Dec 16th 2021

Christmas double issue

The world this week

Leaders

The way things were

The new normal is already here. Get used to it

The era of predictable unpredictability is not going away

Midterm blues

Something has broken in Boris Johnson’s government

This week’s rebellion in Parliament is just the start of his difficulties

From Moscow with menaces

How to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine

The West, and Ukrainians, should raise the cost of Russian aggression

Asset prices

How American stocks could continue to climb

What doesn’t kill the bull market only makes it stranger

Triumphal honours

Which is The Economist’s country of the year for 2021?

In a gloomy year, a few stars shone

Letters

On Brexit, satellite pollution, local taxes, cheese, Fairphone, art, Stephen Sondheim, the Beatles

Letters to the editor

Asia

A decade of despair

Ten years into Kim Jong Un’s rule, North Korea is more North Korean than ever

Rule of three

New Caledonia votes against independence from France for the third time

Banyan

Democracy declined across Asia in 2021

China

Frigid farewells

Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

Old and sad

Nearly one-third of suicides in China are by old people

United States

Movers and shakers

Why Americans are rethinking where they want to live

The long road back

The tornado damage in Kentucky could take decades to repair

Lexington

America’s Christmas wars

Middle East & Africa

On your marks, get set, now what?

Libya’s presidential election was meant to unite the country

The bitter taste of sanctions

Iranian saffron dealers are struggling

Back to the mountains

Ethiopian forces have recaptured key towns on the road to Tigray

The Americas

Studying Ceará

What a Brazilian state can teach the world about education

The final stretch

Chile’s presidential front-runners edge towards the centre

Europe

No room at the inn

Why have Danes turned against immigration?

The Lolland exception

A Baltic island bucks a Danish anti-immigrant trend

Here come the Harvards

A reformist prime minister takes over in Bulgaria

Charlemagne

Emmanuel Macron’s tricky Christmas present

Britain

Covid-19

The triumph of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine

Saving Ulster

Anti-gay attitudes in Northern Ireland are changing

The Marble Arch mound

How to lure shoppers off their computers?

Bagehot

Liz Truss declares an end to the age of introspection

International

Seeing the need for speed

The Omicron variant advances at an incredible rate

Christmas Specials

Interactive archaeology

A Zimbabwean archaeologist retells the story of a civilisation

Teach your children well

Does good parenting in Hong Kong mean submitting to the Party?

The pleasures of the table

An economic history of restaurants

Gimme shelter

The rise and rise of corrugated iron

Quadratic voting

The mathematical method that could offer a fairer way to vote

Fighting fit

How to prevent conflict on the way to Mars

It takes a village

Scenes from an almost vanished Singapore

He came, he saw, he lied

Retracing Julius Caesar’s path through France

Pocock’s pen pals

The virtues of an unrepresentative sample

A forced brotherhood

Why Russia has never accepted Ukrainian independence

The Kalergi plan

Sons of Tokyo, dreams of Europe

A bloodless revolution

Meatless meat is nothing new

Murder of the Orient Express

Railway lines once connected the Middle East

One woman’s trash

Fashion as an asset class

Movies

India’s touring cinemas are dying, and being reborn

A world of two halves

North-south antipathies endure around the globe

Under the hoodies

The most powerful people in crypto

On the wings of song

Of birds and men

Business

All at sea

Why supply-chain snarls still entangle the world

Plots unearthed in 2021

A year in four charts

Cloud atlas

The battle of the computing clouds is intensifying

Bartleby

The Beatles and the art of teamwork

Schumpeter

The billionaire battle for the metaverse

Finance & economics

Spinning around

The private-markets party reaches fever pitch

SWIFT thinking

The hidden costs of cutting Russia off from SWIFT

Follow the money

After a shocker in 2021, where might inflation go in 2022?

Hidden danger

China’s property slowdown sheds light on another worrying debt problem

Free exchange

Has the pandemic shown inflation to be a fiscal phenomenon?

Science & technology

Apiarism

Honey bees, Varroa mites and unintended consequences

Marine propulsion

Nature does not use propellers. So why do people?

Geomagnetic archaeology

Earth’s magnetic field illuminates Biblical history

Books & arts

Arabian lights

After banning cinema for decades, Saudi Arabia is making movies

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

If it spreads, it’s read

2021’s biggest stories were covid-19 and America’s presidential transition

Obituary

How little Ant became big Ant