United States

President Barack Obama arrived in Havana on Sunday ending over half a century of Cuba’s isolation as a pariah state by the US. The US president as met by Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez when landed at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport aboard Air Force One on Sunday. ITV reports: The trip, which marks a new chapter in Washington’s engagement with the island’s Communist government, would have been all but unimaginable before a detente brokered in December 2014.

Submitted by Mark St. Cyr

What’s The Frequency Janet?

Once again, in spectacular fashion, the financial “markets” have miraculously rebounded from the aptly moniker’d “Bullard Bottom” and without pause has traversed in a near vertical assent to recapture the levels where all the uncertainties began. In other words, after all the gyrations over the last 14+ months we are once again only back to the levels (as scored by the U.S. financial markets e.g., Dow, S&P, et al) where the Fed stood confidently in their economic policy acumen.

Two weeks ago, before first the ECB first and then, the Fed, unleashed two massive dovish surprises, we warned - citing JPMorgan - that the most painful part of the short squeeze "may be yet to come."

As a reminder, this is what JPM said on March 5:

One of the more surprising market developments of 2016 has been the violent obliteration of those who had taken part in the biggest consensus trade of 2015, namely long the USD. As the Fed finally admitted earlier this week, the US economy is sputtering and is woefully incapable of handling 4 rate hikes, or 3 for that matter.

Since President Barack Obama’s historic Cuba visit on March 20, some are speculating about whether he can pressure Cuba to improve its human rights. A comparison of Cuba’s human rights record with that of the United States, however, shows that the America should be taking lessons from Cuba, says Marjorie Cohn. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains two different categories of human rights – civil and political rights on the one hand; and economic, social and cultural rights on the other.