Following the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, modern industrial countries appear to be coming back to a moderate growth trajectory, as was the case for the last three decades.

Regulatory coherence is claimed to be the core of the potential economic stakes in the TTIP. As the 9th Round of Negotiations is being convened in New York City, time has come for discussions to take a more concrete form.

While European external surpluses are accumulating and domestic demand is slacking, insisting on improving the Union’s external competitiveness, as some in the Commission are presently doing, is paradoxical. For Europe, the paramount risk is not losing its competitiveness. It is not recovering cohesion and growth.

The ECB will purchase a monthly €60bn of private and public debt instruments between March 2015 and September 2016 – a total worth over €1 trillion. While the timing and size of purchases are known, there is more leeway than it seems in the way purchases are allocated to each category of assets.

The ECB has announced that it will launch in March its first round of quantitative easing. The announcement contains some good and bad surprises: the size of the ECB's plan is gigantic, while the Central Bank was unclear about the Greek issue. How was this announcement perceived by markets?

Instead of buying sovereign debt, the ECB could broaden further its purchases to include equity of all sorts. Fuelling an equity bubble is no worse than fuelling a bond one. It can be mitigated by intervening secretly and including non listed securities. Inhibitions to take risk should be lifted.

The long awaited Juncker Plan for investment in Europe has arrived a few weeks ago. Beyond the creation of a Strategic Fund, the Plan as a whole has disappointed: not adamant enough to eliminate the deep obstacles to cross-border investment, and opaque in generating the “List” of projects to be financed. Yet, even imperfectly, Europe has now done its homework.

The recycling of current account and/or financial account surpluses through the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves by emerging countries after the 1999-2001 crisis, particularly by China, has been described as “smoking but not inhaling in international financial markets”.

The TTIP has become a full-blown political issue as the two largest economic entities in the world are negotiating a deep integration agreement, going beyond what has been done previously in any agreement except the EU’s Single Market.