presidential election

Clashes have erupted in Le Bastille in central Paris on Sunday evening between riot police and disappointed far left protesters following the closing of polls in the first round of the presidential election, AP reports.

According to local press, the French police have used smoke pellets and are moving toward protesters who started to break the fences at the Place de la Bastille in the center of Paris. After that, police started dispercing protesters, Sputnik notes.

After months of anticipatory build up, voting is underway in France on Sunday in the first round of a bitterly fought presidential election that is seen as crucial to the future of the Eurozone, and a closely-watched test of voters' anger with the political establishment.

Local polling stations opened at 0600 GMT and will close at 1800 GMT, with about 47 million voters expected to cast their ballots in around 67,000 polling stations amid a high terror alert.

Having already 'dropped' over one trillion dollars in 2017 to keep reality at bay, it appears the world's central bankers are not about to let a French election mishap spoil the illusion.

Just as central bankers gathered at The BIS' Basel Tower just says before the Brexit vote, so judging by the statements today, the monetary manipulators stand ready to rescue markets once again should the first round of the French election 'surprise' the 'free' markets.

Brexit's BTFD took a few days...

One month after a startling reversion by the G-20 finance ministers and central bankers, who during their latest meeting in Baden-Baden dropped a decade-long tradition of rejecting protectionism and endorsing free trade, pressured by Trump's delegate Steven Mnuchin, the IMF has done the same, and according to a communique from the IMF’s steering committee released on Saturday in Washington echoed the G-20 reversal, and said that officials “are working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies" while omitting a call from its last statement in October to “resist all for

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).