Is This Finally The Beginning Of The End? We Can Only Hope

Bubbles bursting, tensions boiling over, reverse repos draining again (maybe), bunkers opening up, Ayatollahs PMSing like transwomen, it's pandemonium out there.

• Everything quiet this weekend, but preparations are ratcheting up, ER doctors being flown in and underground hospitals opening up.

• Unemployment rate up to 4.3%, expected 4.1%, 15 months since bottoming, we've got to be close to the next recession/crisis.

• Bond yields crash, reverse repos start to drain again, down to $338B, 10Y-2Y yield curve briefly uninverts.

All Quiet on the Northeastern Front, So Far

Nothing happening over here yet. A few rockets from Lebanon over the Galilee as usual, all shot down. I'm hearing reports of underground hospitals opening up in the major cities and ER doctors flying in from the US on ElAl to help out in case of a mass attack.

There was a very interesting report from Jerusalem Post on speculation that Iran is waiting for Tisha B'av (the 9^th of Av, falling out this year on August 13^th at sunset) to launch a coordinated attack. 9 Av is the date on the Hebrew calendar when both the 1^st and 2^nd Temples were destroyed, and other national tragedies. In other words, it's a day of Divine wrath, at least on the surface.

If this Jpost report is true (no idea if it is), I actually see this as a sign of reverence and respect from the Iranians, and rather comforting. This is not the first time the Persians have tried to pick a specific day to kill. The entire Book of Esther is about that very thing, and how the Persians ultimately failed and got themselves killed in a massive counterattack that wiped out 75,800 of them in two days across the Persian Empire. This we now celebrate annually as the Holiday of Purim, when we narrowly avoided annihilation.

The reason they failed is that we had a man and woman on the inside, who, with the hidden help of God, turned things around. In parallel to today, we are now seeing reports of paranoid arrests being made within the IRGC looking for the double agent that supposedly helped plant the bomb that killed Haniyeh, leader of Hamas. (There are probably many of them.)

What the Persians don't quite get though is that Tisha B'av, while it is a day of Divine wrath, is technically a Jewish holiday, not entirely sad. It has been a day of punishment, yes, but ultimately it's really a day of Providence, of relationship – negative at times, but which can and ultimately will turn positive.

So 9 Av can turn from punishment to celebration on a dime, and the Iranians are taking a very big gamble picking 9 Av to attack. I can think of nothing more poignant and unifying than all of us praying on 9 Av for Divine assistance, when we will be fasting and praying anyway.

Many times in the Bible, especially in the book of Judges over and over, God saves Israel for no merit-based reason other than His own reputation. Samson was the biggest example of that, but there's also Yiftah, neither of which were great leaders. They were both not such amazing people, to put it lightly. "Ooga Booga" leaders, as one of my friends quipped. Samson was addicted to women, and Yiftah murdered his own daughter.

Judges was the period of subpar Israelite leadership, which we are definitely under now, so hopefully it's a parallel, because Israel's leadership being so horrific right now, I can't think of any merit-based reason that God would help us, other than His own reputation. Maybe I'm selling us short, but after the Covid insanity and the October 7th LIHOP (at best), I'm quite jaded when it comes to Israel's merits.

Unemployment Up to 4.3%

Expectations were 4.1%, and we're in month 15 since bottoming at 3.4%. Below is the amount of months before official "recession" since unemployment bottomed since 1989. We've got to be close here, within months. I understand the unemployment rate is manipulated, but that just makes the point stronger. If it’s manipulated down, it’s higher than reported.