Crypto News: Putin is just waiting for Zelenskiy’s star turn to end

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a military onesie of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here.

The US may run out of patience with Ukraine's war costs.
SBF's friends turned on him.
The leveraged loan market isn't feeling so hot.
Congress is abandoning poor children.

If you were the president of a war-torn country under relentless assault by the world's biggest war-crimes enthusiast and had to duck overseas real quick to ask your benefactor country for more missiles, would you:

Gussy yourself up in your finest duds like you were the king of France, or
Not bother changing out of your camos, to visually hammer home just how war-torn your country is.

If you chose No. 2, then you might be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who wore camo sweats when visiting the White House and Congress yesterday. If you chose No. 1, then I can only assume you are one of the handful of conservatives who were deeply offended by Zelenskiy's attire.

This is of course the silliest White House-related sartorial controversy since the tan suit. Zelenskiy was just carrying on a long tradition of wartime leaders wearing wartime gear, including Winston Churchill, who visited the White House in 1942 rocking a military onesie:

Zelenskiy is a former actor who understands he is playing a role: the scrappy, heroic war president. That requires a specific kind of costume. It has garnered him enough global hosannas and missiles to keep the war criminal, Vladimir Putin, at bay.

But only just barely. Putin shows no sign of ending his assault on Ukraine, whose defenses need constant replenishment. The US has so far been Ukraine's biggest supplier, with rare bipartisan support. But sniping by such extremists as Donald Trump Jr. could soon bleed into the mainstream of the GOP, which doesn't run very far from the fever swamps. That party will have a hand on America's pocketbook starting next year.

And discomfort with throwing money into the war's perpetually hangry maw could be bipartisan, Hal Brands notes. Already Biden doesn't want to give Zelenskiy everything he wants, and the US needs to keep enough war materiel on hand in case Russia expands the war beyond Ukraine, or China invades Taiwan, or both. Putin won't be flying to Washington for help anytime soon. He may not need to.

It's been a good news/bad news kind of day for Sam Bankman-Fried. On the one hand, after finally being transferred from a Bahaman jail to an American one, where toilets aren't considered a luxury and the rats are presumably better-fed, he was released on a $250 million bail bond.

On the other hand, his ex-girlfriend and the high-school buddy who helped him found FTX have both turned on him, pleading guilty to fraud charges and helping prosecutors build their case against him. So, all in all, not great. SBF has been telling everyone who would listen that his crypto exchange's spectacular face-plant was a terrible oopsie, not fraud. Sworn crony testimony to the contrary will take that wafer-thin defense and rip it to shreds, writes Matt Levine.

As entertaining as this debacle continues to be, it might behoove us as a society to stop this happening again and again. Fortunately, FTX's implosion has made it much easier for regulators to identify the many weak points in the crypto system, Bloomberg's editorial board writes. Making exchanges and stablecoins safer and keeping banks from wading too deep into the crypto swamp would be a good start. It's a free country; people should be able to play with imaginary exploding money all they want. There's just no need for us all to suffer when the inevitable happens.

Like me that time I ate undercooked chicken at a Dave & Buster's, the leveraged loan market is trying to get some bad debt out of its system, writes Paul Davies, including the billions borrowed to finance Elon Musk's Twitter takeover. The market's not going to feel right for a while.

Luxury brands need wealthy Chinese shoppers to get back in the game, writes Andrea Felsted. Unfortunately, that's looking like a 2024 thing.

By killing the expanded child tax credit, Congress is choosing to keep kids in poverty. — Kathryn Edwards

After Trump, Republicans need to start choosing honor. — Francis Wilkinson

Hybrid work is here to stay, but we're all learning to be flexible about it. — Sarah Green Carmichael

Self-driving cars could be a lifesaver for elderly rural Americans. — Adam Minter

The Bank of Japan showed other central bankers the value of flexibility. — Dan Moss

Europe's carbon tax is designed to encourage developing countries to pollute more. — Mihir Sharma

China's Covid toll is skyrocketing.

Tesla is offering big discounts.

RIP, Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd.

Japan is betting big on nuclear energy.

Ocean geoengineering passes an early test.

Your next hotel may be a little dirtier and robot-ier.

Read H.L. Mencken's review of "The Great Gatsby."

Notes: Please send reviews and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net or @markgongloff@mastodon.world

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.