Welcome to the Wall Street Week newsletter, giving you some investing food for thought from our conversations on Bloomberg Television with some of the best minds on Global Wall Street. This week we told the stories of on-the-ground effects of eroding statistical data in the US and the trade-off that the European Union has made between growth and competition with our colleagues, Molly Smith and Max Ramsay. If you're not yet a subscriber, sign up here for this newsletter.

Numbers cost money

President-elect Donald Trump identified slimming down the federal government and its spending as one of his earliest priorities, and he’s even creating a Department of Government Efficiency dedicated to that task. Under his administration, US statistical agencies such as the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics could face cutbacks. But with a combined budget of $2.2 billion, those three agencies accounted for just 0.03% of federal spending. After adjusting for inflation, BLS funding has slumped almost 20% since 2010, according to a September report from the Center for American Progress. 

The EU's ‘reputation for regulation’

Under the European Commission’s Margrethe Vestager, the EU took the lead on regulating the most powerful companies. Vestager took on the world’s biggest companies and issued fines worth billions of euros for abuses of dominance and cartel violations. The EU might be winning the regulatory race, but some argue that it’s losing the competition for innovation and growth. A report from former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, "The Future of European Competitiveness," sets out solutions to reform the EU's economic policies, but success depends on the will of its member states.

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