Your 401K is bad. How bad? You don’t need to know

Plus: Unstable stablecoins. [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a low-cost index fund of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - Don’t look at your [401K](. - Stablecoins [aren’t so stable]( anymore. - What if nukes are just a [passing fad](? - Young Russians [want out](. The Money Don't Jiggle Jiggle If you haven’t checked your 401K all week, stop what you’re doing and pat yourself on the back. You have officially reached the upper echelons of societal intelligence. You’re smarter than me, your neighbor, certainly your [neighbor’s dog](, and most definitely Mark Gongloff. You see, Mark’s son recently asked him for investing advice (famous last words), and Mark told him to take his $40 and go for the sensible, low-cost index funds that eventually lead to lifelong riches. Ha ha ha. About that! [Shortly thereafter his son was in the red by 11%](. The same sad scenario is playing out across the country. Virtually everything is down by some jaw-dropping percentage or another, the bags underneath our weary eyeballs growing darker by the day. Tech stocks are the saddest bunch of them all, and for younger employees at startups, Chris Bryant says “their first experience of [a really vicious bear market]( comes as an unpleasant shock.” [Take Peloton, for example](. The wunderkind of the pandemic turned its resistance up too high and is now sputtering to a near halt, writes Andrea Felsted. But it’s not like young people are out here tweeting pics of their Vanguard account with a “bby’s first recession” caption like it’s cute. The meme stock era was a surefire sign something was bound to go wrong eventually. [The selloff is punishing stocks for being too expensive](, and John Authers says “it’s remarkable how similar it looks to the bursting of the dot.coms’ bubble at the turn of the century.” The best advice is the same as Santa Claus’s classic adage: No peeking! Let’s just hope that by Christmas there will be more green than red. Unstable Coins The cryptoverse is built on one thing, and one thing only: confidence. Confidence to pronounce “doge” correctly. Confidence to use more electricity than the [city of Houston](. Confidence to draw a [stick figure]( on Microsoft Paint and say it’s worth .01 ETH, or $2,381 on OpenSea. For the most part, this shameless bravado has worked for the crypto crowd. Everywhere around us digital coins are being taken seriously: The White House is working on a [crypto policy](! Instagram is [testing NFTs](! There’s even a [blockchain Bachelorette]( in the works! But the consequences aren’t all positive. Because of widespread acceptance, everyone started to want in on crypto, including your dad, maybe. Now the true believers are outnumbered by people who, during Good Times, exude a similar confidence in their tokens. But during Bad Times, they’re [this guy](: Source: koreydior on TikTok Source: koreydior on TikTok We are in midst of one of those Bad Times. Inflation is bumping up the price sticker on everything from energy to [Costco croissants](, and crypto is taking a hit because of it. “Bitcoin’s 50% slide in six months highlights its flaws in times of stress: It’s an energy suck at a time when power prices are surging and offers no dividend against a backdrop of rising interest rates,” writes Lionel Laurent. All the people who flocked to crypto because they saw [Matt Damon in a SuperBowl commercial]( that one time are now like, Woah, wait a minute … if I can’t even afford to keep my Netflix subscription, why do I still own this Bored Ape? When confidence starts to fall, prices follow. Matt Levine [examines this phenomenon within the context of Terra, an algorithmic stablecoin](. At first, people had the confidence to say Terra was worth a dollar. But now, people aren’t so sure about that, so they’re dumping it at lower prices — 90 cents, 80 cents, all the way down to 60 cents at one point on Monday. Making matters worse is the fact that the creators of Terraform Labs, which powers the Terra blockchain, are using ludicrous amounts of Bitcoin to prop up the digital currency. Naturally, this puts a lot of pressure on the price of Bitcoin! So the price goes down, the cycle continues, and new people start worrying about whether their initial gambit into crypto is worth anything anymore. Numb to Nukes On any given day, a lot of youngs will say or send a variety of the below phrases: - “I’m dead by that.” - “Omg ded” - “I die” - “Dying” These are of course idioms. But we live in a society where we are surrounded by inordinate quantities of stuff, 24/7. And it’s not just stuff we want to buy, it’s stuff to read, stuff to do, stuff to watch. This overload of stimulation has, for better or worse, led to humanity overdramatizing basically everything in life. We say things like “my body is broken” when our arms are sore from carrying groceries five blocks. We [superglue ourselves to Starbucks counters]( in protest of overpriced nut milks. We tweet things like “[America is Rome 2.0](,” which, by the way, [it’s not](. But what happens when all of this overhyped doom and gloom is a daily staple in our media diet? We enter “the state of being numb.” When humans are numb to every single thing, there is no capacity to register catastrophic events as catastrophic. These are the battles that flash on our Twitter Feeds and Instagram Stories day in and day out: A global pandemic. A war between Russia and Ukraine. A fight to preserve a woman’s right to choose. “And what’s next, a nuclear war?” people will tweet, semi-jokingly. Tyler Cowen used to think he’d know how people would react to Vladimir Putin pulling out the nukes, but now he’s not so sure. Instead of utter dismay, [maybe people will be numb to nukes, too](. That could be dangerous for the world order. One day we’ll be fretting over nuclear war, the next we’ll be criticizing Dolly Parton and Doja Cat’s performance in [the TikTok musical about Taco Bell's Mexican Pizza](. Our pea-sized attention spans may further embolden Putin, but we probably won’t care for long. Bonus Wartime Reading:  Keep it on the DL, but the U.S. is helping wage one of the most[ruthlessly effective proxy wars]( in modern history. — Hal Brands Telltale Charts Putin’s war is compounding the fact that nearly half of young Russians would prefer not to live in Russia, writes Bloomberg’s editorial board. [This brain drain is welcome news for president Joe Biden](, who is hoping to make it easier for Russian scientists and tech professionals to move to the US. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser might be the poster child for Wall Street’s culture wars, but she’s not alone. Banks have started to lean increasingly left, along with most other industries. Why are they risking the political backlash? Paul Davies says it’s simple: [Millennials and Gen Zers will have deep pockets for a long time](. Further Reading [A brutal dictator’s son]( is now in charge of the Philippines. — Daniel Moss All the investors acting like they know [what it takes to build EVs]( need to take several seats. — Anjani Trivedi Everyone and their mother has Covid-19 right now, yet [Democrats are once again twiddling their thumbs]( on aid. — Jonathan Bernstein [Cathie Wood’s ARK might have the same fate as Janus](, which famously tanked in the dot-com bust. — Marc Rubinstein China’s tech crackdown was a [$2-trillion-dollar nightmare](, and now Covid lockdowns are making things worse. — Shuli Ren [Want to travel to Uranus?]( All you need is 15 years of your life and $4 billion from the government. — Adam Minter ICYMI Ads are coming for your [Netflix account](. Enjoy [Trump-free Twitter]( while it lasts. Mexico has [too many tourists](. Kickers South Koreans get [one extra year to live](. (h/t Scott Duke Kominers) You’re not going to like Balenciaga’s [$1,850 “destroyed” sneakers](. How one woman convinced me and many other women [to wear pajamas in public](. [Phoodle]( is a Martha Stewart-approved Wordle for food. Notes:  Please send Taco Bell's Mexican Pizza and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. 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]( [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( | [Ad Choices]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022