You Are Here: An 80s Hangover

Where the Fall Began

Much of the (lousy) finan­cial news does date back to 1930s and the Great Depres­sion, not shock­ing to astrologers who rec­og­nized the sim­i­lar­ity between the Saturn-Uranus-Pluto T-squares shown in the mini-tutorial dis­played below:
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Great Recession-Great Depres­sion Comparison

But much of the finan­cial cause of the cur­rent down­turn relates back to the 1980s and Rea­gan­ism. His ‘Trickle Down’ eco­nom­ics sup­pos­edly award all by favor­ing cor­po­ra­tions through fewer reg­u­la­tions and a ‘smaller gov­ern­ment’. That debate still rages in the debate on rescind­ing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that favor the wealthy over lower wage earn­ers. That part seems to work well with cor­po­ra­tions mak­ing record prof­its, sit­ting on unspent cash largely based on cut­ting jobs and costs. Mean­while, the sit­u­a­tion for much of the work­ing and mid­dle classes looks dire until the fun­da­men­tal issue of the hous­ing mar­ket finds res­o­lu­tion. Home prices rose on the spec­u­la­tive atmos­phere that began and con­tin­ued from the 80s onward. Much of the hous­ing issue finds foun­da­tion in how large finan­cial firms, who brought the world into the eco­nomic cri­sis that peaked in 2008, ‘bun­dled’ mort­gages, sell­ing them as trad­ing mech­a­nisms with scant con­nec­tion to actual mort­gage a buyer thought she or he agreed to.

The Saturn-Pluto Story

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1983Saturn-Pluto2020 began with the Rea­gan era and shows inti­mate rela­tion­ship to it along all the quad­ra­ture align­ment check­points. The tuto­r­ial below shows how we got from there to here and what to expect dur­ing the last phase of this most per­ti­nent outer planet wave.

Final Phases

I included the image of the last phase of 1948Saturn-Pluto1982 to give fla­vor to what we might expect dur­ing the upcom­ing decade that coin­cides with the final por­tion of the cur­rent Saturn-Pluto wave. The time from 270° to next con­junc­tion brings a real feel­ing of depar­ture from the theme of the over­all wave, while still being tied to it. The 70’s cer­tainly fit this descrip­tion when the last Saturn-Pluto entered its last phase. The Cold war still played in the back­ground, but the US had newly dealt with China, while a new aspect of inter­na­tional rela­tions entered the pic­ture: OPEC oil. A new way faded as a new one entered the pic­ture, but a new direc­tion still lay open to debate. I think we can see that in the way the US shows cer­tain signs of decline while remain­ing the largest econ­omy on the planet, a sit­u­a­tion unlikely to change soon. We also see the BRIC nations com­ing to the fore, but each has inher­ent prob­lems with uncer­tain out­comes: China’s eco­nomic might cer­tainly will con­tinue to grow, but it’s poverty will remain high and its com­pro­mises on the envi­ron­ment linger with dis­as­trous out­come; how will Brazil deal with lead­ing a South Amer­i­can con­ti­nent never known for log-term sta­bil­ity; how will it deal with being in the inter­na­tional spot­light; Rus­sia is still rife with cor­rup­tion and a KGB under a less obvi­ous guise, its birth rate is negative;