“For years I [have] thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." Charles E. Wilson

Last month, General Motors signed a 5-year agreement with Henry Ford Health System to provide comprehensive healthcare services for GM’s salaried employees in Southeast Michigan. This is a landmark transaction that moves GM away from pure fee-for-service (FFS) payment while holding Henry Ford accountable for care delivery cost, quality, outcomes and service levels. 

I returned to Europe this week to hear views from the other side of the pond, as US trade policy continues not just to pivot, but to spin.  There is no doubt that a major reset of key trading relationships is now underway with implications for currencies worldwide.  As the US economy seems to be outpacing growth everywhere except in China and India, will US monetary policy have unintended global spillover effects, especially for emerging markets? And more direct effects from trade policy in developed nations? European PMI figures announced today are down to 2-year lows. 

The U.S. Department of the Treasury issues its FinTech report as bitcoin gains institutional momentum.

Given all the attention to cryptoasset trading over the past two weeks, it's a bit strange that the U.S. Department of the Treasury makes no mention of it in its long-awaited FinTech report (PDF).

Over the past month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced several pro-market policies that will enhance pricing transparency, stimulate competition (and fair prices) for routine procedures and eliminate burdensome reporting requirements.

Hospitals welcome the regulatory relief but generally oppose measures that improve pricing parity and transparency. They are on the wrong side of history.

I am sharing my just published article, making the case for US policymakers to use "democratic governance" as an orienting strategic concept for engagement with Latin America.

The article first appeared on the website of Newsmax.

During President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China, the press asked China’s premier Zhou Enlai to comment on the French Revolution’s impact on world affairs. Zhou famously replied, “Too early to say.”

For British novelist Charles Dickens, the French Revolution was a period of change and turmoil filled with plenty of evidence for hope and ample cause for despair. As he wrote eloquently in A Tale of Two Cities:

China says the United States has waged a trade war, while America’s intelligence agency is now terming it as a China-led cold war. Nevertheless, the trade brouhaha continues. Trumponomics ceases to be rhetoric anymore, and Xinomics is candidly reciprocal. In fact, neither countries were striving for autarky, nor is the situation as grim as it was in the 1930s. Yet the present scenario is destined to reach alarming proportions, as its spillover effect has begun to deter the global value chains (GVCs) that perennially define the geo-economic architecture of international business today.

The relationship between FinTech firms and incumbent financial institutions appears to be entering the next phase of their evolution. The first two items in this week's newsletter explore how FinTech has transformed finance and provide a context for strategic partnerships that can produce results.