The Financialization of Commodity Markets: A Short-lived Phenomenon?

“A band-aid on a bullet hole!” That’s how Charlie McElligott, a cross-asset strategist at Nomura, described the maneuver carried out by United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on August 19. The U.S. Treasury Department announced that from September 9 to November 4, it would double the volume of long-term bond buybacks, going from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, with a focus on maturities of between 10 and 30 years. ...

The next Secretary-General should begin with an act of institutional rebellion: refuse to become the Secretary-General ofeverything. Over three decades the office's political and administrative reach has spread across sustainable development, climate, health, migration, digital governance, financing, gender, food systems, and a still-growing list of global priorities. These issues are not unimportant; the trouble is that institutional ambition has simply outrun institutional capabil ...

Recent crises in the Middle East, particularly attacks targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea and tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, have highlighted the vulnerability of the main strategic corridors of global trade. Rather than fundamentally disrupting the organization of trade flows, these crises are accelerating an ongoing transformation driven by the search for more resilient connectivity chains, the diversification of trade routes, and the development of logistics ...

Les crises récentes au Moyen-Orient, notamment les attaques ciblant les navires commerciaux en mer Rouge et les tensions autour du détroit d'Ormuz, ont mis en évidence la vulnérabilité des principaux corridors stratégiques du commerce mondial. Plus qu'un bouleversement de l'organisation des échanges, elles accélèrent une transformation déjà engagée, fondée sur la recherche de chaînes de connectivité plus résilientes, la diversification des itinéraires commerciaux et le développement ...

La géographie mondiale des hydrocarbures n'est évidemment pas figée. De nouveaux producteurs de pétrole et/ou de gaz naturel apparaissent suite à des découvertes, le plus souvent réalisées par des compagnies pétrolières internationales. On pense notamment au Mozambique, qui produit et exporte du gaz naturel liquéfié (GNL) depuis la fin 2022, au Sénégal, qui est un producteur de pétrole offshore depuis la mi-2024, et au Sénégal et à la Mauritanie, qui sont devenus conjointement expor ...

This paper addresses the persistent challenge of resource dependence in the world's poorest countries, focusing on the ten poorest African nations where natural- resource rents average 14% of income. It argues that four decades of conventional policy advice, which treated resource dependence primarily as a revenue management problem, have failed to help these countries. While stabilization funds and permanent-income frameworks aim to smooth consumption, they do not answer the fundam ...

This policy paper explores how China’s economic development model—rooted in pragmatism, long-term planning, and civilizational renewal—has become its most compelling soft power asset, particularly in the eyes of the Global South. While critically engaging with Joseph Nye’s original conception of soft power as a primarily cultural and normative force, the paper argues that China’s ability to transform itself from an impoverished postimperial state into the world’s largest trading nat ...

This Opinion was originally published in Project Syndicate and republished by The Edge Malaysia, DT Next, and The Japan Times. Data from a period in which both China and India pursued deliberate industrial policies show that neither country's development route is accessible to other countries. At best, their experience can alert policymakers to structural limitations and coordination problems that will require their own homegrown solutions.RABAT—What is the most reliable develo ...