No longer "draining swamps"

One of Donald Trump's advisers says the president-elect is no longer interested in his rallying cry "drain the swamp."
"I'm told he now just disclaims that. He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in an interview that aired Wednesday on NPR. Gingrich, a vice chairman of the transition team, also predicted there would be "constant fighting" over Trump's efforts to reduce the influence of lobbyists and Washington insiders.

Still bailing out banks in Italy

Monte dei Paschi di Siena is to be rescued by the Italian state using a new €20bn bailout package, as a last-gasp private sector rescue plan for the world’s oldest bank looked set to fail, forcing losses on bondholders...
Support for the bank bailout bill was led by Italy’s ruling centre-left Democratic party, but members of the centre-right opposition also agreed to vote in favour after Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of Forza Italia, announced his backing.
The Five Star Movement, the main anti-establishment opposition party led by comedian Beppe Grillo, opposed the measure, calling for a full nationalisation of struggling banks.

our future "populism"?

A little over a year ago, Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) swept to power promising to challenge the political elite, restore national control of the country’s affairs, and realign government with traditional conservative values. Since then concerns have grown, at home and in Europe’s capitals, that Poland has taken a wrong turn. The government’s most recent moves do nothing to dispel that fear.
PiS has devoted too much energy on consolidating power and not enough on bolstering Poland’s economic prospects. It has tightened its grip on the media -- firing managers and more than 100 journalists at the country’s public broadcasters, and undercutting the regulator’s authority. It put a friend of the party in charge of the intelligence services, brought the prosecutor’s office under political control, and replaced scores of executives at state-owned companies. When it moved to undercut the country’s constitutional court, the European Commission launched a probe that might lead to sanctions.

Old and in debt

The federal government is increasingly taking money out of Americans’ Social Security checks to recover millions in unpaid student debt, a trend set to accelerate as more baby boomers retire.
The government has collected about $1.1 billion from Social Security recipients of all ages to go toward unpaid student loans since 2001, including $171 million last year, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday. Most affected recipients in fiscal year 2015—114,000—were age 50 or older and receiving disability benefits, with the typical borrower losing about $140 a month. About 38,000 were above age 64.
The report highlights the sharp growth in baby boomers entering retirement with student debt, most of it borrowed years ago to cover their own educations but some used to pay for their children’s schooling. Overall, about seven million Americans age 50 and older owed about $205 billion in federal student debt last year. About 1 in 3 were in default, raising the likelihood that garnishments will increase as more boomers retire.

China capital controls

China is also trying to avoid a currency crisis that its companies’ massive transfers of funds overseas is hastening. The RMB has slipped recently to an eight and a half year low and analysts are predicting a further slide by the time Trump takes office next month.
“China has been worried about what could happen to the dollar with Donald Trump becoming president,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist with Capital Economics in Beijing. “It is controlling capital outflows as a pre-emptive measure.”

Trustiing Trump

Americans’ confidence in the economy continues to gradually strengthen after last month’s post-election surge. Gallup’s U.S. Economic Confidence Index averaged +10 for the week ending Dec. 18, marking another new high in its nine-year trend.
The latest figure is up slightly from the index’s previous high of +8 recorded in both of the prior two weeks. The first positive double-digit index score since the inception of Gallup Daily tracking in 2008 reflects a stark change in Americans’ confidence in the U.S. economy from the negative views they expressed in most weeks over the past nine years.

Trusting Trump #2

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey for the fourth quarter found that the percentage of Americans who believe the economy will get better in the next year jumped an unprecedented 17 points to 42 percent, compared with before the election. It’s the highest level since President Barack Obama was first elected in 2008.
The surge was powered by Republicans and independents reversing their outlooks. Republicans swung from deeply pessimistic, with just 15 percent saying the economy would improve in the next year, to strongly optimistic, with 74 percent believing in an economic upswing. Optimism among independents doubled but it fell by more than half for Democrats. Just 16 percent think the economy will improve.

U.S. no longer has a say in Syria

Russia, Iran and Turkey met in Moscow on Tuesday to work toward a political accord to end Syria’s nearly six-year war, leaving the United States on the sidelines as the countries sought to drive the conflict in ways that serve their interests.

Secretary of State John Kerry was not invited. Nor was the United Nations consulted.

With pro-government forces having made critical gains on the ground, the new alignment and the absence of any Western powers at the table all but guarantee that President Bashar al-Assad will continue to rule Syria under any resulting agreement, despite President Obama’s declaration more than five years ago that Mr. Assad had lost legitimacy and had to be removed.