Macquarie: Don't Count On Rational Leader Theory With North Korea

An argument soothing nerves over the current geopolitical standoff with North Korea is that rational leaders are going to avoid war. Such soothing voices point to the stock market, which is climbing higher in the face of currently unfathomable nuclear risks and in the face of a rising interest rate environment, an oddity that Goldman Sachs recently pointed out in a report. But forget the soothing voices singing a lullaby at bedtime. Macquarie analysts Viktor Shvets and Chetan Seth look at the history of war with a degree of wariness, pointing to a momentum towards war that even a rational leader could not avoid – and a stock market history that has badly mispriced geopolitical risk.

[russia]