No. of Recommendations: 3
I'm guessing that Jim was thinking more in terms of the big picture. I hope you're right in that this will all work outYes, I've always been an optimist.
As for the bigger/longer picture, I wouldn't be an investor in Europe. They are currently on a money high of government spending with debt limits loosened for much of the EU to spend on defense (and other programs pushed in). However, the longer term sclerosis remains.
Last fall, Mario Draghi put out a report on EU competitiveness, making the case that growth and competitiveness are fading in Europe.
For example, he writes “there is no EU company with a market capitalisation over EUR 100 billion that has been set up from scratch in the last fifty years, while all six US companies with a valuation above EUR 1 trillion have been created in this period.”
The future of European competitivenesshttps://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e...The death pains of the European Unionhttps://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/22/the-death...The largely unspoken trade-off involved in membership of the European Union is that democracy and national sovereignty are sacrificed in return for economic prosperity. Member states give up much of their control over critical policy areas to an unelected, technocratic elite who are entrusted with delivering higher living standards and productivity. But Brussels is not keeping its part of the bargain – and hasn’t for some time…
Draghi’s bleak assessment actually underestimates the scale of the EU’s economic malaise. Looking at averages across the 27-member bloc obscures the depths of the crisis. Astonishingly, the economies of Italy, Spain and Greece, having been battered by the Euro crisis and EU-mandated austerity, are actually smaller than they were in the late 2000s…
So, what is to be done? According to Draghi, nothing less than a fundamental rethink in how Brussels approaches investment, trade policy and business regulation will dig Europe out of its hole…If, as Draghi believes, the choice facing Europe is radical change or ‘slow agony’, then slow agony is what Europe will get.DB2
