Is Europe becoming uninvestable?

[dwy000]

8 hours ago, Dinar said:

Discriminatory pricing is also outrageous.  I had surgery, had I paid cash, the price would have been $40K.  Insurance said no, the bill should not be $40K, it should be $10K, it paid $9K and I paid $1K.  Why is the hospital allowed to charge 4x more for the same thing?

Because there's no limit on what providers are allowed to charge - and nobody is price shopping health care, especially urgent or emergency care or pharma with no generic or equivalent.  So quite a bit of insurance (incl medicare and medicaid and pharma) is priced off the "list" price with a % discount negotiated by insurance. 

[james22]

True, the WEF propaganda remains fixated on Environmental, Social, and Governance issues, and, of course, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—the familiar, woke-globalist acronyms ESG and DEI, now supplemented with AI.

 

The corporate billboards still burble their word salads about resilience and sustainability. But talk to the chief executives and a very different picture emerges.

 

Almost everyone at Davos is long U.S., short EU. The new Davos consensus is that Europe cannot get its economic act together and never will, whereas America is rocking and rolling, and if you don’t own the big U.S. tech stocks, then the FOMO may kill you. 

 

Börje Ekholm, the CEO of Swedish telecom firm Ericsson, told one interviewer that he was fed up with Europe’s “regulatory-first approach.” I heard the same thing again and again. “Europe is always lagging behind,” complained Zurich Insurance Group CEO Mario Greco. Vasant Narasimhan, who runs the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis, agreed.

 

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-always-bet-against-the-davos-man-donald-trump-elon-musk?hide_intro_popup=true

[Spekulatius]

Since when is going long consensus that everyone agrees upon making money when investing?

 

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Almost everyone at Davos is long U.S., short EU. The new Davos consensus is that Europe cannot get its economic act together and never will, whereas America is rocking and rolling, and if you don’t own the big U.S. tech stocks, then the FOMO may kill you. 

 

[james22]

32 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

Since when is going long consensus that everyone agrees upon making money when investing?

 

That's Ferguson's point, actually:

 

The trouble is that the Davos consensus is nearly always wrong. I still remember the way it was five years ago. It was clear to me—and I told everyone who would listen—that a global pandemic was underway.

 

But what was the dominant topic on the agenda of the World Economic Forum? That’s right: climate change and how morally superior Greta Thunberg was to wicked Donald Trump.

 

So, if Davos Man is, despite his qualms, long America and short Europe, that might be your cue to take the other side of the trade.

 

But I believe they've got it right (for once).

 

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://www.ft.com/content/b6a5c06d-fa9c-4254-adbc-92b69719d8ee

 

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Europe can import disillusioned talent from Trump’s US, says Lagarde

 

Lagarde is absolutely clueless. Can't believe she still has a leadership position in the EU, but then again, the EU is not democratic but just a cabal of insider bureaucrats who have destroyed their continent. The European people have no say in who runs this clown show.

 

The EU needs reform badly.

[Dinar]

13 hours ago, dwy000 said:

Because there's no limit on what providers are allowed to charge - and nobody is price shopping health care, especially urgent or emergency care or pharma with no generic or equivalent.  So quite a bit of insurance (incl medicare and medicaid and pharma) is priced off the "list" price with a % discount negotiated by insurance. 

There should be a law of one price - a hospital has to charge the same amount for a procedure no matter who is paying for it and how.  Otherwise people are forced to buy insurance.

[Spekulatius]

59 minutes ago, Dinar said:

There should be a law of one price - a hospital has to charge the same amount for a procedure no matter who is paying for it and how.  Otherwise people are forced to buy insurance.

There is no such thing for pretty much any service. Nobody pays the same price for a car service, to get their lawned mowed, their toilet repaired and so forth.

 

I do agree the pricing variances in Health care are extreme.

[james22]

 

if you have to insist you're not a basket case . . .

 

[Paarslaars]

It also makes no sense... Why would the talent leave US when talent is finally getting rewarded instead of gender or race?

 

The only thing Europe is getting is the DEI crap. And please keep that in the US, we have far too much diversity already.

[james22]

 

[cubsfan]

^^^ Gosh, I couldn't agree with this more.