To hear Donald Trump tell the tale,
America's intervention in Venezuela will be a huge boon for American oil firms.
They will win lucrative investment opportunities and spend lavishly on them.
The oil will flow and the profits will gush.
Yet the oil firms themselves—and the investors who own them—are not persuaded.
After attending a meeting on Venezuela at the White House,
ExxonMobil's CEO dismissed the country as "uninvestable".
Since an irritated Mr Trump responded by threatening to exclude Exxon from Venezuela,
its share price has actually risen.
For the markets, it seems, any sort of respite
from political meddling in a company's commercial decisions,
even if motivated by pique, is a distinct plus.
Alas, such moments are not as frequent as they used to be.
For several years now, commentators (including The Economist)
have warned that politicians' efforts to influence
where companies make and sell their wares
will undermine the benefits of globalisation
and so make multinationals less efficient and less profitable.
Sadly, lots of data already suggest that big,
global firms are indeed reshaping their operations