The rental market appears to be deflating

Plus: Learn to mine. [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a broccoli helicopter of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - The [rental market is deflating](. - Laid-off tech workers should [learn to mine](. - Liz Truss is [smarter about wind]( than Rishi Sunak. - [Black farmers]( are being driven to extinction. The Rent Is Less Damn High Throughout these anxious months of soaring inflation, Americans have had one dream, which may soon finally become reality: Elon Musk will put a [chip in their brains](. Eight out of [23 monkeys]( can’t be wrong, after all. I can even reveal that I am personally part of an early-stage test, and so far everything is totally broccoli helicopter mmmm is that toast? The second thing Americans have yearned for is lower gasoline prices, which we have [gotten](, more or less. The third thing, which is arguably more important to inflation than either gasoline or the chip in my head, is cheaper rent. As you can probably tell from the construction of this intro, we’ve gotten that, too, writes Conor Sen. Apartment demand declined in the third quarter, and a new report says [rents dropped sharply in the past three months](. Meanwhile, vacancies are rising. All of this feeds into the CPI report with a lag and must be filtered through cheesecloth under a full moon by a maiden pure of heart to produce the all-important “owners’ equivalent rent” that dominates official inflation data. So it will be a while before the Fed can declare inflation has been defeated. Mohamed El-Erian suggests the [market has unhelpfully heard that call]( already, in its head. Karl Smith goes a step further and argues the Fed is still [naively hoping for an economic miracle]( of inflation falling while unemployment barely rises. Such a thing has not happened since they started keeping track of this stuff back in 1948, he points out. But then again, we haven’t had the supreme weirdness of a pandemic and a major war happening back-to-back since 1948, either. Rent falling today, along with all the [other stuff]( that’s getting cheaper in a hurry, could go a long way toward making something miraculous happen. Or maybe that’s just the chip talking. A Good Miner Is Hard to Find Tech companies are laying workers off [in bunches](, at levels not seen since the last recession, which as you may recall was a bad one. But a door doesn’t close without a window opening, as burglars are always saying. The opportunity in this case, Clara Ferreira Marques writes, is in a new generation of [high-tech mining for the fancy elements]( we’ll increasingly need to electrify everything and kick our fossil-fuel habit. Mining is not an industry historically known for its foosball tables, nap rooms or social consciousness, so recruiting tech wizards may seem impossible. But there’s got $ to $ be $ a $ way. The Bonfire of the Brexiteers Also not historically known for social consciousness is former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. And yet he and Liz Truss are being far more progressive and [sensible about wind energy than Rishi Sunak](, writes Javier Blas. To throw red meat to hard-core Brexiteers, Sunak has adopted a NIMBY approach to wind, along with a NIMCW (Not in My Coastal Waters) one. This isn’t just a British thing; the same attitude sadly prevails across Europe. It’s a ludicrous stance when cheap energy sources are thin on the ground. Meanwhile, Brexiteers are pushing Sunak’s government to do away with all leftover EU rules and regulations by the end of next year. It’s wildly irresponsible, Paul Davies points out — and also [wildly unpopular among the very businesses]( that would most benefit from trashing all these regs. What they want most is predictability and stability. With the Tories for the past several years, that has also been thin on the ground. Telltale Charts A hundred years ago, there were 925,000 Black farmers in the US. Today there are only 45,000, Adam Minter writes. That loss is the direct result of decades of discrimination in lending and government aid that have [cost Black families $326 billion]( by one estimate. President Joe Biden promised to help with debt relief but gave up in the face of Republican objections. So the injustice continues: European companies [understandably want to buy US companies]( to tap their superior growth potential, but investors aren’t having it, Chris Hughes writes. Further Reading Schools are [sitting on piles of federal aid](, which they should spend on reversing Covid learning loss. — Bloomberg’s editorial board [Russia’s carpet-bombing campaign]( is an ineffective relic of another age. — Leonid Bershidsky Whether he likes it or not, Bob Iger is now [Disney’s chief political officer](. — Beth Kowitt [Telegram is a model for how Twitter](can exist without moderation. Advertisers won’t like it. — Parmy Olson FTX may not exactly have told [the truth about its risk management](. — Matt Levine Xi’s biggest problem is that [China’s middle class]( feels its government is failing it. — Minxin Pei An early-stage Amgen drug may be [the future of weight-loss treatment](. — Lisa Jarvis ICYMI The Supreme Court [froze Biden’s student-debt relief](. The Senate [averted a rail strike](. Kanye West thinks we’ve [judged Hitler too harshly](. Be careful buying [weed from New York bodegas](. Kickers Scientists created an [adorable baby wormhole](. Global [sperm counts are plunging](. [Your dishwasher]( may be giving you a bellyache. [Nobody changes keys]( in music anymore. Notes:  Please send baby wormholes 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. 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