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Donald Trump invades Venezuela and threatens to annex Greenland – and share prices, not only in the US, but also in the UK and Europe, shoot to new highs. Most remarkable of all, since Greenland is an autonomous region of Denmark, the prices on Copenhagen market have risen sharply too.

It’s an extraordinary contrast between the huge political and military tensions around the world and the positive mood of the stock markets. It’s almost as though investors don’t care about what Trump does, or indeed the actions of Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, as long as the world economy keeps going.

Instead they seem to be much more interested in what happens to interest rates. Is this a delusion, or are investors simply being tough-minded about the ability of the giant corporations to keep making decent profits despite whatever is thrown at them?

The explanation, insofar it’s possible to make a helpful instant analysis when things are moving so fast, comes in two parts.

First, investors believe that despite his mercurial temperament, Trump will not do anything that seriously damages American commercial interests. He is following the line of president Calvin Coolidge, who famously declared in a speech in 1925: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.”

Since the........

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