While some were worried about an "unexpected outcome" from yesterday's Dutch general election, in the end the country's center-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte managed to fight off the challenge of anti-Islam, anti-EU rival Geert Wilders to score an election victory that was hailed across Europe on Thursday by governments facing a rising wave of nationalism.
World stock indexes soared to record highs on Thursday while the dollar traded close to a one-month low after the Federal Reserve hiked U.S. interest rates but signaled no pick-up in the pace of tightening. European and Asian were broadly higher this morning, with S&P tagging along, driven by two main events: the latest "dovish" Fed rate hike, and the Dutch election results, in which Geert Wilders performed worse than some expected, reducing concerns of Eurozone political risk, and broadly seen as a sign of support for Europe's establishment.
From today's "Morning Porridge" by Bill Blain of Mint Partners
Mint – Blain’s Morning Porridge – March 16th 2017
What a fascinating world of possibilities opened up y’day, but let’s start with a simple game. Without thinking about it too much; name 5 famous European politicians of the last 30 years.
I bet none of them were Dutch.
Why? It’s a great country with a functional consensual political system biased towards compromise and coalition. Generally it works. The country works.
Authored by Andrei Akulov via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
With Donald Trump leading the United States, Europe seems to be losing trust in the American nuclear umbrella. As the EU focuses on the need to have its own military, the issue of European nuclear deterrent comes to the fore. The debate has been triggered. This issue is intensively discussed in Germany.
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,