North America

Cet article examine l'évolution des relations entre les États-Unis d’Amérique et l'Afrique, en mettant en lumière la nature cyclique de l'engagement américain et ses implications pour les deux parties. Historiquement, l'Afrique n'a pas été une priorité constante dans la politique étrangère américaine, avec des périodes de collaboration intense alternant avec des moments de négligence relative. Depuis la fin de la guerre froide, l'engagement des États- Unis en Afrique e ...

The writing of this Report started in november 2023 and benefited during six months from the quality of discussions in the Policy center. Paul Isbel, Professor at UM6P, was a relentless proofreader who generously brought his outstanding competence in economy and political economy. Stephen Gardner went beyond his role as linguistic proofreader and showed an admirable understanding of the substance at stake. Under the direct supervision of Professor Abdelaziz Aitali, the Economic Depa ...

Tanks Are Not Yet Deployed Containers are in place, razor wire and metal barriers, nine meters high. Dogs sniff for illegal intruders, spyware registers noise, alerting border patrol units to people approaching the border, trying to evade National Guard troops. Tanks, mind you, have not yet been deployedon the 1954 miles (3145 kilometer) border between Mexico and the U.S. Migrants who approach dare to pass through ferocious desert, climb harsh mountains, jump on freight trains pass ...

Cette étude est consacrée à la faillite de FTX, considérée comme la deuxième plateforme mondiale d’échanges des cryptomonnaies, derrière Binance, avant l’annonce de sa faillite en novembre 2022. Annonce qui va être un véritable coup de tonnerre, les ébranlant très sérieusement. Après avoir rappelé l’indispensable à connaitre des cryptomonnaies et de leurs plateformes d’échange, l’étude rappelle l’historique d’une faillite arrivant au pire moment, avec des cours du ...

This Policy Brief examines the current banking crisis in the United States and its implications for Africa. Many studies have pointed out the main factors responsible for this crisis, including poor risk-management practices in the failed banks, the sector’s weak regulatory structure, and the failure of bank supervisors. However, a key factor that has contributed to the extent and speed of the crisis is the U.S. Federal Reserve’s (Fed) policy actions, including the elimination of re ...

The current banking crisis in the United States began with the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) run in March 2023 and was followed by other bank failures, raising concerns about the health and stability of the financial sector. This Policy Paper traces the root causes of these bank failures and examines the U.S. monetary policy decisions during this period. These bank failures were caused by the poor risk management practices of the failed banks, the sector’s weak regulatory structure, and ...

Earlier this month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told congressional leaders that the government could run out of cash as early as June 1, if the debt ceiling is not raised in time. In January, the Treasury reached the current legally established ceiling in nominal terms ($31.46 trillion). The funds currently available to make government payment flows tend to exhaust by the end of this month. According to the Treasury Department: “Failing to increase the debt limit would ha ...

La première bipolarisation a appartenu au XX° siècle et opposé États-Unis et URSS. Avec la guerre froide, elle était l'expression de la rivalité entre deux systèmes antagonistes. La seconde est née de la montée de la Chine populaire qui est entrée en compétition avec les États-Unis. Une compétition au départ économique et technologique, devenue aussi, au fil du temps, culturelle et stratégique, dans un monde interdépendant et digitalisé, mais également segmenté, complexe et incertai ...

This paper explores the impact of commodities financialization on crude oil prices and their volatility. While some commodities have been market movers for centuries, introducing others, such as oil, to the financial markets is more recent. The increase in investors' appetite for commodity investing has led to commodities’ financialization, which is often considered an amplifier of commodity price volatility. This paper focuses on the relationship between crude oil prices and the fi ...

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the sixteenth largest bank in the United States, experienced a bank run in early March 2023, and was closed by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) on March 10. This bank failure, followed by others, creates fear of contagion throughout the U.S. and global banking systems. This Brief identifies four factors leading to the SVB crisis: i) Sharp interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve, which adversely affected SVB’s income and balance shee ...

The big menacing balloon, about 60 meters in height and an estimated couple thousand pounds, was not carrying extraterrestrials or some exquisite new covid viruses from Wahun, China. A spying monster, as Washington's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken insisted, deployed by Beijing to "attempt to surveil very sensitive military sites" (CNN, February 19, 2023). The balloon, large as roughly three buses, went over several military installations," in some cases loitering", claimed Bli ...

As FBI agent  Charles McGonigal, 54, was used in handcuffs, these metal symbols of repression and the end of freedom. When the former  Special agent in charge( SAC) of the Counter-intelligence Division of the FBIs field office in New York returned from a trip to the Middle East, he suddenly felt the cold iron around his wrists; some of the FBI agents arresting him he certainly knew well-from 1996 until his retirement in 2018 McGonigal specialized in Counterintelligence, organized cr ...

La souveraineté numérique européenne, entendue comme « capacité de l’Europe à agir de façon indépendante dans le monde numérique », a été érigée comme priorité par la Commission d’Ursula Von der Leyen. Du fait de la position privilégiée occupée par les entreprises américaines sur le marché européen, les efforts de Bruxelles en matière de souveraineté numérique sont scrutés de près par les décideurs politiques américains. Ces derniers considèrent souvent les initiatives européennes c ...

This ninth edition of “Atlantic Currents” appears in an international context marked predominantly by a ten month-war between Russia and Nato members that began February 2022. The war is affecting not only the European and American member States directly and actively involved in an unprecedented manner, but more importantly the countries of the global South that have suffered collateral damage. Indeed, the nations of the world were barely out of the most painful and costly phase o ...

En attribuant le prix Nobel d'économie 2022 à Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond et Philip H. Dybvig, le jury Nobel a voulu distinguer des travaux, remontant aux années 1980, qui permettent de mieux comprendre l'implication des banques dans les crises. Travaux pionniers, également, dans l'élaboration d'une théorie bancaire, où l'analyse historique est présente avec Ben S. Bernanke qui a longuement étudié le rôle des banques dans la crise de 1929, afin de ne pas renouveler les erreu ...

Despite the United States' disastrous record in both Iraq and Afghanistan, President Joe Biden is right in asserting that the world faces a confrontation between autocracy and freedom. And that a choice will ultimately have to be made. This makes people cringe, particularly in Europe, which remains polarized on the subject. ...

“Be there “, tweeted the President of the United States, “will be wild”. January, 6, 2021, was     supposed to be a historic day. The members of Congress would certify the electoral vote- declaring Joe Biden, the Democrat as 46th   President. Instead a band playing “God bless America” or “Hail to the Chief”, gunfire was heard and insurgents forcing their way into Congress on Capitol Hill, chanting “ Hang Mike Pence”, the Vice President, who was hiding in an underground garage, prote ...

Le président des États-Unis, Joe Biden, malgré les états de service catastrophiques de son pays en Irak ou en Afghanistan, n’a pas tort d’affirmer que le monde va vers un affrontement entre l’autocratie et la liberté. Et, qu’en fin de compte, il va falloir choisir. Cela fait grincer des dents, surtout en Europe qui est divisée sur le sujet. ...

The Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Alumni (ADEL) Portraits are a series of journalistic insights that delve into the stories and backgrounds of impactful young leaders of the ADEL community, now 350 alumni strong. These portraits are more than a biography as they capture the motives, success stories, career shifts, and vision behind each emerging leader’s pursuit of positive impact. From Morocco to South Africa, Germany to Canada, Brazil and the United States, these young leade ...

In the first half of this year, U.S. stock markets suffered a fall not seen in more than 50 years. The S&P 500 index on Thursday June 30 was more than 20% down compared to January, a drop not experienced since 1970. The S&P 1500 index, built by Bloomberg and incorporating companies of various sizes, has seen more than $9 trillion in stock value disappear since January. Except for energy stocks, all sectors have suffered value reductions. On Wednesday June 29, Citi announced ...

As China’s presence has expanded into the Horn of Africa, Somaliland has opted to distance itself from Beijing and presented itself as a democratic ally of the West – and Taiwan. On March 17, 2022, three Republican Congressmen introduced a bill titled the “Somaliland Partnership Act,” requiring the American Secretary of State to submit annual reports to Congress on assistance provided to Somaliland and conduct a feasibility study on establishing a security partnership with Somalilan ...

The insurrection of 6 January 2021, when supporters of then President Donald Trump stormed the US Congress in Washington DC, “is widely viewed as a seminal moment in the history of US democracy,” noted the British The Guardian (January 9, 2022). “Never before had the modern nation witnessed such an organized, violent attempt to overthrow the elected government. Never before, not even at the height of the Civil War, had the Confederated flag flown over the halls of Congress.” This w ...

He is 81 years old, and obviously, his job is not joyful. Or, rather some people he is dealing with, are not just angry about him, but outright murderous. Just a few days before Christmas, a man identified as Kuachua Brillion Xiong, was stopped by police on a highway in the state of Iowa, his car loaded with an AR 15 assault rifle, ammunition, and body armor (Des Moines Register, December 30, 2021) The  25-year-old Californian resident was on his way to Washington, DC- to kill Pres ...

Thanks to the positive momentum in transatlantic relations brought about by the arrival of the Biden administration, significant progress is expected on a range of key digital issues. New rules are emerging that are designed to level the playing field for economic actors and ensure the respect of civil liberties, while significant new investments in technological innovation are taking place amid considerable industrial reorganizations. This paper proposes to shed light on seven part ...

Richard Blumenthal, the US Democratic Senator from Connecticut, was shaken by the testimonies of top officials of the Department of Justice during the August 2021 Congressional hearings. The Officials recounted how the former President, Donald Trump, through phone and in private meetings, pressured them to falsify the results of the November 2020 Presidential: "say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to the congressmen and me". (”Mother Jones”, July 30, 2021) Blumenthal ...

Depuis l’accession au trône du Roi Mohammed VI, l’Afrique s’est transformée en priorité de la diplomatie marocaine. Sur le plan économique, l’Afrique est devenue le prolongement naturel du Maroc en termes d’investissements et d’implantations. Pascal Chaigneau s’attarde sur les relations affaiblies Europe-Afrique, l’ambitieuse relation Chine-Afrique ainsi que les relations entre la Russie, les Etats-Unis, la Turquie ou encore les pays du Golf et l’Afrique. Ce chapitre traite égalemen ...

The Taliban movement took control of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, without confrontation or resistance, as soon as the president, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country. Afghan forces were not able to face the Taliban, despite of the fact that Taliban was technically outnumbered and outgunned by Afghan government forces. The New American administration first priority is to make US military mission in Afghanistan conclude by August 31st. Biden believes that the mission US army in Afghanistan ...

Macroeconomic dynamics in the U.S. economy has increasingly become associated with asset price fluctuations in the past few decades. Financial conditions have increasingly become an influential factor shaping the cyclical pace of the macroeconomy. There has been a mismatch between rising financial wealth and the pace of creation and incorporation of new assets. Several secular stagnation hypotheses offer explanations for the insufficient creation of new assets. Public debt—and its p ...

Joe Biden’s victory in the U.S. elections was widely anticipated, and much of what has happened since he took office on January 21 has conformed to his election promise. The progress he helped steer in vaccinations and repairing the pandemic’s economic damage is especially impressive. However, the first 100 days of his term have also seen major unexpected developments. Three of these surprises have both major implications for the U.S. economic outlook, and global repercussions. The ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has induced a major shift in Carolina Zuheill Rosales’ career. This internal medicine doctor founded Guimedic in 2011, when she was 25. Through its mobile clinics, this NGO provides medical consultations in remote and poor areas throughout Mexico. The main focus is to treat indigenous communities. Because of a structural lack of medical access to these populations, she has launched in March 2020 Promesa, a social business that is using artificial intelligence. ...

According to this month’s OECD economic outlook, global GDP --- which took a huge hit from the pandemic and is still 3% below its level of a year ago – will not recover its pre-pandemic level until the end of 2021. In a downside scenario, the return could take almost a year longer. The OECD predictions, which imply high and protracted unemployment, are in line with the view of many other official and private organizations. The arrival of effective vaccines such as Pfizer-BioNTech wa ...

The maxim that in adversity we find unity has never truly materialized following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Despite fighting a common enemy, individual societies have turned inwards, moved by a self-preservation instinct that prioritizes individual over collective well-being. Outbursts and demonstrations of solidarity have punctuated national and international responses to COVID-19, but the virus has also often exacerbated structural inequalities, reopening ol ...

This article was originally published on Bruegel  A recovery from the COVID-19 recession is underway though the suffering is far from over, especially for the most vulnerable. Inequality is both a consequence of the pandemic and a cause of its severity. Many countries need comprehensive policy change to address its worst effects. At the end of a tragic year marked by pandemic and increased poverty, the miraculously rapid arrival of vaccines stirs great hope. The COVID-19 recession ...

“When I got home late that night, the house was dark and Michelle was already asleep. After taking a shower and going through a stack of mail, I slipped under the covers and began drifting off. In that luminal space between wakefulness and sleep, I imagined myself stepping toward a portal of some sort, a bright and cold and airless place, uninhabited and severed from the world. And behind me, out of the darkness, I heard a voice, sharp and clear, as if someone were right next to me, ...

During the last few weeks, the United States has seen unfold one of its most contentious elections to date, which also registered a record turnout. While the results trickled in after November 3, each camp reassured its base regarding its confidence in a win, President Trump going as far as calling the election in his favor on Twitter. The following weekend, news outlets began calling the Presidency in favor of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, who served under President Obama ...

Le suspens électoral américain s’est achevé le samedi 7 septembre par la victoire du candidat démocrate Joe Biden comme 46ème président des Etats-Unis, en franchissant la barre fatidique des 270 grands électeurs lui garantissant la victoire le 14 décembre prochain au sein du Collège électoral. Néanmoins, le président sortant Donald Trump, refusant de reconnaître le verdict des urnes, semble déterminé à poursuivre son bras de fer judiciaire engagé devant les tribunaux pour contester ...

As President elect Biden prepares for the enormous responsibility of becoming President of the United States (US), there is one question I want to ask him, writes Stephen Young, Washington Representative and Senior Analyst of the ”Union of Concerned Scientists” on November 7th, 2020: “Sir ,are you a fan of nuclear arms race? Because you are being handed one, a burgeoning nuclear and technology arms race waged by Russia, China and the United States.” Two weeks after Joe Biden will be ...

The Trump Administration “America First” policy changed U.S. foreign policy towards the African continent. Trump opposed trade agreements with several countries, considering them to be unfavorable to the U.S., given the nature of the African market. He shifted the U.S. concern in Africa from fighting against violent extremism and terrorism to a direct competition with other great powers—China and Russia—which had already extensively implemented African strategies. He endeavored to r ...

Le mandat du président Trump qui, sauf miracle, s’achève en janvier 2021, avait soumis à rude épreuve les alliances des Etats-Unis d’Amérique avec plusieurs pays et entités européens et asiatiques. Plusieurs de ces alliés stratégiques des Etats-Unis avaient, alors, perdu confiance en l’esprit de solidarité qui a toujours empreint l’action étasunienne à leur égard, et amorcé des réflexions sur la construction de leurs propres systèmes de défense. L’arrivée à la Maison Blanche d’un no ...

La perspective d’une victoire de Joe Biden s’est heurtée, jusqu’au bout, au scepticisme des observateurs, en raison du précédent de 2016 : ils n’avaient, alors, pas vu venir la défaite d’Hillary Clinton et le triomphe de Trump, en retard dans les sondages. Mais, l’élection de 2020 n’est pas celle de 2016. D’abord, l’avance de Biden est bien supérieure à celle dont disposait Hillary Clinton. A la veille du scrutin, celle-ci avait deux ou trois points d’avance dans les sondages par ...

Whether President Trump is reelected or not, the United States will, sooner or later, revert to a traditonalist foreign policy of openness and alliances. If Joe Biden beats Donald Trump on November 3, as he is expected to do, the United States will return to a traditionalist brand of foreign policy: one of openness, support for multilateralism, and constructive engagement with allies. But even if Biden doesn’t winwhich is possible—and four more years of Trump’s America First polici ...

The so-called QAnon conspiracy theory has inspired groups with millions of members on Facebook and is considered by some observers to be “a new American religion”. For the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, the conspiracy theorists could pose a domestic terrorist threat. Q followers believe the baseless messages of their faceless leader(s) that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child-trafficking ring and plotting against Donald Trump, who is bat ...

Bank robbers are now and then caught because banks, insurance companies, or robbed personalities promise rewards for the arrest of criminals. In the past, Hollywood took the lead in dreaming up such scenarios. But in early August, the U.S. State Department offered a $10 million reward for information leading “to the identification or location of any person, who works with or for a foreign government for the purpose of interfering with U.S. elections through certain illegal cyber act ...

If America votes Donald Trump out of office in November, will he go? Just a few days ago (Sept. 13), one of Trump’s closest political friends, Roger Stone, publicly suggested to the President that if the votes should go against him, he should alert the military, ready to defend his power, and arrest opponents including the Clintons or Microsoft boss Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame. Stone was sentenced in February 2020 to 40 months in jail for witness tampering, making ...

En dépit d’une diminution du contrôle des changes, le cours d’une devise continue de se jouer, jusqu’ici encore, en fonction de l’importance du poids considérable des relations financières qu’elle permet et facilite. Autant la monnaie américaine demeurait la devise-clé, en raison de la puissance tant économique que sécuritaire qu’elle reflète, autant l’Euro et le Yen n’en sont pas moins bien présents, également, sur les marchés que dans les réserves monétaires des divers pays. Certe ...

L’industrie automobile mondiale est confrontée à une année 2020 des plus difficiles. La pandémie est apparue pour la première fois dans une région chinoise réputée pour son secteur automobile développé. Dans un premier temps, ce sont les constructeurs sudasiatiques qui ont subi les premières ondes de l’arrêt de l’activité en Chine avant que le foyer pandémique se déplace en Europe et aux Etats-Unis et que la perturbation des chaînes de valeurs prenne une dimension cette fois-ci mond ...

At the beginning of June, officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, usually active on America’s periphery, were deployed to Washington D.C., where President Donald Trump had sighted an internal threat posed by “anarchists, agitators, looters, or lowlifes”. In reality, American citizens were protesting, mostly peacefully, against police brutality, and the killings of African-Americans by cops. Nevertheless, the urban revolt seemed grave enough for the Trump Administration to ...

The United States has suffered more COVID-19 casualties than any other country and continues to report large numbers of new cases and deaths, and – as evident recently in stock markets – investors remain extremely sensitive to the epidemic’s shifting trends. As every state reopens, including most recently the New York epicenter, the fates of the American economy and of the global economy depend on whether the United States has put the worst of the epidemic behind it, or whether it w ...