The Long Spiral.

"Someone from within."

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1. A weeks-long selloff in government bonds has intensified in recent days, threatening to drive up borrowing costs across the globe and knocking some momentum out of what had been a furious stock rally. With bond prices sliding, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, a key benchmark for mortgage rates and other borrowing costs, reached as high as 4.687% Tuesday, its highest intraday level since January 2025. (Source: wsj.com)

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2. John Authers:

It’s a while since we’ve been here, and it’s not a good place to be. The yield on 30-year Treasury bonds rose Tuesday to 5.19% for the first time since June 2007.

A similar headline appeared on a piece I wrote with my colleague Michael Mackenzie about that 2007 landmark for the Financial Times, our employer at the time, and it makes uncomfortably relevant reading today. The concern was that rates at these levels might burst higher, bringing down the then-booming stock market and putting unbearable pressure on credit markets. As I argued:

“Money just seems too cheap. Bond yields are not high by historical standards, but the suddenness of their move might dislodge the financing that underpins stocks. If that scenario turns out to be true — and it is still too early to say that it will — the bond selloff might presage the end of an era for stocks.”

I hedged by saying that it was too early to tell, but that bond selloff did indeed signal the end of an era for equities. Within weeks, subprime credit was selling, two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed, and the long spiral into what we now call the Global Financial Crisis had begun. (Sources: bloomberg.com, ft.com)

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3. The New York Times:

Days after Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials in the opening salvos of the war, President Trump mused publicly that it would be best if “someone from within” Iran took over the country.

It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views.

But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.

He has not been seen publicly since then and his current whereabouts and condition are unknown. (Source: nytimes.com)

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