dater, and he’s gaslighting us all. Bonus Ukraine Reading:  After sending 100,000 troops to Ukraine’s border, [is there a way for Putin to back down]( without hurting his street cred at home? — Bobby Ghosh Pour One Out for the Federal Reserve Some humans are born with an innate desire to please. There’s a solid chance you’ve had a “people pleaser” as a friend, a colleague or even a central bank. Perhaps their Instagram bio says something wishy-washy and annoying like “sprinkling kindness everywhere I go.” Fine, sure, drink your kombucha or whatever. But when you scale people-pleasing on a national level, the goal of a no-conflict, drama-free world seems quite idealistic. The free world thrives on chaos and tension! Any attempts to quell the undercurrent of drama that keeps America humming along are met with various levels of resistance. So the Fed’s urge to please everybody at once is not an easy task, which was evident today: “The central bank doubled down on its 2021 trade-off of trying to please financial markets at the cost of increasing the challenges ahead for the economy,” writes Mohamed A. El-Erian. Maybe it’s considered taboo to sympathize with the Fed, but it does have a *lot* going on: sky-high inflation, [a zigzagging stock market](, dwindling employment participation and a raging pandemic. John Authers predicted that Jerome Powell [would have a tough time trying to thread the needle](, and he was right. [Diane Swonk]( put it nicely on Bloomberg TV this afternoon: “They want to turn down the flame without having it fully go out.” But the thing is, Jerome Powell is not a Michelin-star chef cooking risotto for the umpteenth time! He is creating a brand-new recipe. So the Fed held its breath and announced a route that it hopes will make everyone zen out: an end to its asset purchase program in March followed immediately by an interest-rate increase and then a gradual reduction in its $8.87 trillion balance sheet. Although predictable, “this will not shield the Fed from criticism,” Mohamed warned. [Read his full reaction to the FOMC meeting here](. Bonus Central Bank Reading:  Predictions about central bank decisions are unreliable. [Canada learned that lesson the hard way](. — Robert Burgess Bonus SZN Something neat that might happen next week is that you’ll quit your job. How do I know this, you may be wondering? I’m no clairvoyant, but I do know that Monday is Jan. 31 — payday, baby! And for many individuals slogging along in the treacherous hellscape that is corporate America, [it’s no ordinary payday: It’s bonus day](. Once you secure the bag, you might realize that you’re just, like, over it? It, being the 9-5 that has caused you more emotional turmoil and back pain than your therapist and chiropractor can handle. Sarah Green Carmichael writes that the annual ritual of handing out bonuses might feel wonderful, but we don’t really know how effective they are, if at all. In a study that takes the phrase “drip or drown” to an entirely new level, people were asked to “count cash or slips of paper, and then submerge their hands in scalding water. When asked how much their hands hurt, the participants who had counted money rated their pain less than the control group,” Sarah writes. If the scalding water is a metaphor for your job, maybe the promise of an annual bonus does indeed help tamp down your boss’s inferno. But you can imagine the shiny prize loses its luster when, year after year, your bonus becomes a routine expectation. [Read the whole thing](. Telltale Charts Tae Kim thinks [Microsoft’s money-making machine]( might be inflation-proof. But its [unnerving after-hours session]( is a reminder that the future for tech juggernauts isn’t totally assured, writes Conor Sen. [A lithium shortage is no longer a prediction](, it’s a reality, writes Liam Denning. Luckily, the rising demand for EVs means that plenty of countries will want to mine more of it. Further Reading The recipe to salvage [President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill]( involves splicing and dicing it. — Bloomberg’s editorial board [Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement]( will mark an end to the Supreme Court’s pragmatic personality. — Noah Feldman Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, is getting the [Kamala Harris treatment](, and it’s not pretty. — Jonathan Bernstein [Puerto Rico’s five-year bankruptcy saga]( may be ending, but the island’s dance with debt is far from finished. — Antonio Weiss [Israel’s universal draft]( has a problem: You can’t magically turn the average teen into a cyber-warrior. — Zev Chafets It's been a hot minute since atomic bombs were used against humans. Maybe we should, uh, [check in on that](. — Tyler Cowen Just because nobody has gotten in trouble before for [the sketchy business thing]( you’re considering doing doesn't mean you should actually do it. — Matt Levine ICYMI Fun news for high schoolers: [The SAT is going digital](. Time to hoard the Swiss Miss: [A bomb cyclone]( might be coming for the East Coast. Kickers [A Scottish school project]( from 1996 ends up in Norway, 25 years later. [Link-in-bios]( are the new internet middlemen. Bored Ape wears a Chelsea football logo in an NFT: [harmless fun or intellectual property lawsuit?]( McDonald's concocts the dessert of your nightmares: a [cilantro McFlurry](. Notes:  Please send Swiss Miss and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [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](. 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