On February 13, 2009, in direct response to the economic crisis and at the urging of President Obama, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- commonly referred to as the "stimulus" or the "stimulus package." Four days later, the President signed the Recovery Act into law. The three immediate goals of the Recovery Act were:

The OECD Report 'Lobbyists, Governments and Public Trust, Volume 3 (2014) takes stock of progress made in implementing the 2010 Recommendation on Principles for Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying, the only international instrument addressing major risks in the public decision-makiing process related to lobbying. The review process found that although there is an emerging consensus on the need for transparency to shed light on lobbying, the degree of transparency in lobbying varies considerabkly from country to country.

When the European Central Bank’s (ECB) governing council meets on 22nd January,  it will take a historic decision. Among the main central banks, the ECB alone has abstained from a big programme of quantitative easing involving the creation of money to buy sovereign bonds with the aim of spurring growth and inflation. The economic case for QE in the euro area is overwhelming: the feeble economic recovery that has followed Europe’s double-dip recession is faltering; headline inflation has turned negative and longer-term inflation expectations have also declined to a worrying extent.

François Hollande veut "mieux encadrer les groupes de pression". Le président a chargé Michel Sapin, Ministre de l’Economie, des Finances et de l’Industrie d'élaborer "un projet de loi pour la transparence dans la vie économique".

"Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before; more of our people are insured than ever before; we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we've been in almost 30 years. The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.

The Theme for 2015 The New Global Context

The existing Schengen legal and technical tools already ensure a high level of safety for European citizens. Member States need to use the existing instruments to the greatest extent so that all persons representing a threat to internal security are appropriately dealt with. The Schengen Information System (SIS II) has proven to be one of the most efficient tools in following the travel routes of foreign fighters through discreet or specific check alerts or to retain them at the external borders if their travel documents are invalidated and entered into SIS for seizure.

The Foreign Policy magazine determines each year the 100 most important public intellectuals who are still alive and active in public life based on the following categorization:

Today, Spain is held up as an example of the positive impact of policies demanded by the European Union, the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. The country has left the recession behind and its economy has annual growth of 1.6%. But few are paying attention to the real nature of that recovery. Big problems persist and the forecasts are not good. Unless Spain, and Europe, change course there is a risk dangerous deflation and decades of high unemployment -- currently at nearly 24%. Per capita income is lower than in 2004.

The world economy will grow by just 3.5% in 2015, and by 3.7% in 2016, according to the latest estimate from the International Monetary Fund. One bright is the United States: The IMF revised its estimate for U.S. economic growth to 3.6% this year.

World economic growth remains limited. Even drastically lower oil prices will have limited impact on stimulating the overall economy. New factors supporting growth -- lower oil prices, but also depreciation of euro and yen -- are more than offset by persistent negative forces.