Europe

Social-media company Foursquare has crunched the data generated by its 50 million active monthly users and determined that America’s share of the international tourism market has fallen sharply since October.

According to data published on the company’s blog, visits by foreigners to the U.S.  started to decline in October, when they fell by 6% year-over-year. The decline has continued through March 2017, the latest month for which Foursquare has data, when visits declined by an astounding 16%.

To the list of 'rigged' markets (e.g. Libor, FX, Silver, Treasuries...) we can now add VIX (which explains a lot) as two University of Texas at Austin finance professors find "large transient deviations in VIX prices" around the morning auction, "consistent with market manipulation."

Authored by Don Quijones via WolfStreet.com, 

Catalonia’s independence would set off Spain’s debt time-bomb.

On Monday El Pais published leaked excerpts from what it claims to be the Catalonian regional government’s road map to independence. The secret document includes a plan for the region to unilaterally break away from Spain should its citizens be prevented from holding a referendum on independence in the fall.

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The OPEC Vienna meeting has not officially concluded just yet, but moments ago a delegate told the WSJ and Reuters that the oil producing cartel had decided to do what had been widely telegraphed previously, and merely extend output cuts by nine months to March 2018. While the full quota breakdown has not been released yet, the cuts are likely to be shared again by a dozen non-members led by top oil producer Russia, while several nations like Iran and Nigeria will remain exempt from production caps.