European Union

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Austerity is over, proclaimed the IMF this week. And no doubt attributed that to the ‘successful’ period of ‘five years of belt tightening’ a.k.a. ‘gradual fiscal consolidation’ it has, along with its econo-religious ilk, imposed on many of the world’s people. Only, it’s not true of course. Austerity is not over. You can ask many of those same people about that. It’s certainly not true in Greece.

IMF Says Austerity Is Over

Risk is definitely on this morning as European shares soar, led by French stocks and a new record high in Germany's Dax, after a "French relief rally" in which the first round of the country’s presidential elections prompted investors to bet that establishment candidate Emmanuel Macron will win a runoff vote next month, and who is seen as a 61% to 39% favorite to defeat Le Pen according to the latest just released Opinionway poll.

For those who may have missed yesterday's events, here is a quick recap from DB:

Ahead of Sunday's first round of the French election, we have previously provided several perspectives on the political and economic outcomes, including a permutation matrix of all six possible outcomes in terms of "high" vs "low market risk" (from BofA), why the market may be too complacent about a Le Pen - Melenchon result (candidate approval variance is within the polling error), and that European stocks have completely failed to price in any adverse outcome (as DB observed yesterday).

Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

On April 23, French voters could drive the entire European Union into its grave.

 

Doug Casey and I recently discussed this historic election—and why it matters to US investors.

Nick Giambruno: Doug, you predicted the fall of the European Union a few years ago. What has changed since then?

Diplomatic relations between the UK and EU are fast approaching zero degrees Kelvin.

One day after Theresa May not only cemented, but allowed herself Brexit negotiating breathing room with her stunning, yet cunning decision to announce snap elections which would only boost the leverage of her party, Brussles has retaliated and as the FT reports, Brussels is starting to "systematically shut out British groups from multibillion-euro contracts" while urging companies to migrate to one of the 27 remaining EU members.