Job Creators

     Some systems that developed over centuries are suddenly (Uranus) being questioned and discarded or radically changed (Pluto). I was reminded of this the other day while talking politics with my auto mechanic.  "Words," he said, "don't matter.  What matters are deeds." 

We're weary of being bombarded with the words of politicians.  Once elected, all they seem to do is raise money for their next election. They raise money from the wealthy in exchange for doing the bidding of the wealthy, which shortchanges the people who vote them into office. This breakdown is in process under the present long-lasting Uranus-Pluto square, due to be within a potently tight orb from 2012 through 2015.       

Of course words matter, for words enable us to figure out what's really going on and decide what needs to be changed.    

Take, for instance, two words that are currently very fashionable: "job creators," meaning the people who hire workers.  What most of those workers do is make stuff that the job creators sell for profit.  So the job doers are also wealth creators, and the job creators are also wealth confiscators—they pay the job doers as little as possible and sell the products made for as much as possible. 

Many job creators then send the profits they confiscate to offshore banks in order to evade paying taxes, another reflection of the Uranus-Pluto square.  They try to justify this by proclaiming that the "private sector" creates jobs, not the government.

Yet when you investigate the private sector, you discover that it needs the infrastructure built by government, and often derives profits from government—by making contracts with government to provide stuff the government wants, like information, weapons, cars, furniture, paper, the list goes on. 

It's the law that the job creators legally own what the job doers create. That's a law the present Uranus-Pluto square is addressing and is destined to redefine.  There is a difference between being paid for eight hours on the job, and being paid from the profits created by the work.    

 Example: In a unionized West Virginia coal mine, a typical miner works for pay ranging from $24.75 to $26.41 per hour. Using the higher rate, our miner receives $211.28 pay per eight-hour shift. (1)  The miner can extract 67.63 tons of coal per hour, 541 tons per day. The miner's job creator sells coal for $59.17 per ton.  What the miner is paid $211.28 for makes the job creator $32,020.97. (1)

When they retire, the miner scrapes by on Social Security, Medicare, and maybe a pension—if he hasn't invested his pension money in Wall Street and lost it in a stock market crash.  The retired owner winds up a millionaire, or maybe a billionaire from investing his profits in other job creators who confiscate the wealth created by their job doers, then hide their profits from the government in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands.   

In reality, job creators need wealth creators, and the private sector needs the government.  The wealth creators need the job creators and the government needs the private sector.  The Solar System needs all the bodies it has to be what it is. 

I need my auto mechanic to keep my old car humming—its odometer just turned 200,500 miles—and my mechanic needs to be adequately paid; if he's shortchanged, he'll turn to another way of generating income and I'll lose his service.  And the way we figure out and communicate what's fair is by words.    

But the deal your mechanic and you strike is very different from the deal you make with your corporate employer. The mechanic shows you what the auto parts cost and what he's charging for his labor. The corporation doesn't give you a metric for the wealth your labor creates, it merely pays you for your time on the job.

The modern economy thrives on willing and able consumers.  Yet the most profitable corporations are those that get away with paying the least for workers, who spend as consumers. Some workers are now paid so poorly, they depend on food stamps and homeless shelters to survive.  Unemployed workers can't buy anything.  This erodes the health of the overall economy.  Eventually, it causes the big corporations to fail.  Unemployment  compensation and other "safety net" programs save the whole economy from complete collapse.

If we use words skillfully to figure out what needs to change to revitalize the economy, the Uranus-Pluto square will benefit us.  If we try to preserve a system that needs to change—i.e., job creators who confiscate wealth and hide it from the tax man in offshore accounts, thus disabling government safety-net programs—the result becomes a form of plundering that makes the shade of Genghis Khan green with envy. 

Yet, job creators focused on their own immediate need to increase profits, want government  to "tighten its belt" by cutting the social programs that keep workers alive and thus prolong the viability of job creators.

It's like the Hindu myth of the blind men groping the elephant, each proclaiming the whole to be the part they can feel.  In this case, the elephant is the whole economy, and the gropers are all of us who depend upon it.  Money is the blood that sustains the whole-economy elephant. When all the gropers are trying to suck as much blood from the economy elephant as they can…

This metaphor applies to any number of activities considered economically necessary today. Take fracking, for instance. That's presently the most efficient method of extracting gas from the ground, and this gas can save us from going broke buying oil to power electricity, vehicles, etc, and poisoning our atmosphere with carbon monoxide.  But fracking is also poisoning our water and food, bleeding the whole economic elephant in this new way.   

Here's another way to look at our present economic conundrum:

Ancient astrologers believed the planets were the realm of the gods, and that the gods imposed their will on humans via such harsh aspects as this Uranus-Pluto square.  We moderns are educated to find such a notion laughable.  Maybe we should stop laughing and reconsider it.  

What if we "scientificate" the gods as aspects of the rainbow range of energy that is all at various rates of vibration.  That would bring us to about half a step away from returning soul to our perception of reality. If we perceive everything in our reality as possessed of ever-evolving and interdependent souls, we would have good reason to take care of our environment and each other. 

As it is, our perception of reality is shaped by our scientifically-oriented education, and educated people do not believe anything has soul.  If there is such a thing as soul, educated people believe, science would have discovered it. But science, until the discovery of subatomic particles, dealt only with what can be weighed and/or measured.

The good news, under this present Uranus-Pluto square, is that scientists are finding that subatomic particles behave in mysterious ways. Some of these miniscule mites act like they have minds of their own—or souls, destinies, karma. 

Seems this phenomenal turn of perception is heading us back to the beginning of a cycle that began two Neptune-Pluto conjunctions ago with what we now call the Reformation. Our reformatted concept of the reality we're all part of, did not include anything as non-physical as soul. This freed us from the restrains our mismanagement of religion had imposed, enabling us to discover many more dimensions of our physical reality. 

This focus on our material reality—to the exclusion of the invisible, immaterial world of soul—appears to be completing its cycle, and thus ready for a new end/beginning.  We have found that there is just too much going on to be fully explained by materially-oriented science and rational logic.  Or what we have come to think of as rational logic. 

Perhaps as we morph into this new cycle, we will re-establish the universally religious ideal, captured in the Biblical line, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," and in other traditions expressed as, "Do no harm."  This would enable us to stop trying to suck blood from our own little piece of the whole economic elephant.  For we would then realize the whole economic elephant needs blood/money to circulate, not clot into private fortunes, depriving other parts of itself.

If something bangs us over our collective head, say, changing our perception of this vast reality we are tiny units within, maybe we will again see our world as infused with soul, and this soul-dimension of our reality as shared by everyone of us and everything else too, and a new logical rationality will demand that we stop killing each other and other things, for we'll know that their death means they will reincarnate into entities bent on rebalancing, and rebalancing means pain and suffering for all. We'll realize we cannot go on playing economic Whac-A-Mole without losing everything.               

Endnote:

1.     "Romney Unaware Who Creates Wealth" by Gene Grabiner, Truthout web site, October 26, 2012.    

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

Dreaming

The American Dream

About the American dream, comedian George Carlin said, "You have to be
asleep to believe it."

What began as the Occupy Wall Street movement was the awakening of
masses of people to an obvious, dream-shattering fact:

The government will never get out of debt to the banks until the
government takes back its duty to create our money and lend it to the
banks. As long as the central bank, the Federal Reserve, creates,
controls and lends money, the government—and we the people—will be
debtors, with the heavy foot of the bankers on our necks.

To get that heavy foot off our necks, we will have to awaken from
another dream: As surely as God is up in the sky, the Bank is where the
money is. Just as you have to go to the priest to get holy water, you
have to go to the bank to get money.

This Bank Dream is over five hundred years old. Back in medieval
times, the folks we now call bankers were called moneychangers. What
did moneychangers do? They locked your gold and other precious metals
in their vaults and gave you a paper receipt you could use as money.
This they did so no one else could rob you of these trinkets of wealth.

No one else, that is, except the moneychangers, for alter all,
possession is nine-tenths of the law, as is famously said by lawyers
representing those in possession of the trinkets of wealth—which have
evolved from gold and precious metals into paper bills and numbers in
cyberspace. Back in medieval times, moneychangers discovered they could
lend paper money for many more times the amount of gold they had in
their vaults. This grew into our present fractional reserve banking
system, whereby when one bank lends $1M, that amount ripples through
the system into something like $9M, all loaned out at ever-compounding
interest.

But as Aristotle pointed out a couple of millennia ago, money's
function is to facilitate commerce as a means of exchange. When some
decide to make money sort of fornicate and reproduce itself (lending at
interest) an unnatural act occurs that distorts money and destroys its
real function. In ancient times when cattle were used as money, money
could copulate and reproduce. But try getting two nickels to have sex.

Some astrologers say that Pluto signifies plutocrats and thus also
oligarchs and all those to whom the rest of us owe money, and by whom
the rest of us are controlled. What is the real object of governance?
Is it to create a sane and sensible society so that all can prosper and
be free of debt and degradation? Or is the real purpose of
government—as compared to the stated purpose—to facilitate the
plundering of debtors by creditors?

Pluto, that mysterious little body way out on the edge of our solar
system that has been downgraded by astronomers to a so-called "dwarf
planet," is as mysterious as some of our concepts of God. As comedian
George Carlin points out, the God most of us are raised to worship and
petition in prayers, this God tells us—according to the Bible—that if
we don't obey his Commandments, he'll dispatch us to the fiery tortures
of Hell. That's because God loves us! Each and everyone one of us.
Why, if God loves us, would he consign us to Hell for disobeying rules
and regulations that benefit the few at the expense of the many?
Indeed, this God works in mysterious ways.

Our modern money system is as counter-intuitive and illogical as the
American Dream, which demands that we borrow from bankers to "own" a
home that they, the bankers, hold title to. And if we can't make the
monthly payments on our ownership delusion, they will foreclose, kick
us out of our home, and sell the home to someone else who can make
payments—payments which, after 30 years, mean they will have paid the
price of the home three, four, maybe six times over. The icing on the
banker cake is, the bankers did not lend us the cash to buy the
home—they loaned us the credit, which they conjured from thin air. We
repay them for their shamanism with cash and look down our noses at the
superstitions of primitive people.

Today, the bankers will foreclose even if they lost the title to a home
by reselling the debt on the so-called "securities" market when they
"bundled" batches of loans into debt-obligation bonds so "investors"
can share in the interest paid on all those home loans. Did they forget
that you cannot legally sell a car or a house without a transfer of the
paper title that says who owns the thing? Or did they assume their
good buddies the judges would overlook the lack of titles when they
kicked people out of their foreclosed homes?

Chances are they did not know that the lingering Uranus-Pluto square
we're all under during this decade is famous for burning down systems
that no long work and raising phoenix-like out of the ashes of the old,
new systems that do work. Work for the benefit of all, not just for
the few.

For the slumbering American dreamer, the system that puts the 1% in
control of the 99% is what God intended, just as God intended to send
you to eternal torture in some CIA black ops station in the outback of
Somalia if you break the rules.

Well, there have been zillions of concepts of God over the centuries,
probably as many concepts as there have been human minds doing the
conceiving. Of course we generalize these, saying there is the Santa
Claus God, the Wrathful God, the Loving God, etc., yet each and every
individual's notion of any of these Gods is his or her very own. Each
and every one of us is unique.

There have been comparatively few minds watching celestial activities
and noting that certain cyclical angles made by certain planets
coincide with the cyclical breakdown of social systems that no longer
work as advertised. And the cycle that really kicks ass is the
Uranus-Pluto pair forming a 90-degree square from Aries to Capricorn.

Thus it is no wonder that there is now a worldwide movement afoot that
promises big trouble for the few who have used the medieval, debt-based
money system to dominate us. We are awakening from our American Dream.

Black Swans and Uranus

By Robert Gover

The term "Black Swan" is used to describe events which are
unpredictable, have a tremendous impact, and are rationalized only
after the fact.

In economics, great depressions and stock market panics are viewed as
Black Swan events. For instance, at the time of the stock market crash
of October 1929, there was no known logical reason why stocks should
crash and keep going down and down and down and then lead into the
greatest depression to that point in history. It was a Black Swan
event because nothing in the past pointed to its possibility.

"Go ask your portfolio manager for his definition of risk, and odds are
that he will supply you with a measure that excludes the possibility of
the Black Swan—hence one that has no better predictive value for
assessing the total risks than astrology…" (1)

Actually, astrology may offer the clearest and most incisive way to
explain Black Swan events in the economic realm, as I will show in this
article. Western astrologers will recognize in Black Swan events the
influence of Uranus.

The term is believed to have been coined by the Roman poet Juvenal and
used in 16th Century London to describe an impossibility. All swans
were believed to have white feathers until swans with black feathers
were discovered in the outback of Australia, a Black Swan discovery
that happened in 1697. Still, the term continues to be used for the
unpredictable and unprecedented, especially in economics and finance.

Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions are
Black Swan events in the natural realm. The 2011 Japanese Tohoku
earthquake and tsunami and resulting nuclear plant meltdowns hit with
astounding surprise. We know that San Francisco is located on a
dangerous fault line but we cannot predict when another earthquake may
hit, nor if it will devastate that city. Tornadoes "come out of
nowhere," it seems, although later we can piece together the
meteorological factors that created one. We know the East Coast and
Gulf Coast are likely to be hit by hurricanes during the late summer
and early autumn, and we can track tropical depressions moving across
the Atlantic and note when they reach hurricane proportions but we
cannot predict where exactly they will hit and with precisely what
devastation. Seismic sensors can detect volcanic activity but we cannot
predict exactly when another Mount St. Helens will blow and wipe out
forests and towns.

Amazing artistic creations and scientific discoveries that come "like a
bolt from the blue" are also categorized as Black Swan events. In this
essay, I focus on Black Swan economic events. Such events are beyond
any logical risk assessment. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes
pointed out that there is no scientific basis on which to form any
calculable probability for such events. They come as total surprises
and are rationalized only after the fact.

In the 1990s a couple of brilliant mathematicians came up with a
formula for consistently profiting from options trading. They won a
Nobel Prize. Their formula led to the creation of what was then a
unique investment firm, Long Term Capital Management. But the crash of
LTCM and the Federal Reserve's rush to prop up the wrecked banking
system thereafter became a Black Swan event. The professors' formula
addressed known risk, but not unpredictable, unprecedented Black Swan
events. (2)

Long Term Capital Management's crash was triggered by Russia's allowing
its currency to fail—something the best financial minds deemed an
impossibility—on August 17, 1998 with Uranus at 10 degrees Aquarius
forming a grand cross pattern with Saturn at 3 degrees Taurus, Venus at
9 degrees Leo and Chiron at 13 degrees Scorpio. Taurus is opposite
Scorpio and square Leo and Aquarius. Uranus was thus within orb of 90
degrees square Saturn and Venus, and 180 degrees opposite Chiron.
Astrologers call this a grand cross pattern because it creates an X
inside a square box pattern.

The financial meltdown of 2008 was another Black Swan event, for
although there was a bubble in real estate prices, there was no known
reason why the puncturing of that bubble would create such chaos in the
world's financial system and economy. After the fact, reasons abound in
the hidden transactions involving trillions of dollars of unfunded
credit default swaps and the marketing of mortgage securities without
legal transference of property titles. The full story of how this
happened has not yet came to light. (See
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Dm9ISwQt8. for some details about the credit
default swap scandal that has yet to be cogently covered by the mass
media.)

Uranus, in primary aspect to other planets, brings the unpredictable
and unprecedented to individuals and whole societies. These Uranian
surprises impact our world in ways that we can only rationalize later,
after the fact, when we look back and try to fit them into some
logical, cause-effect paradigm.

Yet seven decades after the great depression of the 1930s, economists
still debate why it happened, and what can be done to prevent it ever
happening again. Economists who say they have logically solved the
riddle are vulnerable to looking foolish when the next economic Black
Swan event hits.

Given Uranus' role in Black Swan events, if economists were able to
overcome their prejudice against astrology, a whole new realm of
cause-effect relationships would open to them.

The crashes of 1929 and 2008 both occurred under a T square formed by
Uranus, Saturn and Pluto. The way to foresee the possibility of Black
Swan events is by charting the astrology involved. And the key to
analyzing is the position of Uranus and the aspects it makes at the
time, especially to the other three outermost planets—Saturn, Neptune
and Pluto—and to the natal chart of whomever or whatever is affected.
(Refer to Charts 1. 2, 3 and 4 delineated below).

After a Black Swan event, we are usually able to define a chain of
causes and effects that led to it, even though there is likely to be
disagreement on precisely which precipitated it. What can we say for
sure about the crash of 1929 and the great depression that followed?
Suddenly, within a few months, the national mood changed from optimism
to pessimism. Was it that change of mood that precipitated the crash
and depression? Or was the pessimism caused by the crash and
depression?

Astrologically, the answer is that both occurred simultaneously. The
1930s unfolded as Uranus inched into Arises, forming a square with
Saturn in Capricorn and Pluto opposite in Cancer, with all three
creating a grand cross pattern with the USA's Sun-Saturn square.

That T square repeated early in this millennium when Uranus in Pisces
moved opposite Saturn in Virgo with Pluto square both from Sagittarius,
afflicting the USA's natal Mars-Neptune square. The orbs are not exact
and the Signs aren't the same but the planetary angles and
transit-to-natal impact are unmistakable.

This is not to say that there are never rational reasons for Black Swan
economic events. It's just that those reasons are hidden or ignored
till it's too late. As Robert Reich (3) has pointed out, "It's no mere
coincidence that over the last century the top earners' share of the
nation's total income peaked in 1928 and 2007—the two years just
preceding the biggest downturns."

But who tracked this growing disparity back then? The few who worried
about it were accused of fomenting class warfare. Now, in the wake of
the 2008 crash, more and more people are becoming aware of the huge
disparity between the few super rich and the rest of humanity, although
how this disparity developed is still debated, as no single explanation
satisfies all.

Hard angles formed by the outermost planets coincide with highlighting
what has gotten out of balance. What is now out of balance economically
is this huge disparity of wealth. What to do about it is another and
more vexing question.

We must make a distinction between stock market crashes and great
depressions, though, for one rarely leads to the other. Stocks have
crashed when the overall economy remained robust, and great depressions
have preceded sinking stock markets.

Looking back through history, we find that every time the USA's
Sun-Saturn square has been afflicted by a grand cross formed by the
outermost planets the national economy has fallen into a great
depression. Great depressions are not to be confused with recessions,
corrections or depressions without the adjective "great." Economist
Ravi Batra (4) defined great depression this way:

"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."
By that definition, there have been four great depressions so far in
the history of the USA. Each has occurred under afflictions to the
USA's Sun-Saturn square, with Saturn in Capricorn and Uranus prominent
in every instance. (5)

1780s with Saturn in Capricorn opposite the US Sun in Cancer and square
the US Saturn in Libra, Uranus conjunct the US Sun square Neptune in
Libra conjunct the US Saturn.

1840s with Saturn in Capricorn opposite the US Sun in Cancer, square
Pluto opposite the US Saturn from Aries, and Uranus opposite the US
Neptune from Pisces, square the US Mars in Gemini.

1870s with Saturn in Capricorn opposite the US Sun in Cancer, Uranus
conjunct Jupiter and the US Sun in Cancer, and Neptune in Aries
opposite the US Saturn in Libra.

1930s (by Christmas 1930) Saturn in Capricorn opposite the US Sun in
Cancer, which was conjoined by Jupiter and Pluto, and Uranus in Aries
opposite the US Saturn.

Other periods have been economically difficult and often called
depressions, but those four fit the metrics defining great depressions,
which were Black Swan events because they were unpredicted and
unprecedented.

By 2025, we may look back on the 2000-teens as a fifth great
depression, although as of this writing, our travail is still described
as a "great recession." Euphemisms are little comfort to those whose
lives have been devastated by the meltdown of 2008, however—today's
unemployment statistics have been "politicized," so that 9% really
means closer to 18% or 20% when all the unemployed are taken into
account. Given the desire of most politicians to put a smiley face on
our economic situation, the economists they hire obligingly fudge the
numbers.

We may look back on this period as the most difficult in our history,
for this time it is Pluto in Capricorn, not Saturn, and Pluto is square
Uranus in Aries. All previous great depressions since the Industrial
Revolution have occurred under Saturn in Capricorn. Tiny little Pluto
takes an average of 248 years to orbit the Sun, and hasn't been in
Capricorn since colonial times and the American Revolution. From 1755
to 1758, Uranus in Pisces squared Pluto in Sagittarius, making seven
direct hits. These were the years leading up to the American
Revolution, which manifested in warfare when Pluto went into Capricorn.

Uranus-Pluto squares from Aries to Capricorn are exceedingly rare:
Prior to the one we're presently under, there were only two going back
to the year 1. In 258-259, a killer smallpox pandemic ravaged the
Roman Empire. In 1676 to 1678, an uprising called Bacon's Rebellion
unfolded in the Virginia Colony when English indentured servants and
African slaves united against the colony's aristrocracy, killed Indians
and burned Jamestown to the ground, sending landowners fleeing to the
Eastern Shore; the outcome was the legal color coding of the working
class into separate races called black and white.

Stock market crashes are another category of Black Swan events. A
distinction must be made between the overall economy and the stock
market. The stock market is part of the economy but by no means the
leading indicator of overall economic health or illness. That leading
indicator is employment/unemployment.

Almost every time there has been a surprising stock market crash that
has come with such surprise it has caused panic, the USA's natal
Mars-Neptune square has been afflicted by transiting planets,
especially the outermost four. (See "An Astrological History of Stock
Market Crashes" by Robert Gover.) Not all panic crashes lead into
great depressions.

A few especially intuitive investors may anticipate a crash. These
anticipators are usually called "doom and gloomers" before the crash.
Cassandra has never been popular. After each crash, a variety of
explanations are put forward as to why it happened. Still, the only
way to really explain this type of Black Swan event is to understand
the astrology involved.

The crash of October 19, 1987 was a shocker, and many an analyst at the
time predicted that it would lead into another great depression. But
it did not. Why? Again, astrology holds the explanation. For this
crash, the USA's Mars-Neptune square was afflicted by Saturn and Uranus
in Sagittarius, and Chiron in Gemini. Great Depression occur when the
USA's Sun-Saturn square is afflicted by outermost planets in the
Cardinal Signs of Capricorn, Aries, Cancer and Libra. In 1987 the
affliction was to the natal Mars-Neptune square. By the early 1990s
when Saturn had moved into Capricorn, there was a recession but not a
great depression because there was no outermost planetary affliction to
the US Sun-Saturn square.

As an economic astrologer I rely on the primary angles formed by the
outermost four planets, plus the Moon's Nodes and Chiron, to ascertain
what to expect in the stock market and economy. However, the cosmic
environment our Earth lives within is in constant motion, so no two
moments in cosmic time are the same astrologically. Primary planetary
angles repeat—the Sun-Moon conjunction repeats every 28 days at the New
Moon, the Neptune-Pluto conjunction every 496 years—but always within a
changed cosmic environment.

This ever changing phenomenon reflects how we perceive earthbound
history as ever repeating but never duplicating. So there is no
guarantee that these planetary patterns which have brought Black Swan
crashes and great depressions in the past will bring the same in the
future. It may be that we are influenced by celestial bodies so far
distant that we have not yet seen and identified them. Yet the
astrology of past Black Swan events remains the best way to ascertain
when another will hit, with hard angles from Uranus the most indicative
pattern to look for.

Anyone with an astrological computer program can quickly erect the
following charts to see the patterns described.

Chart 1:

On the inner wheel is the natal chart for the USA, July 4, 1776. I use
the Gemini Rising version of this chart. Most astrologers use the
Sibley version. On the outer wheel is a chart for October 28, 1929 when
the stock market plunged in a way that signaled this wasn't to be just
another bear market, but something more devastating.

The two most economically sensitive points in the USA's chart are two
squares: Sun in Cancer square Saturn in Libra and Mars in Gemini square
Neptune in Virgo. Afflictions to the Sun-Saturn square impact the
overall economy. Afflictions to the Mars-Neptune square bring down the
stock markets. On Black Monday 1929, a stock market crash was indicated
by the opposition of T Saturn and Jupiter hitting the natal
Mars-Neptune square. Moon conjunct natal Neptune apparently triggered
the panic. A few months later, trouble for the overall economy was
indicated by T Uranus opposite the US Saturn, square T Pluto conjunct
the US Sun.

Chart 2:

On the outer wheel of this comparative chart is Christmas Day, 1930, by
which point it was clear that the nation was sinking into another
depression, although no one knew yet how bad it would become.

Biwheel Chart 2 shows the T square formed by Uranus, Saturn and Pluto
about a year after the Crash of 1929 as people were realizing that this
crash was unlike any previous, and was leading the nation into what we
now call "The Great Depression." When the Crash of '29 occurred in late
October, the T square had not yet formed but was applying. A biwhell
chart for Christmas 1930 show how the Uranus-Saturn-Pluto T square
afflicts the USA's natal Sun-Saturn square. It's this square that has
always been afflicted when great depressions have hit the USA.

Chart 3:

By mid-September 2008, it was clear that another Black Swan market
event was unfolding. A T square formed by Uranus, Saturn and Pluto this
time hit the USA's natal Mars-Neptune square—indicating that this was
strictly a stock market and/or financial catastrophe. As Uranus then
moved into Aries, it opposed Saturn in Libra conjunct the US Saturn and
square the US Sun, with Pluto applying to an opposition to the US Sun.
This indicated another great depression, although few were willing to
call it that by 2011. Every time the USA's Sun-Saturn square has been
hit by the outermost planets from Capricorn and Aries, the nation has
gone into a great depression. Logical reasons why each happened are
found later, although there is rarely agreement among economists
regarding the primary reasons.

Chart 4:

In a biwheel chart for March 5, 2015 the US Saturn is opposed by
Uranus, Mars and Venus in Aries, square Pluto in Capricorn opposition
the US Sun. On this particular day the Full Moon is conjunct and
opposite the US Neptune square the US Mars in Gemini. What this
indicates is that the nation, and probably the whole world, is very
likely to be in the pits of another great depression, with the strong
possibility of another finanacial crash around this time making things
even more difficult. What is likely to be different about this great
depression is a militant mood, indicated by Pluto's position. Pluto's
arrival in Capricorn—every 248 years on average—has a history of
coinciding with revolutions. Its previous sojourn through Capricorn
coincided with the American Revolution. The one before that coincided
with the decimation of Native American populations from diseases
imported by Spanish conquistadors, to which the Indians had no
immunity, and the shipment of tons of gold and sliver back to Europe,
setting off inflation and a series of wars. In effect, both Hemispheres
underwent cultural and economic transformations as Europeans invaded
the New World in search of gold and silver.

Chart 5:

It was the USA's financially-sensitive Mars-Neptune square that was hit
when stocks suddenly crashed to a new one-day record October 19, 1987.
Uranus at 23 Sagittarius was opposite the US Mars, conjoined at this
time by Chiron, and square the US Neptune, conjoined by the Moon.
Although Jupiter was in Aries opposite the US Saturn, its trine to
Uranus apparently saved the overall economy, for the stock market
rebounded in the coming months. A couple of years later, with Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune all clustered together in Capricorn, the Berlin Wall
came down and major restructuring occurred in economies around the
world—the Old Soviet Union disbanded and the USA ramped up
laissez-faire capitalism—but no great depression occurred.

Two rules of thumb emerge from these and other chart studies: No grand
cross hitting the USA's Sun-Saturn square, no great depression. And
when the USA's Mars-Neptune square is afflicted, there is danger of
another stock market crash.

The tremendous impact on humanity of Black Swan events is best
appreciated in retrospect. At the time of each, people are baffled.

Judging by the increased incidence of Black Swan events since the
Uranus-Pluto square began tightening toward exact in 2008—first from
Pisces to Sagittarius and then from Aries to Capricorn—the world as we
know it will soon be transformed, presenting us with a variety of new
challenges. That much we can deduce from the astrology involved. What
we cannot yet know is exactly how the world will be transformed, and
how we will respond to the challenges of change.

In Western culture, we have been imbued with the belief that it's up to
each individual to find ways to survive and prosper. Intuitively
anticipating hard times, some people talk of storing up gold for a day
when our money becomes useless; or moving to a tropical island and
living a self-sustaining life; or turning homes into fortresses to
defend against marauding mobs, and so forth. But such preparations are
iffy at best because Black Swan events are unpredictable and bring the
unprecedented. Those two key words—unpredictable and unprecedented—have
long been used to describe the effects of hard angles to Uranus.

Endnotes:

1. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Influence of
the Highly Improbable, published April 22, 2007, TatePublishing.com.

2. In his book The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson has a cogent
explanation of this Black Swan event from page 320 to 330. In brief,
if the Nobel Prize winning mathematicians had known more about economic
history and Black Swan events, they would not have been so sure of
their risk-assessment formula guaranteeing profits from options and
derivatives trades. Investors put so much faith in this formula that
big banks bet billions of dollars—and lost.

3. Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the
University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national
administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President
Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of
Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent
book, Aftershock.

4. See Great Depression 1990 by Ravi Batra, published by Dell, 1998.
Although no great depression hit the USA in 1990, the Japanese economy
slumped into a prolonged depression. From Wikipedia: "Batra continued
to publish books with the main thesis that financial capitalism breeds
excessive inequality and political corruption which inevitably succumbs
to financial crisis and economic depression." Great depressions in the
USA have occurred when Saturn in Capricorn combined with Uranus,
Neptune and/or Pluto to create a grand cross pattern with the USA's
natal Sun-Saturn square. In 1990, Saturn in Capricorn made no such
pattern with the other outermost planets. No grand cross, no great
depression. But American jobs were steadily eroded by automation and
corporate outsourcing to cheap labor markets overseas.

5. Economists do not agree on the specific dates when each great
depression began, so it is impossible to pinpoint a specific date for
precise astrological calculation. But the outermost planets move
slowly, so the aspects they form are within orb for extended periods.
These extended periods encompass disagreements among economists. In
retrospect, it is clear that it's impossible to pinpoint a specific
date and time when any great depression began. The relevant economic
factors involved usually develop in a zigzag pattern of fits and
starts. Given our human proclivity to hope for the best, these fits and
starts are often misread at the time, and corrected after the fact. As
I write this, there is great disagreement concerning the true
unemployment figures. What we know for sure is that unemployment and
under-employment are enough to curtail demand for goods and services,
which in turn curtails the production to supply goods and services, and
the bank credit needed to restore normal buying and selling. By the
time you read this, the government may or may not have stimulated
enough demand to reverse this downward cycle.

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