Europe

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,

In a setback for Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders, and perhaps the entire European populist movement, the first Dutch exit polls are out and his PVV, or Freedom Party, has only won 19 seats, tied with the Christian Democrats and Democrats 66 party, both of which also got 19 seats; the outcome is in line with polls that were predicting a sharp drop off in support for Wilders in recent days. The winner: prime minister Mark Rutte's VVD, or Liberal Party, with 31 seats.