Recommended Reading: Mauldin's Outside the Box

Although I will be the first to admit that Mauldin's pieces are fairly hit or miss, he often does provide some unique insights and most importantly (IMO) shares some very thought provoking research from Stratfor. Stratfor provides economic and military research related to current geo-political events affecting the macro-economic landscape and are often simply really really interesting. Below is the conclusion of author George Friedman's piece. What I find particularly interesting is the notion of having the foresight to recognize current events as being key turning points that are at the forefront of a paradigm shift.

But the decision of the V4 to even propose a battlegroup commanded by Poles is one of those small events that I think will be regarded as a significant turning point. However we might try to trivialize it and place it in a familiar context, it doesn’t fit. It represents a new level of concern over an evolving reality — the power of Russia, the weakness of Europe and the fragmentation of NATO. This is the last thing the Visegrad countries wanted to do, but they have now done the last thing they wanted to do. That is what is significant.

Events in the Middle East and Europe’s economy are significant and of immediate importance. However, sometimes it is necessary to recognize things that are not significant yet but will be in 10 years. I believe this is one of those events. It is a punctuation mark in European history.

You can read the whole thing here. You can sign up for Mauldin's pieces for free here.

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