Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted December 3, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted December 3, 2019 Oven Ready Not for Sale NHS done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gary v1 Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 (edited) On 11/25/2019 at 12:57 PM, quote the raven said: This will stop them being brought cheaper than market value. However they have been promised government bonds to make up for any shortfall I have no idea how government bonds work. Would the shareholders be better off with them or no? A government bond is just a loan from the government to the bondholder. It pays a fixed rate of interest and then the initial loan is repaid when the bond matures. With a government bond you know exactly what you'll be getting paid in the future. e.g. a £100 bond that pays you the £100 back in 10 years time and £2 a year interest every year until then. Payments are known in advance and fixed. You can sell your bond to someone else and they'll receive the future payments instead. You may get more or less than the £100 face value but this will depend on interest rates at the time (or in other countries the credit-worthiness of the government - think Greece). With a share the return is totally unknown. You may get paid dividends out of the company profits but how much or if you get any dividends at all is not known in advance. You can also sell your share on the market to someone else but you could get more or less than you paid. If you own shares you own a part of the company so if the company goes bust your share becomes worthless. So in summary it's impossible to know if you'd be better off with the shares or the government bonds until further down the line. In general a well diversified portfolio of shares usually gives better returns over time than government bonds but returns are much more volatile than the safe and steady government bonds. The UK government will never go bust (because they can always print more money to buy back the shares via the central bank which is what quantitative easing was. If the UK government is ever in a position it can't pay bond holders then you have more to worry about than your bond investments). However, presumably the shareholders would rather keep their shares or else they would have bought government bonds to begin with. Edited December 3, 2019 by gary v1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members quote the raven Posted December 3, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted December 3, 2019 Awesome thanks for explaining how they work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted December 3, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted December 3, 2019 Here’s the clip  Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 Personally, I don't see the story here. If we agree a trade deal with the US for pharmaceuticals then the price for the duration of the deal will be set, no? If the US decide they want to raise prices at a later date then that's perfectly fine, it's a free market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted December 3, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted December 3, 2019 12 minutes ago, David said: Personally, I don't see the story here. If we agree a trade deal with the US for pharmaceuticals then the price for the duration of the deal will be set, no? If the US decide they want to raise prices at a later date then that's perfectly fine, it's a free market. Have you seen the price difference we’re talking here. This isn’t 30p on top of a box of tablets. We’re talking 1000’s Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 10 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said: Have you seen the price difference we’re talking here. This isn’t 30p on top of a box of tablets. We’re talking 1000’s Then we go elsewhere for a pharmaceutical trade deal. The US isn't the only show in town, are they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted December 3, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted December 3, 2019 18 minutes ago, David said: Then we go elsewhere for a pharmaceutical trade deal. The US isn't the only show in town, are they? Well, yes in some cases. The other issue is with patents. They hold the patents for much longer in the US then the EU. And it was one of the things mentioned in those papers released last week. If the patent is still her, you can’t make a generic brand version. So it could have massive repercussions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members quote the raven Posted December 3, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted December 3, 2019 (edited) 21 minutes ago, David said: Then we go elsewhere for a pharmaceutical trade deal. The US isn't the only show in town, are they? I think the issue is that people are worried that it will be a deal breaker to any trade negotiations. IE you pay for our drugs or no trade deal at all. Boris has said on LBC that any attempt to strong arm that would end with the uk waking away. However boris says a lot of things I might be confused but couldn’t the US jack prices regardless of trade deals? Like right now if they felt like it? Edited December 3, 2019 by quote the raven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 3 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said: Well, yes in some cases. The other issue is with patents. They hold the patents for much longer in the US then the EU. And it was one of the things mentioned in those papers released last week. If the patent is still her, you can’t make a generic brand version. So it could have massive repercussions Where do we get our pharmaceuticals from at the moment? 4 minutes ago, quote the raven said: I think the issue is that people are worried that it will be a deal breaker to any trade negotiations. IE you pay for our drugs or no trade deal at all. Boris has said on LBC that any attempt to strong arm that would end with the uk waking away. However boris says a lot of things I might be confused but couldn’t the US jack prices regardless of trade deals? Like right now if they felt like it? Wouldn't a trade deal prove beneficial for the US as well though? Surely it wouldn't be a case of them storming in as though they're doing us a favour? I imagine we'd be looking to negotiate a deal that benefits both sides, rather than just the US. If the US slapped a huge increase on prices then we (and other potential trade partners) just go elsewhere I assume. They'd essentially price themselves out of the market, which would be counter-productive to good business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted December 3, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted December 3, 2019 Trump says it himself in that video Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 1 minute ago, Hannibal Scorch said: Trump says it himself in that video Not to defend Trump, but that video is a few different quotes from him that have been spliced together. I don't see how him talking about "the days of freeloading being over" being a sign that he's going to try and bump up the prices in any UK/US trade deal. Besides, isn't one of the leading pharmaceutical companies operating in the UK at the moment a US company? Pfizer enjoyed the biggest market share of any individual company with almost 10% in 2018, so it's hardly as if we leave the EU and the Americans come steaming in to take over. They're followed by Swiss-based Novartis and our very own GlaxoSmithKline. The rest of the top five by market share consists of US-based Merck & co, and Bayer of Germany. If Trump and the US companies start playing funny buggers (which they won't in my opinion, because the pharmaceutical industry isn't government-run, it's private enterprise. They're not going to just allow Trump to fuck up trade deals potentially worth billions of dollars) then we can just say "Cool, we'll see if Novartis, Bayer, Roche, or even our own GlaxoSmithKline fancy increasing their own interests. It's very much mountains out of molehills in this instance I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 I like the NHS being a car analogy. You can say you aren’t selling the car, but you can sell off components of the car, like the headlights, the stereo, the spark plugs, the starter motor etc until the car doesn’t work anymore and is just the shell. But you never sold the car like you said you wouldn’t. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted December 4, 2019 Paid Members Share Posted December 4, 2019 Yep, and David's statement of "mountains out of molehills" is exactly the response people like BJ are hoping for - they're doing it in such a way that it could just as easily be nothing as something. Salami tactics, as they say in Yes, Prime Minister. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 6 hours ago, Carbomb said: Yep, and David's statement of "mountains out of molehills" is exactly the response people like BJ are hoping for - they're doing it in such a way that it could just as easily be nothing as something. Salami tactics, as they say in Yes, Prime Minister. If you're suggesting that I'm being duped somehow then I'd say you were mistaken. My point is simply that this notion of the NHS now being in danger of a US style takeover because of Brexit is false. As mentioned, a US pharmaceutical company was the leading provider to the NHS last year. We've also got German and Swiss companies playing a huge part. This has been the case for years now, long before Boris Johnson or Brexit was even a factor. It's how things are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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