Treasury yields hold steady as investors monitor Israel-Iran ceasefire
U.S. Treasury yields held steady on Wednesday as investors monitored the Israel-Iran ceasefire and awaited Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's second day of testimony before Congress.
At 3:50 a.m. ET, the 10-year Treasury yield was down over one basis point to 4.28%, while the 2-year yield was up less than a basis point at 3.78%. The 30-year yield was little changed at 4.818%.
One basis point equals 0.01% and yields move inversely to prices.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on Tuesday, but the two countries both violated the ceasefire initially by firing non-lethal rockets. The ceasefire has held since, but investors will keep an eye on the situation to keep track of any uncertainty.
Investors will also await Powell's second testimony before Congress, after he delivered remarks to the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. The central bank leader reiterated that policymakers will continue to hold rates as they wait and see the impact of tariffs on prices.
"Policy changes continue to evolve, and their effects on the economy remain uncertain," Powell said. "The effects of tariffs will depend, among other things, on their ultimate level."
Trump has continued to fire criticism at Powell for his wait-and-see approach and posted Tuesday, on the Truth Social platform, that he hopes "Congress really works this very dumb, hardheaded person, over."
Powell will speak before the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, which investors will watch closely for further clues about future monetary policy.
On the data front, new home sales for May is due in the morning, with the gross domestic product growth rate out on Thursday, and the personal consumption expenditures index — the Fed's preferred inflation gauge — to be released on Friday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump bombs Iranian nuclear facilities in major escalation. What happens next?
President Donald Trump has claimed to have 'completely, totally obliterated' Iran's nuclear program in a series of missile strikes and bombings, marking explicit U.S. intervention into Israel's war that risks a wider international crisis. The true extent of the damage is unclear. Retaliatory strikes are expected, as are efforts to revive already-fractured negotiations and diplomatic efforts to lower temperatures. But the United States is now embroiled in a war between two well-armed nations that could spill out far beyond their borders with untold casualties, experts have warned. 'Remember, there are many targets left,' Trump said in a brief address to the nation on June 21, roughly two hours after announcing a 'very successful' series of strikes on nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan. 'If peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.' The world is watching to see what will happen, as experts and analysts consider how current conditions, history and a volatile political environment could inform what's next. A 'dangerous escalation' Trump had campaigned on a promise to end all wars, including Israel's war in Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, yet the president has so far failed to negotiate an end to either. Israel sought American military support for its campaign against Iran after receiving virtual permission for its devastating war in Gaza in the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks — 'undermining Trump's claim to be a peacemaker and his assertion that wars would never have started under his leadership,' according to Brookings Institution senior fellow Sharan Grewal at the Center for Middle East Policy. He now risks exploding a wider crisis across the Middle East that could endanger U.S. installations abroad and embolden Iran's allies to retaliate, following a legacy of U.S. intervention and destabilization in the Middle East dovetailing with U.S. support for Israel's ongoing devastation in Gaza and in occupied territories. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said late Saturday that he was 'gravely alarmed' by Trump's decision to bomb Iran, calling it 'a dangerous escalation' and 'a direct threat to international peace and security.' 'There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control — with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world,' he said. Iran could also retaliate by blocking the strategically important Strait of Hormuz or attacking the energy infrastructure of the Arab Gulf — dramatically driving up global oil prices. Within hours after Saturday's attacks, roughly 50 oil tankers were seen scrambling to leave the Strait of Hormuz. Iran-backed Houthis have warned that Trump 'must bear the consequences,' Houthi political bureau member Hizam al-Assad posted on X. The Houthi-controlled Yemeni Armed Forces also said the group was prepared to target U.S. Navy warships in the Red Sea 'in the event that the American enemy launches an aggression in support' of Israel. Houthi rebels had previously attacked ships linked to Israel's war in Gaza, and the United States retaliated with a series of airstrikes in Yemen earlier this year. Hardening Iran's resolve — or doing enough damage to force negotiations? Saturday's attack marks an 'unprecedented event that may prove to be transformational for Iran, the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, global non-proliferation, and potentially even the global order,' according to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.' 'Its impact will be measured for decades to come,' he wrote. 'It could entrench the regime — or hasten its demise. It could prevent a nuclear Iran — or accelerate one. ' Iranian officials have stressed for years that its nuclear programs are for civilian and peaceful purposes only, but Israel has claimed that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a claim central to the long and now accelerating conflict between the two nations. Following Saturday's bombings, Iran's atomic agency vowed 'never' to stop its nuclear program, according to Iranian media. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said the three targeted nuclear sites came under 'savage assault,' seen as 'blatant violation of international law, particularly the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.' The agency also accused the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog of 'complicity' in the effort as it urged the international community to condemn the strikes and 'never allow the progress of this national industry … to be halted.' Aerial bombardment alone would not be enough to conclusively stop any nuclear ambitions because 'neither Israel nor the U.S. can kill all the nuclear scientists,' former U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker told Politico. Targeted strikes that significantly damage operations could convince Iran to negotiate, according to former U.S. special envoy Dennis Ross. But a wider assault — fueled by demands from Israeli officials and Iran hawks in the United States — could be seen by Iran as seeing that 'they have little to lose and their best bet is to show they can make us pay a heavy price,' he told Politico. When Israel struck nuclear programs in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, 'the long-term results were diametrically different,' according to Mara Karlin, former assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities under Joe Biden. 'Tehran could conceivably choose either path,' she said. 'And, as long as the uranium enrichment complex at Fordow remains largely intact, it does not need to decide.' Blowback in Washington — and across America Trump's attacks risk deepening a growing divide between his allies and anti-interventionist Republicans now tenuously aligned with a wider anti-war movement and the majority of Americans who do not want the United States involved with Israel's campaign at all. Several members of Congress have questioned whether the president's actions are even legal, amounting to an unconstitutional attempt to escape congressional authorization. At least two congressional Republicans — Rep. Warren Davidson and Thomas Massie — joined Democrats to immediately condemn the bombings as unconstitutional. 'The only entity that can take this country to war is the U.S. Congress,' Sen. Bernie Sanders said in remarks in Oklahoma as the crowd learned about the bombings in real time. 'The president does not have the right.' 'The President's disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers,' said Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 'He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations.' The New York congresswoman said the attack is 'clearly grounds for impeachment.' Top Democrats on congressional intelligence committees were also not briefed in advance of the attacks. 'The American public is overwhelmingly opposed to the U.S. waging war on Iran,' said Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who has urged Congress to pass legislation that would require Trump to go to Congress before attacking Iran. He noted that Israeli officials said its bombs have already set Iran's nuclear capability back by two to three years. 'So what made Trump recklessly decide to rush and bomb today?' he said. 'Horrible judgment. I will push for all Senators to vote on whether they are for this third idiotic Middle East war.' While Trump touts what he claims are unequivocal military successes, he has also spent his first few months in office developing plans to crush dissent domestically. The deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to respond to protests against his anti-immigration agenda could be seen as a 'dress rehearsal' for far more expansive emergency powers to impose federal control of America's cities, according to The Atlantic's David Frum. More demonstrations against further military action in Iran are expected, adding to a steady rhythm of protests and unrest against the Trump administration that exploded across American streets in recent weeks.
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump draws Pentagon into Bush-era Groundhog Day over Iran as he shuns intelligence to justify war
George W. Bush and his administration of neocons spent years building a spurious case for the war in Iraq. They collated sketchy intelligence about supposedly hidden weapons of mass destruction, fed it to a pliant press, went through the motions of seeking United Nations resolutions and formed a ramshackle coalition of the willing before going to war. It took Donald Trump all of five seconds to create his own WMD scandal. That came aboard Air Force One Tuesday morning when he rebuked his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for sharing a U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran was not seeking a nuclear weapon. 'I don't care what she said, I think they were very close to having one,' he told the press corps. It's Groundhog Day in the Pentagon. The U.S. stands on the precipice of joining another war in the Middle East to relieve another dictatorial regime of its non-existent deadly arsenal, but there are at least some procedural differences this time around. In rejecting the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies in favor of his own instincts, Trump appears to want to skip every step in the Manufacturing Consent handbook and declare war based on instinct alone. Rather than send Marco Rubio to the United Nations with satellite photos, audio recordings and vials of undisclosed substances as Bush did with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Trump opted to simply declare that Iran could never have nuclear weapons and begin mobilizing the U.S. military to act in support of Israel's ongoing attack. Whereas Powell had a well of intelligence to draw on, however faulty, to build his argument in front of the world, it seems Trump has barely even glanced at his own agencies' work. Gabbard testified to Congress as recently as 26 March that 18 U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.' Trump's flippant dismissal of that assessment is no small thing. It could be the determining factor in whether the U.S. joins a war against a sovereign nation, potentially putting American lives at risk across the Middle East and beyond. Rather than busy himself with studying the intelligence that should weigh on those decisions, the president spent most of the last few days posting erratically on social media, calling on 10 million people who live in Iran's capital Tehran to evacuate, for Iran's 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,' and even threatening the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. 'We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,' he wrote on Truth Social. Trump's position is all the more surprising given that his political rise was fuelled in part by his positioning as a critic of the so-called 'forever wars' of the Bush era, particularly the Iraq War. He shocked his fellow candidates during the Republican primary debates in 2016 when he accused them all of being complicit in the falsehoods that led to the war. 'I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction,' he said. This time around, Trump appears to be playing the opposing role in building a faulty premise for a destructive war in the Middle East. MAGA billed itself as the destroyer of neoconservatism, but now in the White House and with their hands on the missile launcher and the B-52's they look and sound much the same. This is also the same person who said of Barack Obama in 2011: 'Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.' Trump's role in the build-up to this war didn't begin this week, either. His decision to dismantle a previously successful nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers paved the way for the carnage of today. In 2015, then-President Obama and a coalition of world powers managed to broker an agreement with Iran in which it agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program, place limits on how much uranium it could enrich, and open its facilities to inspections in return for sanctions relief. China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran all signed on to the deal — a remarkable feat of diplomacy. All believed the deal was working. Israel believed the deal was too lenient, and then-presidential candidate Trump campaigned on a promise to completely dismantle it. In 2018, as president, Trump pulled out of the deal and initiated new sanctions against Iran. Tehran started to increase uranium enrichment and build up its stockpile once more, and removed monitoring equipment from nuclear facilities. Over the past few years, Iran increased its enrichment to record levels of purity, close to the level needed to make a bomb. Still, U.S. intelligence agencies did not change their assessment that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon, and the Trump administration was engaged in a new round of talks over the program. At the same time, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was signaling that he was readying an attack on Iran. He has claimed for decades that Iran was on the brink of building a nuclear weapon, a development that he insisted required a military confrontation to avoid. As early as 1992, as a member of the Israeli parliament, he claimed Iran was 'three to five years' away from a bomb. Three years later, in a book titled 'Fighting Terrorism,' he again claimed Iran was 'three to five years' away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. In 2012, he gave a widely mocked speech to the United Nations in which he held up a picture of a cartoon bomb while claiming Iran was roughly one year away from building a bomb. None of those warnings came to pass, but they were treated no less seriously. While Netanyahu believed military action was the only way to remove the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, he had been kept at bay by successive U.S. presidents. Earlier this year, it appeared he was closer than ever to making that move. In April, he asked Trump for the 30,000-pound American GBU-57 bunker buster bomb, which can only be carried by U.S. aircraft, to destroy a nuclear site deep underground at Fordo, according to the New York Times. Trump reportedly refused and asked Israel to allow his negotiations a chance. But as the talks dragged on through the months, Trump lost patience. When Israel decided to launch its attack this month, the U.S. and Iran were days away from meeting again. No new intelligence showing an increased nuclear threat has been presented or claimed by the Trump administration beyond the president's passing comment on Air Force One. And senior administration officials told the New York Times they were unaware of any new intelligence showing a rush to build a bomb. There are obvious differences with Iraq, of course. This war has already begun. Israel has already taken out Iran's air defenses and is bombing military and nuclear infrastructure across the country at will. It was Israel's fait accompli that appears to have brought Trump around. The war has already begun. Trump may be able to join it in a limited capacity and claim victory, but the days of claiming the mantle of an anti-war president are over.
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump suggests regime change in Iran – hours after Vance and Hegseth insisted that was not the plan
Just hours after Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted that there was no plan for the U.S. to push for regime change in Iran, President Donald Trump suggested he was open to the idea. After the U.S. joined Israel's air campaign targeting Iran's nuclear sites on Saturday with an audacious strike using bunker-busting bombs launched from B-2 bombers, Vance appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday morning. The vice president said that the administration's view 'has been very clear that we don't want a regime change.' He added: 'We do not want to protract this or build this out any more than it's already been built out. We want to end their nuclear program, and then we want to talk to the Iranians about a long-term settlement here.' However, by late afternoon, a different message emerged from the White House. The president posted on Truth Social: 'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!' It is the first time Trump has raised the possibility of regime change in Iran, or encouraged it, since Israel launched air strikes against the nation ten days ago. It is also a change of tune for Trump, who has criticized neo-conservatives in the Republican Party for years for their support for regime changes, most notably in Iraq. Vance is not alone in stressing that the goal is not to topple the government in Tehran. Other administration officials have said that the goal is to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Also on Sunday morning, Secretary Hegseth insisted the Trump administration 'does not seek war' and is not trying to force regime change. 'Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated,' Hegseth told reporters in a briefing, adding that the strikes did not target Iranian troops or people. Vance reiterated that message during his NBC appearance, describing it as 'an incredibly targeted attack' while admitting it is 'an incredibly delicate moment.' Of the possibility of Iran responding by attacking U.S. troops, the vice president said it would be 'the stupidest thing in the world,' and would be 'met with overwhelming force.' 'If the Iranians are smart, they are going to have to look in the mirror and say, 'Maybe we are not so good at this war thing, let's give peace a chance, let's drop our nuclear weapons programme and start to make some smart decisions',' he added. In other posts, Trump said the damage to Iran's nuclear sites is said to be 'monumental' thanks to 'hard and accurate' hits by the military, and thanked the B-2 crews for 'a job well done' when they landed back in Missouri. Iran's U.N. ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, speaking at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Sunday, said that the U.S. 'decided to destroy diplomacy' with its strikes on the country's nuclear program and that the Iranian military will decide the 'timing, nature and scale of Iran's proportionate response.'
