It's been a less-than-ideal week for Donald Trump. Federal prosecutors directly implicated the president in campaign finance law violations, which are potential felonies. His former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, promised to testify to Congress and said Friday that Trump ordered payments to two women to silence them during the 2016 election. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that prosecutors in Manhattan are looking into the activities of the Trump inauguration committee. And he appears to be having trouble finding a new chief of staff. —Josh Petri

Here are today's top stories

Investors rushed out of U.S. equity funds in the second-biggest weekly exit on record, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Imagine: It's the end of 2019 and the world is in crisis. Driven by severe weather and policy blunders, there's a global food shortage. Refugees are on the move. All the weather disasters and most of the policy scenarios described in our Pessimist's Guide to 2019 have happened in the past. Just not at once.

Even as Bitcoin crashes, crypto ATMs are spreading—and they can be perfect vehicles for cleaning dirty cash, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. 

A Moscow real-estate executive. Two former staffers in Vladimir Putin’s administration. A Siberian mayor with dreams of cloning woolly mammoths. To Maria Butina and her minder back home, these were the right Russians for Donald Trump’s Washington.

In the heart of Europe's poorest corner, Bulgaria plans to get an abandoned nuclear plant up and running. It has no other choice. 

Facebook said a software bug gave outside developers broader access to photos of millions of users, another privacy misstep by the world’s largest social network.

What's Luke Kawa thinking about? The Bloomberg cross-asset reporter is trying to figure out December's hectic markets. The key reason it’s been so difficult to grapple with what markets are doing: Intraday volatility is haywire.

What you'll need to know tomorrow

• The long-anticipated New York area housing slump has arrived.
• Residents are fleeing NYC, Chicago and Los Angeles.
• How Ireland outmaneuvered Britain on Brexit.
• A Boeing jet was damaged after potentially hitting a drone midair.
• In Bloomberg Opinion: Trump's tweets hint at a future legal strategy.
• A new checking account from Robinhood has raised red flags.
• China will remove the retaliatory tariff on American cars.

What you'll want to read tonight

Your Guide to Extremely Alternative Investments

When money and connections mean you can invest in just about anything, anywhere and over any time period, what winds up in your portfolio? In the rarefied world of ultra-high-net-worth investors, diversification doesn’t mean index funds or assembling a standard stock/bond/cash mix. Perhaps you might be interested in some psychedelics, art, limited-edition Ferraris, or a bespoke battery?

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