| By Derek Caney
The suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was killed in a shoot-out in a suburb of Milan, Italy's interior minister said. The suspect Anis Amri was stopped by a routine police patrol when he opened fire wounding one of the officers. Twelve people were killed when a truck barreled into the Berlin market on Monday.
Digits of the day: $12 billion The Justice Department won $12 billion in penalties from Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank over the sale of toxic debt. Credit Suisse is expected to pay about $5.3 billion to settle claims that it misled investors in residential mortgage-backed securities it sold in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. Deutsche got dinged for $7.2 billion over its sale and pooling of toxic mortgage securities. The fines represent a victory in the waning days of the Obama administration, which pledged to hold Wall Street accountable for their role in the Great Recession. The Justice Department also sued Barclays after the two sides couldn't reach a settlement.
President-elect Donald Trump once again decided to upend decades of foreign policy by declaring the United States' nuclear arsenals should get bigger, not smaller. 
But the foreign-policy-via-Twitter strategy raised more questions than it answered. Did he mean he wanted to throw out the 2011 New START treaty with Russia? The arms control folks, somewhat predictably, flipped out. "It is completely irresponsible for the president-elect or the president to make changes to US nuclear policy in 140 characters and without understanding the implications of statements like ‘expand the capacity.’ He must have leaders around the world trying to guess what he means. This is bush league." – Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. We do know that the tweet followed remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin: "We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems." Maybe it's an early Christmas present for Cold War nostalgia buffs…
But I wanted a PS4! 
A lioness opens up Christmas presents in her enclosure in Hagenbeck's zoo in Hamburg, Germany December 23, 2016. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer
Around the world - Russian President Vladimir Putin jabbed at the U.S. Democratic Party, saying it is losing on all fronts and that it is wrongly trying to blame President-elect Donald Trump's victory on external factors. "You need to learn how to lose gracefully," he said at his annual year-end press conference. He added that no one but the Russians expected Trump to win.
- A Libyan jet was hijacked by a man claiming to have a hand grenade. The flight was diverted to Malta, where it landed with 118 people on board. The aircraft had been flying from the southwestern city of Sebha in southwest Libya to Tripoli for state-owned Afriqiyah Airways.
- China warned of a "showdown with the U.S." after Trump named Peter Navarro to be one of his trade advisers. Navarro wrote a book called "Death By China: How America Lost Its Manufacturing Base." "The new administration should bear in mind that with economic and trade ties between the world's two largest economies now the closest they have ever been, any move to damage the win-win relationship will only result in a loss for both sides," the state-owned China Daily said in an editorial.
Around Wall Street - Speaking of China and trade tensions, remember the automaker that the country said it was going to fine for monopolistic pricing? State television named GM as the company and $29 million as the fine.
- China's crackdown on smog-spewing factories that shut or slashed output this week at sites will ripple across major bulk commodity markets into 2017. Closures on this scale could put the brakes the world's second-largest economy.
- Volkswagen agreed to provide "substantial compensation" to the owners of about 80,000 3.0-liter polluting diesel vehicles, a key hurdle to resolve the German automaker's emissions scandal. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer did not disclose the amount of owner compensation, which is not included in a $1 billion settlement announced earlier this week between VW and U.S. regulators.
Around the country - The president-elect's son Eric Trump is suspending the operations of his charitable foundation over concerns that donors could be seen as buying access to the Trump family, the Washington Post reported. Dad is very sad about this.
For the record, this is the same gentleman who said: 
- The storm over transgender bathroom legislation is set to intensify in 2017 with several U.S. states proposing measures similar to restrictions in North Carolina. Missouri, South Carolina and Washington have legislation limiting transgender bathroom rights that will be on the agenda when lawmakers convene next year.
- Dreaming of a white Christmas? Heavy snow, freezing rain and wind gusts will make holiday travel treacherous in swaths of the northern United States.
Today's reason to live Terry Allen – Gimme A Ride To Heaven, Boy | 
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