Today's Agenda  The End of the Small Car In "Raising Arizona," H.I. McDunnough observes that the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse is "especially hard on little things." He was talking about bunny rabbits and such, but today this also applies to cars. This week the Volkswagen Beetle died, ending a wild history stretching from Nazi Germany through the Summer of Love to Lindsay Lohan. It's the latest victim of an increasingly hostile environment for small cars, writes Chris Bryant: VW is replacing the Beetle with a compact SUV, succumbing to growing consumer demand for bigger vehicles. This appetite feeds itself, as people balk at driving tiny cars that could be squashed by the monsters barreling down the highways. But the timing is particularly bad for humanity, Chris notes: Bigger cars guzzle more gasoline, leading to more carbon emissions, right when we desperately need less of that. This may also come back to haunt automakers enjoying big-car profits, as big-car prices soar out of reach, making car ownership less desirable for common volk. Lately, the car industry has been a bit preoccupied with simply trying to survive, as Daimler's fourth profit warning in a year shows. It's a reminder for investors, Chris Bryant writes in a second column, that the true state of the car business is a rapidly moving target. Time to Get Serious on Immigration President Donald Trump today confirmed that his administration plans mass immigrant roundups this weekend, just a day after abandoning efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. They're the latest steps in Trump's scattershot, self-defeating approach to his signature issue. But as consistently wrong as Trump is on immigration, most of the Democrats running to unseat him lack serious counter proposals, Bloomberg's editorial board writes. It will take years of thoughtful, concerted effort to balance a real need for border security while fulfilling America's humanitarian and demographic imperative to welcome asylum-seekers, the editors write. They have some ideas on what needs to be done, as does James Gibney. Why is striking the balance right so important? Because an aging population and years of failed efforts to find solutions will leave the U.S. short of the entrepreneurial spirit and talent that immigrants bring to the economy, James writes. That talent, meanwhile, is going elsewhere:  Fill Your Boots With Bonds Even those who think little about economics can grasp one of its core concepts: that higher demand leads to higher prices, which eventually hurts demand. Today's bond market would blow their minds. Lately, the higher bond prices rise, the more people hunger to buy them. In this way, they fit the definition of a far-more obscure economic idea known as the "Giffen good." As Komal Sri-Kumar writes, these are things that grow more desirable as their prices rise. In this case, expensive bonds signal worry about the economy, which makes people even more anxious for safer places to park their cash. So they buy more bonds, even when yields are negative. That's one reason a super-bearish bond call by fund manager Franklin Templeton looks increasingly detached from reality, writes Brian Chappatta. Then gain, the U.S. Treasury keeps struggling to sell its long-term debt, notes Robert Burgess. That suggests the bond market's trip to the Upside Down will eventually end. It just might take a while. Further Interest-Rate Reading: Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez right about the Phillips Curve? Maybe, maybe not; either way, the Fed should cut rates. – Noah Smith Diplomacy Isn't Dead, It's Just Resting Former Vice President Joe Biden this week laid out a foreign-policy vision that vows a return to the centrist liberalism of the pre-Trump era, notes Hal Brands. The big question is how this will play with both a less-centrist Democratic primary electorate and a general population that put Trump in the White House despite his unorthodox policy views. We'll never know how the centrist-liberal approach of Earth-Two's President Hillary Clinton would have worked on, say, North Korea. We do know Trump's bluster-and-bro-hug approach has left us here on Earth-One just kind of accepting that Kim Jong Un will end up with some number of nuclear weapons. And this might be OK, writes, James Stavridis, as long as we handle this new reality carefully. Further Diplomacy Reading: Qatar somehow manages to keep the U.S., Iran and Turkey all happy at once. – Hussein Ibish Telltale Charts OPEC+ needs Russia's loyal cooperation to meet its production-cutting goals, notes Liam Denning. That should go well.  David Fickling notes one big reason coal assets aren't fetching high prices these days: Solar power is so much cheaper.  Further Reading The biggest fashion hit of the summer is a polka-dotted dress from Zara's. This shows both the edge the Inditex SA-owned chain has, and the challenges it faces. – Andrea Felsted and Sarah Halzack Trump has unexpectedly sided with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and against Steve Bannon in supporting the dollar over Bitcoin; even more ironically, he's the dollar's biggest threat. – Lionel Laurent Free college might make our stagnant-wage problem even more intractable. – Karl Smith China needs to develop its own strong investment banks, but Beijing keeps interfering. – Nisha Gopalan It keeps getting more expensive for Apple Inc. to access bleeding-edge phone components. – Tim Culpan Planting a trillion trees is a necessary but insufficient response to climate change. – Faye Flam Update: Anheuser-Busch InBev today abandoned an IPO of its Asian unit after struggling to drum up demand. Earlier today, Chris Hughes wrote a failed IPO would be a big problem for the brewer. ICYMI Jeffrey Epstein's private island goes quiet. Labor Secretary Alex Acosta resigned amid Epstein furor. The U.S. may run out of cash in a couple of months. Kickers Facebook and Carnegie Mellon built a bot that beats humans in poker. (h/t Scott Kominers) Costa Rica has run for 300 straight days on nothing but renewable energy. A ketogenic diet may treat schizophrenia. TikTok stars are taking over. Note: Please send poker bots and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. New to Bloomberg Opinion Today? Sign up here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. | 
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