Europe has a $450 billion weapon against Putin it’s not using

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a Zombie-Removing Robot™ of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here.Today’s Agenda Europe has a huge gas [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a Zombie-Removing Robot™ of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - Europe has [a huge gas field just sitting there](. - Say it early and often: [Jan. 6 was a coup attempt](. - Central banking is [hard, you guys](. - Roe’s end will [shove companies into the culture wars](. Europe’s Unilateral Disarmament Imagine you’re defending your home against a zombie invasion and have several Zombie-Removing Robots™ in your possession. The robots are noisy and leak poison all over the place, and sometimes they knock over the TV. At the same time, they are very effective at removing zombies. Do you: - Use the robots until the zombie invasion is over and clean up the mess later, or - Dismantle the robots and try to fight off the zombies with just like a fire poker and yelling. If you chose 2, then you might be Europe. It is ostensibly trying to defend itself against a creeping invasion by Vladimir Putin. But in a war being fought largely with weaponized economic pain, Europe is scrapping some of its biggest assets. Germany is shutting down nuclear plants just as energy prices are pushing it and the continent into recession. At the same time, Lionel Laurent notes, the Dutch government is [shutting down the massive Groningen gas field](, with an estimated $450 billion in reserves. It’s like a Zombie-Removing Robot™ in that it contributes to poisoning the environment and also maybe causes earthquakes? But this is hardly the moment to look a gift weapon in the mouth, Lionel points out. $450 billion worth of gas would go a long way toward easing the pain of forgoing Russian gas. Europeans will need all the help they can get to endure more rounds of sanctions, which Clara Ferreira Marques writes will be [necessary for Ukraine to fend off Putin]( and make Europe safe for democracy. Sanctions are already having an impact, but without more turns of the screw, Putin will eventually overcome them — at least enough to drag the war on even longer. As Hal Brands notes, that will only [compound the misery the war has already caused]( and strain the bonds of the West. Please, for now, let’s use the robots. Should We Care About a Coup or Nah? The House Jan. 6 committee will hold its first public hearing in prime time tonight, carried by all the major networks and also Fox News 8, “The Ocho.” Pundits have already pre-doomed the hearings to irrelevance, and Julianna Goldman writes [they will probably have little impact]( even on the midterm elections. Delaying hearings about a Jan. 6, 2021, attack until June 9, 2022, might have dulled their impact. Bloomberg’s editorial board warns any effort to [make too much of a circus out of the hearings]( will backfire, too. Julianna’s column mentions a panel of swing voters who said they didn’t want to see anybody make a “political football” of the attack — although I gotta say, attempting to overthrow the elected government of the United States strikes me as the Political Super Bowl and World Cup final rolled into one. Anyway, it’s a dilemma for the Dems and two Republicans on the committee: They have to remind everybody that Jan. 6 happened and also how awful it was, without overplaying it. Tim O’Brien suggests the one message they should hammer home again and again is that the evidence makes clear this wasn’t just some rowdy Capitol sightseeing gone wrong, but [a coup attempt by Donald Trump and his supporters](. If we have lost the ability to care about that, then maybe we should just go back to watching the Ocho and forget the whole democratic experiment. Inflation-Fighting Robot, AI artist’s conception. Source: DALL-E Mini Sympathy for the Fed Once upon a time, economists and the people who love economics waited for every jobs-report day like it was Christmas morning. But that’s so 2012. The hot new economic report everybody waits for is the monthly CPI report, which is like Christmas in the Upside-Down; instead of presents from Santa, you get body-invading slugs from the [Demogorgon](. Weirdly, as Jonathan Levin points out, [CPI lately has been much worse]( than a different government inflation measure, PCE: The Fed historically has preferred PCE, and those of us who don’t want to see the Fed wreck the economy to fight inflation prefer it right now, too. But CPI is the report that gets all the headlines, and Jonathan warns the Fed will favor it for now. It won’t stop hammering at the economy until both measures come down. Many critics grumble that the Fed wouldn’t be in this spot if it had just attacked inflation much earlier. Some still complain it’s not attacking inflation hard enough. But Clive Crook points out it is [basically impossible to say with any precision]( what the right monetary policy is in an economy this complex and with such weirdness and lags in cause and effect. Should the Fed have moved more quickly? Possibly, in hindsight. Could you or an Inflation-Fighting Robot™ do a better job? Probably not. Further Interest-Rate Reading: - [At long last, Japan has inflation](, and people aren’t happy about it. — Dan Moss and Gearoid Reidy - The [all-time bottom for mortgage rates]( might already be in. — Allison Schrager - The [ECB waiting too long to fight inflation]( means it’ll have to fight it harder. — Marcus Ashworth Further Reading end of Roe v. Wade will mean [new state laws that pressure companies]( to take sides in the culture wars. — Noah Feldman [Fox News doesn’t help Republicans win elections](, and it hurts their ability to craft convincing arguments. — Jonathan Bernstein must [keep its anti-Muslim sentiment from bubbling over]( to protect its international reputation, for now. — Mihir Sharma [Humans put too much faith in algorithms]( for sensitive tasks. They need more human oversight. — Parmy Olson ICYMI Eating [non-fried fish is linked to skin cancer]( (???), a study has shown. That’s just great; now [we’ve got a sriracha shortage](bbg://news/stories/RD72XCT0AFB4). And it’s [getting expensive to have your period](. [Larry Ellison bought a Hawaiian island]( and is pushing out the locals. Kickers A day in the life of a [private chef in the Hamptons](. (h/t Ale Lampietti) This [Halsey concert has everything](: squirrels, screaming, mysterious bodies of water. (h/t Jessica Karl) Marble slab [turns out to be an ancient yearbook](. Your [car is tracking you]( just as much as your smartphone is. Notes: Please send yearbooks and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@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 Opinion Today newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( | [Ad Choices]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022