America

In the first woman appointment to Trump's administration, South Carolina Govenor Nikki Haley has accepted the president-elect's offer to be his ambassador to the United Nations, NBC News reported this morning. The daughter of immigrants from India, Haley served three terms in South Carolina's State House before winning the governorship in 2010 and again in 2014. A two-term governor, Haley, 44, initially backed Trump rivals Sen. Marco Rubio and then Sen. Ted Cruz during the GOP battle for a White House nominee.

Authored by Alastair Crooke, via Raul Ilargi Meijer's Automatic Earth blog,

We are plainly at a pivotal moment. President-Elect Trump wants to make dramatic changes in his nation’s course. His battle cry of wanting to make “America Great Again” evokes – and almost certainly is intended to evoke – the epic American economic expansions of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.

Back in the summer we wrote about an IMF report that flagged Deutsche Bank as the "most important net contributor to systemic risks" (see "'Deutsche Bank Poses The Greatest Risk To The Global Financial System': IMF").  Those who read our site frequently were likely not terribly surprised by the IMF's conclusion.

After “the most contentious election in U.S. history,” journalists wrote, “the art of fiction is dead.” We chose “the most unqualified president in history,” but voters were reacting to years of “social experimentation and economic extravagance,” motivated “not by ideology but a desire to vote against” the loser—or perhaps “a desire for change.” Democrats, meanwhile, were “turning their guns on each other” in despair.

The first two quotes are from 2000, the last from 1980, the “social experimentation” line from 1942, the “turning their guns” quote from 1880.

In my younger years, my mother tried to manage my expectations in the maddening way that mothers do. Whenever I was worked up at the prospect of some unwanted turn of events, she’d reliably intone: “always expect the unexpected.”