BRUSSELS—Yes, “Europe will be the focus of the Cannes Summit.” Although anticipated, the blunt statement from European Commission President Barroso and European Council President Van Rompuy seemed both redundant and inspiring. Redundant, because a €1 trillion commitment needs implementation and global coordination that only the G20 can offer. Inspiring, because this crisis serves as the [...]

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BRUSSELS — Any banking system relies on its depositors retaining their faith in the soundness of their banks. Investors have traditionally regarded government bonds as a relatively low interest, but safe place to park their funds. And voters have trusted their governments to deal competently with complex financial questions. What happens when these components of [...]

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Washington – In yet another sign of the eurozone members’ inability to stem their regional financial crisis, last week Standard and Poor’s downgraded Spain’s credit rating to AA-. This move has raised new fears about the ability of beleaguered European nations to pay their sovereign debts. And it has revived calls for expanding the International [...]

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WASHINGTON — Civil unrest is breaking out on both sides of the Atlantic. This year, Greek protestors took to the streets in resistance to government austerity measures. Riots broke out in London neighborhoods in response to cutbacks in government services and rising unemployment. Now Americans are camping out in city centers across the country, following [...]

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WASHINGTON—Despite economic worries and domestic political preoccupations, perceptions in the United States and Europe of each other appear to be in better shape now than they were during the presidency of George W. Bush. Americans and Europeans have generally favorable opinions of one another and majorities on both continents believe they share enough common values [...]

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By Mark Allegrini and Kate Ritterspach This summer, the issue of food security in sub-Saharan Africa has been thrown into cruelly sharp focus. The United Nations reports that over 3 million Somalis (almost half the country’s population) are in need of food aid, and the U.S. Agency for International Development claims that over 12 million [...]

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WASHINGTON — The world faces a near-perfect financial storm of unprecedented proportions. Europe and the United States face debt and deficit problems that are coming to a head at the same time, threatening to plunge both economies into recession. There is a single unifying theme to this transatlantic crisis: a profound failure of economic governance [...]

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WASHINGTON — With public finances in disarray following the financial crisis, recent political debate in Europe and the United States has focused on national debts. The ongoing crisis in the eurozone and daunting government deficits in the United States have added a sense of urgency. As the United States reaches its statutory debt ceiling and [...]

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NEW YORK — Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have been rather well behaved over the past few years. They have avoided, to a significant degree, blatant forms of protectionism in the face of one of the worst financial crises in modern history. In the dark days of early 2009, following the collapse in [...]

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WASHINGTON — When the G20 finance ministers and heads of the central banks gather this weekend in Paris, attention will center on some of the major pledges made at the G20 Summit in Seoul—most notably the commitments related to a more market-determined exchange rate system and to policies to address current account imbalances, whether excessive [...]

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