There are few events that could lead to a truly cataclysmic upheaval of the global order.
Right now, half a world away and out of the view of most Americans, exactly such developments have been set into motion. These events are so significant that they promise to shape the geopolitical landscape for decades to come. And, should the trend continue unabated it is only a matter of time before the American way of life as we have come to know it is no more. So says Casey Research Chief Global Strategist Marin Katusa in his latest interview with Future Money Trends:
Definitely it’s all about the Judgment Day for the petrodollar and the effect on the derivative market. I can sum it up in one sentence: If the petrodollar dies so does the American way of life.
I think people have taken for granted what the petrodollar means to the American way of life. So this is significant and it will be the most important event of our lives.
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It’s unbelievable how things that are happening in Europe and Asia can specifically change the daily lives of Americans if America is not prepared for the colder war.
Katusa, who recently authored The Colder War, an extensive analysis of the paradigm shift in the global resource marketplace, shares some incredibly insightful thoughts on what is happening around the world today, how it will cause an unprecedented impact on Americans, and what you can do to position yourself for the events that threaten to shake the very foundations of the West’s global influence.
The “Putinization of Resources” as Katusa refers to it, is not something to be overlooked. Despite the disdain from America and Europe, Russia has a lot more power than the West gives it credit for and if Putin keeps on this path he could soon become the single most powerful individual on the planet (with an army of millions of men to boot).
First of all, under Putin’s leadership Russia has reestablished itself as a global super power. What people have to understand is Russia has been the number one oil producer for almost a hundred years. They’re also the largest net gas exporter to Europe. More importantly, all of their growth plans are going to China.
This is all about Judgment Day for the petrodollar. These deals are not being signed in U.S. dollars. More importantly here is that Putin now controls the resources… Not only does he control the European market, he’s now gotten into the Asian market, which remember, during the first cold war China was a non-event. This is the game changer. So now, rather than having America and Saudi Arabia as allies, they’re actually at war. They’re in an oil war with one another.
Time is running out for America and Europe. They are heavily indebted, facing economic collapse, and becoming more dependent on foreign suppliers for everything from key commodities to consumer goods.
When we consider the necessity of essential global resources like oil, uranium, natural gas, rare earth minerals and food, history has made it clear that war often becomes the only option when one super power loses influence to an up-and-comer.
They may not be there just yet, but one of these days Russia and China will decouple themselves from Western dependence. When this happens the world will fall into a tailspin. The colder war will be over, likely transitioning very quickly to a more heated conflict.
One need not be psychic to see that super powers will meet, once again, on battlefields like those of World War I and World War II.
Hours after the leaders of the world's 20 most developed economies sought to boost confidence by promising to increase global output by $2 trillion over five years, Japan said it had fallen into recession.
That leaves the country — the world's third-largest economy — on a long and growing list of troubled economies. China is slowing as well, and Europe can't seem to take off.
Among major economies, only the United States and Britain are growing at decent rates, and how long that lasts depends on how much trouble their trading partners are in.
British Prime Minister David Cameron warned in an opinion piece in the Guardian newspaper on Monday that the "red warning lights are flashing" for the world economy.
Here's a look at the problems in some key economies.
JAPAN'S RECESSION
This setback was not in the plan.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had pledged to end two decades of stagnation with a strategy dubbed "Abenomics" that included big economic reforms and stimulus. But the economy contracted at an annual pace of 1.6 percent in the third quarter after housing and business investment dropped following a sales tax increase.
The contraction came despite predictions the economy would rebound from a drop in the previous three months.
Consumer spending is faltering as the population shrinks and grows older. Household incomes peaked more than a decade ago, and workers are increasingly having trouble making ends meet with part-time or contract work.
CHINA'S DECLINING GROWTH
Growth in China, a manufacturing giant, is slowing — from 10.4 percent in 2010 to an estimated 7.5 percent this year. Explosive growth in China has been one of the primary drivers of the world economy for the past decade, so its slowdown is having ripple effects.
The question for Chinese leaders is how to let the country's economy slow to more sustainable growth rates without having a "crash landing." The government is trying to boost domestic spending while easing off its dependence on trade and state-sponsored investment.
Because China has strong trade links to the West, a slowdown would do some damage to the U.S. and Europe. Its massive manufacturing sector is a big consumer of raw materials, so weaker growth would particularly hurt commodity-producing countries like Australia and Brazil.
EUROZONE WOES
The economy of the 18 euro countries has been struggling to grow since it emerged from recession last year. It expanded by a mere 0.2 percent in the third quarter from the previous three-month period.
Government debt, meanwhile, remains high among large economies like France, Italy and Britain. That means they will have to limit spending for years, potentially stymieing growth.
The conflict in Ukraine is also raising uncertainty, leading to sanctions between Russia and the U.S. and European Union. The impact has been visible in a drop in factory orders and business confidence in Germany.
The eurozone's combined $13 billion economy is the world's second-biggest, trailing only the United States, meaning its problems cast a pall over the global economy.
Forty eight hours after Nato said Russia is pouring fresh troops into Ukraine, EU ministers opted to blacklist some “separatists” while trying to restart talks with Moscow.
Speaking after the event, EU foreign relations chief Federica Mogherini noted that the “main” point of Monday’s discussion was “how to re-engage in a dialogue … Russia is for sure part of the problem, but it is also part of the solution for the crisis”.
But it also took place 24 hours after a long, behind-closed-doors meeting between German chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Australia.
Speaking after the G20 on Sunday, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said one way to “ease” EU-Russia ties might be to hold talks between the EU and Russia’s new economic club, the Eurasian Union.
Speaking in Brussels on Monday, he said “there were many [EU foreign ministers] who said it should be tried”.
The Austrian foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, also said on Monday there should be “direct talks” with Putin’s new Union.
Polish FM Grzegorz Schetyna told press that the Eurasian Union idea was “mentioned” by some delegations “but with no concrete details ... it was not a subject of today’s meeting”.
He said that following the Merkel-Putin meeting in Australia, some EU states wanted soft conclusions in order to “leave space for further talks” with Russia.
With nasty cold fronts thrusting an icy and early winter across the continental U.S. — along with last winter described by USA Today as "one of the snowiest, coldest, most miserable on record" — climatologist John L. Casey thinks the weather pattern is here to stay for decades to come.
In fact, Casey, a former space shuttle engineer and NASA consultant, is out with the provocative book "Dark Winter: How the Sun Is Causing a 30-Year Cold Spell," which warns that a radical shift in global climate is underway, and that Al Gore and other environmentalists have it completely wrong. [Get "Dark Winter" with Free Offer — Click Here]
The earth, he says, is cooling, and cooling fast.
And unless the scientific community and political leaders act soon, cold, dark days are ahead.
In fact, Casey, a former space shuttle engineer and NASA consultant, is out with the provocative book "Dark Winter: How the Sun Is Causing a 30-Year Cold Spell," which warns that a radical shift in global climate is underway, and that Al Gore and other environmentalists have it completely wrong. [Get "Dark Winter" with Free Offer — Click Here]
The earth, he says, is cooling, and cooling fast.
And unless the scientific community and political leaders act soon, cold, dark days are ahead.
Casey says the evidence is clear that the earth is rapidly growing colder because of diminished solar activity.
He says trends indicate we could be headed for colder temperatures similar to those seen in the late 1700s and early 1800s when the sun went into a "solar minimum" — a phenomenon with significantly reduced solar activity, including solar flares and sunspots.
He says trends indicate we could be headed for colder temperatures similar to those seen in the late 1700s and early 1800s when the sun went into a "solar minimum" — a phenomenon with significantly reduced solar activity, including solar flares and sunspots.
Casey is president of the Space and Science Research Corp., an Orlando, Fla., climate research firm.
His new book debunks global warming orthodoxy. For more than a decade, he reports, the planet's oceans have been cooling. And since 2007, the atmospheric temperature has been cooling as well.
"The data is pretty solid," Casey says. "If you look at the 100-year global temperature chart, you look at the steep drop-off we've had since 2007. It's the steepest drop in global temperatures in the last hundred years."
His new book debunks global warming orthodoxy. For more than a decade, he reports, the planet's oceans have been cooling. And since 2007, the atmospheric temperature has been cooling as well.
"The data is pretty solid," Casey says. "If you look at the 100-year global temperature chart, you look at the steep drop-off we've had since 2007. It's the steepest drop in global temperatures in the last hundred years."
Noted Russian astrophysicist Habibullo I. Abdussamatov has argued that a new mini-ice age has begun, though Casey doesn't go that far.
He does agree with Abdussamatov that the real driver of global climate is solar activity, namely sunspots. These correspond to shifts in global temperature with a greater than 90 percent accuracy, he says.
He does agree with Abdussamatov that the real driver of global climate is solar activity, namely sunspots. These correspond to shifts in global temperature with a greater than 90 percent accuracy, he says.
The environmental left focuses instead on ever-rising greenhouse emissions, suggesting nature is just taking a bit of a breather before the upward march in temperatures ineluctably resumes.
"There are two fundamental flaws with that," Casey says. "No. 1, the greenhouse-gas theory, and the global climate models that they produced, never permitted a pause. As long as CO2 levels were going up, the only thing that could happen was global temperatures could go up. That has not happened.
"No. 2, there could absolutely be no cooling, much less a pause. And yet we've been cooling for 11 years now."
The recent polar vortex that sent temperatures across the Midwest plunging to sub-zero records is not an aberration, Casey says.
If "Dark Winter" is right, that means the nation is busily preparing for the wrong calamity.
"There are two fundamental flaws with that," Casey says. "No. 1, the greenhouse-gas theory, and the global climate models that they produced, never permitted a pause. As long as CO2 levels were going up, the only thing that could happen was global temperatures could go up. That has not happened.
"No. 2, there could absolutely be no cooling, much less a pause. And yet we've been cooling for 11 years now."
The recent polar vortex that sent temperatures across the Midwest plunging to sub-zero records is not an aberration, Casey says.
If "Dark Winter" is right, that means the nation is busily preparing for the wrong calamity.
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