The Financial Markets And The New Israel/Trump War On Iran

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Israel and the Trump administration launched war on Iran a few days ago. This has taken many Americans by surprise, because, unlike in 2003, there was no public campaign ahead of time to lay out the reasons for war or to build support. There was no vote in Congress. In 2003, such a campaign went on for over a year, but despite that, this time, people who were paying very close attention to events and news saw it coming. But, it’s hard to understand what is going on, because there has been no address to the nation by Trump nor any clearly laid out explanation of how the campaign is expected to unfold or realistically achieve. How is it expected to come to an end and how will things look afterwards? This isn’t the first Gulf War, where you had Dick Cheney and Colin Powell implement his “Powell Doctrine.” It’s more like a much bigger version of when Obama bombed Libya, with much larger unknown consequences to come.

In the end, the most certain thing one can say is that Israel wanted this war and Trump decided to fight with them, for whatever reason.

The new war may be why the US stock market had a dip on Friday and why the 10-Year Treasury bond yield fell below 4%.