Petard

His Own Petard

Robert Gover, USA

The developing conflict over foreclosures is an amazing example of being "hoisted by his own petard," a phrase from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act III, scene IV.
 
A petard is a bucket of gunpowder used to blow down enemy fortifications.  Being hoisted by one's own petard means that the explosives went off and "hoisted" the handler rather than the target.  
 
And that is what happened to a lot of big banks during the ballooning of the real estate bubble that crashed in 2008 bringing down the whole economy, under the Saturn-Uranus opposition that hit the USA's Mars square Neptune.

The mortgage system that was developed in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s is a lot different from the one in the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." The banker that sells you the home loan today bundles your loan with a lot of others and resells them as mortgage backed securities (MBS) to investors around the world.

This Uranian variation on the old Saturnian way of doing loans worked so well it became a wondrous money-maker for bankers and loan brokers—and seemed an equally wondrous deal for buyers of MBS. Lenders scrambled to sell any home loan they could. As real estate prices zoomed up, people bought homes or refinanced, investors bought rental real estate at an amazing pace, and lenders flipped those loans into MBS and investors collected the monthly mortgage money and everybody danced and drank Champaign.  

The real estate industry created a thing called MERS, Mortgage Electronic Registration System, to record the conversion of home loans into MBS. MERS did not, however, retain title to properties.
 
Inevitably this wondrous scheme collapsed and a lot of homeowners lost jobs or discovered they'd signed a mortgage that suddenly popped their monthly payments beyond their means.  So the foreclosure "industry," as its being called now, went into action, foreclosing on failed mortgage payers, and reselling their homes, then reselling new bundles of MBS.
 
It was around this time that Pluto became involved, creating a T square with the Saturn-Uranus opposition. Pluto's involvement suggested there was something unsavory going on behind the scenes.
 
That hidden something is now coming to light in a most dramatic way. A judge in California may have triggered this new angst when he noted that one cannot transfer a real estate title one does not have. Titles to homes had been sliced and diced like ingredients in a huge MBS gumbo and could not now be extracted from the bubbling gumbo and restored to their previous condition.
 
Buyers of MBS securities were as distressed as foreclosed homeowners and frustrated bankers and foreclosure specialists who'd smelled fresh meat in the bloody waters of the housing market, who are now huddling with armies of lawyers, trying to figure out what can be done to get those deadbeats out of their homes so the homes can be resold fast and cheap, as the system was designed to do.   
 
To the foreclosure specialists, it's a legal technicality that should be smoothed over by a judge friendly to the big money. But the foreclosed homeowners have their lawyers, too, and Pluto's participation in the Saturn-Uranus T square probably has more secrets to reveal.
 
Congress persons will soon become stressed as they are caught between the devil of distressed homeowners and the deep blue sea of profit-hungry bankers—their voters v. their campaign funders. The Wall Streeters who created this trap are now caught in it and screaming as the Uranus-Pluto square tightens and we head into what is likely to become the most revolutionary time in US history. 

Python and Pig

The Pig Through the Python

Robert Gover, USA, gocycles@aol.com

 

"Get this pig through the python" is a metaphor that is catching on among big bankers and financiers who are losing money because of the present foreclosure crisis.

 

The 18.6 year cycle of the Moon's North Node has correlated with the real estate cycle when charted over centuries.  During the 20^th Century this correlation was distorted by the Fed's ability to impose interest rates rather than allowing the "free market" to do so.

 

On November 27 this year, at 8:59 AM, the North Node will precisely conjoin Pluto at 4 Capricorn 07.  With the North Node's role in real estate prices and Pluto's role in major transformations, the current foreclosure crisis appears to be headed for some kind of resolution.  It may not happen on November 27, though, for Pluto's effects are notorious for manifesting like births months after conceptions. But this coincidence tempts me to suggest Pluto is the python and the North Node is the pig.  

 

The cause of the foreclosure crisis is that the financial sector python swallowed a pig that was way too big.  The pig grew too big when mortgages were sliced and diced into securities and sold all over the world—without due diligence to the deeds to each property thus sold.  In other words, in Wall Street's enthusiasm to reap big profits from this python, the pig got stuck in the python's throat. 

 

Millions of foreclosures across the country are stalled as the Wall Street python appeals to government to help it digest this pig. Caught between the devil (big campaign contributors) and the deep blue sea (voter reaction) politicians are stumped. Temporarily, at least.  Legal precedent going back to the invention of the printing press calls for written deeds to prove ownership of properties.  Without a deed, a bank cannot foreclose on a property—you cannot take back something you cannot prove you own. 

 

Another interesting astrological fact is that, as the North Node and Pluto make their exact conjunction, Saturn will be conjunct within 1 degree of the USA's natal Saturn at 14 Libra, square the USA's Sun.  The Pluto-Node conjunction will be opposite the USA's money planets Venus and Jupiter in Cancer, and applying to an opposition to the USA's Sun.    

 

What we may be moving into is a change in the present makeup of our government, from "of, by and for big banks and corporations" to of, by and for the voters—a return of the democracy we like to believe we have.  I'm not suggesting we hold our breaths till this change manifests in our daily lives, though, for where billions of profits are concerned, wealthy campaign contributors and their political beneficiaries get panicky.   

 

Judges across the land who are involved in foreclosure cases have tended to side with the foreclosure industry. If a distressed homeowner was legally savvy enough, he or she could throw sand in the foreclosure machinery by hiring a lawyer to demand the bank involved show title to the property. Since so many titles have been put into the mortgage backed securities blender, there is no longer any way to un-blend and retrieve them.  That Humpty Dumpy had a great fall. 

 

What's to be done? 

 

A Legal Aid attorney in Jacksonville, Florida, April Chamey, pioneered saving homeowners from foreclosure back in 2004 by demanding banks prove ownership by producing titles.  She then filed "quiet title" actions on behalf of her homeowner clients.  A quiet title action quiets all other claims, giving homeowners a fresh new title to their properties.

 

Thus may the python of justice digest both the Wall Street python and its pig. 

 

http://robert-gover.blogspot.com/

Foreclosures

Foreclosures

Robert Gover, USA, gocycles@aol.com

 

Lately, the news has carried stories of foreclosures put on hold. This is

another sign of the presently tightening Uranus-Pluto square—a surprising development in the established foreclosure business. It emerged out of a California court ruling that may enable thousands of foreclosed homeowners to save their homes.   

 

Let's say you bought a home by obtaining a mortgage from a bank for $250,000.  That bank sold another 1,000 mortgages to your neighbors, then "bundled" those mortgages and sold them as securities (bonds called mortgage credit obligations) to investors around the world. 

 

Then came the crash of 2008 and you lost your job and could not make the mortgage payments. The bank wants to foreclose and resell your property.  But it no longer holds the paper showing that it owns the loan you took out.  That paper departed when your bank bundled its mortgages and sold them. Without proving that it owns your loan, how can your bank foreclose? 

 

The real estate industry believed it had solved that problem by creating MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System).  Although your bank no longer holds the deed to your house, by relying on MERS it can claim it has the right to foreclose, kick you out and conjure a new loan.  Then bundle the new mortgage with others and sell that bundle to investors far and wide.  And, if new borrowers can't pay their mortgages, repeat this wondrous profit-generator ad infinitum. 

 

However, on May 10, 2010, a California bankruptcy court held that MERS could not enable foreclosure. (See In re Walker, Case no. 10-21656-E–11)  The judge said that since MERS did not own the underlying Deed of Trust note, it could not transfer it to another entity. Any attempt to transfer a trust deed without ownership of the underlying note is void under California law. You can't transfer something you don't have.    

 

The creation of a worldwide debt derivatives market in effect means that trust deeds have disappeared as surely as if they'd been shredded.  MERS kept records of sales but not trust deed titles proving ownership.    

 

An article in Mother Jones Magazine put the problem this way: "With so many loans having been bought, sold, securitized, and traded, establishing who owns the mortgage is hardly a trivial matter. It frequently requires months of sleuthing in order to untangle the web of banks, brokers, and investors, among others." 

 

Until the California court decision in May, judges overlooked this legal technicality and sided with the foreclosure companies against distressed homeowners.  Mortgage foreclosures have so far cost $7 Trillion in lost real estate equity and untold suffering by unwitting victims of the Wall Street scheme that crashed the economy. 

 

Concurrently, the foreclosure business has netted tremendous profits for those who have used MERS to obtain "ghost" titles to distressed properties and resell them.  If the California court ruling holds up, it will mean a surprising stroke of true justice for many a victimized homeowner.    

 

Uranus in hard angles to Pluto has a way of turning established systems upside down, as events in the1930s and 1960s attests.  If the California court ruling catches on around the country, sixty-two million homes could become foreclosure-proof, hanging a lot of financial sharpies by their own petard. 

 

This is upsetting to people in the foreclosure business who'd been counting on the crashed economy to make another killing.  But it's an unanticipated stimulant to the overall economy, for it halts the avalanche of lost home equity and homeless families.   

 

Notes:  For more details see a San Francisco Chronicle article by attorney Sean Olender.  Also see http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/homeowners.php. 

 

 

http://robert-gover.blogspot.com/

Money System

The Mysterious Madness of the USA's Money System

By Robert Gover

 

 A monetary system is not about your money or my money, it's about our

money, the stuff we use to buy and sell and keep track of who owes whom how

much. Today, everybody needs money to live. If everybody has enough money to buy necessities, nobody starves or goes homeless and the whole society

prospers.   

 

Money became everybody's business with the industrial revolution and

massive population shift from farms to cities. Before this migration, most people, other than the aristocracy, grew their own food, made their own clothes, built their own homes, bartered, and had little need for money. Now money extends its tentacles into every facet of our lives, from conception to casket.   

 

When gold and silver and other precious metals were used as money, money was a form of wealth itself. But modern paper currencies are based on our faith in them as means of exchange, measure of value, and symbol of wealth. Modern money is not wealth itself, but just as the flag is often equated with the patriotism it symbolizes, money is often equated with the real wealth it symbolizes.

 

Since money is now as necessary to our lives as air and water, it's amazing

that most of us know more about air and water than we know about money. In this and other ways, money is comparable to the great mystery we call God, the mystery from which we came into this life and into which we disappear when we die.

 

Control of money bestows God-like powers.  "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws," said Mayer Amschel Rothschild a couple hundred years ago as he was pioneering what we now call "the new world order." 

 

Lending and borrowing money is as old as money itself. What's new is public debt: Government borrowing from bankers to be repaid by an unwitting third party called "we the people." Public debt is not to be confused with private debt, all those corporate, mortgage and credit card loans.  Murray Rothbard (1) explains public debt this way:

 

"The public debt transaction...is very different from private debt...the

government receives money from creditors, both parties realizing that the

money will be paid back not out of the pockets or the hides of the politicians and

bureaucrats (who borrowed it), but out of the looted wallets and purses of the hapless taxpayers, the subjects of the state. The government gets the money by tax-coercion; and the public creditors, far from being innocents, know full well that their proceeds will come out of that selfsame coercion. In short, public creditors are willing to hand over money to the government now in order to receive a share of tax loot in the future. This is the opposite of a free market, or a genuinely voluntary transaction. Both parties are immorally contracting to participate in the violation of the property rights of citizens in the future. Both parties, therefore, are making agreements about other people's property, and both deserve the back of our hand."

 

This money borrowed by government is then sliced and diced and sold as Treasury Bonds and Bills. It cannot be completely repaid without leaving the American population money-less. All our money—currency and credit—has been borrowed from the banks of the Federal Reserve, the USA's privatized central bank. If everyone were to suddenly repay all debts in full, we'd be without the means-of-exchange money we need to function as a society. That's at once utterly illogical and literary true. 

 

About 99 percent of the American population believes government creates our money.  Not so.  More than 97% of what we call money is actually credit, loaned by the bankers of the Federal Reserve.  In other words, the bankers of the Fed sell us the stuff we use as money.  Money is created when loans are made. So most of what we call money is actually debts to borrowers and credits to lenders.  These electronic transfers become paper bills and coin money if or when people cash checks rather than deposit them.  

 

Most people believe the Federal Reserve is an agency of the US Government.  Why else would it be called "Federal"? 

 

A US senator and a few powerful bankers conceived what was to become the Federal Reserve System in secret during November 1910, at a retreat on Jekyll Island, Georgia.  "Their expressed purpose was to standardize the nation's banking system.  But they also intended to eliminate competition between banks and maximize profits by creating a central bank independent of government control. To do this, they would need to write the needed legislation and carefully navigate it though Congress in such a way as to not arouse fears by allowing the public to realize they were privatizing control of the nation's money.  If they could manage this they might expand and achieve their long-range goal: A cartel of independent central banks that would dominate the world." (2)   

 

Even today some historians deny that this conspiratorial meeting ever happened. But the cat got out of the bag in 1916 when B. C. Forbes, who would later found Forbes Magazine, was a reporter for Leslie's Weekly, and wrote: 

 

"Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily hieing hundreds of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking on to an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world the strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance…I am not romancing. I am giving to the world, for the first time, the real story of how the famous Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency system, was written."     

 

And in 1930 banker Paul Warburg wrote a book of 1,750 pages in which he described the meeting and its purpose without mentioning its location or the names of those who attended—except for Senator Aldrich. "I do not feel free to give a description of this most interesting conference concerning which Senator Aldrich pledged all participants to secrecy," wrote Warburg. "Even the fact that there had been a meeting was not permitted to become public."

 

Ten years after signing off on the Federal Reserve Act, President Woodrow Wilson said: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial Nation is controlled by a system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation, therefore, and all its activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be the worse ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world—no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote by the majority, but government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

 

In the 1920s, Congress asked one Fed member (Donald J. Winn, Assistant to the Board of Governors) if the Fed wasn't in fact a private corporation.  Winn replied, "The Federal Reserve System was established by an act of Congress and is not a private corporation."  He went on to explain: "The stock of the Federal Reserve Banks is held entirely by commercial banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System." 

 

Say what?  How can it NOT be privately held when in fact its stock is privately held by bankers?  If some homeless guy said he didn't rob that convenience store, he merely refreshed its cash register, he'd be declared criminal clown of the year. 

 

Poet Ezra Pound got himself in a world of trouble by vociferously objecting to this heist we now affectionately call The Fed. He felt the need to flee the USA and go to Italy where he broadcast diatribes against those who had created it. The US Government finally locked him up in an insane asylum. While there, Pound was visited by a young poet, Eustace Mullins. In Mullins' forward to his book, Secrets of the Federal Reserve, he wrote:   

 

"In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C., Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten dollar bill marked 'Federal Reserve Note' and asked me if I would do some research at the Library of Congress on the Federal Reserve System which had issued this bill. Pound was unable to go to the Library himself, as he was being held without trial as a political prisoner by the United States government. After he was denied broadcasting time in the U.S., Dr. Pound (had) broadcast from Italy in an effort to persuade people of the United States not to enter World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt had personally ordered Pound's indictment, spurred by the demands of his three personal assistants...I had no interest in money or banking as a subject, because I was working on a novel. Pound offered to supplement my income by ten dollars a week for a few weeks. My initial research revealed evidence of an international banking group which had secretly planned the writing of the Federal Reserve Act and Congress' enactment of the plan into law. These findings confirmed what Pound had long suspected. He said, 'You must work on it as a detective story.'"

 

When Ezra Pound ran out of money and could no longer pay young Mullins $10 a week for his research, Mullins appealed to various foundations for money to complete his task.  All refused.  He then wrote a book based on what he'd found so far, but 19 New York publishers rejected his manuscript.  One editor, Devin Gerrity, president of Devin Adair Publishing Company, gave him some friendly advice: "I like your book but we can't print it.  Neither can anybody else in New York.  Why don't you bring in a prospectus for your novel, and I think we can give you an advance. You may as well forget about getting the Federal Reserve book published." 

 

Mullins eventually did publish a small edition in 1952 via two of Ezra Pound's disciples, under the simple title Federal Reserve.  A couple of years later an unauthorized edition was done by a New Jersey publisher under the tile The Federal Reserve Conspiracy.  In 1955, a German edition was put out by Guido Roeder but the entire edition of 10,000 copies were burned by "government agents," ordered to take this action by the US High Commissioner to Germany James B. Conant, who was President of Harvard University from 1933 to 1953.  This was the only book burning in Germany since the days of the Nazi Party.  In 1968 another pirated edition appeared in California and Mullins tried to get the FBI and Postal Inspectors to act, but they refused.  Then, in 1980, a second German edition came out and because the US Government no longer controlled the internal affairs of Germany, this edition survives.  It's a duplicate of the one that was burned in 1955.

 

Who owns the debt being repaid by American taxpayers for money borrowed from the Fed banks by the US Government?  In 1952, Mullins says, he traced those people to a group called the London Connection. The conclusion was obvious.  Although the USA gained its political independence during the Revolutionary War, we were resold into debt to British aristocrats by the creation of the Fed. 

 

Today the general belief is that our money is printed by government…although simultaneously we are harangued about "the national debt" and how each of us owes an astounding share of it, and what a crime it is to pass this horrendous debt onto our children and grandchildren.  This cognitive dissonance is evidence that secrecy persists.  Even President John F. Kennedy got whacked shortly after he made a move to undermine the Fed's absolute money power. (Google Executive Order 11110. June 4, 1963 for details)  Remember that famous line, "Follow the money," in Oliver Stone's movie JFK?    

 

This evening when you watch the TV news and see that handsome face under the perfectly coifed hairdo blathering on about "the national debt," know that this purveyor of information is grossly misinformed, and that if he were not misinformed, you would not be seeing him on TV.    

 

One final irony: the Peoples Republic of China adopted the monetary system advocated by Ben Franklin and Abe Lincoln. Their People's Bank of China is an agency of their government.  American and European financiers have lanbasted the Chinese system as "state control" in contrast to "free enterprise." Well, our system is free profits for a tiny minority—those who economist Thorstein Veblen called a parasitic leisure class—but a huge debt burden for the vast majority. 

 

 

Notes: 

 

1. "Repudiating the National Debt" by Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), posted on the von Mises web site January 16, 2004. Rothbard was professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and vice-president for academic affairs at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. This article ran in the June 1992 issue of Chronicles (pp. 49–52). 
2. G. Edward Griffin's The Creature From Jekyll Island, American Media, 2006. 
3. Also see The Lost Science of Money—The Story of Power by Stephen Zarlenga, American Monetary Institute, 2002; and The Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System—The Slight of Hand That has Trapped Us in Debt And How We Can Break Free, by Ellen Hodgson Brown, Third Millennium Press, 2007.  Ellen Brown's web page also has a blog with numerous articles and reader comments. 
4. For more information, including videos about this complicated subject, Google "debt based monetary system."

 

add

Banksters and Gumbas

From Robert Gover, USA, gocycles@aol.com

 

Many Americans are wondering why it is that the US Government has unlimited amounts of money to spend on wars but little or no money to spend on its own needy citizens.  Instead of helping needy citizens, our government rewards the guys who caused the neediness—the Wall Streeters who created the casino that made the marketing of doomed mortgages such a gold mine.      

 

Now when Joe Sixpack seeks a mortgage or small business loan from a banker, he's told, "You don't qualify." And Mr. Banker has a long list of "requirements" that "prove" Mr. Sixpack doesn't qualify.   

 

Yet Mr. Banker has no problem qualifying his "gumbas" (to use the Italian American slang term) for investments to "aid the war effort" by siphoning off taxpayer dollars for any number of whacko enterprises such as selling lipstick in Afghanistan. 

 

Mr. Bankster knows his gumbas will be repaid with taxpayer dollars provided by a bribed Congress.  Thus enriched, this gang is inspired to beat their chests, wave the flag, praise free enterprise and tell Joe Sixpack to get lost. 

 

Another prevalent question: Why does our government give fistfuls of dollars to "tribal leaders" halfway around the world while telling our own needy people to "get a job at McDonalds"?    

 

Such questions are spreading throughout the population as the Cardinal T Square tightens its orb.  This exceedingly rare T square is formed, at present, by Saturn conjunct Mars and Venus in early Libra, opposite Jupiter and Uranus conjunct in early Aries, with all five of those planets square Pluto and the Moon's Nodes, the North Node in Capricorn, the South Node in Cancer. 

 

This transiting T square has the US Federal Reserve's Sun-Pluto opposition in a grand cross pattern. The Fed, original source of all our credit and cash, is now in a period from which it will emerge radically changed. 

 

Ellen Brown, author of "Web of Debt" http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/ defines what needs to be changed this way: 

"We no longer have a government 'of the people, by the people, for the people.' We have a government run by and for Big Business, and Big Business has gotten control because its affiliated banks have monopolized the business of issuing the national money supply…What hides behind the banner of 'free enterprise' today is a system in which giant corporate monopolies have used their affiliated banking trusts to generate unlimited funds to buy up competitors, the media, and the government itself, forcing truly independent private enterprise out…"

The solution to this massive fraud: 

"These giant cartels can be brought to heel only by cutting off their source of power—the power to create money—and returning (this power) to its rightful sovereign owners, the people themselves."     

The heart of the problem is how our money is created and distributed by a private company of bankers with the misleading name of "Federal" Reserve.  To learn the history of the Fed, check out a 10-minute video found at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09NuAdKgqhI                               

 

If we transform the Fed from banksters and their gumbas into a public institution responsible to the whole society, we will succeed the way the Tea Partiers of 1763 succeeded—by breaking free from an abusive central bank.  See http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/video-the-real-tea-party-begins-here/ 

 

Legislation to change the Fed has been written and is being circulated in Congress now.  You can access information about it by googling "American monetary institute." 

 

One thing is certain—we have maxed out our indebtedness and must now either suffer "austerity" (drastically reducing our standard of living) or change the way we create and distribute money, which means change the Fed.  

http://robert-gover.blogspot.com/

Racism

Racism and Propaganda

 

This is a Neptunian tale of old delusions and evil intentions gone awry.   

 

Andrew Breitbart (Neptune trine Venus and Chiron, Sun in Aquarius opposite Moon, Sun trine Jupiter and Uranus) is a propagandist promoting rightwing causes.  He engineered the downfall of Acorn, a national organization devoted to helping the poor.  He scored this victory by publicizing a couple of provocateurs, costumed as a pimp and prostitute, visiting Acorn offices to ask workers there how they could get a mortgage and other financial resources. 

 

The firestorm resulting from mass media airing of those videos caused government funding to be withdrawn from Acorn—before it was revealed that Breitbart had created a lie.

 

Breitbart's most recent effort—an attempt to paint the NAACP as a racist organization—backfired.  Breitbart claims "someone" sent him a video of Shirley Sherrod, of the US Department of Agriculture, speaking at a small town NAACP meeting. Her father was murdered by a white racist. In a brief snippet of that speech, Ms. Sherrod described an incident in 1986 when she felt a jolt of prejudice against a white couple who were threatened with foreclosure. 

 

The point Sherrod was making is that she then had an epiphany and reversed herself, and helped the white couple save their farm.  She realized that poverty is the heart of the problem we call racism.  

 

By editing a snippet of the video in which Sherrod describes a momentary feeling of racial disdain, and publicizing this via TV news outlets, Breitbart managed to ignite another firestorm which resulted in Sherrod being fired from her job. 

 

Seems everyone was ready to go with the old "seeing is believing" delusion and bought Breitbart's crude lie—before Sherrod and others protested, and the truth leaked out. 

 

If you compare the Fox News account of Breitbart's public relations effort with the MSNBC account, you'll get a strong sense of the Neptunian-ruled confusion and conflict racism causes.  Which brings me to the point I want to make.

Racism is one form of xenophobia, defined as "an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange." (dictionary.com.)  It surprises most contemporary people to learn that there was less xenophobia and/or racism is Colonial America, and more "mixed marriages" per capita than there are today. Back then, people of different races labored together, which quickly dissolved whatever xenophobia they originally felt toward one another. 

 

What engendered the stigma against African Americans was that they were expensive property, and their mixed-race children were legally the property of their owners.  English indentured servants were freed after their indenture period was up. Indians were so "disobedient" and headstrong they were soon discarded as laborers.  Many mixed marriages were broken up when the non-black partner moved away—although others were kept alive by runaway slaves and indentured servants joining Indian tribes. 

 

"Ol' Massa" paid a lot of money for those African slaves whose labors made him rich, and created laws to keep them separate from whites and Indians.  

 

Today, "Ol' Massa" is reincarnate among the ruling elite, and the stigma against African Americans persists, kept alive after the Civil War by Jim Crow laws and customs, and despite the Supreme Court's reversal of a previous ruling declaring an African American to be one-fifth of a white man. 

 

The Sherrod scandal unfolded with Neptune conjunct Chiron and both opposite Mercury.  By Winter Solstice 2012, Neptune will still be conjunct Chiron with both in a T square to Mercury opposite Jupiter.  Neptunian taboos change slowly.   

Taboos

Taboos

From: Robert Gover, USA

 

Under the Saturn-Uranus-Jupiter-Pluto T square, the USA is rapidly approaching a time when we'll have to overturn some taboos or sacrifice ourselves on the altar of ignorance.   

This isn't the first time a society faced such a choice.  In a book titled "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" Jared Diamond tells the fascinating story of the Norse people who lived in Greenland hundreds of years ago. Their environment underwent changes that threatened their existence.  They had a taboo—much like our taboo against marijuana.  They refused to eat fish.  As the so-called "Little Ice Age" made their hitherto fertile green environment colder and colder, they had to flee or starve, for they would not violate their taboo. 

 We in the USA have developed an abundance of taboos that are threatening our existence.  Skipping our addiction to oil, here's a brief list:

1. A privatized central bank, The Fed.  If we would democratically create the stuff we use as money instead of having our Federal Government buy loans from the private bankers of the Fed and stick us with the ever-ballooning "national debt," there would soon be prosperity aplenty for everyone. 

 

2. Foreign Wars.  If our Federal Government would kick its addition to foreign wars and bring our soldiers home from Iraq, Afghanistan and dozens of other foreign outposts, we would reduce our tax burden tremendously. It would cost billions of dollars less to BUY Iraqi oil. 

 

3. Cheap Chinese consumer products.  If we would impose tariffs on Chinese and other goods made by cheap foreign labor, and instead make the things we need at home, we would upgrade our lives and prosper with high quality goods and services—as we did before we shipped all those millions of jobs overseas, trading our own wellbeing for trans-national corporate profits. 

 

4. Prohibiting marijuana.  Our national drug, booze, causes more traffic deaths and injuries, more domestic violence and more festering health problems than marijuana ever could.  If the government would get out of the business of prohibitions and, instead, tell us what's safe and what's harmful to our health, we'd be a lot healthier, happier and wealthier as a society. 

 

5. Socialized medical care.  We already have a diluted version of this for a minority in the form of Medicare and Medicaid.  Our taboo against sharing the benefits of mainstream and alternative medicines is not only stupid, it's downright insane.  Medical procedures and pharmaceuticals have surpassed traffic accidents as the leading cause of death and injury in the USA today—all because of the need to make dollar profits from illnesses.     

 

We Americans waste more money on bribing politicians (called campaign contributions) and behavioral controls (i.e., the prohibition against marijuana) than we spend on things that would improve our lives.  We have become like those ancient Norse Greenlanders who refused to eat fish, even though they were surrounded by endless banquets of fish, and thus consigned themselves to extinction. 

 

A young lawyer named Robert R. Arthur recently wrote a book titled "You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos."  Since no major publisher would touch it, he produced hand-made copies at his kitchen table.  One amazon.com reviewer said, "…if you pee, poop, fart, pick your nose, or masturbate, you will undoubtedly find value in this book."   

 

And if you're an astrologer who is interested in the presently unfolding changes promised by the long Uranus-Pluto square that will dominate this decade, you will derive a keener sense of the work this revolutionary pair faces—and the changes in store for us as a society.  If, that is, we have what it takes to kick our addiction to insane taboos. 

 

Hyperinflation 1

Hyperinflation Part 1

 

As I pointed out in a previous newsletter, the worst periods of inflation, going back to the Roman Empire, have occurred under Saturn-Uranus or Saturn-Neptune oppositions, and sometimes hard angles from Pluto have been involved. 

 

Saturn-Neptune oppositions occur every 36 years on the average; Saturn-Uranus oppositions occur every 45 years. Planets are said to be in opposition when, from our perspective on Earth, they are 180 degrees apart, putting we earthlings between them.  The Saturn-Uranus opposition brings down whatever entrenched Saturnian structure is ripe to fall. 

 

What is called the Hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic 1923 began in 1915 under a conjunction of Saturn and Pluto.  It built up slowly but steadily during 1917 under a Saturn-Neptune opposition, and then gained momentum 1918 to 1921 under a series of Saturn-Uranus oppositions, to climax in 1923. 

 

An eyewitness said, "It was horrible.  Horrible!  Like lightening it struck.  No one was prepared.  You cannot imagine the rapidity with which the whole thing happened.  The shelves in grocery stores were empty.  You could buy nothing with your paper money."   

 

From 2006-2007, Saturn opposed Neptune, and from 2008 through 2010 we have a series of Saturn-Uranus oppositions moving to a T square to Pluto.  So economic predictions of hyperinflation is supported by the astrological history of past hyperinflations.      

 

If you've been doing your family's shopping for at least ten years, you have probably noticed that food prices have doubled or even tripled.  This slow inflation has been going on since the creation of the Federal Reserve in December 1913.  What you could buy then for a dollar costs around $100 today.    

 

Hyperinflation would mean a 100 dollar bill quickly becomes worth more as toilet paper than money. 

 

What has me revisiting this depressing subject is an article online by economist John Williams (www.shadowstats.com)  Here's the opening paragraph of his article titled "Hyperinflation Special Report" dated April 8, 2008: 

 

"The U.S. economy is in an intensifying inflationary recession that eventually will evolve into a hyperinflationary great depression.  Hyperinflation could be experienced as early as 2010, if not before, and likely no more than a decade down the road.  The U.S. government and Federal Reserve already have committed the system to this course through the easy politics and a bottomless pocketbook, the servicing of big-moneyed special interests, and gross mismanagement." 

 

The last of five exact Saturn-Uranus oppositions will occur in July 2010.  If the past is prologue, we can expect hyperinflation to peak around the end of 2012. 

 

December 2012—famous for "end of the world" prophesies—marks the tightening of a Uranus-Pluto square that will dominate till at least 2018, and which, based on past history, can be expected to bring revolutionary transformations, as detailed in previous articles by me. 

 

Economist John Williams' prediction of hyperinflation is supported by astrology but with a joker in the deck: Uranus, bringer of unprecedented surprises.  Around the end of May 2010 the national mood of public opposition to the ruling oligarchy will change as Uranus (conjunct Jupiter) moves from easy-going Pisces into Mars-ruled Aries, and with Pluto and Saturn forming a grand cross to the Fed's natal Sun-Pluto opposition.  

 

Economist, Henry C. K. Liu, defined the joker when he said, "What we will have going forward is not Weimar Republic type price inflation, but a financial profit inflation…inducing the public to invest what remaining wealth they still hold only to lose more of it at the next market meltdown which will come when the profit bubble bursts."  (1)

 

1. "Bogged Down at the Fed," September 11, 2009, Asian Times Online.  . 

 

GRAND CROSS AND GREAT DEPRESSIONS

By Robert Gover

(Copyright 2006)

My purpose here is to review the astrological history of past great depressions in order to show why the years 2008 through 2019 are likely to be the most difficult so far in US history—and, since the US economy is now so integrated into the world economy—for other nations as well.

In ancient societies that developed astrology to high levels—Egyptian, Hindu, Babylonian, Greek, Mayan, Chinese, etc.—the study of planetary influences was confined to a priesthood. No attempt was made to publicize how these priesthoods worked, knowing that the combination of mathematics and mythology they employed would baffle the masses.

Now, computer programs make astrology more accessible to more people than ever before. Computers have also made astrological research much easier and faster. Not many years ago it required months of work by astrologers to find data that computers now find in seconds. The data presented here can be checked by anyone with an astrological program and access to historical information.

Great Depressions Defined

There have been four great depressions in US history: the 1780s, 1840s, 1870s and 1930s. Great depressions are not to be confused with periods of less hardship or shorter periods of hardship, often called depressions or recessions or downturns. There have been many periods called recessions or depressions in US history but only four that qualify as great depressions.

How can we distinguish recessions and depressions from great depressions? Dr. Ravi Batra provided this definition (The Great Depression of 1990, Simon and Schuster, 1987, page 106):

“A recession usually lasts for one to three years, during which the rate of unemployment, while rising, is generally below 12 percent. When a recession lasts for more than three years, and/or the rate of unemployment lies between 12 percent and 20 percent, the economy may be said to be suffering from a depression. When unemployment remains high and business stagnates for six or more years, the nation’s plight may be called a great depression. Thus, depending on its severity in depth and length, the downswing of the business cycle may be defined as a recession, depression, or great depression.”

What looms ahead in the not-to-distant future is likely to combine the social upheavals of The Sixties with the angst of the 1930s Great Depression and the rebelliousness of the American Revolutionary period. This prognostication is not certain, understand, but it is very likely. I base the likeliness of it on two things: 1) correlations of past great depressions with a certain repeating planetary pattern, and 2) the thrust and momentum of current events.

What makes astrology “unscientific” is that each repeating cyclical pattern formed by the planets of our solar system occurs in an ever-changing celestial environment. For example, each New Moon, the most frequently recurring cycle, occurs within a solar system in which all the other planets are arranged differently in relation to the Lunation. Moreover, our solar system has changed in relationship to the surrounding universe due to the Precession of the Equinoxes. Thus, each moment in “cosmic time” is unique, never to duplicate again. Scientific verification depends on duplication. Astrologers are continually dealing with a changing universe and thus dogged by various degrees of uncertainty.

Nevertheless, astrology is the best predictive tool we humans have. It can tell us what periods will be difficult, what periods will be easy. Combine astrological prediction with the trend of current events, and accuracy of prediction increases.

History of Great Depressions

The single economic condition that has coincided with all great depressions of the past is a record gap between rich and poor. By the beginning of the new millennia, the gap had never been greater. This is so both inside the USA and throughout the world.

But isn’t it possible to fix this problem and minimize another great depression? Yes. The stars do not compel, the future is not set in stone. Even devout believers in laissez faire capitalism know something must be done to narrow this gap that eventually threatens all. The problem is that there is no agreement concerning what must be done to solve the wealth disparity problem. That’s why we are likely to be well into the 2000-teens before circumstances overcome ideological debate and dictate practical solutions.

I should add that as an unrepentant idealist, I believe we will emerge from the coming hard years better than before. Crisis is opportunity. My aim here is to show, first, astrologically why the years from 2008 through 2019 are likely to be the most trying in our history, and second, to stimulate thinking about long-range solutions.

From a purely astrological perspective, every time the USA suffered through a great depression, Saturn § was found in mid-Capricorn forming a 90-degree square angle, as viewed from Earth, to one of the so-called malefic planets in mid-Aries. These heavies have been Uranus ¨, Neptune ©, Pluto À and Mars ¥. Understand that in the solar community, no planet by itself is good or bad. It's when these planets move into certain angles to each other that their combined influence is experienced by us as good or bad. And malefic angles or aspects formed by the slower-moving Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are notoriously the worst, with Mars a close runner-up.

Grand Cross in US History

Never has a great depression occurred when Saturn has arrived in mid-Capricorn without forming a square to Pluto, Neptune, Uranus or Mars in mid-Aries. And the grand cross pattern with Saturn in Capricorn has never formed without coinciding with a great depression.

Of all the various geometric patterns the planets form, the most difficult, demanding or malefic is the grand cross. But the grand cross does not impact all nations equally. To find out how the coming grand cross will impact one nation as compared to another, biwheel charts are used. These show how a given aspect up there in the sky will affect one nation differently than another. All nations may be swept up in the problems of the coming great depression, but not all will face the same challenges.

Combining the time of each great depression with the time of the USA’s birth shows what I call “the great depression grand cross.” A biwheel shows two moments in time so they can be compared to one another.

A word about 1893 to 1895, often called "one of the worst depressions in history," and indeed it was extremely difficult. Crop failures were rife and prices were the lowest they'd ever been to that point in US history. It was ushered in by what is now called "The Panic of 1893" when the primary economic measurement of that time, The Business Curve, dropped from 10 points above normal to 20 points below normal. But it was too brief to qualify as a great depression.

Another example of a difficult but brief period was the Oil Embargo of the 1970s, when the price of gasoline was driven skyward by the OPEC oil cartel. We had what was dubbed "stagflation," a combination of stagnant activity and inflationary prices. But this didn't qualify as a great depression either.

How to Verify

Planetary positions and angles are astronomical measurements. They can be verified by checking an Ephemeris (a table of daily planetary positions). Comparisons of biwheel charts are best done by acquiring astrological software and erecting two charts: one for the USA's birth, July 4, 1776, Philadelphia, (or for the birth of any other nation) and the other for when a past great depression bottomed. The two charts mapping planetary positions are then combined by putting the nation’s chart on the inner wheel and the event chart on the outer wheel, creating a symbolic freeze-frame of two moments in time. This transit-to-natal method has enabled me to discover the repeating planetary pattern that has always coincided with repeating periods called great depressions.

Until the 1990s, America experienced great depressions in roughly 30- and/or 60-year cycles. It takes Saturn 28 to 30 years to complete an orbit by transiting through each of the 12 constellations or Signs of the Zodiac. When Saturn returns to mid-Capricorn each 28-30 years without squaring Pluto, Neptune, Uranus or Mars in mid-Aries, (for instance, in the 20th Century during the 1900s, 1960s and 1990s) the country has experienced economic or social upheavals or adjustments but no great depressions.

When the USA was born on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, the Sun was at 12 degrees and 44 minutes of Cancer, forming a 90-degree square aspect to Saturn at 14 degrees and 47 minutes of Libra. Rounding out to the nearest degree: Sun at 13 Cancer, Saturn at 15 Libra. This Sun-Saturn square has proven to be economically sensitive down through American history.

Endless Argument

As for the precise time of the USA's birth or inception, there is endless argument. The exact time of birth is important because it gives us the degree of the Ascendant or Rising Sign, the moment of dawn, around which the planets are then placed in "houses," signifying areas of activity. The Ascendant indicates how an individual sees his world and is seen by it. Some astrologers make a sound argument for using Scorpio Rising, which appeals to me personally because it puts my natal Sun conjunct the USA's Ascendant. The most widely used is the Sibley chart, with Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius Rising. We Americans may see ourselves as a Jupitarian-generous, Sagittarius “sage” philosophical nation but we are definitely not perceived that way by other nations. Rather we are seen as original, unique, even eccentric and unpredictable, by turns genius and outcast—the qualities of Uranus in Gemini Rising.

I use the Gemini Rising chart with Uranus on the Ascendant because it gives a more accurate astrological reading of who the USA is in the community of nations. Yes, it’s illogical that our Founders would sign the Declaration of Independence around 2 AM. On the other hand, quite a few were Masons and concerned with the astrology involved, and one could hardly ask for a more prosperous indicator than Sun, Jupiter and Venus together in the 2^nd house, indicating great material wealth.

The 12 constellations are important to map our Solar System. In effect, they each denote a different neighborhood within our Solar System and in the vast universe beyond. For astrological purposes, they are mapped into 30-degree sections. These sections are called Signs in astrology. Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn are called Cardinal Signs. They correspond to spring, summer, autumn and winter—the two Solstices and two Equinoxes. Planets in Cardinal Signs, it is often said, “make things happen.”

X in a Box

The USA was born when the Sun was in Cancer. The constellation Cancer is opposite Capricorn. And Libra (wherein resides the USA's Saturn) is opposite Aries. So by comparing the USA's birth chart with a second chart for a great depression, a grand cross pattern is shown by transiting Saturn in Capricorn 180 degrees opposite the US natal Sun in Cancer, while another malefic planet in Aries is 180 degrees opposite the US natal Saturn in Libra. Since the planets involved are also thus 90-degrees square to each other, a box pattern is also formed. It's this X-in-a-box pattern astrologers call a grand cross. It puts the Earth in the middle of a crisscross of planets.

Another way to approach a biwheel chart is to imagine the US birth chart as a clock face. In a biwheel chart, the clock face depicted as the inner wheel remains stationary. The 12 planets depicted on the second chart, shown on the outer wheel, become the clock's moving hands. The combination tells us what cosmic time it was for a certain event.

Most economic or financial astrologers use single charts, not transit-to-natal biwheels. I chanced upon the value of using transits to the USA’s birth chart in the early 1980s and found, as I continued to work with this method, that it speaks eloquently about US economic history. Great Depressions have arrived when the cosmic clock shows the x-in-a-box grand cross pattern made by transiting Saturn moving opposite the US natal Sun's position at 14 Cancer, while another "heavy" planet is transiting through Aries opposite the US natal Saturn's position at 15 Libra. Every time this pattern has formed, the USA has gone through a great depression. Never has it formed without coinciding with a great depression.

The worst wars in US history have occurred when transiting Uranus returned to its natal position in the US chart; other less destructive wars have occurred when planets “hit” the US Uranus from various other hard angles.

Stock market panics become likely when the US Mars-square-Neptune is “hit”—the subject of another paper. The list of such “coincidents” expands as one continues to explore.

Am I saying the planets control our economy? No. I am saying astrology enables us to forecast difficult economic times. How we collectively respond to difficulty times is what results in great depressions.

The grand cross anchored by Saturn has brought great depressions because we humans are creatures of habit. We are not controlled by the stars but we tend to apply solutions that have worked in the past instead of finding new solutions to new problems. I encapsulate this as “Belief trumps evidence.” We find the evidence we seek and do not find evidence we do not seek. Devotees of an economic ideology tend to become fanatical and apply solutions that worked in the past. But—

“History repeats but does not rhyme,” as Mark Twain put it. We can foresee future times that will resemble past times but we cannot predict exactly what specific events will manifest, and thus what innovations will be needed. Planetary cyclical patterns repeat but always in an ever-changing context. No two moments in cosmic time are ever the same. Old economic ideologies must change with changing times.

Another Way to Visualize

Another way to visualize the grand cross pattern is to imagine the Solstice/Equinox chart, which has 0 degrees Aries (spring) Rising at 9 o’clock on the chart, 90 degrees from 0 degrees Cancer (summer) at 6 o’clock, Aries (autumn) at 3 o’clock, with Capricorn (winter) at 12 o’clock. The great depression grand cross would then have Saturn up near noon in Capricorn, square another outer planet around 9 o’clock in Aries, with both opposite and square the US Sun in Cancer (6 o’clock) and Saturn in Libra (3 o’clock). Visualizing this most basic of astrological charts emphasizes the Cardinality of the four Signs involved in the great depression grand cross.

These oppositions and squares are measured by longitude only, and need not be precisely exact. They are effective when they are "within orb"—that is, within 5, 7, 10 or even 15 degrees of exact. I prefer to apply a 7 degree orb.

When Saturn reaches 7 degrees of Capricorn, it has come within 7-degree orb of an opposition to the US Sun at 14 Cancer. Planetary aspects have been found to be more powerful when "applying" than when "separating," much as ocean waves have more force when cresting to breakers.

Keep in mind, also, that the larger, outermost planets orbit slowly as measured in Earth years: Saturn averages 28-30 years, Uranus 84 years, Neptune 165 years, Pluto 248 years. Pluto, the most distant from our Sun, has the most erratic orbit. None of the planets move with the mechanical precision of our earthly clocks. We use our human measurement of time to track the planets, although the planets cycle to their own celestial rhythm.

Great Depression of the 1780s

The first great depression in the new nation's history became an undeniable fact around December of 1783. Saturn §, Uranus ¨, Neptune © and Mars ¥ were all involved in the 1780's grand cross, and this first great depression is viewed by some economic historians as being as severe as any in US history.

On the biwheel chart for this one, Saturn was at 15 degrees Capricorn, which puts it opposite the US natal Sun at 13 Cancer; meanwhile, Mars at 21 Aries is opposite Uncle Sam's natal Saturn at 15 degrees of Libra. Adding to this combination is Uranus conjunct Uncle Sam's Sun and thus also opposite transiting Saturn. Neptune was conjunct Sam's Saturn, and thus also opposite transiting Mars. Saturn, Neptune, Uranus and Mars--four of the five malefic bodies were involved in this grand cross.

What was happening then?

“Even more than their civilian neighbors, the former soldiers nursed grievances that they could attribute to incompetent, if not dishonest, government. They had left their farms and shops to fight the hated redcoats, but they could not even depend on the paltry sums their services had earned for them. Inflation had made their Continental currency almost worthless, and now the government set up by the Articles of Confederation was delaying payment of overdue wages and retracting its promises of lifetime pensions for officers.” (“Shay’s Rebellion” by Alden T. Vaughan, page 199, Historical Viewpoints.) Thus a record gap between Haves and Have-nots existed. The British had issued huge amounts of counterfeit Continentals into the new nation’s money system, using money as a weapon, in order to cause of the hyperinflation.

Great Depression of the 1840s

The second great depression in US history held the nation in its grip two cycles of Saturn or 60 years after the 1780s, during the 1840s when Saturn again arrived in mid-Capricorn, this time square to Pluto in mid-Aries. Again the grand cross pattern was formed with Uncle Sam's Sun and Saturn. Mars added to the stress by being at 14 degrees of Libra conjunct Sam's Saturn.

While Saturn has "anchored" all four great depressions from mid-Capricorn, the planets occupying mid-Aries have been Mars (the 1780s), Pluto (the 1840s), Neptune (the 1870s) and Uranus (the 1930s). When Saturn has opposed Uncle Sam's Sun without forming a grand cross with Uranus, Neptune, Pluto or Mars, no great depression has occurred.

Remember: astrologers speak of planets being "square" when they come within orb of 90 degrees to each other as seen from our perspective here on Earth. To be within orb, I allow 7 degrees. Thus, when Saturn reaches 7 degrees of Capricorn and Uranus reaches 9 degrees of Aries, they are within orb of an applying square to each other, and simultaneously within orb of oppositions to the USA's Sun and Saturn. They are within orb but separating when Saturn reaches 21 Capricorn and Uranus reaches 22 Aries.

Astrologer Raymond A. Merriman analyzed this crash and depression in terms of it following the Saturn-Pluto opposition of 1834-1835 (“The Implications of Saturn in Opposition to Pluto to World Economies and Financial Markets,” The Mountain Astrologer Magazine, November-December 2001 issue.) “When the stock market began to fall, and the land development projects failed to materialize, and banks began to fail…a financial panic ensured in 1837, which resulted in a full-fledged depression by the early 1840s.”

(Note that not all financial panics have led into great depressions.)

Merriman continued, “The stock market tumbled approximately 80% off its highs of 1835, and it wasn’t until 22 years later—in 1857—that the financial markets began to recover. In short, it was a 22-year economic downturn from the highs of 1835, coinciding with the first and only time the US government was forced to default on its bond (debt) obligations.”

The profits of big companies have long been our primary economic indicator but I find this indicator very iffy. We must not forget that the vast majority of Spain’s people did not benefit from the tons of gold shipped back from the New World by companies in the 1500s. Nor did the vast majority of Americans benefit from the spectacular run-up of stocks during the 1990s. There have been periods when corporations flourished while populations suffered. I therefore focus on the overall society’s economic wellbeing.

Great Depression of the 1870s

Thirty years (or one transit of Saturn) after the 1840s, the nation suffered it's third great depression during the 1870s, following the Civil War in the 1860s. This time Saturn § in Capricorn formed a square with Neptune © in Aries to create the grand cross with the US Sun and Saturn. For this date, we expand the orb between Saturn and Neptune to 9 degrees but keep in mind that it’s difficult to pinpoint when the depths of any great depression was reached. Economists endlessly debate rational causes and results, and statistics, presented months later, reflect conditions past.

Neptune’s influence contrasts with Saturn’s so distinctly that they are often considered opposites. Saturn demands structure, systems, and practicality. Neptune inspires searches into the unknown, promotes spirituality, poetry, the arts and new scientific undertakings. Yet even the most Neptunian inspired artist must apply Saturnian order to render his explorations communicable.

Great Depression of the 1930s

Sixty years and two transits of Saturn later, the USA went through what is arguably the worst great depression of its history. I say arguably because historic data indicates the Post-American Revolutionary Great Depression of the 1780s was as bad or worse. We contemporaries are more aware of the 1930s because we have haunting photos of that time, and some still alive to tell us about it.

Although economists are not likely to agree when the bottom of any great depression was reached, by January 1, 1931 it was clear that this crash was not going to rebound quickly. Fear that the whole economy would be impacted had become widespread, despite efforts by important people to propagate optimism. Since this great depression is the most recent, I will include a biwheel chart for it, and explain that chart.

The biwheel chart for 1931 shows transiting Saturn § at 16 Capricorn square Uranus ¨ at 18 Aries to form the grand cross with Sam's Sun and Saturn. Two years previous to this, when the crash of ’29 came, Jupiter ¦ and Pluto À were both in Cancer conjunct Sam’s Sun, opposite transiting Saturn and thus also square transiting Uranus. So the grand cross to Uncle Sam's Sun-square-Saturn at this time was anchored by Saturn and included Uranus, Pluto and Jupiter. It's also notable that this great depression followed the Saturn-Pluto opposition that would reoccur to usher in The Sixties. The one following The Sixties coincided with the attack of 9/11/01.

Understand that there is a lot happening up there in the infinite universe at any given moment. I am pinpointing attention on the planets within our Solar System and ignoring the countless other celestial bodies in and beyond our Solar System. We could also include asteroids, planetary moons and rings, comets, perihelion positions and latitudes as well as declinations and more, complicating the picture immensely. We might venture beyond our Solar System and include many other suns and planets, or add Sirius (Polaris) to our calculations. I aim for the simplest way to portray this pattern that correlates with great depressions.

No Grand Cross, No Great Depression

Following the great depression of the 1930s, Saturn next arrived in mid-Capricorn, opposite Sam's Sun, in 1960. There was no heavy planet square Saturn from mid-Aries, and thus no great depression. What developed as The Sixties unfolded was a rare combination of the unprecedented (Uranus) and transforming (Pluto). Uranus and Pluto were conjunct in Virgo, with both conjunct the US Neptune.

The first decade of the 20th Century was a rocky time for stocks. Two stock market panics rattled Wall Street (1903 and 1907), sending Wall Street financiers down to Washington to seek help from government. After much wrangling in the halls of Congress, Wall Streeters got their way and on December 26, 1913 the Federal Reserve System was created as America's version of a central bank. In effect, Congress turned control of the nation’s monetary system over to private bankers, but by calling it the Federal Reserve, created the impression that the federal government was still in control, as prescribed by the Constitution.

Since then, we have had a debt-based monetary system. Politicians borrow money from the private bankers of the Fed and stick unaware taxpayers with the debt at compound interest. In effect, the US government has operated, since 1914, on something like a limitless credit card, charged to taxpayers.

What $100 bought in 1800 it would still by in 1900. What $100 bought in 1914 now costs $1000 or more. This debt-based monetary system’s impact on American society and the world has been subtle but dramatically accumulative. During the past 35 years, goods and services have quadrupled while the dollar has devalued by 90%.

Dicey Times

Saturn's return to Capricorn in 1961 was another dicey time economically, but military spending provided an innovative mix of Keynesian stimulus and monetary policy delivered, via the military-industrial complex, as corporate welfare. As in the early 1950s when the Korean "police action" stimulated the economy, in the 1960s working class American draftees soon found themselves mired in a foreign land, this time Vietnam. The rationale for this war was—as it had been for the Korean “police action”—stopping communism.

Astrologically, these periods of Saturn’s return to Capricorn occurred without another of the “malefics” being found in Aires. No grand cross, no great depression. However, other economic “adjustments” occurred.

What's most notable for 1989, is that Saturn, Neptune and Uranus were together in Capricorn—a rare conjunction of these three bodies—but with no outer planet in Aries, no great depression occurred.

Economists who track the 30- and/or 60-year cycle of great depressions were sure the 1990s would send the USA into another. Dr. Ravi Batra's book The Great Depression of 1990 was a bestseller in the late 1980s. By May 1, 1989, Saturn at 13 Capricorn was within one degree of a conjunction with Neptune at 12 Capricorn, and within 7 degrees of a conjunction with Uranus at 5 Capricorn. As Uranus moves faster than Neptune, it was soon to come exactly conjunct. So this time when Saturn moved opposite Uncle Sam's Sun, Uranus and Neptune joined Saturn in Capricorn—but with all three forming a beneficent 60-degree sextile angle to Pluto at 13 Scorpio, which in turn formed a 120-degree harmonious trine aspect to the US Sun in Cancer.

Conjunctions of Uranus and Neptune occur once every 171 years, approximately. "When a great conjunction like this happens, it means humanity has come to a 'fork in the road.' It is a chance to start over after the slate has been wiped clean—a moment of decision when we must choose a path of destruction or a path or renewal. This is the key to events of the 1990s. The end of the Cold War caused us to shift the direction of our lives and our society. Whether we move toward a peaceful, sustainable way of life that allows us to express our creative potential, or simply allow the destructive, depersonalizing corporate, military-industrial society to continue, is the great issue we confront in the years after this great conjunction." (Horoscope for the New Millennium by E. Alan Meece, Llewellyn Publications, 1997, page 84).

Uranus-Neptune Crossroads

The 1990 Uranus-Neptune crossroad brought us to the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany. The Berlin Wall came down November 9, 1989, marking a major turning point. This was not the first time a Uranus-Neptune conjunction had marked a major turning point.

During the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1650 at 15 Sagittarius, the Thirty Years War ended, marking an end to a protracted period of religious wars, and beginning another long period of wars between kingdoms and then nation-states.

The Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1821 at 2 Capricorn coincided with the breakup of the Turkish Empire, which had ruled most of the Middle East.

The Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1989-93 became exact at 18 Capricorn in 1993, and formed a beneficent 60-degree sextile aspect to Pluto in Scorpio, foreshadowing positive changes related to mankind's genius, religious nature and institutions.

Nations or religious groupings of humans respond to planetary influences, positive and negative, according to their various beliefs, so positive aspects do not always bring positive changes only. Following this 1989-93 configuration, universalists synthesized the world's great religions while at the same time fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Jews and others demanded adherence to interpretations of scriptural phrases which had changed meanings as languages had evolved, another instance of status quo ideology inhibiting natural change.

In 2008 when Pluto and Uranus move into a square, we will move into another time of abrupt, dramatic and unprecedented changes. This period from 2008 through 2019 will share qualities of the 1930s and 1960s. A foreshadowing of the kind of events this will bring occurred September 11, 2001, when Islamic terrorists hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The Saturn-Pluto opposition of that time afflicted Uncle Sam's natal Uranus and Mars, the warrior energies. Saturn-Pluto oppositions have a millennia-long history of coinciding with dramatic social and economic changes.

Neptunian Speculative Bubble

Economically, the end of the Cold War was followed by a record run-up of US stock prices during the 1990s. This was not as beneficial as it seemed, for it created a Neptunian speculative bubble, coupled with a foggily-perceived, widening gap between rich and poor—the two conditions which have always preceded past great depressions.

Would this bubble and gap bring another? Not during the 1990s.

This roughly 20-year period of the '80s and '90s was called "the best economy in American history," but that Neptunian delusion confused the stock market with the overall economy. Only the wealthiest partook of the stock market's fabulous run-up. The media shouted that a new record number of jobs were created during this run-up, but that was another Neptunian delusion. In previous decades, one worker could support a spouse and children, but by the mid-1980s it took mom and pop wage earners to keep most families afloat. Thus arose "the latchkey kids," children who came home from school to empty houses because both parents were working jobs that didn't pay either enough, in purchasing power, to hold a family together...during this so-called "best economy in American history." Exacerbating the situation for working class Americans, many US-based companies moved overseas to obtain cheaper labor, abandoning workers, latchkey kids and towns. And, with a wink and a nod, the government did not enforce immigration laws, effectively importing cheap labor from south of the border, worsening the plight of working class Americans. In some cases, native-born American workers were replaced in a single day with undocumented Mexican migrants, who worked for one-third the wages paid Americans.

Economic Indicators

The two primary economic indicators which mindlessly measured the economy's health--stock prices and unemployment figures--were dramatically good, so few economists noticed the plight of the working class. Also, by the late 1990s, many working class families had adjusted to the new two-job situation, and younger generations were coming of age never having known the single-worker household. Occasionally, someone such as Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich appeared on TV and mentioned the downward trend of working class purchasing power, but such spokespersons were invariably sandwiched between pundits whose skyrocketing stocks were so expanding their prides, they had "no ears" to hear a discouraging word about "the best economy in American history." The difference between money (means of exchange and measure of value) and wealth was blurred as money became equated with wealth itself.

"As it gets increasingly difficult for most Americans to make a living, it also becomes increasingly easier for a select handful to make a killing," said Morris Berman in The Twilight of American Culture (Norton, 2000, page 22). "According to the Census Bureau, the bottom 20 percent of US families in 1970 received 5.4 percent of the national income, while the top 5 percent received 15.6 percent. By 1994, the corresponding figures were 4.2 percent and 20.1 percent."

"This is what happens when irrationality shapes economic policy," said Ravi Batra (The Great American Deception, John Wiley and Sons, NY, 1966). "People suffer because the leaders trust the self-serving theories of established economists, most of whom are engaged in pleasing their affluent patrons," the wealthy few, the government and big companies.

Monetarists and Keynesians

Monetarism or classical theory versus fiscal or Keynesian theory: this is the overriding contention between economists. Classical theory grew out of the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and J. B. Say, and was called supply-side economics during the Reagan Administration. "Supply creates its own demand" is the belief of supply-siders. The profits from production are distributed throughout the economy in the form of wages, rents, interest incomes and dividends. Stimulate production and the whole economy will prosper—that's the belief of supply-siders.

Against supply-siders are Keynesians or fiscal economists. John Maynard Keynes turned "Say's Law" around and argued that demand creates its own supply. If demand shrinks, businesses are stuck with unsold goods, and thus layoffs and recession or worse ensues. Keynesians hold that the way to stimulate a contracting economy is to get purchasing power into the hands of consumers.

This takes us to the question money. Is it my money and your money? Or is it our money as a nation? Is it our collective means of exchange and measure of value? Fiat paper currency money is certainly not in short supply—governments are printing it by the ton every day. The problem is, a few wind up with most of it while the many suffer for lack of enough of it. And this mal-distribution of money is by no means confined to capitalist societies, as it characterizes socialist societies we well.

Who Gets How Much

If great depressions of the past have been brought on by new record money disparities between the Haves and Have-nots (usually resulting in speculative bubbles) why had we not fallen into another great depression by year 2001? By any reckoning, we had seen a new record speculative bubble in the stock markets, concurrent with a loss of working class purchasing power, and a new record gap between the richest and poorest.

Astrologically, the answer is clear: no grand cross anchored by Saturn in mid-Capricorn square another heavy in mid-Aires has formed since the one that coincided with the last great depression, the 1930s. By 2001, the economy was in a recession, but by no measurement could it be called a great depression. Not yet.

Good News and Bad

As we moved into the new millennium, Saturn wasn't due to arrive opposite Sam's Sun till January 2019. That's the good news.

The bad news is we are not likely to make it to 2019 without suffering something like a combination of the 1930s, the 1960s and the Revolutionary War. This is because Pluto, when it next arrives opposite the US Sun in 2014, will simultaneously square Uranus in mid-Aries, forming the next grand cross with the US Sun-Saturn square.

Before Pluto was discovered in 1930, Saturn (associated with Satan) was considered the energy that brought death and destruction. Astronomical data makes it possible to recover the history of Pluto’s cycles. Tracing Pluto's history has shown it is well named for the god who rules the mystery from which we emerge at birth and into which we disappear at death. Although it is the smallest and most distant of the bodies we call planets, its cyclical history—in both personal charts and world charts—indicates that its effects begin subtlely but manifest as powerful and long lasting.

What appears most likely is that the overall economy will not be brought down by one dramatic stock market crash as happened in 1929, but rather that a series of stock market crashes will lead into the next great depression. These stock market crashes will most likely begin in earnest in 2008. By 2010, Pluto and Uranus will form a T-square pattern with Saturn, heralding a collapse of the overall economy. Combined with the USA’s natal chart, this T-square creates a grand cross with the US Venus and Jupiter, a prelude to the grand cross that will soon hit the US Sun-Saturn square. It’s like we went over Niagara Falls to crash into the great depression of the 1930s, but will go white-water rafting down the Snake River’s rapids into the coming great depression.