Business

If you're a Cuban focused on visiting the United States for tourism of business purposes, it's probably going to be a case of "close but no cigar". As Statista's Nial McCarthy notes, even though relations between Washington and Havanna have improved hugely over the past few months, Cuba still has the highest rate of U.S. visa refusal of any country worldwide. According to U.S. State Department data, 81.9 percent of all Cuban applications for B Visas (tourism or business) were turned down in fiscal year 2016.

Submitted by Paul Brodsky via Macro-Allocation.com

“Selfishness is a virtue.”

       - Ayn Rand

“Selfishness is profitable, but for institutionalized investors it takes courage to be selfish.”

       - Paul Brodsky

Self-Serve

Since we first highlighted the data, there has been a great deal of attention paid to the post-election divergence between the so-called soft (sentiment) data in the US, and the hard (quantifiable) data.

Morgan Stanley's chief equity and rates strategists note "the divergence is stunning."

If you ever had any reservations about who's shilling for the Federal Reserve, look no further than today's vote on increasing oversight into the Federal Reserve, including an audit.

The bill was passed by way of verbal vote and will now be introduced to the House, where it will likely be killed by shills.

Two weeks ago, we showed readers an example of just how sharp the drop in the high-end housing segment has been in Manhattan, courtesy of J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler, who had slashed a whopping $15 million, or 40%, from the asking price of his Tribeca loft after it languished on the market for close to two years, unable to find a buyer. The 6,226-square-foot spread had recently reappeared for sale with a $19.95 million price tag, far below the original $35 million it was first listed for in April 2015.

It has yet to sell.