Category: Telescope

Three times a year, the GEAB produces a calendar of significant events during the next four months. This calendar is the kind of tool normally used by the world’s major strategists, who are wary of sharing such tools and especially of making their comments on these formational events public. Fortunately, LEAP is here and its calendar of forthcoming events will save you valuable time when reading the news in the coming months. You’ll already know about it …

While the wave of buzz and hype around cryptocurrencies, or virtual currencies, is running out of steam among people in general,[1] the movement that has emerged remains robust. The versatility of the technology, its deployment in a digital context which can quickly reach millions of people, its potentially anonymous character and the place it could […]

Jusqu’à présent, médias et analystes ont été unanimes : le Brexit représente un avenir incertain et dangereux pour le Royaume-Uni et seulement pour le Royaume-Uni. Nos lecteurs savent que nous avons toujours été plus circonspects à ce sujet. Alors que la première phase de négociation s’est achevée (en fin d’année dernière) et que la seconde […]

For the past two years, we have been witnessing the meticulous dismantling of the world order that has prevailed since 1945. Unable to adapt to new realities, this world order began to break up in 2001. However, in the last two years, the national units that make up this international system have made a decided […]

Apprehension goes hand-in-hand with financial matters. Last April, the alarmist IMF announcements predicted a huge crisis by 2020 linked to the level of global debt that ten years of ‘crisis management’ have not brought under control. Rather, US public debt has doubled in absolute terms (from $10,000 billion to $20,000 billion), the EU’s debt has […]

The construction of a federal structure for the eurozone got off to a bad start. The vision of the French government to strengthen the structure of the monetary union by creating new eurozone institutions, particularly a Ministry of Finance with its own budget and a convergence of business tax rates[1], already seemed like a somewhat […]

So far, the media and political analysts have been unanimous: Brexit represents an uncertain and dangerous future only for the UK. Our readers know that we have always been more circumspect about this. Now that the first phase of negotiations has been completed (at the end of last year) and the second phase is about […]

Brexit seemed to have opened up the long-awaited project of redefining the functioning and objectives of the European machine. But today Brussels prefers to boast about the UK’s difficulties, and, thinking of itself as unavoidable, it is undertaking to unearth all its bottom drawer projects. Hence, over the heads of the citizens, a whole bunch of […]

As happens every year, LEAP/E2020 presents in January a panorama of the “up & down” main trends[1] of the coming year. Besides the intellectual added value of this contribution, which of course reflects many of the analyses our researchers made over the last few months, LEAP/E2020 aims to enable a better perception of priorities within […]

We can not help going back to the Middle East this month, simply because what is happening now looks so much like we had been anticipating for several years and announced at the beginning of 2017 in our list of “up and down trends”: Saudi Arabia’s emergence as a new strong player in the region, […]

End 2017/early 2018, all major Western Central Banks will be putting a final stop to the 2008 crisis-related unconventional monetary policies, namely the famous quantitative easing policies (QEs) which enabled to provide liquidity to those banks which saw their mutual confidence for borrowing collapse in the aftermath of the subprime crisis. Fiscal QE in rich […]

We anticipated this in May[1]: good news abounds in the eurozone, notably for the economic matters, with a “recovery” making Mr. Trump and Mrs. May jealous[2]. This even encourages the ECB to consider reducing its quantitative easing programme earlier than expected, namely in January[3], before halting it in September 2018. Investments go up, unemployment declines[4], […]

Here after, we will try to sketch out the landscape of a series of elections awaiting us until the end of 2017 (in chronological order). Each of these elections reflects the challenges facing Europe by 2019; challenges which come not just from national or regional voters. The success to reconcile voters’ expectations, government bets and […]

To strengthen the eurozone, the European Commission has just launched the idea of creating products backed by European sovereign debt, a proposal which could be more an alternative than a precedent for the Eurobonds. On May 31, 2017, the European Commission presented its analysis on the “deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union”[1], which had […]

May 19 – Iran: presidential election A serious opponent is now threatening the chances of re-election of the reformist Hassan Rohani. This man is the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raissi, reinforced by the great geopolitical tensions surrounding Iran: war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, involvement in the Syrian conflict, Israeli threats of aggression, risk of questioning the […]

The financial crisis followed by the debt crisis has led to a substantial change in the mandate of the European Central Bank (ECB) and to more political provisions. The ECB has acquired implicit mandates to safeguard the euro but also an economic policy which all go far beyond the original objective of price stability. The […]

This anticipation is not very original but it must nevertheless be faced with all the lucidity required. It is hardly a hypothesis, but rather a certainty: the allied European far rights will constitute the most consistent and therefore powerful parliamentary group in the next European Parliament, whatever their results in the previous national elections. What […]

February 15-16 / Astana: Next round of peace talks on Syria The peace in Syria initiative launched by Russia, Turkey and Iran in the wake of the December 29 ceasefire agreement continues. The capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, will be hosting a new meeting on February 15 and 16, to which the United States, the United […]