Real estate mogul and billionaire Sam Zell warns that he thinks "the economy is much closer to tipping over" than recovering.

He also told The Street.com that he doesn't see any real bargains in the current volatile stock market.

"I look out there at falling prices and don't see much" to buy, he told the Street's Doron Levin. "If I'm not a buyer, then I'm a seller."

Late last year, Zell said the U.S. economy could go into a recession in the next year and that the Federal Reserve interest-rate increase was at least six months too late.

“There is a high probability that we are looking at a recession in the next 12 months,” Zell said on the “Bloomberg” program.

He told the Street that there's only one cause of the nation's economic malaise. The government.

Zell said the Obama presidency "has been a disappointment," too ideological and filled with impediments to economic growth, the Street reported. The next president's priority, he said, "should be to get rid of excessive regulation," the Street reported.

To be sure, other financial experts share Zell's pessimistic outlook for the market.

Byron Wien, vice chairman of the advisory services unit at Blackstone Group LP, warns investors to "buckle up" for more stock-market volatility.

Wien told CNBC that while he doesn't expect another steep decline in the large cap S&P 500, he does see more downside ahead. "We have further to go, but I don't think it's going to be a major downshift from present levels," he said. "I don't think we've seen the ultimate lows," he added.

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