Chicago's FinTech development and investment reputation has been on the rise, and we're expecting big things in this city for 2018. Crain's Chicago Business suggests that Google is planning a major new center here, while city officials remain hopeful that it will make the first cut for Amazon's HQ2.

I am passing along the English-language version of the article on Trinidad and Tobago, just published by the Center for Doctrine of the Colombian National Army (CEDOE) in its official professional journal "Military Expertise." Click here to read the full text of the report.

In 1919, journalist John Reed published Ten Days that Shook the World, a first-hand account of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. During that dramatic 10-day period, Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks took control of the Russian government and established the world’s first socialist government. Russia and the world would never be the same.
 

Every year we ask our EconVue contributors to prognosticate about the coming year. Although many people value economics as a way to forecast the future, most economists are historians rather than visionaries. However, if one understands current trends and events, then it is possible to make some educated guesses about the future. At the very least, it helps us create scenarios, both likely and unlikely, that challenge the conventional wisdom. Which is exactly our mission at EconVue.

The global economy ends 2017 and enters 2018 in apparent good health.  The odds are that world GDP growth, measured at market exchange rates, will continue at a year-over-year rate of nearly 3%.  The main economic risks to this scenario—primarily the deflation of asset bubbles in the US or a debt crisis in China’s corporate sector—seem unlikely.  More worrisome are geopolitical trends.  

It's that time of year: review and predict. Here are 18 links of 2017 trends and 2018 predictions to ponder over the New Year holiday.

2017 in Review

Russia

I am sharing my article on Brazil’s security challenges, and the case for strengthened U.S.-Brazil cooperation, based on my recent trip to the Brazilian Army's Strategic Studies Center (CEEEx) in Brasilia.  The article is originally published at the Global Americans.

Note: The title was inspired by the PhD thesis of LTC Oscar Medeiros Filho of the Brazilian Army Strategic Studies Center, and used with his permission.