"Cautious Optimism": US Pending Home Sales Rise For 3rd Straight Month In April

Trump Admin Pitching US Companies To Rebuild Gulf Infrastructure Hit By Iran, Arab Officials Say 'Tone-Deaf' Via Middle East Eye The Trump administration has told several Gulf states that they should use American companies to rebuild their infrastructure damaged by Iran's retaliatory strikes amid the US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic, US and Arab officials familiar with the discussions told Middle East Eye. Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE are among the countries the US has tapped as potential customers for US engineering, manufacturing and construction firms, given the extent of damage in their countries, the officials told MEE. Smoke...

Slouching Toward Peace With Washington In Good-Cop/Bad-Cop Mode Authored by James Howard Kunstler, ". . .They are running the Accords logic to its conclusion: every adversary becomes a counterparty, every conflict becomes a deal, every closed economy becomes an investable market." - Patrick Wood That squawking you hear is Iran getting dragged kicking and screaming out of its jihad delirium into something that might look like reality-based relations with the rest of the world. They have to loudly declare that it’s not happening, even as it’s happening, to gaslight their own home...

Qatari LNG Tanker Abruptly U-Turns In Hormuz Chokepoint After Weekend Transit Breakthrough Day 72 of the U.S.-Iran conflict opened with yet another failed diplomatic off-ramp. Tehran on Sunday submitted a counterproposal to the Trump administration's plan to end the war, but President Trump swiftly rejected it as "totally unacceptable," pushing WTI crude futures roughly 3% higher to $98 a barrel as traders slightly repriced the war-risk premium higher for a prolonged Strait of Hormuz disruption. Tehran's counterproposal was a major focus over the weekend, but what caught our attention Saturday morning was...