Wall Street is having a hard time figuring out what to do now that the U.S. economy appears to be sputtering and yields are so low, Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, told CNBC.


"What we've got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money," he said. "They can not find a yield and you just don't want to be putting your money into commodities or things that are punts that might work out or they might not depending on what happens with the economy.

The last month has been a horror show for the U.S. economy, with economic data falling off a cliff, according to Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London.

"It seems that almost every bit of data about the health of the US economy has disappointed expectations recently," said Riddell, in a note sent to CNBC on Wednesday.

"US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn't revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing."

"And that's just in the last week and a bit," said Riddell.

GOP Presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) on Tuesday warned of too much "dictatorship in Washington D.C." while on a campaign stop in Mason City, Iowa.

"We're not on the verge of having a king, but we are on the verge of having way too much dictatorship in Washington, D.C.," Paul said, comparing the U.S.'s current situation to a Biblical tale in which the ancient Israelites demanded, against their own good, that a king rule their land instead of God.

"Our rights come from our creator, not our government," added Paul according to the The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.

At the end of the G8 summit, the French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would visit Benghazi with the British Prime Minister David Cameron, since "we think alike," essentially they agree that they "cannot negotiate with Gadhafi." President Barack Obama expressed the same thought: "We will not relent until the people of Libya are protected, and the shadow of tyranny is lifted." In other words, they are preparing to occupy Libya.

And while the G8 demands from Tripoli "the immediate cessation of the use of force," NATO intensifies air raids; in less than eight weeks more than 8,500 have occurred. Most of the planes leave from bases in southern Italy, with supplies coming from others. Pisa is continually crossed over by C-130J and other cargo planes that, from the U.S. Camp Darby base, transport bombs and missiles to bases in the South (foreshadowing what will come into operation when the national air hub opens and begins to transit all troops and materiel to the operational theaters of war.) That the air strikes are preparation for a landing is confirmed by the entry into operation of the French Tiger helicopter, probably accompanied by the British Apache.

A new phase of the war is unfolding leading to a process of military escalation as well as the eventual landing of US-NATO commandos on Libya's shores.

An unprecedented deployment of naval power in the Mediterranean is occurring.

The USS George H W Bush supercarrier, the most advanced vessel in the US naval arsenal, together with its strike and carrier group has entered the Mediterranean, to join up with the Sixth Fleet in Naples.

Aircraft supercarrier USS George H W Bush (CVN77) is the World's largest naval vessel: with "four-and-a-half acres of space on its flight deck, making it capable of housing 90 jets and helicopters. It is home to 5,500 crew". Equipped with sophisticated electronic warfare systems, it is the World's largest "mobile military base" (Manlio Dinucci, "Boots on the Ground": Sarkozy and Cameron Prepare to Land in Libya, Global Research, May 31, 2011).

The USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group was sent on its "maiden voyage" to the Sixth Fleet area of naval operations, namely the Mediterranean. It was "certified ready for combat operations" a month before the onset of the war on Libya. (USS George H.W. Bush Strike Group Certified Combat Ready, February 21, 2011)

The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan.

The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate.

"It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome," Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense panel, said in an interview with The Hill. "When I heard that figure from the Defense Department, we started looking into it."

The Pentagon comptroller's office provided the fuel statistic to the committee staff when it was asked for a breakdown of why every 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan costs $1 billion. The Obama administration uses this estimate in calculating the cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

The Obama administration is engaged in an internal debate over its future strategy in Afghanistan. Part of this debate concerns whether to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country.

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, reportedly has requested that about 40,000 additional troops be sent.
Democrats in Congress are divided over whether to send more combat troops to stabilize Afghanistan in the face of waning public support for the war.

Any additional troops and operations likely will have to be paid for through a supplemental spending bill next year, something Murtha has said he already anticipates.

Afghanistan - with its lack of infrastructure, challenging geography and increased roadside bomb attacks - is a logistical nightmare for the U.S. military, according to congressional sources, and it is expensive to transport fuel and other supplies.

A landlocked country, Afghanistan has no seaports and a shortage of airports and navigable roads. The nearest port is in Karachi, Pakistan, where fuel for U.S. troops is shipped.

The American author William Faulkner once wrote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

And like a horde of flesh-eating zombies shuffling out of a parking garage to feast on what's left of our freedoms, the Obama administration has promised to revive a proposal thought dead by most: the internet "kill switch."

On May 12, the White House released a 52-page document outlining administration plans governing cybersecurity. The bill designates the Department of Homeland Security as the "lead agency" with authority to initiate "countermeasures" to protect critical infrastructure from malicious attacks.

But as with other aspects of U.S. policy, from waging aggressive wars to conducting covert actions overseas, elite policy planners at the Pentagon and at nominally civilian agencies like DHS hide offensive plans and operations beneath layers of defensive rhetoric meant to hoodwink the public.

The standard-bearers of Anglo-American imperialism in the current epoch, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron, met in London on May 25 to discuss the world's two ongoing wars of aggression, those in Afghanistan and Libya, both under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization dominated by Washington and London.

As well as joining a barbecue for American and British troops in the prime minister's haunts, in the gardens of Number 10 Downing Street, the two potentates called for continuing to bomb Libya back to the Paleolithic Age.

Displaying what passes for sophisticated humor in the contemporary deadened age, Cameron told the press, "It was...probably the first time in history, as we stood behind that barbecue, that I can say a British prime minister has given an American president a bit of a grilling."

Correspondents chuckled as Libyan, Afghan and Pakistani civilians writhe in their death throes from the bombs and Hellfire missiles delivered by Cameron's and Obama's warplanes.

Moroccan NGO says it will file legal complaint demanding investigation of claims made on television by Luc Ferry

An accusation of child abuse against a former French minister has sparked a major row in the wake of the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn for attempted rape.

Luc Ferry, a philosopher and former education minister, told a TV chat show that a former French minister had previously been caught at an orgy with young boys in Marrakech in Morocco. He said senior government sources, including a former prime minister, had told him about the incident, but would not name the ex-minister involved for fear of libel laws.

Politicians attacked Ferry for making vague allegations. Rachida Dati, the former justice minister, said if Ferry knew something he must reveal the facts otherwise he risked the offence of failing to report a crime. The foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said if Ferry - who was in government from 2002 to 2004 - had proof of a crime "he must go through the justice system" and not just "go yacking to the press".