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.

No position at this time. Position declarations are believed to be accurate at time of writing but may change at any time and without notice.

Recommended Reading: Bill Gross of Pimco

I greatly admire Bill Gross' abilities to express himself with the written word and always enjoy reading his monthly pieces. June's piece is another must read. I found his introductory paragraph to be interesting from multiple viewpoints and copy it here for your consideration as well. Although I am not sure Mr. Gross intended us to think of this at a personal level, the thought occurred to me - how often do we find ourselves in a similar situation to the toad?

I’m going to one-up Mark Twain in the quantity department and spin two yarns about jumping frogs, one which has been frequently told, the other not so much. Neither of them have anything to do with Samuel Clemens’ heralded short story, but both, metaphorically at least, describe our current investment markets and how to think about the future. My first story is the one you’ve all heard about. Put a frog in a kettle of boiling water and he’ll jump out faster and further than any of those blue ribbon winners at the Calaveras County jumping frog contest. Put him in a pot at room temperature, however, slowly turn up the temperature to boiling, and you’ll have frog legs for dinner. This latter, more unfortunate toad temporarily adapted to his external environment, which seemed like a practical thing to do, until – well, until he reached 212° at which point he was cooked.


Here is a link to the whole article.


No position at this time. Position declarations are believed to be accurate at time of writing but may change at any time and without notice.