| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a Mandalorian clan of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. Today's Agenda  BREAKING: Some Problems May Remain Unsolved Well, we finally did it, folks: We solved all the problems. With the trade war and Brexit sorted, it'll be nothing but smooth sailing for markets from here on out. Congratulations! That's how the stock market reacted, anyway, to last week's "phase one" trade agreement with China and Boris Johnson's Brexit-guaranteeing election victory. Far be it from this always-cheerful newsletter to cast doubt on such things, but we are contractually obligated to pass on some caveats. For one thing, the China deal is really just a mutually beneficial time-out that solves no real long-term threats to global trade and growth, warns Mohamed El-Erian. Trade tensions will keep weighing on economies around the world, which could at some point perturb stocks. Johnson himself raised the other red flag, by walking out to the end of the U.K.'s Brexit plank with a comically large saw and threatening to lop it off at Dec. 31, 2020, deal or no deal. Everybody from Brussels to the City of London immediately shouted for him to stop, and the pound sterling's post-election gains vaporized. The prime minister's threat is just posturing, suggests Therese Raphael. Surely the U.K. and EU could work out an extension somehow if they needed one. Still, Johnson reminded us Brexit anxiety will be alive and well all year long. Fun! Further Market Wet-Blanket Reading: There's a reason this year's rally doesn't feel so huge to investors. It was mostly making up for last year's swoon. — Barry Ritholtz Trump's New Impeachment Defense: "Yeah, I Did It" It's time once again to play America's most exhausting quiz game, "Rudy Giuliani: Crazy, or Crazy Like a Fox?" Lately the personal lawyer for the president of the United States has been all over TV confessing the very stuff Democrats have been trying to prove: that he hijacked America's Ukraine policy to benefit his client's political fortunes. In the process, he waived attorney-client privilege, which would be trouble for him if Mitch McConnell were allowing any impeachment witnesses. (And the GOP-led Senate drives the impeachment boat, Noah Feldman writes, just as the Founding Fathers intended.) This could just be another example of Rudy Being Rudy, Noah writes in a second column. But we can only assume it signals Trump's ultimate defense will be that using his office for personal gain is totally fine. Otherwise, Rudy has really lost it. Of course, congressional Republicans will probably swallow that defense, or any other, no matter how absurd, and keep Trump in office. This is predictable, but it also speaks to a deeper problem in our politics, warns Jonathan Bernstein: Lawmakers in both parties are now driven more by national culture wars than by keeping constituents happy, which is no way to run a representative democracy. Amazon Keeps Testing Its Limits In one way, Amazon.com Inc. removing FedEx Corp. from its Circle of Shipping Trust would be understandable. Prime customers are a key part of Amazon's vast money-making apparatus, and Amazon reportedly claims they're getting annoyed by unreliable FedEx handling of stuff from third-party sellers, writes Brooke Sutherland. On the other hand, this would be yet another reminder of Amazon's black-hole-like market gravity — especially as it's building a competing delivery service. The company is already on the government's bad side, Brooke notes, and this would invite still more unwanted attention. Negative Rates Are Killing Your Retirement Fearing deflation, central bankers around the world have turned to the risky medicine of negative interest rates. Like any experimental treatment, this comes with some nasty side effects. Try your pension savings slowly washing down the drain, for starters. Sweden's central bank has finally decided this trade-off — mitigating a vague risk today by forcing tomorrow's retirees to live on cat food — is unacceptable, so it's doing something about it, writes Mark Gilbert: namely, it's ending negative interest rates, deflation be damned. It may not be the last to kick the habit. Bonus Problem-Solving Reading: Telltale Charts Antitrust regulators have lately been sitting on biotech deals for weirdly long times, notes Max Nisen.  Further Reading The Afghanistan war isn't a crime but a tragedy; nobody thought it would be easy, and there were never good options. — Hal Brands European regulators are still far too eager to bail out banks. — Ferdinando Giugliano Maybe Unilever should get out of the food business. — Andrea Felsted Venezuela's opposition should play the long game and forget its failure to quickly unseat Maduro. — Mac Margolis The Fed and the People's Bank of China increasingly resemble each other in tactics and results. — Dan Moss Econoblogger Mark Thoma changed economics in ways that may have helped save the economy. — Noah Smith Trump stands to gain from threatening to skip the debates, even if he risks making himself look bad. — Scott Kominers ICYMI Trump wrote Nancy Pelosi a letter. Retailers gave you free returns, and you ruined it. A third of America's economy is concentrated in 31 counties. Kickers Local airport makes festive tree from confiscated weapons. (h/t Scott Kominers) Why the brain needs exercise. Human genome recovered from 5,700-year-old chewing gum. How is it possible that Emperor Palpatine is still alive? Note: Please send chewing gum and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. | 
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