It may appear surprising that the spectacular abduction by the United States of Nicolás Maduro – a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter – has unleashed only the faintest of financial shockwaves. Not only did markets easily absorb this event, they immediately wanted to know what would happen next. There has been no massive flight to safe assets, no financial dislocation, no lasting pressure on oil. 

Yet this disconnect between the real geopolitical gravity of the event, global feelings about it and the modest financial reaction is the result of neither pure blindness nor total irrationality. It is even becoming a stylised fact of contemporary capitalism: geopolitics is no longer seen as an anomaly but rather a permanent condition. However, when risk becomes structural and endogenous, markets change not only what they price in but also how they prioritise events.