United States

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.

William Hartung chides the Obama administration for trying to buy Saudi goodwill with weapons:

One justification that has been put forward for the continued flow of weaponry from the United States to Saudi Arabia is that it provides reassurance to the kingdom’s leadership that Washington won’t tilt toward the Iranians in the wake of the deal reached last year over Iran’s nuclear program. But if demonstrating a commitment to the Saudi government entails supporting deadly and reckless initiatives, like the war in Yemen, the policy is not worth the price.

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.

Can you believe it? We’re in the last year of the presidency of the man who, on his first day in the Oval Office, swore that he would close Guantánamo, and yet it and everything it represents remains part of our all-American world. So many years later, you can still read news reports on the ongoing nightmares of that grim prison, ranging from detention without charge to hunger strikes and force feeding. Its name still echoes through the halls of Congress in bitter debate over what should or shouldn’t be done with it. It remains a global symbol of the worst America has to offer.