Inside will be a piece of digital hardware measuring 3in (7.3cm) by 5in, known as "the biscuit". This contains the launch codes for a strategic nuclear strike. The briefing for the incoming president on how to activate them will have already taken place out of public sight, but the moment President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office that aide, and the satchel, will move quietly over to his side. Donald Trump will then have sole authority to order an action that could result in the deaths of millions of people in under an hour.

The question on a lot of people's minds right now is, given his thin skin and impulsive temperament, what are the safeguards, if any, to prevent an impetuous decision by one man with catastrophic consequences? First off, it should be said that Donald Trump has rowed back on some of his earlier, provocative comments on the use of nuclear weapons. He has recently stated he would be "the last person to use them", although he has not ruled it out.

Eisenhower began by describing the changing nature of the American defense establishment since World War II. No longer could the US afford the “emergency improvisation” that characterized its preparations for war against Germany and Japan. Instead, the United States was “compelled to create a permanent armaments industry” and a huge military force.

He admitted that the Cold War made clear the “imperative need for this development,” but he was gravely concerned about “the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex.” In particular, he asked the American people to guard against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Eisenhower’s blunt language stunned some of his supporters. They believed that the man who led the country to victory in Europe in World War II and guided the nation through some of the darkest moments of the Cold War was too negative toward the military-industrial complex that was the backbone of America’s defense.

For most listeners, however, it seemed clear that Eisenhower was merely stating the obvious. World War II and the ensuing Cold War resulted in the development of a large and powerful defense establishment. Necessary though that development might be, Eisenhower warned, this new military-industrial complex could weaken or destroy the very institutions and principles it was designed to protect.

Mary Callahan Erdoes, chief executive of JP Morgan Asset Management, almost struggled to contain her excitement at the prospect of a Trump administration: “The US economy will take off in a way that it hasn’t for many years. There has been a pendulum switch that will be very positive for US companies and should cascade to other businesses outside the US. It will be great for the next couple of years.”

However, Sir Martin Sorrell, boss of advertising giant WPP, cautioned against being too optimistic: “The thing that troubles me is that, while the US looks stronger, Europe looks more turbulent …”

Anti-establishment politicians including Marine Le Pen, head of the National Front in France, and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party echoed the combative language of the new US president’s inaugural address at a celebratory rally in Koblenz, western Germany, on Saturday while Chancellor Angela Merkel was trying to reassure her supporters at a meeting in the country’s industrial heartland.

Le Pen and her allies are spearheading the most sustained challenge to Europe’s status quo since the end of the Cold War, with the continent facing elections this year in Germany, France and the Netherlands. While a meeting of the populist right would once have been dismissed as a sideshow, Trump’s unexpected rise and the UK’s decision to leave the EU in last year’s referendum have focused investors’ concerns on the where the next threat to the European Union project might emerge.

“The first major hit on the old order was Brexit,” Le Pen told a couple of hundred cheering supporters in Koblenz’s conference center. EU countries will soon “leave the prison of Europe,” she predicted, branding Merkel’s decision to let almost a million migrants into Germany last year “a catastrophe.” Trump himself has called the move “a catastrophic mistake.”

Both Wilders [Netherlands] and Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League, congratulated Trump on his rise to power in Koblenz. “We live in historical times - the people of the West are awakening,” Wilders said. “They want their freedom back, they want their sovereign nations back, and we, the patriots of Europe, will be their instrument of liberation.”

Mr Trump frequently hit out at China during his campaigning, branding the Beijing government “currency manipulators” and implicitly threatening a trade war. His inauguration speech did not directly reference the country, but he spoke about foreign industries being “enriched” at the expense of American jobs.

Chinese experts on their country’s relations with the US appeared equally bleak about the future. “A trade war between China and the US seems inevitable,” Pang Zhongying, of Renmin University, told the South China Morning Post.

The story is about the abrupt end of donations to the Clinton Foundation now that neither Bill nor Hillary are in direct political power. No one was surprised at this because, even though the Clinton organization claimed that the Foundation did much good around the world, it was obvious that the millions of donated dollars were merely bribes for political favors. The minute the opportunity for such favors was removed from the equation, donations ceased.

This is a variation of Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will.” The political version is this: “If corruption is possible, corruption will occur.” That’s the lesson. If we create a government that allows corruption, we create a government that eventually will be destroyed by it. By allowing it, we create it. Bill and Hillary are merely the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of others just like them who, as we speak, are continuing the grand tradition. Why? Because they can.

If we truly want to put an end to corruption, we must stop looking only at the criminals who are exposed from time-to-time and begin looking at the system that allows corruption. As long as the system remains, so will corruption.

Neither Trump — nor, aside from a brief appearance by Anthony Scaramucci, any of his advisers — is mixing it up with the liberal cosmopolitan crowd at Davos this year. But, even with an agenda packed with Brexit and Syria and migration crises and big elections coming in Europe this year, the new American president is sucking up most of the thin Alpine air.

Perhaps with the exception of parts of Brooklyn and the San Francisco Bay Area, it would be hard to find any place as deeply anxious about the inauguration on Friday of President Trump. Before and, more worryingly for them, after his election win, Trump has gone out of his way to openly question seemingly everything the Davos crowd holds dear: Free trade and globalization, a Western alliance of democracies, American-funded security for Europe.

Trump spoiled the Davos party before it started. Speaking to German and British dailies a day before the Forum kicked off, he repeatedly criticized Angela Merkel and said he trusted the Germany leader no more than Russia’s strongman Vladimir Putin, declared the NATO military alliance “obsolete” and rooted for the further unravelling of the European Union in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the bloc.

The comments dominated the rest of the week, leaving the “globalists” (to borrow the phrase used, derisively, by Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon) mostly appalled and confused. “No one knows whether to take him seriously,” Emma Marcegaglia, head of lobbying group Business Europe and chairman of Italy’s oil giant Eni, told a panel co-hosted by POLITICO. If Trump does what he says or tweets, she added, “then it’s a disaster.”

Modelled on the Drudge Report, the American aggregator site that generates huge traffic, Westmonster will be powered by the social media reach of Leave.EU, the campaign to which Mr Banks gave close to £7 million - the largest donation in British political history. Leave.EU has nearly 800,000 followers on Facebook and Mr Heaver believes he can use that base to generate substantial traffic from day one. Westmonster will publish some original news, and Mr Heaver hopes to enlist more celebrity writers than backbench MPs.

The site will launch with an article from Nigel Farage, anti-establishment, modelled on the highly provocative tone of Breitbart. This launch is significant for several reasons. It shows that the anti-establishment media which helped to power the campaign of Donald Trump is coming to Britain.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already removed 86% of his country’s currency from circulation in an attempt to curb tax evasion, tackle corruption and shut down the shadow economy. Should the US follow suit?

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, thinks so. Phasing out currency and moving towards a digital economy would, over the long term, have “benefits that outweigh the cost,” the Columbia University professor said on day one of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos.