Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Lane Hall-Witt]

I'm surprised there hasn't been a bigger reaction on the Korea news.

The market's in its own world right now and isn't paying attention to any geopolitical developments right now -- or at least not to any negative ones. Earlier today, the director of the CIA said he's sure another Al-Qaeda attack against the U.S. is coming -- he likened the situation now to the summer of 2001 -- and the market couldn't even be bothered to yawn at the news.

This said, I'd actually say it's a positive development that North Korea would disclose this information about its nuclear program to us. It's a frightening fact, obviously, that North Korea has an advanced WMD program underway, but really not too surprising in light of what we know about its efforts to build sophisticated weapons systems, long-range delivery vehicles, etc., etc. What's truly surprising is that they would tell us anything about their nuclear program; based on the very limited information available to us, I'd say this looks like a major overture to the West and the States, which might well have long-term benefits that would outweigh these kinds of short-term shocks.

It's hard to handicap the importance of geopolitical developments that have such complex implications, though--.