presidential election

Norbert Hofer from the Euro-sceptic, anti-immigration, far-right Freedom Party is close to winning Austria’s presidential election with 51.9 percent of the vote. Postal votes are to be counted by tomorrow. If confirmed, Hofer could become the first right-wing head of state on the European continent since the death of Hitler and the end of world war 2. Russia Today reports: The Ministry states that Green Party candidate Alexander van der Bellen garnered only 48.1 percent of the ballots cast.

Submitted by Matthew Tyrmand, originally posted in BL

Is Soros Funding An Agitprop Protest Movement to Destabilize Poland’s New Democratically Elected Government?

As I have written about at length in these pages; on October 25th the Polish people decisively elected a new government delivering the largest popular mandate in modern Polish history (the post-1989 period) to the right of center Law & Justice party (PiS- Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc).

One month ago, pro-European voices in Austria, and all of Europe, were suddenly muted when in the first round of the Austrian presidential election, Norbert Hofer head of Austria Freedom Party (FPO), described as a "Euroskeptic, right-wing, anti-immigrant party" crushed his opposition buoyed by a migration crisis that has heightened fears about employment and security across the continent, and gathered a whopping 35% of the vote leaving the other five legacy candidates far behind.

Via Monty Pelerin's World,

As the next Presidential election nears, optimism regarding candidates and political parties ebbs and flows. Voters like to believe their candidate sees the problems and will fix them. This fundamental belief drives voting. But what if it isn’t true? What if government ain’t fixable? Or can’t be changed? What then?

Government Ain’t Fixable and People Are Sensing It

A little over a month ago, conventional wisdom (and overrated pundits) said that Trump has no chance of being the republican nominee. They were all wrong, but so was the market which continued to ignore the possibility of a Trump presidency until well after the fact. And, as always happens, now is when if not the market, then certainly Goldman's clients are finally trying to catch up. As Goldman strategist David Kostin (who just one week ago warned that there is now a substantial risk of a market drop ahead of the year end), writes "Politics is now a topic in every client discussion."