CL The Hang Seng closed down 1.59%, not because of anything that happened in Hong Kong, but because a strait four thousand kilometres away stayed shut. Hormuz closing is an abstraction until fuel costs move, and in a city that imports nearly everything, abstractions arrive at the pump faster than most people expect. Vance is flying to Switzerland; traders here are watching whether he lands with anything.-- CL

MB Two ceasefires in effect, five dead in Lebanon, Hormuz closed, a vice president airborne to Switzerland: the day's news is less a sequence of events than a demonstration of how the formal apparatus of diplomacy has learned to coexist with the reality it was built to prevent. Institutions still send the right people to the right cities. Whether anyone expects them to arrive somewhere different is another question.-- MB