Marin Katusa: Author of "The Colder War"

Not really says Marin Katusa, author of “The Colder War,” and chief energy investment strategist at Casey Research. Katusa believes that falling oil prices will eventually give Russia the upper hand and deeply injure the U.S. energy industry. The falling ruble makes Russian oil less expensive and more desirable to other countries—Russia also produces oil quite cheaply while the American shale industry has a larger cost of operation. Russia is more than able to weather the current storm, Katusa says. “They have a $200 billion a year trade surplus. They have over $400 billion in reserve currency. They’ve increased their gold reserve. They have much lower debt to their GDP than America. So yes there’s pain in the economy… [but] it's far from terminal.”

On Tuesday the Ukrainian Parliament voted to drop its “non-aligned” status and begin work towards a NATO membership. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this “unproductive” move would only increase tension between Russia and Ukraine. Katusa believes that this is the beginning of another cold war. “The Ukraine parliament only did this after Obama guaranteed hundreds of billions of dollars in military support to fight the Russians,” he says. “And what is critical here is we all know that the logarithmic rule in war when you commit hundreds of millions - it means billions of dollars and through these actions Obama has declared the colder war on Russia.”

Katusa believes that this move will result in more atrocities on both sides of the border, but mostly in Ukraine. According to Katusa, sanctions have only made it so that Russia must work more closely with emerging markets like China. “We’ve seen billions of dollars of increase in the currency swaps between China and Russia and it’s going to continue,” he says. Currently about 9% of China’s oil exports come from Russia but Katusa predicts that number will grow significantly in the decades to come.

 

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Putin is winning the oil war: Katusa - Yahoo Finance

I have no idea whether what Marin Katusa says is true or not. However, it seemed like a worthwhile article to quote from someone who has taken the time and done the research necessary to write a book like "The Colder War".

The title likely means an even Colder War than the last Cold War. The wealth of the U.S. as well as a higher cost of labor and doing business could likely be used against the Western world by a leaner and meaner Russia. I think this might be what Marin Katusa is talking about.