Business

We get the clear impression today that we heard this from the depths of The Eccles Building...

As earnings offer little to no support whatever here....

Despite the proclamations from any and every Federal Reserve talking-head, Sam Zell appears to be willing to 'peddle some fiction' about the less than awesome reality in America. Having correctly called the top of the last commercial real-estate cycle, Zell is predicting global problems will likely push the U.S. into a recession in the next year...

"I’m not being pessimistic, I’m being realistic,” he said last week at a real-estate conference in New York. The U.S. economy is now “in the ninth inning,” he said.

As conclusion to our article yesterday reporting on the largest U.S. health insurer's accelerating exodus from various Obamacare markets (it had already announced it was out of Georgie, Arkansas, Michigan and Oklahoma) we said that UnitedHealth "will likely announce more defections in the coming days."

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,

Business under Pressure

A recent post by Mish points to the fact that many of the business-related data that have been released in recent months continue to point to growing weakness in many parts of the business sector. We show a few charts illustrating the situation below:

A long term chart of total business sales. The recent decline seems congruent with a recession, but many other indicators are not yet confirming a recession – click to enlarge.

For over an hour XOM stock has traded in a 2c range... glued to the level of a sizable selling program's cliff-edge from this morning. Did the XOM stock algo just give up?

Efficient markets indeed.