The Syrian crisis must not conceal the other current factors of instability. Tension between the U.S. and its allied nations and Russia will wane as soon as situation in Syria calms down. Economic consequences of the sanctions will be limited at the world level. It won’t be the same if a real economic war opposes China and the U.S. It is the whole international trade organization which could be affected. Despite its defects and the exceptional imbalances that system has sometimes generated, it has permitted a continuous trade development for more than fifty years and it is ...

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Donald Trump has announced last week he will sign a decree creating a 25% tax on steel imports and a 10% one on aluminum imports. He hopes, in doing so, that the American production will rebound in these two sectors which he believes they are strategic, regarding the sovereignty of the country. This has triggered several passionate declarations from European leaders and some more cautious ones from China. They threat to replicate with retaliatory measures. According to his habits, the American president has passed a new step in the verbal escalation in mentioning the prospect of a trade war he ...

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Financial markets have always been influenced by the innovations which affected the survival of some companies or which generated the success of the others which had been at their launch. Excessive reactions spiraling out of controls even generated major crisis as at the beginning of the years 2000 with the Internet bubble. Its blow-out had consequences by far more important than the fall of some stocks and affected growth of the American economy. Lessons have not been learnt because we see again a craze for stocks which represents the “new economy” as Alphabet, Google parent company, or Amazon. They reach ...

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