AUSTRIA TRENDS RIGHT – AT 12:50 P.M. ET:   It is a trend throughout Europe, and America, and even Japan.  The establishment is being put on notice.  From Bloomberg: 

Austrian voters gave 31-year-old conservative Sebastian Kurz a mandate to form a new government in an election on Sunday, setting up a potential coalition with the nationalist Freedom Party as junior partner, according to projections based on partial returns.

Kurz’s People’s Party took 31.5 percent of the vote, with Chancellor Christian Kern’s Social Democrats in second place with about 27 percent and the Freedom Party third place at about 26 percent, according to Sora projections for ORF public television.

The outcome may mark a triumph for European populists after they were kept out of power this year in elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany, though the Freedom Party was already part of Austria’s government as recently as 2005. Norbert Hofer, its narrowly defeated candidate in the nation’s presidential election last year, immediately staked a claim to a strong role for his party.

“People demanded change,” Hofer said in an ORF television interview. Any coalition with the People’s Party should be “a partnership of equals,” he said.

Kurz, the Austrian foreign minister who took up the Freedom Party’s hardline stance on immigration during the campaign, now has a chance to become the world’s youngest government leader. After a campaign dominated by migration and fair access to social security, his likely vice chancellor would be the Freedom Party’s Heinz-Christian Strache, 48.

COMMENT:  We approach this result with caution.  On the one hand, it's about time the comfortable, self-important European establishment was jolted.  On the other hand, when we see "nationalist" together with Austria, Germany, and even most of Europe, we have reason to watch closely.  There is a history, and it's not a good one.  Many American military cemeteries attest to that.

So we'll wait and see, but, clearly, the European Union pseudo-aristocrats have some heavy worrying to do.

October 15, 2017