The denoument is well under way. Dutch house prices have fallen 18pc, leaving a quarter of all mortgages “onder water”, and there is surely worse to come. Standard & Poor’s expects prices to drop 5.5pc this year, and slide again in 2014. This is infecting everything. “Consumer sentiment in the Netherlands is at much the same level now as at the depths of the global financial crisis,” said Ken Wattret, an analyst at BNP.