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Good afternoon. Bitcoin is the new crisis currency, increasingly the preferred way for residents of failing economies to transfer money without dealing with banks, and some doomsday preppers are opting for it over gold. Counterpoint: It’s not yet the preferred way to pay for your Thanksgiving turkey. —Megan Hess

Should the upper middle class take the biggest tax hit? Under the GOP House bill, they will get hurt more than the middle class and the super-rich. If the bill becomes law, overall benefits for the upper middle class will start out small and later all but vanish. Some argue it’s only right for them to carry a heavier burden.

Keystone XL clears a major hurdle. Nebraska approved TransCanada’s construction of an $8 billion crude oil pipeline, which had been on the drawing board since 2008, across the state. The company is now "assessing how the decision would impact the cost and schedule of the project,” TransCanada’s CEO said. While Nebraska’s approval was an important milestone, it’s still unclear whether the pipeline will be built.

Germany may hold new elections. Chancellor Angela Merkel said she’d rather face a fresh vote than govern without a majority, betting that voters won’t blame her after talks on forming a coalition collapsed. “A minority government isn’t part of my plans,” she said on Monday.

Doomsday preppers are switching from gold to bitcoin. They won’t be able to access their virtual cash the moment a catastrophe knocks out the power grid or the web, but that hasn’t dissuaded them. Even staunch survivalists are convinced bitcoin will endure economic collapse, global pandemic, climate change catastrophes and nuclear war.

Kushner Cos. found an Israeli partner to help fund its return to New Jersey. Two months ago, the Kushners announced the purchase of an apartment complex in New Jersey that it had sold 10 years earlier. They didn’t mention that most of the money for the $146 million deal came from others. Psagot, Israel’s largest asset manager, and another buyer helped finance the purchase. The deal requires the buyers to take on an existing loan with burdensome conditions.

More turkey, anyone? According to an annual survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, a 16-pound turkey will cost about 1.6 percent less than last year, and the whole Thanksgiving meal will be the cheapest since 2013. Plentiful supplies after a recent production boom are driving down prices. No wonder the grocery price war is on full display this week.

These 10 paintings just sold for almost $1 billionApproximately $2.3 billion of Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art was sold in five days at New York’s mega auction week, but the numbers are skewed pretty dramatically by da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi.” These others get very close to totaling $1 billion on their own, excluding the Leonardo.

 

To contact the author of this story: Megan Hess in New York at mhess19@bloomberg.net.

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