A 74-year-old conservative Democrat from a coal state may very well be enjoying his time in the limelight. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia handed himself a pivotal role in election year politics after he effectively torpedoed the president’s monster $2 trillion economic agenda this week. The administration is still scrambling to try and meet his ever-shifting wish list. Among Manchin’s reported concerns: low-income parents will blow their tax savings on drugs. That aside, Bloomberg’s editorial board predicts clearer priorities and more transparent accounting could still result in some version of Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan becoming law in 2022.

Omicron is racing across the globe, thriving in the winter of the Northern Hemisphere and among the millions of unvaccinated. The U.S. government over-counted the number of Americans who are at least partly inoculated, meaning millions more than previously thought remain unprotected. But more data is suggesting that the Covid-19 variant is less likely to land you in the hospital.

Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking has a new leader: Chile, which has the second-most vaccinated population in the world among countries bigger than 1 million people. Formerly the Latin American haven of choice for investors, the country also finds itself marked by exceptionalism again, this time following the election of a 35-year-old socialist as president.

Chile President-elect Gabriel Boric

Photographer: Cristobal Olivares/Bloomberg

Just in case you need them, Bloomberg columnist Shuli Ren has some valuable tips on how to survive 21 days of quarantine in a government-administered hotel room in Hong Kong. Perhaps slightly less cramped, Manhattan luxury-home sales are wrapping up their biggest year ever.

It’s been quite a year for Wall Street. The biggest banks made it their most profitable ever and bonuses are bulging. But veterans of previous booms don’t feel so good about this one. And initial public offerings, once considered pretty close to a sure-thing, were a bit, well, meh.

Google says the food of the year is TikTok’s baked feta pasta, but Bloomberg food editor Kate Krader reckons it’s actually pizza. And for pure comfort grub, top Maui chef Sheldon Simeon says you can’t beat a grilled cheese-meets-Sloppy Joe island specialty known as a flying saucer.

An imperfect but delicious flying saucer.

Photographer: Kate Krader/Bloomberg

• The James Webb telescope should be on its way.
• It’s New Year’s, but Edinburgh’s famous party is closed.
• The Ghislaine Maxwell jury resumes deliberations.
• Susan Arnold succeeds Bob Iger as Disney chairman.
• U.S. LNG cargoes arrive in a fuel-starved Europe.

Who Saw the Collapse of the USSR Coming?

On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union, Bloomberg asked historians, economists and political analysts why it happened, and what lessons today’s occupants of the Kremlin—and students of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia—should take from it.

A Soviet-era statue of Vladimir Lenin at a party inside the Museum of Communism in Prague in 2009.

Source: Bloomberg

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