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Two days before American voters head to the polls for this year’s mid-term elections, there are growing signs the long-awaited “Blue Wave” could fail to materialize, says the leader of the Republican Party’s overseas office in Israel. A US-born attorney now living in Gush Etzion south of Jerusalem, Marc Zell, 65, is Vice President of Republicans Overseas, and chief of Republicans Overseas Israel. […] “When it comes to mid-term elections, the traditional wisdom in the United States is the party in power loses seats in both the Senate and the House. Because the difference between Republicans in the Senate, for...

BREAKING: Former Georgia Gov. Zell Miller has died.

Sam Zell has called the top again… Zell is a real estate mogul and self-made billionaire. He made a fortune buying property for pennies on the dollar during recessions in the 1970s and 1990s. This earned him the nickname “The Grave Dancer.” Zell was also one of the only real estate gurus to spot the last property bubble and get out before it popped. In February 2007, he sold $23 billion worth of office buildings. U.S. commercial property prices peaked nine months later and went on to plunge 42%. • Zell is seeing a similar situation in today's market… His...

Outspoken realist billionaire Sam Zell tells Fox's Maria Bartiromo, "the US economy is bifurcated," noting that "the very top has done very well as The Fed's QE 'saved the system'," but, he adds, the 90% that did not benefit from that "have seen wages go down and the recent election showed a lot of discomfort and a lack of trust." A hopeful money-honey asks whether the president will work with the Republicans to improve this situation, Zell lashes back, "isn't the question whether the president wants to work with anybody to create anything?"

Tyler Durden 09/03/2014 "The stock market is at an all-time, but economic activity is not at an all-time," explains billionaire investor Sam Zell to CNBC this morning, adding that, "every company that's missed has missed on the revenue side, which is a reflection that there's a demand issue; and when you got a demand issue it's hard to imagine the stock market at an all-time high." Zell said he is being very cautious adding to stocks and cutting some positions because "I don't remember any time in my career where there have been as many wildcards floating out there that...

Zell Miller speaks at the 2004 GOP convention...

**SNIP** "What makes this man different than anyone else?" he asked. "The president is elected to negotiate." "We treat the tea party like they are some kind of disease, and the very same thing on the other side the press don't even cover it," continued Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments. "Can you imagine the press vilifying the ACLU?" Zell said he's "not a big tea party fan at all," but added that they are "significant percent of the voting population" with a "right to have a view."

Here's something he said earlier: The topic (in advance of today's phony unemployment numbers) was how to get companies to hire workers. Lots of back & forth. But here is the kicker: Zell mentions that while Obamacare was about to come up for the final, miserable vote he went to Capitol Hill to "lobby" a couple of lawmakers. Reminding them that this kind of bill with so much uncertainty built into it, was guaranteed to put a chill on employment. Here is the exchange he relayed to the host. Zell to lawmaker: This bill gives only 6 years of services,...

Zell: Obama Has Lost His Focus on Economy Thursday, July 1, 2010 09:04 AM By: Dan Weil The White House has mishandled the economy, and the solution is a victory by Republicans in elections this November, says real estate titan Sam Zell. “We have to get our economy back in line,” he told CNBC. “We have to focus on creating jobs. So far the programs of this administration seem to be focused on a lot of ideological issues and not on jobs.” Non-farm payrolls rose 431,000 in May, but only 41,000 of those jobs were in the private sector. “The...

The policies of the current U.S. administration have created "political risk" to investing in the United States, billionaire real estate investor Sam Zell said on Wednesday. Appearing on a panel at the Urban Land Institute's real estate summit in Boston, Zell said "what's going on now is frightening" and working to undermine confidence, although he allowed that an economic recovery is under way. "Up until this administration, you knew the rules and had a very stable environment," Zell said. Never one to mince words, Zell said he saw similarities that are "a little eerie" between Nero's Rome and the United...

The Chicago Cubs aren't going to win anything this year despite having one of baseball's largest payrolls. But their bankrupt owner, Sam Zell's Tribune Co., may be about to hit a home run -- at your expense. Zell...is trying to unload the team in a deal that would divert almost $300 million from taxpayers to the creditors of Tribune...The proposed Cubs deal, involving a "leveraged partnership" using lots of borrowed money, is so aggressive that a leading tax expert, Robert Willens expects the IRS to challenge it... Zell, who took over Tribune in late 2007 and put it into bankruptcy...

Disgruntled Tribune Co. bondholders have asked a U.S. bankruptcy judge to let them investigate Sam Zell's 2007 buyout of the newspaper-and-television chain in an effort to derail a plan that would hand the company over to its banks. The filing, made late Wednesday, calls the $8.2 billion transaction a "fraudulent conveyance" that left Tribune insolvent from the onset of the 2007 deal. It accuses senior lenders led by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. of completing a leveraged buyout they should have known would push the company into bankruptcy. "Fraudulent conveyance" is a legal term most often used in bankruptcy court,...

"Decrying a federal government he says is out of control, former Georgia Gov. and U.S. Sen. Zell Miller said Thursday that America is “spending like we’re Paris Hilton.” But the comparison to the blonde socialite might not be the worst offense in Miller’s litany of all that’s wrong with the country. Speaking to more than 1,000 conservative - overwhelmingly Republican - lawmakers from around the country, Miller said, “Today, we’re spending like we’re Paris Hilton, regulating like we’re Ralph Nader, nationalizing like we’re Hugo Chavez, printing money like we’re the Weimar Republic and taxing like we’re, well, the Democratic Congress.”

In 2007, Sam Zell, the billionaire Chicago investor, sold a portfolio of 573 properties he had assembled over three decades, Equity Office Properties Trust, to the Blackstone Group for $39 billion. It was the largest private equity deal in history, but Blackstone did not stop there: it immediately flipped hundreds of the buildings for $27 billion. Today, the wreckage of those purchases is strewn across the country, from Southern California to Austin, Tex., to Chicago to New York. Many of the 16 companies that bought Equity Office buildings are now stuck with punishing debt, properties whose values are plummeting and...

Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI to arrest Rod Blagojevich before sunrise Tuesday in order to stop a crime from being committed. That would have been the sale of the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. But the opposite is true: Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on...

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich bragged that the owner of the now-bankrupt Chicago Tribune agreed to fire top editorial writers in exchange for $100 million in state aid, according to an indictment released yesterday. The alleged quid pro quo was laid out in the 78-page corruption indictment of Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris. Blagojevich was thrilled when Harris reported that the financial adviser to the Tribune Company, owned by Sam Zell, suggested that the ax would fall on his editorial critics.

Media conglomerate Tribune Co. has filed for bankrutpcy protection, pressured by high debts, according to the Associated Press.

Tribune Co. is preparing for a possible bankruptcy-protection filing as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter, opening a new front of trouble for the newspaper industry. As Tribune continues discussions with its lenders to rework its debt load, the newspaper-and-television concern in recent days ...

Tribune has hired bankruptcy advisers as the ailing newspaper company faces a potential bankruptcy filing, people briefed on the matter said. The newspaper, which was taken private last year by billionaire investor Samuel Zell, has hired advisers including Lazard and Sidley Austin, one of its longtime law firms, these people said. Tribune has been hobbled by debt related to that sale last year, which has been compounded by the growing drought of advertising for newspapers. It is only the latest — and biggest — sign of duress for the newspaper industry yet.

NEW YORK While Sam Zell's biggest newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, made history endorsing a Democrat, Barack Obama, this year, he has been busy giving tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to Obama's opponent, Sen. John McCain. Among other CEOs: Rupert Murdoch has given $2,300 to McCain, Richard Scaife and Philip Anschutz have heavily backed Republicans, while William Dean Singleton has pretty much sat it out while his fellow MediaNews honcho Richard Scudder has funded Obama. A review of several online campaign donation sites shows Zell, listed as the chairman of his Equity Group Investments, donated...