Liam Dann: Brace yourself for market turmoil

Brace yourself.

Brace yourself for market turmoil. Brace yourself for a global economy that is about to get horribly, horribly complicated. And frankly it was already a mess but there were signs of light at the end of the tunnel.

Brace yourself for President Donald Trump and hope that he fails to live up to billing. Hope that he can't enact the mad policies he's been talking up for the past six months.
Who will be the last voices of reason?

We are going to need to look to the world's central bankers. Brace yourself for an almighty showdown between the powers of economic orthodoxy and an anarchistic Trump regime.

How much pressure now falls on US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, perhaps the most powerful woman in the world now?

How does she respond to the chaos and political mayhem this result will unleash on America?

And what can our own Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler say?

Today he has to update us on monetary policy and give us his outlook for the local and global economy.

One suspects he has had to do a quick rewrite, although he and his team will have spent some time preparing for this scenario.

It was always on the radar, but for many of us it was just too extreme to believe possible.

So clearly market meltdown represents a significant short-term risk to global growth.

It may change an outlook for New Zealand that was looking increasingly upbeat. There was talk that today's rate cut would be the last in this cycle, now all bets are off.

Beyond that what will Trump do to global trade? Will he start the trade war he has promised? Will he escalate tensions with China? Do our exporters face a new world of tariffs and trade barriers?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead in the water. From New Zealand's perspective the best hope is that there are enough free trade believers left in the Republican controlled House and Senate to keep Trump's more extreme ideas at bay.