The Cardinal Crisis
Murder Of Innocents In Mexico's Bloody Drug Wars
Also
The Economy:
Five Reasons Why Falling Real Estate Prices Is Good
And
Astrologer Jude Cowell Asks:
Is The Federal Reserve Caught In A Liquidity Trap?
Plus,
Global Mundane Forecast:
2010-2015
By Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.S
Θεόδωρος
Over 36 years of stargazing have taught me to trust mundane astrology for answers to the most pressing questions of the world's myriad of problems.
One of the great joys of being born and raised in the United States of America is to understand that our powerful phrase, enshrined into the hearts of every American - "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" - is an undeniable truth which extends to all human beings on this planet.
That is what makes America great.
Yes, some may have their gripes with the U.S., but I say to all who will listen that the hope of mankind also exists along the very principles which have guided America since she was born as nation among nations here on God's good Earth.
One way or another the United States is about to return to its core patriotic values. Believe it as transits confirm this fact to come, as soon the ruling generational establishment now leaving through the back door, is out of the way so society and its institutions can improve.
So progress can once again finally be made. That time is nearly here, as one cannot cheat the passage of transits, the passages of time.
Some of this will have to be about taking names and kicking ass we all can be sure. But that which is typically human, and quite American, show that when all is said and done, we are going to set some things straight in order to get back on a positive track towards anything that we can call healthy progress.
Senseless Acts Of Violence Continue Under Cardinal Transits
The Cardinal Crisis is more than just about a series of planetary transits taking place over this time. It is also about how some in society are unable to handle the rapid changes taking place as we head into a new decade.
I hate cop killers. When I was a child, my father, a police officer, was shot three times, and survived all three attempts on his life.
In one shooting the police badge over his heart literally saved his life. During a long law enforcement career my father was forced to kill six men in the line of duty. Police work is among the most stressful and dangerous jobs on the planet.
There is nothing worse than a killer of law enforcement officers.
See these recent news links:
Two Of Alaska Villages' Four Police Officers Fatally Shot
Police Capture Suspect in Utah Deputy's Murder
Rebels Killed 8 Police Officers in Philippines
14 Police Officers Killed In Ambush
Meanwhile, the powerful cardinal inclinations continue to show themselves in other acts of violence - fueled by haste, impulse, ignorance and no respect for life.
Arizona police say Gunman Kills 5, then himself
Mormon Official & Gunman Killed In California Shootings
Muslim-Hating New York City Cabbie-Slash Suspect Taken To Psych Ward
Gunman Kills 7, wounds 15 in Slovakia
Five Dead, 25 Wounded During Violent 50 Hours In Chicago
Triple West Hollywood Homicide Victims Were Targeted, Police Say
Children Watch As Father Killed In Road-Rage On California Highway
~
Mundane Forecast:
In this edition of Global Astrology, we look to Mexico, where innocent blood is spilled with ease and where life appears to be very cheap to evil cartels standing at the doors of perdition.
We also look to the economy and state of real estate as economists wonder aloud if the global economy is about to falter heading into the second half of 2010.
Meanwhile, poverty, distress and mistreatment often drives innocent human beings to improve their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Yet, here in the post-modern world of 2010, we continue to see how another two generations fight for survival in a world swimming in corruption, greed, false power, evil and outright transgression.
Those who do so are warned that they are being watched, and that their very selves, indeed, their very souls, are at stake from powerful forces they do not see, think of, or even feel, but are as real as the Earth and sky itself.
What awaits these abusers, cheats, bosses, exploiters, rapists, and murderers is a fate more horrible than their sick acts - the distribution of society-killing drugs and brutal violence through acts of corruption, greed and the love of false power, wealth and money which fuels the senseless slaughter of innocents - the children of the Immortal God.
So I say to those who fund, protect, and participate all who commits such evil -
That you are on the way to what I can only describe as a very, very terrible, terrible perdition.
All of you will face beings so fierce, so horrible, and so terrible by their very countenance, that it will boggle your own very limited imaginations.
These beings are real and await all of you who transgress.
You will not have considered the consequences of your own actions on Earth.
These fierce beings, who are 10 million times more evil than yourselves - will rend you so thoroughly, and grind you many years through the transits of pain, that the more you beg - the more so will they thrust upon you, repeatedly, and viciously: without compassion.
And you will not be forgiven.
The Cardinal Crisis
The bodies of 58 men and 14 women who were allegedly murdered by the Zetas drug gang are seen here August 25, 2010 lined up inside an abandoned warehouse in the town of San Fernando, 100 miles from the Mexican border with the U.S., near the city of Matamoros, Mexico.
The victims are from the nations of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Brazil. The cattle-ranching region is one the most dangerous in Mexico's turf war between two drug cartels. Tropical Storm Hermine heads towards this same area where these 72 migrants were killed two weeks ago in what is believed to be Mexico's worst drug gang massacre to date.
credit: El Universal/AP
See - Interactive Map -
~
By
Meanwhile, authorities in Tamaulipas state said they had so far identified the remains of 31 of the massacre victims and determined that they were from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Brazil.
Tamaulipas officials said Roberto Suarez, an agent for the state prosecutor's office involved in the investigation, went missing Wednesday.
That was a day after Mexican marines found the slain migrants on a ranch outside the town of San Fernando.
A San Fernando police officer was also reported missing Friday. The case is now run by the federal attorney general's office.
The disappearances and car blasts appeared to be further signs of the lawlessness that prevails in Tamaulipas, a stronghold of drug traffickers across the border from Texas.
In Ciudad Victoria, the state capital, a car blew up shortly after midnight outside the Televisa office, though it was not immediately known whether it was rigged with a bomb. The explosion caused damage but no one was hurt.
Less than an hour later, a second car exploded outside a San Fernando police station. No one was injured.
The car blasts were the second and third in Tamaulipas this month. A car detonated outside state police headquarters in Ciudad Victoria three weeks ago.
Last month, a car bomb blast in Ciudad Juarez, in the border state of Chihuahua, killed a police officer and three others, raising worries that drug gangs were adopting a new weapon in the nearly 4-year-old drug war.
In recent days, attackers have hurled grenades at Televisa stations in Tamaulipas and neighboring Nuevo Leon state. Drug gangs have made it so dangerous to report the news that many outlets have stopped trying.
In San Fernando, Mexican authorities and foreign emissaries worked to identify massacre victims found Tuesday after a survivor from Ecuador made his way to a highway checkpoint manned by marines.
Officials said the migrants were captured on their way to the U.S. border by the Zetas gang.
Alejandro Poire, spokesman for the Mexican government's anti-crime strategy, said in a radio interview that the victims were killed because they refused to work for the drug-trafficking group, among the most bloodthirsty in the country.
The slayings touched off a fresh outcry by migrant rights activists who have long said that Mexico mistreats or fails to protect the estimated 400,000 workers who cross its territory on their way to the United States each year.
Migrants have for years been targeted by robbers, rapists and corrupt officials in league with smugglers.
They face a new threat as drug traffickers increasingly move into people smuggling or target migrants for extortion.
Mexican officials, sensitive to charges that they don't protect migrants at home while complaining of mistreatment of Mexicans on U.S. soil, say they are cracking down on the smugglers and kidnappers.
Cecilia Romero, head of the federal immigration agency, said authorities raided 16 safe houses in Tamaulipas last year, rescuing 812 foreign nationals.
She said 30 immigration agents have been jailed and 300 fired for corruption. About 43,000 foreign migrants have been sent home this year.
"We are sorry we never found these 72," Romero said of the slain migrants. "Probably they were hidden in a trailer when transported, and we could not detect them. That is how it works. The migrants are invisible to us. They hide from us."
Romero later said that the Ecuadorean survivor, Luis Fredy Lala Pomavilla, has been offered a humanitarian visa to remain in Mexico if he chooses, the Associated Press reported.
Mexico's growing drug violence prompted the State Department on Friday to instruct U.S. diplomats in the northern city of Monterrey to remove their children from the area. The move came after a shootout near the American School Foundation last week.
Update: Bloomberg reported Friday, August 27, 2010 that Mexican President Felipe Calderon said the officer investigating the massacre of 72 migrants in the state of Tamaulipas has disappeared.
Newspaper El Universal reported that the official, identified as Officer Roberto Javier Suarez Vasquez, had been found dead on a highway near where the migrant killing occurred. Calderon said in an event in Mexico City that his death couldn’t be confirmed.
The State Department told U.S. government employees in Monterrey, Mexico, August 27, 2010 to send their children elsewhere because of heightened security risks related to drug violence.
The order is the first of its kind in any Mexican city, said Brian Quigley, a spokesman for the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey, adding it reflects an increasingly violent and insecure reality. Monterrey is located in northern Mexico. The travel warning was issued after an August 20 shooting in front of the American Foundation School in Monterrey, said the State Department. The high incidence of area kidnappings was also cited as a motive behind the move.
~
Reuters highlights some of the the worst attacks since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and declared war on powerful drug cartels.
It is estimated that more than 28,000 people have been killed so far in drug-related violence since 2007.
* Sept. 15, 2008 - Suspected members of the Zetas drug gang tossed grenades into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence day in the western city of Morelia, killing eight people and wounding more than 100.
* Jan. 31, 2010 - Suspected cartel hit men killed 13 high school students and two adults at a party in Ciudad Juarez.
* March 13, 2010 - Hit men killed three people linked to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez in March, provoking "outrage" from U.S. President Barack Obama.
* March 28, 2010 - Gunmen in northwestern Durango state killed 10 people, as young as 8 years old, after the pick-up truck they were traveling in sped through a roadblock on a highway in the drug-producing "Golden Triangle" region.
* June 7, 2010 - Police pulled 55 bodies out of in a mine in the colonial town of Taxco near Mexico City over several days. Some bodies were in advanced states of decomposition.
* June 11, 2010 - Two dozen heavily armed gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation clinic in the northern city of Chihuahua and killed 19 addicts, ranging in age from 18 to 25.
* June 28, 2010 - Suspected cartel hit men shot and killed a popular gubernatorial candidate in the northern state of Tamaulipas in the worst cartel attack on a politician to date.
Rodolfo Torre, 46, and four aides from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, were ambushed on their way to a campaign event for the July 4 state election.
* July 15, 2010 - A 22-pound (10-kilo) car bomb killed four people in Ciudad Juarez in a blast that was detonated by cell phone, the first such attack since Calderon took office.
* July 18, 2010 - Gunmen burst into a birthday party in the northern city of Torreon, using automatic weapons to kill 17 party-goers and wound 18 others.
Mexican authorities later said those responsible were incarcerated cartel hit men who were let out of jail by corrupt officials. The killers allegedly borrowed weapons and vehicles from prison guards and later returned to their cells.
* July 24, 2010 - Police unearthed 51 bodies in a grave outside Mexico's business capital Monterrey in northern Mexico over several days. Some corpses were burned beyond recognition.
* Aug 18, 2010 - The body of the mayor of Santiago, a colonial tourist town near Monterrey, was dumped on a rural road, two days after he was taken from his home. Calderon condemned the killing of Edelmiro Cavazos, the latest attack on public officials in an escalating drug war.
* Aug 25, 2010 - Marines found 58 men and 14 women at a ranch near the Gulf of Mexico in Tamaulipas state, some 90 miles (150 kms) from the Texas border, after a firefight with drug hit men in which three gunmen and a marine died.
The Cardinal Crisis
Migrants Victimized By Drug Cartels?
By
August 26, 2010 -- Mexico City -- The discovery of 72 dead bodies in northeastern Mexico this week has highlighted an under-reported but highly profitable business: the kidnapping of illegal migrants by drug cartels in Mexican territory.
Migrants, mostly from Central and South America, cross Mexico's southern border on their way to the United States.
They travel barely carrying any belongings. And yet, they have become targets for drug traffickers, who kidnap them, extort from them - and their families back home - and, in some cases, force them to join their ranks.
Over a period of six months in 2009, the independent Mexican National Human Rights Commission registered 10,000 kidnappings of illegal migrants in Mexico.
The money and forced labor that emerge from the kidnappings are crucial to the cartels' operations, says Alejandro Solalinde, a Catholic priest and migrant rights activist based in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
"Migrants are poor, some of them uneducated and they are good-hearted people: criminals take advantage of that," he told the BBC.
Financing the Business
Migrants stand in line outside the cafeteria at the Migrants' House in Tijuana August 28, 2010. Mexico's violent drug gangs are increasingly kidnapping illegal migrants for ransom and forcing them to carry illegal narcotics into the United States as they muscle into the lucrative trade of smuggling people across the border.
Credit: Jorge Duenes/Reuters
The National Human Rights Commission reports that "the frequency and magnitude of the kidnapping of migrants involves a criminal activity of enormous proportion, and it generates high profits for crime organizations."
In the six-month period studied by the Commission, the revenue for the kidnappers was an estimated $25m.
Mr Solalinde, who also runs a shelter for migrants in Oaxaca, says that criminals steal "today's, yesterday's and tomorrow's money" from the victims.
Today's, he explains, because they take away the cash that migrants carry with them - often borrowed, in order to pay for the expenses they incur on in their way into US territory, like the payments to human traffickers known as "coyotes."
Yesterday's money, because they demand ransoms that are usually paid from savings, both of the migrants and of their friends and relatives, either in their country of origin or those already in the U.S.
And tomorrow's, he adds, because kidnappers sometimes carry on with the extortion for an extended period, obtaining monthly payments for a future release that may or may not happen.
Easy Prey
Kidnappers also put captured migrants "in a situation of forced labor, of slavery," crime expert Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz told the BBC.
Because they are in Mexican territory illegally, they are very vulnerable and at the same time easy to dispose of without consequences once they are no longer necessary.
Many Central American kidnap victims are even used to batter and ill-treat their compatriots, reports Mr Solalinde.
Stories of migrants who have become cooks, cleaners or guardians for the cartels abound.
Kidnapped migrants are also used for drug smuggling and even to attract new victims at the refuges run by religious or civil organizations and the fear of being deported silences them.
Shocking
The Mexican government has expressed concern about this problem.
It says it has already taken measures to combat it, including the firing of some local public officials who are accused of connivance with the criminals in orchestrating the kidnappings.
And while authorities have not validated the figures from the Commission - arguing that the research method was designed to create awareness about this problem rather than to measure it accurately - civil and human rights organizations fear the reality could be even worse.
Cartels are said to have developed effective techniques to dispose of their victims' bodies, including their incineration or burial in mass graves.
"There are no figures, no reliable numbers about how many migrants have been kidnapped and murdered in Mexican territory," says Pablo Martinez, spokesman for Sin Fronteras, a migrant rights organization.
Mr Solalinde agrees, saying that real figures would be "shocking and make us shiver."
Many in Mexico wonder what would have happened to the 72 migrants found dead this week, if the injured Ecuadorean who escaped the massacre in the state of Tamaulipas had not been able to alert the authorities.
"They would have been regarded as disappeared, and their families back home would never have heard from them again," Mr Solalinde concludes.
~
Federal police officers stand in formation after their arrival at Mariano Escobedo international airport in Apodaca, neighboring Monterrey, August 26, 2010. It is reported that hundreds of federal police officers arrived on Thursday to take part in operations to curb drug-related violence, according to local media.
Credit: Tomas Bravo/Reuters
By AFP
August 30, 2010 - Nuevo Laredo, Mexico - Mexico's blood-soaked drug war intensified in northeastern Tamaulipas state over the weekend, with fresh violence attributed to the Zetas, the drug cartel blamed for slaughtering 72 illegal migrants.
In the latest flareup, unidentified gunmen murdered the mayor of Hidalgo, a small town in the western part of state, which borders Texas, a source in the state prosecutor's office said.
Marco Antonio Leal Garcia, 46, was shot to death while he was driving his car, the source said. His four-year-old daughter was seriously wounded in the attack, the source said.
Leal Garcia had taken office in January 2008 and was supposed to step down on December 31. The town of 25,000 people is located 60 miles (90 kilometers) northwest of the state capital, Ciudad Victoria.
Much of the violence in the area is blamed on the Zetas, a brutal, well-trained group of former elite Mexican army commandos that the US government calls the most dangerous organized crime syndicate in Mexico.
Attacks were reported in the coastal city of Tampico late Saturday, where two people were wounded when a police station was bombed.
Hours earlier two bombs exploded near a morgue in Reynosa, on the US border, where the bodies of the Central and South American migrants -- 58 men and 14 women -- slain Tuesday were being kept.
Fifteen people were injured in the blast, local media reported.
Two car bombs exploded in Ciudad Victoria on Friday, one outside a major TV station and the other outside the public transport offices. Both caused material damage but no victims.
And a government official probing the massacre went missing Friday along with a police officer.
Unconfirmed news reports said that their bodies were found Saturday on a road near the ranch where the migrants were gunned down.
These attacks are a direct challenge to the government, Mexican analysts said Sunday.
The Zetas emerged in the late 1990s as hired guns for the powerful leader of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cardenas.
After Cardenas was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007, the Zetas broke off and began a turf war with their former employers for control of drug smuggling routes into the lucrative US market.
"It's clear that the Zetas are behind those explosions," said Raul Benitez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
"They didn't expect anyone to survive (the massacre) and now they are reacting with these attacks by challenging the Mexican state," he told AFP.
The slaying of the migrants "takes place in the specific context in the northeast where two (illegal) organizations are fighting," said Alejandro Poire, government spokesman on security issues.
The sole survivor of Tuesday's massacre, an 18 year-old Ecuadoran man, said the Zetas kidnapped the group and demanded that the migrants work for them as hit men for 2,000 dollars a month. The group refused, and were slaughtered.
According to Poire, the Zeta's attempt to recruit the migrants is a sign that the group has weakened. "There is evidence that these organizations have entered a phase of downfall and destruction," said Poire.
The survivor was in a Mexico City military hospital over the weekend under protection and awaiting a trip back to Ecuador.
Diplomats from Brazil, Ecuador and three Central American countries were in Tamaulipas on Saturday helping local police identify the slain migrants, Mexican officials said.
As of Sunday, 14 Hondurans, 13 Salvadorans, five Guatemalans and a Brazilian had been identified.
Mexican marines discovered the slain migrants after a gun battle with suspected Zetas near the town of San Fernando late Tuesday. Three Zetas were killed and one was captured in the fighting, officials said.
The slaughter spotlights the risks taken by hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking to reach the United States each year.
An estimated 400,000 migrants transit through Mexico every year, most of them victims of trafficking by gangs, according to UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.
Mexican government officials have said that drug gangs are increasingly extorting and kidnapping migrants to raise money because a controversial government clampdown on organized crime has eaten into their other sources of revenues.
Turf wars between Mexico's seven major drug cartels and government forces have killed at least 28,000 people since President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to crack down on the illegal trade in December 2006.
~
The Cardinal Crisis
By Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.S
Now that the world is past the time where they can believe that the economy is not healthy, and has suffered a severe downturn, we can see how the inclinations of the world transits to this time has got us here.
One of the sad things about forecasting astrologically is that while some people wait for their own understanding, or belief of astrology to catch up to where they are, and where they are going, it is often much too late.
This happened with the current economic crisis.
It continues to be my estimation that until people wake up, and realize that they are not going to live forever young on this world, in this time, that the economic and social climate will not improve.
The effect of the Cardinal crisis transits along with the current angst of the Baby Boomer generation has led to a immense loss of household and commercial wealth in the world. Pure and simple.
To truly recover, the generation that has brought this on cannot continue as the ruling establishment, nor should be allowed to mismanage the economies of cities, states, and nations.
Enough is enough already, don't you think?
The world transits will also help to make this happen. A healthy, honest economic recovery, to take place in the 2010s, will require new faces, and methods to tackle what can only be called an economic depression.
The sooner that important works begins, the better.
The era of wishful thinking, and living high on the giant bubble hog is over.
In the wake of widespread economic corruption are at least two billion people on this planet who are poorer than they were 10-15 years ago. Tens of millions more are being added to the ranks of the poor every day.
It has been, and remains my mundane forecast that the second half of 2010 will see the second pass of the economic storm over the world. This was not something which was not forecasted before.
The difference is now some people are listening.
The year 2007-08 was the first pass, and the year 2009 was the eye of the hurricane, where things appeared stable under government interventions.
The second pass is the second half of 2010 and the first half of 2011, according to my mundane calculations.
I know it is not something some people wish to hear, but the world transits confirm this.
So, as we delve further into the economy in this edition of Global Astrology, let's remember that famous question from an American TV comedy show when it comes to the headaches of the world economy.
~
By Jude Cowell, Astrolog.S
Jude's Threshold
"My cat was munching some green shoots the other day from a flower pot of catnip but you know they didn’t look anything like the slow economic recovery we’re slogging through like dazed Bambis.
Seems the Fed is ‘caught in a trap’ and the US dollar must fall because chewing off their own hindquarters isn’t in the power elite’s script for achieving greater control of society. They want more, not less, silly!
Well, one of my problems with all this, of course, is that I can’t forget FDR’s informative statement which I shall paraphrase once again:
‘Nothing in politics happens by accident, if it happens you can be sure it was meant to happen’.
So you’ve probably never noticed me calling the Fed, Obama’s economic team of Wall Street gentry, or economists such names as ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb’ or ‘incompetent’ because I think they have the US economy and financial system just where they want it, more or less.
‘Less’ because outside interference seems evident to me so there’s that crazy wild card about to be played for shock value – the coup de grace some people think is coming to the over-extended US. (Read article linked above for better ‘splainin’ of the fundamentals.)
From TARP funds sent overseas to fatten foreign investors’ piggybanks (where it won’t be spent to help any of the world’s Main Streets pay a street sweeper’s wages much less sell some merchandise) and huge corporate bonuses bundled and thieved from taxpayer pennies – to mergers that blight careers and thus lives, plus, those hoarding banks – someone has sopped up all the drippings and left the rest of us with only gristle to chew on.
The American public has recently had the Great Conjunction/s of inflationary Jupiter and Neptune upon our US natal Moon (we-the-people) in Aquarius all through 2009, a year of financial mummery, dreams of popping bubbles, and pumping liquidity into the system if there ever was one.
Plus, counterfeit (Neptune) bills (Jupiter) have become more of a problem than the Fed is likely to admit and a Jupiter/Neptune year is an integral time for that particular cyclic scam.
These huge planets conjunct approximately every 13 years, the last time in Jan 1997 @ 27Cap09 during Bill Clinton’s and Alan Greenspan’s watch (conjunct US natal Pluto!)
2009′s Jupiter/Neptune = US n Moon: becoming involved in speculation; confusion over reality vs fiction; an emotional swoon; going with the wind; dreaminess deceives; losing oneself in plans; instability; wastefulness.
1997′s Jupiter/Neptune = US n Pluto: plans unreasonable beyond measure; far-reaching speculations; a great loss.
(Note: the pair may also signify global (Neptune) + bankers (Jupiter), an amorphous international group of shady characters with grand schemes all their own.)
Now you know that Astrology describes energy in an AC-DC fashion so if a midpoint trait manifests or is stimulated, its energy can be on, or coming from, one side the other; any, all, or none may apply.
Now we’re plopped into 2010, a year of financial slight of hand brought to us in part by the Great Conjunction/s of Jupiter and Uranus through the year into 2011.
This is a bright duo that can magically impress with what later turns out to be little more than a flash in the pan or an over promise unless other factors stabilize or give support.
Jupiter and Uranus met at Aries Point on June 8, 2010 and will conjoin twice more in September and on January 4, 2011 in late degrees of nearby murky Pisces, sign of oceans, fish (including thousands of dead ones on the Gulf Coast and elsewhere), drugs, chemicals, deceit, footwear, and the collective unconscious.
Actually, January 4, 2011 is the date of a Solar Eclipse @ 13Cap39 which closely opposes U.S. natal Sun (the leader) so we may expect the President to be turning course on something around that time or during the 6 months following, if need be.
This one is in the 13 North Series: ‘energy in groups and associations; large ambitious group projects that require the breaking of an existing bond; separation then joint achievement.’
(Paraphrasing Brady’s Predictive Astrology; midpoint pics from Tyl; Ebertin: Munkasey.)
He may be changing course in some way because this eclipse occurring in opposition to US n Sun echoes an ‘un-birthday’ when the Sun opposes its natal position: say, you were born on January 4, then your un-birthday is July 4… time to review how plans are going toward your goals for the year and make adjustments if necessary.
The presence of an eclipse at the critical degree of 13Cap/Can gives potential events and situations more of a ‘wild card’ vibe, however.
Remember June 8′s conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus @ 00Ari18 (AP)?
It conjoined the IC in America’s Sibly natal chart so there’s a midpoint picture which may be of interest to our topic…IC is about Endings and is sometimes called, The Drain in a horoscope.
Opposite is the most visible point in any chart, the Mid-heaven (MC) which is about Career, Status, Goals and Aspirations, and Recognition on the World Stage….the high point with the IC being the low point.
Jupiter/Uranus = n MC: the role of politics as a means of gaining status or standing.
Oh, politics is a means, all right.
A means for lining pockets! (US n Jupiter @ ’6Can’ = “Game Birds Feathering Their Nests.” And that’s from 1776!)
And perhaps the government’s proposed ‘kill switch’ on the internet is related to the technology and science of 2010/11′s Jupiter/Uranus combo and the ‘pull the plug’ image I’m unwillingly envisioning is inspired by The Drain in the US chart being ‘stimulated’ like a corporate welfare bailout that results in wastefulness for the US economy - but a windfall for person or persons unknown."
~
"Here’s a link to Credit Writedowns which maintains a banking crisis time line including Goldman Sachs, Fannie and Freddie, and the rest of the domestic and foreign financial varmints of our day.
I would say ‘Enjoy’ but unless you happen to be one of the power elite banking gentry (or kin to them), that’s quite impossible, isn’t it?"
~
The Cardinal Crisis
By DoctorHousingBubble
A recent report shows that 11 million homeowners with a mortgage are underwater with a deep red line item on their household budget.
Add into the mix those with less than 5 percent equity and we realize that 28 percent of all “homeowners” are either in a negative equity position or teetering close to it.
States like California have negative equity rates of 33 percent thanks to the growth of highly questionable mortgage products. Yet California looks like a saint when compared to Nevada with an underwater rate of 68 percent!
If we want to examine the core premise of the debate surrounding the bailouts, it is that higher home values by default are good for the economy.
I would argue that having high home values as a mission is misguided if that is the only goal we are seeking (and that is basically what we have been doing for the last few years).
In fact, the majority of Americans would benefit from lower home prices. A market with higher home values is only beneficial if incomes and the economy move along in synchronization.
Popping the last few balloons of the housing bubble is a good thing for most.
Let us examine five reasons why falling home prices will be a good thing for the economy moving forward.
Reason #1 – As real estate values inflated actual owners’ equity plummeted
click on graphic to enlarge
The above chart is of paramount importance in understanding the housing bubble. For fifty solid years, homeowners had at least 50 percent equity in their homes nationwide.
It is fascinating that during the biggest jump in housing values that actual equity collapsed.
What happened?
Low to nothing down toxic mortgages funneled by Wall Street and the invention of the home equity ATM.
If we slice the above chart into a smaller time frame and only look at the last decade, we see this insidious trend:
This chart pinpoints the last decade of growth for our economy.
To sum up what happened, as the middle class struggled to gain any advantage in actual wages the home became the one-stop shop for consumer spending.
Why save $500 a month when you can yank out that much money from your home equity and keep spending going?
Of course the problem with this is that it is unsupportable and now the taxpayer is footing the bill.
But as we will show later, the burden of the recession has fallen disproportionately on the shoulders of the working and middle class while banks have shielded themselves from the worst parts of the recession.
Why the recent increase in homeowners’ equity? This is good news right?
Not exactly.
The recent bump that you see is due to people losing their homes through foreclosure. For example, say a subprime borrower bought a home in an area with low incomes for $400,000.
The home is now valued at $200,000. If the borrower is current, this is a drag of $200,000 on the equity chart. After foreclosure, a figure of zero actually helps the bigger mortgage pie.
So expect this figure to increase in the short-term as foreclosures remain elevated.
Reason#2 – Real estate should not be the primary driver of the Economy
Financial sector profits are back to near record levels:
It is interesting to note that back in the 1950s when Americans had their highest levels of owners’ equity, the financial sector was less than 10 percent of all total corporate profits.
Today, it is back up reaching nearly 30 percent.
Real estate and the financial sector is now a drag on the overall economy.
Finance and capital allocation should be on creating and producing real value in the real economy.
Today with no actual changes to Wall Street, we have days with flash crashes that erase trillions of dollars in wealth for most but actually make billions for a select handful of banks.
The profit is now in speculating on the biggest casino on Earth. For the last decade, real estate was the hub of this speculation.
Today, it is a matter of chasing the latest algorithm and trying to beat other hedge funds to the latest calculation that can rob wealth from the real economy.
If you look at the above chart, we seemed to do well with bread and butter 30 year fixed rate mortgages. For the large part of 50 years we required people to put down 20 percent to purchase a home.
That seemed to work and actually provided the biggest net worth boost to individual households and ushered in the largest middle class the world has ever seen.
The latest gimmicks and mortgages seem to be only helping one tiny sector of the economy.
Any time you allow easy access to debt, expect to see massive inflation in prices.
We have seen this with the auto industry, college tuition, and with of course housing. When you give people the ability to borrow whatever they like, many will do it.
Some will argue that this is a question of personal responsibility. I agree. But the propaganda that banks won’t tell you is that they are gambling with taxpayer money.
If banks wanted to lend someone $20,000 a year with no income so they can go to a paper mill institution, so be it if the money comes from their capital pool.
But the money is largely taxpayer backed. They are funneling taxpayer backed loans into this market so care not if the loan defaults.
The magicians of our time are the banks.
Reason #3 – The brunt of the recession has been shouldered by Households
click on graphic to enlarge
The above chart highlights the inequality in the bailouts.
The biggest line item for household net worth is residential real estate values. Households in the U.S. have lost over $6 trillion in real estate values since the bubble popped.
Interestingly enough, mortgage debt has only fallen by $372 billion. Banks are able to suspend reality and avoid using mark to market accounting so they can continue to gamble on Wall Street.
Most typical American families have to contend with actual market values. The massive amount of toxic mortgages still out there is astounding yet banks continue to pretend that things are fine.
What this does is stunts the actual clearing ability of the market. Japanese banks did this for decades and how did that turn out?
Home values are going down because Americans are now dealing with more normal market factors. We are now looking at incomes (at least at a more modest level) and as it turns out, the economy is not healthy.
We are now looking at debt through a microscope and as it turns out, many households are maxed out. So lower home values are good for those looking to buy.
The only way home values can remain high is if the government and Wall Street keep pretending that bubble values actually had some fundamental reason to be so high.
Ironically agencies like the FHA which have a core mission to help fund affordable housing are actually the main tool in the market today keeping home prices inflated.
I mean how can this agency say they stand for affordable housing when they are backing loans up to $729,250 in value?
Reason #4 – Not everyone benefits from a Housing Bubble
The brutal reality is that falling home values will actually help many out in the current market:
If you combine those who are renters and those who have zero mortgage debt, these two groups would make up the majority of households in the U.S.
Renters will definitely benefit because they can purchase homes at a lower price without going into incredible amounts of debt.
Instead of blowing a large part of their income on the mortgage, they can use freed up disposable income to actually spend in the real economy.
Who wins when someone is funneling 50, 60, or even 70 percent of their income into a home?
Those who have paid off their house win either way. If home prices fall, they will get less for their home but at the same time, other home prices will fall so they can purchase a home at an adjusted level.
Many of these people are not looking to move so either way it is a moot point. The only people that are obsessed with home values are those who are now real estate speculators.
Twenty-eight percent of all households with a mortgage are either underwater or near negative equity.
It is hard to call this group homeowners. For many, the only way out is for home values to surge. Yet many jumped in with low down payment mortgages so they have a big incentive to walk away.
With a glut of rental housing, many would win simply by walking away, fixing their credit, and buying a home in a few years if they are able to meet stricter lending requirements (we can hope this plays out for the sake of our economy.)
If you think about it, the only big loser here is the banks holding the mortgages. Now you understand why the entire focus of the bailouts has been on banks. Strip the layers of the onion back and follow the stinking money.
Reason #5 – Negative equity is a drag on the Economy
click on graphic to enlarge
Many of those with negative equity are already walking away from their homes. They made a bet and lost.
The only way banks can combat this behavior is ignoring missed housing payments and allowing people to stay in the homes while they keep mortgage debt on their balance sheets at inflated levels.
But the longer this game of pretend goes on, the worse it is for the economy.
Right now the vast majority, renters, those with paid off homes, and homeowners with equity who pay on time are watching this game between negative equity homeowners and Wall Street play out.
Why should the majority be brought down because of the bad bets from these two groups? Realize the losses and move on. Otherwise, more and more taxpayer money from the other groups will be shifted to this area. That is not good.
In the last few weeks after I tossed out an estimate of nationwide home values falling by 25 percent, a handful of articles made the rounds predicting a similar figure.
This was not some doom prediction for housing but will actually help the overall economy realize the losses and move on.
In therapy, you have to accept a mistake to move on. At times, this realization will be painful but in the end it is better for you.
Right now Wall Street is in complete denial and trying to pretend all is well. Their profits are up but all that is happening is a wealth transfer from taxpayers to this unproductive group.
Lower real estate values will be better for the economy moving forward until wages catch up. If wages don’t catch up why should we insist on keeping prices inflated? Who really wins with higher home prices?
~
The internal battles in Greece because of heavy sovereign debt and deep austerity will re-ignite over the summer months of 2010.
The year 2011 is the start of a new cycle, mainly brought on by the official entry of Uranus into Aries, the first time in 84 years.
~ Mundane Review: 2010-2015 ~
- Saturn oppose Uranus -
Coercions, False Promotions, Litigation & Dishonesty
The Jupiter/Pluto Square acts much like that of Saturn's square to Pluto. Jupiter's motion into Aries in mid-2010, and then again in February 2011, will square Pluto in tropical Capricorn.
The same kinds of conflicts under Saturn's influence by square to Pluto comes into action with hasty, impulsive and headstrong promotion of one's opinions as facts to gain a perceived advantage over others.
An unprecedented Seven (7) exact squares occur in just three (3) years: 2012 to 2015
(*) = significant dates
1. June 24, 2012 – first global square at 8-degrees Aries/Capricorn
2. *September 18-19, 2012 – second square at 6-degrees Aries/Capricorn
3. May 20, 2013 – third square at 11-degrees Aries/Capricorn
4. November 1, 2013 – fourth square at 9-degrees Aries/Capricorn
5. *April 21, 2014 – fifth square at 13-degrees Aries/Capricorn
6. December 14-15, 2014 – sixth square at 12-degrees Aries/Capricorn
7. *March 16-17, 2015 – seventh global square at 15-degrees Aries/Capricorn
The last time Uranus and Pluto met in global square aspect was during the 1930s. This was a decade of reactionary, extreme right-wing politics, revolutionary socialism, rising crime, rebellions, revolts, and restrictive laws gradually reducing freedoms throughout Europe and the then-Soviet Union.
The Bank Crisis and Stock Market Crash of 1929-33 fueled the early years of the Great Depression with rising waves of petty crime and bank robberies. The resulting foreclosures of homes, businesses and family farms amid a depressed global economic system cast a dark shadow over the world.
The NYSE reaching its lowest trading point in history. Weather anomalies under the influence of Uranus in Aries led to the hottest year in U.S. history in 1933-34 with drought and dust storms raging across the American Midwest.
Meanwhile, political extremism ensued with the rise of tyrants, as Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany while in Japan, radical forms of militarism spread so much that it was being openly taught in elementary and high schools.
The revolts, rebellions and revolutionary sentiments under the Uranus/Pluto squares thus paved the way for the Second World War that followed by the end of the 1930s.
Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn revolve their squares worldwide for much of the 2010s, but the most powerful periods are between 2012 through 2015.
This is a time of great upsets within nations which have now experienced at least four to seven years in the wake of the global economic crisis.
Uranus' penchant for sudden change against Pluto's desire structure in Capricorn for a kind of transformational war that butt heads over the "kinds" of new changes to be realized and those not to be supported.
While this is happening, populations around the world seem to have had it to their chins with the constant disruptions of their lives; the losses of lifestyles over the years.
Nonetheless, expect the global square of Uranus to Pluto to be the prime cardinal inclinational force that will make world news time and again through the decade of the 2010s, and into the mid-2020s.
~
Θεόδωρος
Over 36 years of stargazing have taught me to trust mundane astrology for answers to the most pressing questions of the world's myriad of problems.
One of the great joys of being born and raised in the United States of America is to understand that our powerful phrase, enshrined into the hearts of every American - "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" - is an undeniable truth which extends to all human beings on this planet.
That is what makes America great.
Yes, some may have their gripes with the U.S., but I say to all who will listen that the hope of mankind also exists along the very principles which have guided America since she was born as nation among nations here on God's good Earth.
One way or another the United States is about to return to its core patriotic values. Believe it as transits confirm this fact to come, as soon the ruling generational establishment now leaving through the back door, is out of the way so society and its institutions can improve.
So progress can once again finally be made. That time is nearly here, as one cannot cheat the passage of transits, the passages of time.
Some of this will have to be about taking names and kicking ass we all can be sure. But that which is typically human, and quite American, show that when all is said and done, we are going to set some things straight in order to get back on a positive track towards anything that we can call healthy progress.
Senseless Acts Of Violence Continue Under Cardinal Transits
The Cardinal Crisis is more than just about a series of planetary transits taking place over this time. It is also about how some in society are unable to handle the rapid changes taking place as we head into a new decade.
I hate cop killers. When I was a child, my father, a police officer, was shot three times, and survived all three attempts on his life.
In one shooting the police badge over his heart literally saved his life. During a long law enforcement career my father was forced to kill six men in the line of duty. Police work is among the most stressful and dangerous jobs on the planet.
There is nothing worse than a killer of law enforcement officers.
See these recent news links:
Two Of Alaska Villages' Four Police Officers Fatally Shot
Police Capture Suspect in Utah Deputy's Murder
Rebels Killed 8 Police Officers in Philippines
14 Police Officers Killed In Ambush
Meanwhile, the powerful cardinal inclinations continue to show themselves in other acts of violence - fueled by haste, impulse, ignorance and no respect for life.
Arizona police say Gunman Kills 5, then himself
Mormon Official & Gunman Killed In California Shootings
Muslim-Hating New York City Cabbie-Slash Suspect Taken To Psych Ward
Gunman Kills 7, wounds 15 in Slovakia
Five Dead, 25 Wounded During Violent 50 Hours In Chicago
Triple West Hollywood Homicide Victims Were Targeted, Police Say
Children Watch As Father Killed In Road-Rage On California Highway
~
Mundane Forecast:
"The Eagle, grimacing, looks to the south and is displeased."
In this edition of Global Astrology, we look to Mexico, where innocent blood is spilled with ease and where life appears to be very cheap to evil cartels standing at the doors of perdition.
We also look to the economy and state of real estate as economists wonder aloud if the global economy is about to falter heading into the second half of 2010.
Meanwhile, poverty, distress and mistreatment often drives innocent human beings to improve their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Yet, here in the post-modern world of 2010, we continue to see how another two generations fight for survival in a world swimming in corruption, greed, false power, evil and outright transgression.
Those who do so are warned that they are being watched, and that their very selves, indeed, their very souls, are at stake from powerful forces they do not see, think of, or even feel, but are as real as the Earth and sky itself.
What awaits these abusers, cheats, bosses, exploiters, rapists, and murderers is a fate more horrible than their sick acts - the distribution of society-killing drugs and brutal violence through acts of corruption, greed and the love of false power, wealth and money which fuels the senseless slaughter of innocents - the children of the Immortal God.
So I say to those who fund, protect, and participate all who commits such evil -
That you are on the way to what I can only describe as a very, very terrible, terrible perdition.
All of you will face beings so fierce, so horrible, and so terrible by their very countenance, that it will boggle your own very limited imaginations.
These beings are real and await all of you who transgress.
You will not have considered the consequences of your own actions on Earth.
These fierce beings, who are 10 million times more evil than yourselves - will rend you so thoroughly, and grind you many years through the transits of pain, that the more you beg - the more so will they thrust upon you, repeatedly, and viciously: without compassion.
And you will not be forgiven.
~ Mundane Warning ~
"What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
- Matthew 16:26
Mary said: "Woe, woe, unto sinners!"
Salome answered and said: "My Lord Jesus, a murderer who hath never committed any sin but murdering, if he comes out of the body, what is his chastisement?"
Jesus answered and said:
"A murderer who has never committed any sin but murdering, if his time is completed through the sphere {Earth} that he comes out of the body, the receivers of Yaldabaōth come and lead his soul out of the body and bind it by its feet to a great demon with a horse's face, and he spends three days circling round with it in the world.
"Thereafter, they lead it into the regions of the cold and of the snow, and they take vengeance on it there three years and six months.
"Thereafter they lead it down into the chaos before Yaldabaōth and his forty-and-nine demons, and every one of his demons scourge it another three years and six months.
"Thereafter they lead it down into the chaos before Persephonē and take vengeance on it with her chastisements another three years and six months.
"Thereafter they carry it on to the way of the midst, and every one of the rulers of the way of the midst takes vengeance on it with the chastisements of its regions another three years and six months.
"Thereafter they lead it unto the Virgin of Light, who judges the righteous and the sinners, that she may judge it.
"And when the sphere turns itself, she commands that it shall be cast into the outer darkness until the time when the darkness of the midst shall be upraised.
That soul will then be destroyed and dissolved.
This is the chastisement of the murderer."
- Jesus Christ, Sixth Book, chapter 145, The Pistis Sophia
The Cardinal Crisis
Murderers of Innocents Run Rampant In Mexico
The victims are from the nations of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Brazil. The cattle-ranching region is one the most dangerous in Mexico's turf war between two drug cartels. Tropical Storm Hermine heads towards this same area where these 72 migrants were killed two weeks ago in what is believed to be Mexico's worst drug gang massacre to date.
credit: El Universal/AP
AFP Reports
August 26, 2010 - San Fernando, Mexico - Seventy-two people found murdered on a ranch in northeast Mexico are believed to have been migrants bound for the United States, officials said, in one of the most horrific examples of Mexican violence in years.
Marines discovered the bodies of 58 men and 14 women after a clash with a suspected drug cartel in Tamaulipas state, which borders the US state of Texas, in which one marine and three gunmen were killed, the military said Wednesday.
An injured Ecuadoran man claiming to be the sole survivor of the massacre and who alerted the military to the killings has been placed under federal protection.
Ecuadorean citizen Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla recovers at a hospital after being shot in the neck and face. He is one of two survivors of a mass murder that took place August 24-25, 2010 by the Zeta Drug Cartel. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said Lala told authorities there was another survivor, a Honduran who is now in hiding. Lala left Mexico for Ecuador under heavy guard over the weekend and is in a witness protection program.
Credit: El Bravo de Matamoros/AP
The man told police the group had been kidnapped and killed by members of an armed gang heavily involved in the drug trade and organized crime, and known for extorting migrants.
"Preliminary unconfirmed reports suggest (the victims) could have been immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and Brazil," Alejandro Poire, a Mexican security official, told a news conference.
At least four Brazilians were among the dead and diplomats whose nationals could be among the victims were traveling to the scene, a Brazilian foreign ministry official said.
If the victims turn out to be undocumented migrants, the case "will turn into an emblem of the capacity or incapacity of Mexican officials to face up" to migrant abuses, said Alberto Herrera, director of Amnesty International Mexico.
"The level of impunity in this country is scandalous," he added.
Front row, left to right: Felipe Carcamo, Maria Carcamo and Ana Carcamo, and the family of Honduran migrant Miguel Carcamo, react as they stressfully await information at the Foreign Ministry building in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Friday, Aug. 27, 2010. Carcamo would have allegedly been killed by the Zetas drug cartel along with other 71 migrants, in the eastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, very close to the border with the U.S.
Credit: Fernando Antonio/AP
Around half a million clandestine migrants cross Mexico each year, mostly from Central America, according to Mexico's Human Rights Commission.
Some 10,000 undocumented migrants were abducted in Mexico over six months from September 2008 to February 2009, the commission reported last year.
According to a navy spokesman, the Ecuadoran survivor accused the Zetas drug gang -- who are often blamed for migrant killings and abductions -- of committing the massacre.
A Quito newspaper identified the survivor as an 18-year-old farmer who paid so-called "coyote" human traffickers to smuggle him across Mexico's northern border into the United States.
He said the gunmen offered to pay the migrants 500 dollars a month to work as hit men for them, and began shooting them when they refused, according to a spokesman for the state prosecutor's office, who declined to be named.
Tamaulipas has recently seen scores of brutal clashes between the Gulf drug cartel and its former allies, the Zetas, over control of trafficking routes into the United States.
The Zetas are comprised of Mexican military deserters and corrupt former police officers. The US government has called them the most dangerous organized crime syndicate in Mexico.
Identified simply as "Freddy," the Ecuadoran led security forces to the ranch near San Fernando after pleading for help at a roadside checkpoint, officials said.
Marines said they took fire as they approached the ranch with ground and air support. They captured one "underage suspect," but the rest of the surviving gunmen escaped.
The massacre brought condemnation across the Americas, including from Washington, where the State Department deplored the "horribly tragic" killings.
click on graphic to enlarge
Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino called the crimes "very serious and regrettable" after meeting in Quito with his Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa, who blasted the "cowardly" killers and said Mexicans stood in mourning alongside fellow Latin Americans.
The grisly discovery was the latest mass dumping of bodies in recent months, which authorities blame on drug gangs as the death toll spirals in Mexico's drug wars.
In June, 55 bodies were removed from an abandoned mine near Taxco in the southern state of Guerrero.
In July, investigators found 51 corpses in a residential area on the outskirts of Monterrey, capital of the northern state of Nuevo Leon.
More than 28,000 people have died since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began deploying some 50,000 troops to tackle organized crime.
The victims of the latest killings will be kept in San Fernando for forensic examinations, local officials said.
Workers walk outside a funeral home where the bodies of 72 men and women, who were allegedly killed by the Zetas drug gang, are kept inside a refrigerated truck in San Fernando, just 100 miles from the the Mexican border with the U.S. near the city of Matamoros, Thursday Aug. 26, 2010. A wounded migrant who escaped the Zetas gang stumbled into a military checkpoint and led marines to the scene were migrants from Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador and Honduras were executed.
Credit: Guillermo Arias
Last week Calderon accused the U.S. government of failing to tackle drug addiction in the United States and neglecting to rein in the arms industry -- the main supplier of weapons to Mexico's drug gangs.
Marines discovered the bodies of 58 men and 14 women after a clash with a suspected drug cartel in Tamaulipas state, which borders the US state of Texas, in which one marine and three gunmen were killed, the military said Wednesday.
An injured Ecuadoran man claiming to be the sole survivor of the massacre and who alerted the military to the killings has been placed under federal protection.
Credit: El Bravo de Matamoros/AP
The man told police the group had been kidnapped and killed by members of an armed gang heavily involved in the drug trade and organized crime, and known for extorting migrants.
"Preliminary unconfirmed reports suggest (the victims) could have been immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and Brazil," Alejandro Poire, a Mexican security official, told a news conference.
At least four Brazilians were among the dead and diplomats whose nationals could be among the victims were traveling to the scene, a Brazilian foreign ministry official said.
If the victims turn out to be undocumented migrants, the case "will turn into an emblem of the capacity or incapacity of Mexican officials to face up" to migrant abuses, said Alberto Herrera, director of Amnesty International Mexico.
"The level of impunity in this country is scandalous," he added.
Credit: Fernando Antonio/AP
Around half a million clandestine migrants cross Mexico each year, mostly from Central America, according to Mexico's Human Rights Commission.
Some 10,000 undocumented migrants were abducted in Mexico over six months from September 2008 to February 2009, the commission reported last year.
According to a navy spokesman, the Ecuadoran survivor accused the Zetas drug gang -- who are often blamed for migrant killings and abductions -- of committing the massacre.
A Quito newspaper identified the survivor as an 18-year-old farmer who paid so-called "coyote" human traffickers to smuggle him across Mexico's northern border into the United States.
He said the gunmen offered to pay the migrants 500 dollars a month to work as hit men for them, and began shooting them when they refused, according to a spokesman for the state prosecutor's office, who declined to be named.
Tamaulipas has recently seen scores of brutal clashes between the Gulf drug cartel and its former allies, the Zetas, over control of trafficking routes into the United States.
The Zetas are comprised of Mexican military deserters and corrupt former police officers. The US government has called them the most dangerous organized crime syndicate in Mexico.
Identified simply as "Freddy," the Ecuadoran led security forces to the ranch near San Fernando after pleading for help at a roadside checkpoint, officials said.
Marines said they took fire as they approached the ranch with ground and air support. They captured one "underage suspect," but the rest of the surviving gunmen escaped.
The massacre brought condemnation across the Americas, including from Washington, where the State Department deplored the "horribly tragic" killings.
Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino called the crimes "very serious and regrettable" after meeting in Quito with his Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa, who blasted the "cowardly" killers and said Mexicans stood in mourning alongside fellow Latin Americans.
The grisly discovery was the latest mass dumping of bodies in recent months, which authorities blame on drug gangs as the death toll spirals in Mexico's drug wars.
In June, 55 bodies were removed from an abandoned mine near Taxco in the southern state of Guerrero.
In July, investigators found 51 corpses in a residential area on the outskirts of Monterrey, capital of the northern state of Nuevo Leon.
More than 28,000 people have died since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began deploying some 50,000 troops to tackle organized crime.
The victims of the latest killings will be kept in San Fernando for forensic examinations, local officials said.
Credit: Guillermo Arias
Last week Calderon accused the U.S. government of failing to tackle drug addiction in the United States and neglecting to rein in the arms industry -- the main supplier of weapons to Mexico's drug gangs.
See - Interactive Map -
~
Mexico Massacre Investigator Goes Missing While Blasts Strike Mexican TV and Police Stations?
 |
| A Mexican soldier and federal police investigators work a crime scene where a vehicle exploded outside the Televisa network in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Victoria. Another possible car bomb also exploded outside a police station in San Fernando, Tamaulipas state near the site where the bodies of 72 murdered migrants were found this week. Credit: AP |
An official investigating this week's massacre of 72 migrants goes missing, while possible car bomb explosions rocked a TV station and police station in the same violence-torn state of Tamaulipas.
August 27, 2010 - A law enforcement official investigating this week's massacre of 72 migrants in northern Mexico was missing Friday, while possible car bomb explosions rocked a television station and police station in the same violence-torn state.Meanwhile, authorities in Tamaulipas state said they had so far identified the remains of 31 of the massacre victims and determined that they were from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Brazil.
Tamaulipas officials said Roberto Suarez, an agent for the state prosecutor's office involved in the investigation, went missing Wednesday.
That was a day after Mexican marines found the slain migrants on a ranch outside the town of San Fernando.
A San Fernando police officer was also reported missing Friday. The case is now run by the federal attorney general's office.
The disappearances and car blasts appeared to be further signs of the lawlessness that prevails in Tamaulipas, a stronghold of drug traffickers across the border from Texas.
In Ciudad Victoria, the state capital, a car blew up shortly after midnight outside the Televisa office, though it was not immediately known whether it was rigged with a bomb. The explosion caused damage but no one was hurt.
Less than an hour later, a second car exploded outside a San Fernando police station. No one was injured.
The car blasts were the second and third in Tamaulipas this month. A car detonated outside state police headquarters in Ciudad Victoria three weeks ago.
Last month, a car bomb blast in Ciudad Juarez, in the border state of Chihuahua, killed a police officer and three others, raising worries that drug gangs were adopting a new weapon in the nearly 4-year-old drug war.
In recent days, attackers have hurled grenades at Televisa stations in Tamaulipas and neighboring Nuevo Leon state. Drug gangs have made it so dangerous to report the news that many outlets have stopped trying.
In San Fernando, Mexican authorities and foreign emissaries worked to identify massacre victims found Tuesday after a survivor from Ecuador made his way to a highway checkpoint manned by marines.
Officials said the migrants were captured on their way to the U.S. border by the Zetas gang.
Alejandro Poire, spokesman for the Mexican government's anti-crime strategy, said in a radio interview that the victims were killed because they refused to work for the drug-trafficking group, among the most bloodthirsty in the country.
The slayings touched off a fresh outcry by migrant rights activists who have long said that Mexico mistreats or fails to protect the estimated 400,000 workers who cross its territory on their way to the United States each year.
Migrants have for years been targeted by robbers, rapists and corrupt officials in league with smugglers.
They face a new threat as drug traffickers increasingly move into people smuggling or target migrants for extortion.
Mexican officials, sensitive to charges that they don't protect migrants at home while complaining of mistreatment of Mexicans on U.S. soil, say they are cracking down on the smugglers and kidnappers.
Cecilia Romero, head of the federal immigration agency, said authorities raided 16 safe houses in Tamaulipas last year, rescuing 812 foreign nationals.
She said 30 immigration agents have been jailed and 300 fired for corruption. About 43,000 foreign migrants have been sent home this year.
"We are sorry we never found these 72," Romero said of the slain migrants. "Probably they were hidden in a trailer when transported, and we could not detect them. That is how it works. The migrants are invisible to us. They hide from us."
Romero later said that the Ecuadorean survivor, Luis Fredy Lala Pomavilla, has been offered a humanitarian visa to remain in Mexico if he chooses, the Associated Press reported.
Mexico's growing drug violence prompted the State Department on Friday to instruct U.S. diplomats in the northern city of Monterrey to remove their children from the area. The move came after a shootout near the American School Foundation last week.
Update: Bloomberg reported Friday, August 27, 2010 that Mexican President Felipe Calderon said the officer investigating the massacre of 72 migrants in the state of Tamaulipas has disappeared.
Newspaper El Universal reported that the official, identified as Officer Roberto Javier Suarez Vasquez, had been found dead on a highway near where the migrant killing occurred. Calderon said in an event in Mexico City that his death couldn’t be confirmed.
The order is the first of its kind in any Mexican city, said Brian Quigley, a spokesman for the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey, adding it reflects an increasingly violent and insecure reality. Monterrey is located in northern Mexico. The travel warning was issued after an August 20 shooting in front of the American Foundation School in Monterrey, said the State Department. The high incidence of area kidnappings was also cited as a motive behind the move.
~
Reuters highlights some of the the worst attacks since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and declared war on powerful drug cartels.
It is estimated that more than 28,000 people have been killed so far in drug-related violence since 2007.
* Sept. 15, 2008 - Suspected members of the Zetas drug gang tossed grenades into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence day in the western city of Morelia, killing eight people and wounding more than 100.
* Jan. 31, 2010 - Suspected cartel hit men killed 13 high school students and two adults at a party in Ciudad Juarez.
* March 13, 2010 - Hit men killed three people linked to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez in March, provoking "outrage" from U.S. President Barack Obama.
* March 28, 2010 - Gunmen in northwestern Durango state killed 10 people, as young as 8 years old, after the pick-up truck they were traveling in sped through a roadblock on a highway in the drug-producing "Golden Triangle" region.
* June 7, 2010 - Police pulled 55 bodies out of in a mine in the colonial town of Taxco near Mexico City over several days. Some bodies were in advanced states of decomposition.
* June 11, 2010 - Two dozen heavily armed gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation clinic in the northern city of Chihuahua and killed 19 addicts, ranging in age from 18 to 25.
* June 28, 2010 - Suspected cartel hit men shot and killed a popular gubernatorial candidate in the northern state of Tamaulipas in the worst cartel attack on a politician to date.
Rodolfo Torre, 46, and four aides from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, were ambushed on their way to a campaign event for the July 4 state election.
* July 15, 2010 - A 22-pound (10-kilo) car bomb killed four people in Ciudad Juarez in a blast that was detonated by cell phone, the first such attack since Calderon took office.
* July 18, 2010 - Gunmen burst into a birthday party in the northern city of Torreon, using automatic weapons to kill 17 party-goers and wound 18 others.
Mexican authorities later said those responsible were incarcerated cartel hit men who were let out of jail by corrupt officials. The killers allegedly borrowed weapons and vehicles from prison guards and later returned to their cells.
* July 24, 2010 - Police unearthed 51 bodies in a grave outside Mexico's business capital Monterrey in northern Mexico over several days. Some corpses were burned beyond recognition.
* Aug 18, 2010 - The body of the mayor of Santiago, a colonial tourist town near Monterrey, was dumped on a rural road, two days after he was taken from his home. Calderon condemned the killing of Edelmiro Cavazos, the latest attack on public officials in an escalating drug war.
* Aug 25, 2010 - Marines found 58 men and 14 women at a ranch near the Gulf of Mexico in Tamaulipas state, some 90 miles (150 kms) from the Texas border, after a firefight with drug hit men in which three gunmen and a marine died.
The Cardinal Crisis
Migrants Victimized By Drug Cartels?
By
August 26, 2010 -- Mexico City -- The discovery of 72 dead bodies in northeastern Mexico this week has highlighted an under-reported but highly profitable business: the kidnapping of illegal migrants by drug cartels in Mexican territory.
Migrants, mostly from Central and South America, cross Mexico's southern border on their way to the United States.
They travel barely carrying any belongings. And yet, they have become targets for drug traffickers, who kidnap them, extort from them - and their families back home - and, in some cases, force them to join their ranks.
Over a period of six months in 2009, the independent Mexican National Human Rights Commission registered 10,000 kidnappings of illegal migrants in Mexico.
The money and forced labor that emerge from the kidnappings are crucial to the cartels' operations, says Alejandro Solalinde, a Catholic priest and migrant rights activist based in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
"Migrants are poor, some of them uneducated and they are good-hearted people: criminals take advantage of that," he told the BBC.
Financing the Business
Credit: Jorge Duenes/Reuters
The National Human Rights Commission reports that "the frequency and magnitude of the kidnapping of migrants involves a criminal activity of enormous proportion, and it generates high profits for crime organizations."
In the six-month period studied by the Commission, the revenue for the kidnappers was an estimated $25m.
Mr Solalinde, who also runs a shelter for migrants in Oaxaca, says that criminals steal "today's, yesterday's and tomorrow's money" from the victims.
Today's, he explains, because they take away the cash that migrants carry with them - often borrowed, in order to pay for the expenses they incur on in their way into US territory, like the payments to human traffickers known as "coyotes."
Yesterday's money, because they demand ransoms that are usually paid from savings, both of the migrants and of their friends and relatives, either in their country of origin or those already in the U.S.
And tomorrow's, he adds, because kidnappers sometimes carry on with the extortion for an extended period, obtaining monthly payments for a future release that may or may not happen.
Easy Prey
Kidnappers also put captured migrants "in a situation of forced labor, of slavery," crime expert Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz told the BBC.
Because they are in Mexican territory illegally, they are very vulnerable and at the same time easy to dispose of without consequences once they are no longer necessary.
Many Central American kidnap victims are even used to batter and ill-treat their compatriots, reports Mr Solalinde.
Stories of migrants who have become cooks, cleaners or guardians for the cartels abound.
Kidnapped migrants are also used for drug smuggling and even to attract new victims at the refuges run by religious or civil organizations and the fear of being deported silences them.
Shocking
The Mexican government has expressed concern about this problem.
It says it has already taken measures to combat it, including the firing of some local public officials who are accused of connivance with the criminals in orchestrating the kidnappings.
And while authorities have not validated the figures from the Commission - arguing that the research method was designed to create awareness about this problem rather than to measure it accurately - civil and human rights organizations fear the reality could be even worse.
Cartels are said to have developed effective techniques to dispose of their victims' bodies, including their incineration or burial in mass graves.
"There are no figures, no reliable numbers about how many migrants have been kidnapped and murdered in Mexican territory," says Pablo Martinez, spokesman for Sin Fronteras, a migrant rights organization.
Mr Solalinde agrees, saying that real figures would be "shocking and make us shiver."
Many in Mexico wonder what would have happened to the 72 migrants found dead this week, if the injured Ecuadorean who escaped the massacre in the state of Tamaulipas had not been able to alert the authorities.
"They would have been regarded as disappeared, and their families back home would never have heard from them again," Mr Solalinde concludes.
~
Drug War Intensifies In Mexico?
Credit: Tomas Bravo/Reuters
By AFP
August 30, 2010 - Nuevo Laredo, Mexico - Mexico's blood-soaked drug war intensified in northeastern Tamaulipas state over the weekend, with fresh violence attributed to the Zetas, the drug cartel blamed for slaughtering 72 illegal migrants.
In the latest flareup, unidentified gunmen murdered the mayor of Hidalgo, a small town in the western part of state, which borders Texas, a source in the state prosecutor's office said.
Marco Antonio Leal Garcia, 46, was shot to death while he was driving his car, the source said. His four-year-old daughter was seriously wounded in the attack, the source said.
Slain Mayor Marco Antonio Leal Garcia is pictured here in this October 2009 file photograph.
Credit: Reuters
Leal Garcia had taken office in January 2008 and was supposed to step down on December 31. The town of 25,000 people is located 60 miles (90 kilometers) northwest of the state capital, Ciudad Victoria.
Much of the violence in the area is blamed on the Zetas, a brutal, well-trained group of former elite Mexican army commandos that the US government calls the most dangerous organized crime syndicate in Mexico.
Attacks were reported in the coastal city of Tampico late Saturday, where two people were wounded when a police station was bombed.
Hours earlier two bombs exploded near a morgue in Reynosa, on the US border, where the bodies of the Central and South American migrants -- 58 men and 14 women -- slain Tuesday were being kept.
Fifteen people were injured in the blast, local media reported.
Two car bombs exploded in Ciudad Victoria on Friday, one outside a major TV station and the other outside the public transport offices. Both caused material damage but no victims.
And a government official probing the massacre went missing Friday along with a police officer.
Unconfirmed news reports said that their bodies were found Saturday on a road near the ranch where the migrants were gunned down.
These attacks are a direct challenge to the government, Mexican analysts said Sunday.
The Zetas emerged in the late 1990s as hired guns for the powerful leader of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cardenas.
After Cardenas was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007, the Zetas broke off and began a turf war with their former employers for control of drug smuggling routes into the lucrative US market.
"It's clear that the Zetas are behind those explosions," said Raul Benitez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
"They didn't expect anyone to survive (the massacre) and now they are reacting with these attacks by challenging the Mexican state," he told AFP.
The slaying of the migrants "takes place in the specific context in the northeast where two (illegal) organizations are fighting," said Alejandro Poire, government spokesman on security issues.
The sole survivor of Tuesday's massacre, an 18 year-old Ecuadoran man, said the Zetas kidnapped the group and demanded that the migrants work for them as hit men for 2,000 dollars a month. The group refused, and were slaughtered.
According to Poire, the Zeta's attempt to recruit the migrants is a sign that the group has weakened. "There is evidence that these organizations have entered a phase of downfall and destruction," said Poire.
The survivor was in a Mexico City military hospital over the weekend under protection and awaiting a trip back to Ecuador.
Diplomats from Brazil, Ecuador and three Central American countries were in Tamaulipas on Saturday helping local police identify the slain migrants, Mexican officials said.
As of Sunday, 14 Hondurans, 13 Salvadorans, five Guatemalans and a Brazilian had been identified.
Mexican marines discovered the slain migrants after a gun battle with suspected Zetas near the town of San Fernando late Tuesday. Three Zetas were killed and one was captured in the fighting, officials said.
The slaughter spotlights the risks taken by hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking to reach the United States each year.
An estimated 400,000 migrants transit through Mexico every year, most of them victims of trafficking by gangs, according to UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.
Mexican government officials have said that drug gangs are increasingly extorting and kidnapping migrants to raise money because a controversial government clampdown on organized crime has eaten into their other sources of revenues.
Turf wars between Mexico's seven major drug cartels and government forces have killed at least 28,000 people since President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to crack down on the illegal trade in December 2006.
~
The Cardinal Crisis
The Economy:
"What You Talkin 'bout Willis?"
Now that the world is past the time where they can believe that the economy is not healthy, and has suffered a severe downturn, we can see how the inclinations of the world transits to this time has got us here.
One of the sad things about forecasting astrologically is that while some people wait for their own understanding, or belief of astrology to catch up to where they are, and where they are going, it is often much too late.
This happened with the current economic crisis.
It continues to be my estimation that until people wake up, and realize that they are not going to live forever young on this world, in this time, that the economic and social climate will not improve.
The effect of the Cardinal crisis transits along with the current angst of the Baby Boomer generation has led to a immense loss of household and commercial wealth in the world. Pure and simple.
To truly recover, the generation that has brought this on cannot continue as the ruling establishment, nor should be allowed to mismanage the economies of cities, states, and nations.
Enough is enough already, don't you think?
The world transits will also help to make this happen. A healthy, honest economic recovery, to take place in the 2010s, will require new faces, and methods to tackle what can only be called an economic depression.
The sooner that important works begins, the better.
The era of wishful thinking, and living high on the giant bubble hog is over.
In the wake of widespread economic corruption are at least two billion people on this planet who are poorer than they were 10-15 years ago. Tens of millions more are being added to the ranks of the poor every day.
It has been, and remains my mundane forecast that the second half of 2010 will see the second pass of the economic storm over the world. This was not something which was not forecasted before.
The difference is now some people are listening.
The year 2007-08 was the first pass, and the year 2009 was the eye of the hurricane, where things appeared stable under government interventions.
The second pass is the second half of 2010 and the first half of 2011, according to my mundane calculations.
I know it is not something some people wish to hear, but the world transits confirm this.
So, as we delve further into the economy in this edition of Global Astrology, let's remember that famous question from an American TV comedy show when it comes to the headaches of the world economy.
~
American Astrologer Jude Cowell Asks:
Is The Fed Caught In A Liquidity Trap?
Jude's Threshold
"My cat was munching some green shoots the other day from a flower pot of catnip but you know they didn’t look anything like the slow economic recovery we’re slogging through like dazed Bambis.
Seems the Fed is ‘caught in a trap’ and the US dollar must fall because chewing off their own hindquarters isn’t in the power elite’s script for achieving greater control of society. They want more, not less, silly!
Well, one of my problems with all this, of course, is that I can’t forget FDR’s informative statement which I shall paraphrase once again:
‘Nothing in politics happens by accident, if it happens you can be sure it was meant to happen’.
So you’ve probably never noticed me calling the Fed, Obama’s economic team of Wall Street gentry, or economists such names as ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb’ or ‘incompetent’ because I think they have the US economy and financial system just where they want it, more or less.
‘Less’ because outside interference seems evident to me so there’s that crazy wild card about to be played for shock value – the coup de grace some people think is coming to the over-extended US. (Read article linked above for better ‘splainin’ of the fundamentals.)
From TARP funds sent overseas to fatten foreign investors’ piggybanks (where it won’t be spent to help any of the world’s Main Streets pay a street sweeper’s wages much less sell some merchandise) and huge corporate bonuses bundled and thieved from taxpayer pennies – to mergers that blight careers and thus lives, plus, those hoarding banks – someone has sopped up all the drippings and left the rest of us with only gristle to chew on.
The American public has recently had the Great Conjunction/s of inflationary Jupiter and Neptune upon our US natal Moon (we-the-people) in Aquarius all through 2009, a year of financial mummery, dreams of popping bubbles, and pumping liquidity into the system if there ever was one.
Plus, counterfeit (Neptune) bills (Jupiter) have become more of a problem than the Fed is likely to admit and a Jupiter/Neptune year is an integral time for that particular cyclic scam.
These huge planets conjunct approximately every 13 years, the last time in Jan 1997 @ 27Cap09 during Bill Clinton’s and Alan Greenspan’s watch (conjunct US natal Pluto!)
2009′s Jupiter/Neptune = US n Moon: becoming involved in speculation; confusion over reality vs fiction; an emotional swoon; going with the wind; dreaminess deceives; losing oneself in plans; instability; wastefulness.
1997′s Jupiter/Neptune = US n Pluto: plans unreasonable beyond measure; far-reaching speculations; a great loss.
(Note: the pair may also signify global (Neptune) + bankers (Jupiter), an amorphous international group of shady characters with grand schemes all their own.)
Now you know that Astrology describes energy in an AC-DC fashion so if a midpoint trait manifests or is stimulated, its energy can be on, or coming from, one side the other; any, all, or none may apply.
Now we’re plopped into 2010, a year of financial slight of hand brought to us in part by the Great Conjunction/s of Jupiter and Uranus through the year into 2011.
This is a bright duo that can magically impress with what later turns out to be little more than a flash in the pan or an over promise unless other factors stabilize or give support.
Jupiter and Uranus met at Aries Point on June 8, 2010 and will conjoin twice more in September and on January 4, 2011 in late degrees of nearby murky Pisces, sign of oceans, fish (including thousands of dead ones on the Gulf Coast and elsewhere), drugs, chemicals, deceit, footwear, and the collective unconscious.
Actually, January 4, 2011 is the date of a Solar Eclipse @ 13Cap39 which closely opposes U.S. natal Sun (the leader) so we may expect the President to be turning course on something around that time or during the 6 months following, if need be.
This one is in the 13 North Series: ‘energy in groups and associations; large ambitious group projects that require the breaking of an existing bond; separation then joint achievement.’
(Paraphrasing Brady’s Predictive Astrology; midpoint pics from Tyl; Ebertin: Munkasey.)
He may be changing course in some way because this eclipse occurring in opposition to US n Sun echoes an ‘un-birthday’ when the Sun opposes its natal position: say, you were born on January 4, then your un-birthday is July 4… time to review how plans are going toward your goals for the year and make adjustments if necessary.
The presence of an eclipse at the critical degree of 13Cap/Can gives potential events and situations more of a ‘wild card’ vibe, however.
Remember June 8′s conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus @ 00Ari18 (AP)?
It conjoined the IC in America’s Sibly natal chart so there’s a midpoint picture which may be of interest to our topic…IC is about Endings and is sometimes called, The Drain in a horoscope.
Opposite is the most visible point in any chart, the Mid-heaven (MC) which is about Career, Status, Goals and Aspirations, and Recognition on the World Stage….the high point with the IC being the low point.
Jupiter/Uranus = n MC: the role of politics as a means of gaining status or standing.
Oh, politics is a means, all right.
A means for lining pockets! (US n Jupiter @ ’6Can’ = “Game Birds Feathering Their Nests.” And that’s from 1776!)
And perhaps the government’s proposed ‘kill switch’ on the internet is related to the technology and science of 2010/11′s Jupiter/Uranus combo and the ‘pull the plug’ image I’m unwillingly envisioning is inspired by The Drain in the US chart being ‘stimulated’ like a corporate welfare bailout that results in wastefulness for the US economy - but a windfall for person or persons unknown."
~
Jude Cowell also presents us with a time line of the economic crisis and says,
"Here’s a link to Credit Writedowns which maintains a banking crisis time line including Goldman Sachs, Fannie and Freddie, and the rest of the domestic and foreign financial varmints of our day.
I would say ‘Enjoy’ but unless you happen to be one of the power elite banking gentry (or kin to them), that’s quite impossible, isn’t it?"
~
The Cardinal Crisis
5 Reasons Why Falling Home Prices Will Be Good For The Economy
By DoctorHousingBubble
A recent report shows that 11 million homeowners with a mortgage are underwater with a deep red line item on their household budget.
Add into the mix those with less than 5 percent equity and we realize that 28 percent of all “homeowners” are either in a negative equity position or teetering close to it.
States like California have negative equity rates of 33 percent thanks to the growth of highly questionable mortgage products. Yet California looks like a saint when compared to Nevada with an underwater rate of 68 percent!
If we want to examine the core premise of the debate surrounding the bailouts, it is that higher home values by default are good for the economy.
I would argue that having high home values as a mission is misguided if that is the only goal we are seeking (and that is basically what we have been doing for the last few years).
In fact, the majority of Americans would benefit from lower home prices. A market with higher home values is only beneficial if incomes and the economy move along in synchronization.
Popping the last few balloons of the housing bubble is a good thing for most.
Let us examine five reasons why falling home prices will be a good thing for the economy moving forward.
Reason #1 – As real estate values inflated actual owners’ equity plummeted
The above chart is of paramount importance in understanding the housing bubble. For fifty solid years, homeowners had at least 50 percent equity in their homes nationwide.
It is fascinating that during the biggest jump in housing values that actual equity collapsed.
What happened?
Low to nothing down toxic mortgages funneled by Wall Street and the invention of the home equity ATM.
If we slice the above chart into a smaller time frame and only look at the last decade, we see this insidious trend:
This chart pinpoints the last decade of growth for our economy.
To sum up what happened, as the middle class struggled to gain any advantage in actual wages the home became the one-stop shop for consumer spending.
Why save $500 a month when you can yank out that much money from your home equity and keep spending going?
Of course the problem with this is that it is unsupportable and now the taxpayer is footing the bill.
But as we will show later, the burden of the recession has fallen disproportionately on the shoulders of the working and middle class while banks have shielded themselves from the worst parts of the recession.
Why the recent increase in homeowners’ equity? This is good news right?
Not exactly.
The recent bump that you see is due to people losing their homes through foreclosure. For example, say a subprime borrower bought a home in an area with low incomes for $400,000.
The home is now valued at $200,000. If the borrower is current, this is a drag of $200,000 on the equity chart. After foreclosure, a figure of zero actually helps the bigger mortgage pie.
So expect this figure to increase in the short-term as foreclosures remain elevated.
Reason#2 – Real estate should not be the primary driver of the Economy
Financial sector profits are back to near record levels:
It is interesting to note that back in the 1950s when Americans had their highest levels of owners’ equity, the financial sector was less than 10 percent of all total corporate profits.
Today, it is back up reaching nearly 30 percent.
Real estate and the financial sector is now a drag on the overall economy.
Finance and capital allocation should be on creating and producing real value in the real economy.
Today with no actual changes to Wall Street, we have days with flash crashes that erase trillions of dollars in wealth for most but actually make billions for a select handful of banks.
The profit is now in speculating on the biggest casino on Earth. For the last decade, real estate was the hub of this speculation.
Today, it is a matter of chasing the latest algorithm and trying to beat other hedge funds to the latest calculation that can rob wealth from the real economy.
If you look at the above chart, we seemed to do well with bread and butter 30 year fixed rate mortgages. For the large part of 50 years we required people to put down 20 percent to purchase a home.
That seemed to work and actually provided the biggest net worth boost to individual households and ushered in the largest middle class the world has ever seen.
The latest gimmicks and mortgages seem to be only helping one tiny sector of the economy.
Any time you allow easy access to debt, expect to see massive inflation in prices.
We have seen this with the auto industry, college tuition, and with of course housing. When you give people the ability to borrow whatever they like, many will do it.
Some will argue that this is a question of personal responsibility. I agree. But the propaganda that banks won’t tell you is that they are gambling with taxpayer money.
If banks wanted to lend someone $20,000 a year with no income so they can go to a paper mill institution, so be it if the money comes from their capital pool.
But the money is largely taxpayer backed. They are funneling taxpayer backed loans into this market so care not if the loan defaults.
The magicians of our time are the banks.
Reason #3 – The brunt of the recession has been shouldered by Households
The above chart highlights the inequality in the bailouts.
The biggest line item for household net worth is residential real estate values. Households in the U.S. have lost over $6 trillion in real estate values since the bubble popped.
Interestingly enough, mortgage debt has only fallen by $372 billion. Banks are able to suspend reality and avoid using mark to market accounting so they can continue to gamble on Wall Street.
Most typical American families have to contend with actual market values. The massive amount of toxic mortgages still out there is astounding yet banks continue to pretend that things are fine.
What this does is stunts the actual clearing ability of the market. Japanese banks did this for decades and how did that turn out?
Home values are going down because Americans are now dealing with more normal market factors. We are now looking at incomes (at least at a more modest level) and as it turns out, the economy is not healthy.
We are now looking at debt through a microscope and as it turns out, many households are maxed out. So lower home values are good for those looking to buy.
The only way home values can remain high is if the government and Wall Street keep pretending that bubble values actually had some fundamental reason to be so high.
Ironically agencies like the FHA which have a core mission to help fund affordable housing are actually the main tool in the market today keeping home prices inflated.
I mean how can this agency say they stand for affordable housing when they are backing loans up to $729,250 in value?
Reason #4 – Not everyone benefits from a Housing Bubble
The brutal reality is that falling home values will actually help many out in the current market:
If you combine those who are renters and those who have zero mortgage debt, these two groups would make up the majority of households in the U.S.
Renters will definitely benefit because they can purchase homes at a lower price without going into incredible amounts of debt.
Instead of blowing a large part of their income on the mortgage, they can use freed up disposable income to actually spend in the real economy.
Who wins when someone is funneling 50, 60, or even 70 percent of their income into a home?
Those who have paid off their house win either way. If home prices fall, they will get less for their home but at the same time, other home prices will fall so they can purchase a home at an adjusted level.
Many of these people are not looking to move so either way it is a moot point. The only people that are obsessed with home values are those who are now real estate speculators.
Twenty-eight percent of all households with a mortgage are either underwater or near negative equity.
It is hard to call this group homeowners. For many, the only way out is for home values to surge. Yet many jumped in with low down payment mortgages so they have a big incentive to walk away.
With a glut of rental housing, many would win simply by walking away, fixing their credit, and buying a home in a few years if they are able to meet stricter lending requirements (we can hope this plays out for the sake of our economy.)
If you think about it, the only big loser here is the banks holding the mortgages. Now you understand why the entire focus of the bailouts has been on banks. Strip the layers of the onion back and follow the stinking money.
Reason #5 – Negative equity is a drag on the Economy
Many of those with negative equity are already walking away from their homes. They made a bet and lost.
The only way banks can combat this behavior is ignoring missed housing payments and allowing people to stay in the homes while they keep mortgage debt on their balance sheets at inflated levels.
But the longer this game of pretend goes on, the worse it is for the economy.
Right now the vast majority, renters, those with paid off homes, and homeowners with equity who pay on time are watching this game between negative equity homeowners and Wall Street play out.
Why should the majority be brought down because of the bad bets from these two groups? Realize the losses and move on. Otherwise, more and more taxpayer money from the other groups will be shifted to this area. That is not good.
In the last few weeks after I tossed out an estimate of nationwide home values falling by 25 percent, a handful of articles made the rounds predicting a similar figure.
This was not some doom prediction for housing but will actually help the overall economy realize the losses and move on.
In therapy, you have to accept a mistake to move on. At times, this realization will be painful but in the end it is better for you.
Right now Wall Street is in complete denial and trying to pretend all is well. Their profits are up but all that is happening is a wealth transfer from taxpayers to this unproductive group.
Lower real estate values will be better for the economy moving forward until wages catch up. If wages don’t catch up why should we insist on keeping prices inflated? Who really wins with higher home prices?
~
Dates of Cardinal T-Square Transits
Mundane planetary configurations & dates 2010-2011
Compiled by Theodore White; mundane Astrolog.S 
- April 6-7 - Pluto stations retrograde at 5-Capricorn
- April 7, 2010 - Saturn re-enters tropical Virgo
- April 26, 2010 - Saturn opposes Uranus (4th opposition)
- May 23, 2010 - Jupiter opposes Saturn (first time since 1990-91)
- May 27-28, 2010 - Uranus enters tropical Aries
- May 30th, 2010 - Saturn stations direct motion at 27-Virgo
- June 5-6, 2010 - Jupiter enters tropical Aries
- June 6-7, 2010 - Mars enters tropical Virgo
- June 8, 2010 - Jupiter conjoins Uranus at 0-Aries
- July 5, 2010 - Uranus stations retrograde at 0-Aries
- July 8, 2010 - Jupiter turns North in declination
- July 11, 2010 - New Moon total eclipse at 19-Cancer (not seen in N. America)
- July 21, 2010 - Saturn re-enters tropical Libra for good
- July 23, 2010 - Jupiter stations retrograde
- July 25, 2010 - Jupiter Squares Pluto
- July 26, 2010 - Fifth Saturn/Uranus opposition
- July 31, 2010 - Mars & Jupiter turn S in Declination
- July 31 - Mars conjoins Saturn at 0-Libra
- August 3, 2010 - Jupiter, retrograde, Squares Pluto again
- August 6, 2010 - Venus turns South in Declination
- August 13-14, 2010 - Uranus re-enters tropical Pisces
- August 16, 2010 - Jupiter Opposes Saturn
- August 20, 2010 - Mercury retrogrades in Virgo
- August 21, 2010 - Saturn Squares Pluto
- September 8, 2010 - Saturn turns South in declination
- September 8, 2010 - New Moon at 15-Virgo
- September 8, 2010 - Venus enters Scorpio
- September 8-9, 2010 - Jupiter re-enters tropical Pisces
- September 12, 2010 - Mercury stations direct
- September 14, 2010 - Pluto stations direct
- September 14, 2010 - Mars enters Scorpio
- September 19, 2010 - Jupiter conjoins Uranus for first time in Pisces
- October 8, 2010 - Venus retrograde in Scorpio
- October 29-30 - Venus turns to "morning star" phase for ten months
- November 6, 7, 2010 - Neptune direct in motion
- November 18 - Venus stations direct
- November 18 - Jupiter stations direct
- December 5, 6- Uranus stations direct motion
- December 10-30 - Mercury retrograde
- January 4, 2011 - Jupiter conjoins Uranus a third time
- January 22, 2011 - Jupiter enters Aries
- Jan. 25, 26 - Saturn stations retrograde 17-Libra
- February 25, 2011 - Jupiter Squares Pluto
- March 3, 2011 - Transiting Lunar Nodes shift to Mutable Quality of Sagittarius & Gemini
- March 11-12, 2011 - Uranus enters Aries (first time in 84 years)
- March 28, 2011 - Jupiter opposes Saturn
~
Mundane Survey Of Global Events: 2010-2012
The Cardinal Cross of August 2010: This chart, set for London, England, shows the Cardinal Cross in action for most of the world as global transits rotate. August 2010 is a powerful month of conflicts, clashes, and global stresses according to my mundane forecasts.
World events are strongly highlighted. From the crisis in the Middle East, to crisis in Thailand, Greece, Europe, Asia, Korea, and North & South America.
The Cardinal Crisis is basically forcing long-standing, unresolved issues to the surface, demanding change, betterment, and, as a result, evolution, from how people live and work, to how public and private institutions serve their wider communities.
The events of the world from now to the mid-2010s are reflective of the decisions and actions of the 1990s and 2000s that are now being exposed by the global transits.
Geopolitical stresses will force leaders to tackle a host of challenging issues worldwide that require vision and a new way of looking at the world to promote peace and advance healthy progress into the new decade.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton with her diplomatic team in China in May 2010.
Credit: AP
The oil leak crisis in the Gulf of Mexico will become a epic disaster, casting British Petroleum into financial ruin, and threatening the future existence of the company.
By summer 2010, it is hoped a hurricane will sweep through the Gulf to clear out the tens of millions of gallons of oil which has spread along the U.S. southern coastline.
May 2010 satellite image of BP's oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico.
Credit: NASA
The internal battles in Greece because of heavy sovereign debt and deep austerity will re-ignite over the summer months of 2010.
Groups battling severe economic austerity measures in Greece urge Europeans to "rise up" during the late spring and summer of 2010.
The crisis in the Middle East beckons between Israel, Gaza, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Arab states highlighted threatening war over international aid to Palestine.
The crisis on the Korean Peninsula will also continue to be tense, threatening to re-ignite a war between both those nations.
Thailand's crisis is far from over. The coalition government is due to fall from the repression of groups intent on ending what they see as a illegal killer government.
The economic crisis is also far from over. The pressures on Wall Street, bankers and hedge fund moguls will increase in 2010 and 2011 with calls for major, and sweeping financial reforms across the board, pitting the status quo against a very angry American middle class:
The climate & weather will become major news again with volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, climate extremes of hot and colder than normal temperatures, La Nina, droughts, and most of all floods, as world transits strengthen into 2010-2011:
Nature Erupts: Volcanic activity as Uranus enters Aries.
Criminal underworlds undergo vicious struggles: As Pluto transits Capricorn, and forms a T-square to Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, the drug wars raging in Mexico will expand, forcing ever more soldiers onto Mexican streets and pitting the average person against killer drug gangs.
Mexican Drug Wars: Mexican federal police & forensic experts inspect the scene after two men were shot dead by unknown gunmen in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on May 26, 2010. Ciudad Juarez has been hit by waves of very brutal drug-related violence, making it one of the deadliest cities in the world.
Credit: AP
The Markets
That 1,000 point drop: May 6, 2010 proved to be one of the strangest days in the history of the Dow Jones. A mysterious "1,000-point" plunge in the afternoon hours, blamed on a "fat finger," lost money for tens of thousands of traders and nearly collapsed the stock market. Federal authorities investigate, but the "glitch" still has not been explained nearly a month later.
The Markets
So, in my mundane perspective, the world is, in effect, dealing with the outworn views and methods of the past, while seeking to forge a new way forward into this new century.
The year 2010 is a transition year, and will be historic in my view. In 2010, we are in the predawn of a new age, and some are in the sunset of a old age, mainly that of the late 20th century.
The year 2011 is the start of a new cycle, mainly brought on by the official entry of Uranus into Aries, the first time in 84 years.
This cycle opens up the decade of the 2010s, and practically dominates it with a long-running square aspect to Pluto in Capricorn.
The year 2012 is a strong year. It is dominated by Gemini for the most part, as well as the popular-culture fears of the Mayan Calendar system and the "end of the world."
According to my calculations, the world will not end, but those who continue to press on with such foolishness will cause enough worry and concern among that some people will go about very upset through 2012, that is, until the year 2013 arrives on time.
Below, is my mundane forecasts on the major planetary configurations of the Cardinal Crisis Years:
~ Mundane Review: 2010-2015 ~
Forecast By Theodore White; mundane Astrolog.S
Θεόδωρος
There are six (6) major transits of the Cardinal Crisis Years - signified by the planets involved & their inclinations:
There are six (6) major transits of the Cardinal Crisis Years - signified by the planets involved & their inclinations:
- Saturn oppose Uranus -
2008-2010
Frustrating attempts to change existing conditions
The new versus the old
Virgo/Pisces - Aries/Libra
Negative attitudes within personal areas of responsibility against those of personal freedom. People generally demand strict obedience to their authority but will rebel against authority at the same time.
Much cooperation is needed to avoid falling into the unfavorable inclinations of Saturn's opposition to Uranus.
Much cooperation is needed to avoid falling into the unfavorable inclinations of Saturn's opposition to Uranus.
A sustained cycle where much insight, honesty, and awareness is needed to offset the powerful tendency to be rigid and unforgiving in personal and professional affairs.
Extreme viewpoints expressed by the ignorant and mentally ill fall under this influence. Loud public pronouncements shouted with wild mannerisms expressing inconsistent attitudes can be observed.
Common sights are: bugged-eye pundits uttering unsubstantiated personal opinions as facts; personal attacks, insults, and acerbic comments designed to bring attention to oneself.
Impulse, haste, snap judgments, immaturity, poor communication skills lacking any sign of social grace and basic manners can be observed.
Extreme viewpoints expressed by the ignorant and mentally ill fall under this influence. Loud public pronouncements shouted with wild mannerisms expressing inconsistent attitudes can be observed.
Common sights are: bugged-eye pundits uttering unsubstantiated personal opinions as facts; personal attacks, insults, and acerbic comments designed to bring attention to oneself.
Impulse, haste, snap judgments, immaturity, poor communication skills lacking any sign of social grace and basic manners can be observed.
Negative emotional attitudes bordering on signs of stress and mental illness is also quite common.
There is widespread conflict between the old order and the new emerging order. This is generational.
There is widespread conflict between the old order and the new emerging order. This is generational.
Groups and individuals battle against corruption of the old establishment, while the old establishment denies losing their clout, and remain fixated on old methods, rejecting anything "new" that threatens their established order.
Concepts and ideas in economic, business and political affairs tend to be impractical, unreliable, and eccentric. Economic life continues to run at a low ebb.
Concepts and ideas in economic, business and political affairs tend to be impractical, unreliable, and eccentric. Economic life continues to run at a low ebb.
See - Part 3 Of Spain Is Dying
These conflicts play out with professional and personal relationships in a pre-revolutionary manner - pushing relationships to breaking points.
Saturn's opposition to Uranus is unfavorable when dealing with joint accounts, finances, corporate business affairs, inheritances, insurance, and all economic matters important to organizations, groups, and individuals.
Saturn's opposition to Uranus is unfavorable when dealing with joint accounts, finances, corporate business affairs, inheritances, insurance, and all economic matters important to organizations, groups, and individuals.
The economic climate is highly stressed, with conflicts between the "old" and the "new" at extremes and waiting for the breaking points to arrive.
Selfish motives within organizations, and groups tend to be those where others try to take credit for the work of others in order to advance their own careers leading to estrangements between associates, colleagues and friends.
Selfish motives within organizations, and groups tend to be those where others try to take credit for the work of others in order to advance their own careers leading to estrangements between associates, colleagues and friends.
Ulterior motives abound, as do negative emotions, rampant cynicism; along with personal and professional betrayals. The feelings are quite intense, as oppositions tend to be.
Saturn's inflexibility grinds against Uranus' desire for significant change. The events that have taken place in the world since 2001 is now moving into the "release" phase and into the second decade of the 2010s.
As the fifth and last Saturn/Uranus opposition peaks by July/August 2010, we should observe strong emotions worldwide; seeking a "release" from the pent up energies, anger, and recriminations that have built up over the recent decade of the 2000s.
- Saturn Square Pluto -
2010
Power Plays, Plots, Cold, Evil & Unsympathetic People
Power Plays, Plots, Cold, Evil & Unsympathetic People
Libra/Capricorn
General signs of paranoia exists within groups and organizations is one feature of a Saturn/Pluto Square.
The large-scale implications of actions taken in government, business, and political groups often force people to face dangerous situations of a sinister nature.
The will power of those involved in personal and professional intrigues is heightened to the point of very negative inclinations with some people using coercive methods to achieve what they perceive as success.
Under Saturn/Pluto this can feature acts of blackmail, threats, and plots at the highest levels of government, within political groups, and corporations.
Paranoid individuals with extreme opinions, and viewpoints is also common under A Saturn/Pluto square.
The will power of those involved in personal and professional intrigues is heightened to the point of very negative inclinations with some people using coercive methods to achieve what they perceive as success.
Under Saturn/Pluto this can feature acts of blackmail, threats, and plots at the highest levels of government, within political groups, and corporations.
Paranoid individuals with extreme opinions, and viewpoints is also common under A Saturn/Pluto square.
The emotions can be deep, but the insights are often clouded by dishonorable associations and emotions to individuals and groups who do not have the best interests of others at heart.
Some individuals will find themselves battling against corruption and rampant dishonesty within organizations, or within associations, be they professional or personal with attacks on their reputation coming as a result of fighting dishonest persons and groups.
The coming revelations of widespread corruption in global financial markets, on Wall Street, and other stock markets will be under the Saturn/Pluto square.
Some individuals will find themselves battling against corruption and rampant dishonesty within organizations, or within associations, be they professional or personal with attacks on their reputation coming as a result of fighting dishonest persons and groups.
The coming revelations of widespread corruption in global financial markets, on Wall Street, and other stock markets will be under the Saturn/Pluto square.
Forcing major players to fight for their freedom because of accusations of the theft of tens of billions of dollars leading to a worldwide global recession.
Corporate power plays take center stage under the cardinal crisis transits with increasing political pressure and regulatory scrutiny on major banks, insurance companies, and those implicated in widespread financial malfeasance over the last decade.
The focus on these areas: unemployment, insurance, housing, stock markets, hedge funds, secret bank accounts, general economics, political and government affairs, alimony, and inheritances - is all common under the influences of Saturn's square from Libra to Pluto in Capricorn.
It is also common under these inclinations for opposing groups and individuals to use negative, dishonest, and evil means to obtain personal/profession advantages over others; or attempts to hide past acts of malfeasance to avoid implicating others involved in acts of corruption.
This often backfires under the Saturn/Pluto square and results in public scandal along with damage to the reputation and the careers of those who used negative means to gain what they "perceive" to be an advantage.
Nowhere does "do unto others as you would have them do unto you' applies more than under a Saturn/Pluto world square.
The effect on personal and professional connections can be long-lasting with people completely breaking off any further association with friends, family and colleagues.
Power struggles - both internal and external - is a main theme of a Saturn/Pluto Square.
Corporate power plays take center stage under the cardinal crisis transits with increasing political pressure and regulatory scrutiny on major banks, insurance companies, and those implicated in widespread financial malfeasance over the last decade.
The focus on these areas: unemployment, insurance, housing, stock markets, hedge funds, secret bank accounts, general economics, political and government affairs, alimony, and inheritances - is all common under the influences of Saturn's square from Libra to Pluto in Capricorn.
It is also common under these inclinations for opposing groups and individuals to use negative, dishonest, and evil means to obtain personal/profession advantages over others; or attempts to hide past acts of malfeasance to avoid implicating others involved in acts of corruption.
This often backfires under the Saturn/Pluto square and results in public scandal along with damage to the reputation and the careers of those who used negative means to gain what they "perceive" to be an advantage.
Nowhere does "do unto others as you would have them do unto you' applies more than under a Saturn/Pluto world square.
The effect on personal and professional connections can be long-lasting with people completely breaking off any further association with friends, family and colleagues.
Power struggles - both internal and external - is a main theme of a Saturn/Pluto Square.
The will-power is increased, but the personal judgment is often very poor. This gives way to intense emotions that are not clearly understood enough to make valuable judgment calls on all levels of decisions.
Often, decisions are based on perceived "associations" with others who are not one's friends, nor who share one's common interests, except to advance their own personal interests while using others as a means to and end. Very common under Saturn's square to Pluto.
After the square aspect passes, the events which have taken place under its influences are fully revealed, leading to permanent estrangements from those once trusted and valued as friends, associates, or lovers.
Saturn's continued transit through Libra (2010-2012) then features a full distrust and estrangement from those who used dishonest means during the Saturn/Pluto inclinations.
Often, decisions are based on perceived "associations" with others who are not one's friends, nor who share one's common interests, except to advance their own personal interests while using others as a means to and end. Very common under Saturn's square to Pluto.
After the square aspect passes, the events which have taken place under its influences are fully revealed, leading to permanent estrangements from those once trusted and valued as friends, associates, or lovers.
Saturn's continued transit through Libra (2010-2012) then features a full distrust and estrangement from those who used dishonest means during the Saturn/Pluto inclinations.
These estrangements will last a very long time and trust will never be restored after the world square aspect has moved out of orb.
- Jupiter Square Pluto -
Aries/Capricorn - 2010-2011
Opposition from Jupiter in Cancer to Pluto in Capricorn arrives 2013-2014
The Jupiter/Pluto Square acts much like that of Saturn's square to Pluto. Jupiter's motion into Aries in mid-2010, and then again in February 2011, will square Pluto in tropical Capricorn.
The same kinds of conflicts under Saturn's influence by square to Pluto comes into action with hasty, impulsive and headstrong promotion of one's opinions as facts to gain a perceived advantage over others.
Temptation is strong with inclinations to use dishonest means to get what one thinks they want.
Rampant litigation under Jupiter's inclinations lead to a rush toward legal wars without first seeing the bigger picture. With the Jupiter square to Pluto: it is the forest first, the trees second, but do make sure you count each tree.
The contradictions of this is simple:
Rampant litigation under Jupiter's inclinations lead to a rush toward legal wars without first seeing the bigger picture. With the Jupiter square to Pluto: it is the forest first, the trees second, but do make sure you count each tree.
The contradictions of this is simple:
Jupiter's square to Pluto, in combination to its conjunction to Uranus in opposition to Saturn, and by square to Pluto, and back, fully complicates matters, so as to act as a powerful feedback loop with amplifiers about to blow loudly if the volume of intensity is not turned down.
The energies of the Cardinal Cross transits are simply too strong. Patience, slowing down, and reposing are the keys to effectively neutralizing these powerful cardinal inclinations.
Under the Jupiter/Pluto square, serious mistakes are often made preparing legal cases without first laying down the proper practical groundwork.
Often, this comes about because of ego, and headstrong acts featuring arrogance and pride; but wholly failing to take into account the small, but very important details.
Often, this comes about because of ego, and headstrong acts featuring arrogance and pride; but wholly failing to take into account the small, but very important details.
The majority of litigation made under these influences will collapse like a house of cards after months of what seemed like a iron-clad case.
The only way to neutralize this transit, as with all the others of the Cardinal Crisis transits is to slow down, and to be strictly honest at all times in all personal and business affairs.
Also, the need to remain detached and practical while plodding step-by-step without ego, impulse, and haste. This is the antidote to the impulsive inclinations of cardinal transits.
Power-plays, and forced acts of coercion, with promotions of extreme expressions of personal, political and religious viewpoints is quite common under this global square.
Often, one's aspirations to remake others comes with neglecting one's own house while confused attitudes about ethics and morality are cast aside in favor of haste and impulse - rushing to judgment.
Struggles with corrupted individuals and groups is also common under a Jupiter/Pluto Square.
The only way to neutralize this transit, as with all the others of the Cardinal Crisis transits is to slow down, and to be strictly honest at all times in all personal and business affairs.
Also, the need to remain detached and practical while plodding step-by-step without ego, impulse, and haste. This is the antidote to the impulsive inclinations of cardinal transits.
Power-plays, and forced acts of coercion, with promotions of extreme expressions of personal, political and religious viewpoints is quite common under this global square.
Often, one's aspirations to remake others comes with neglecting one's own house while confused attitudes about ethics and morality are cast aside in favor of haste and impulse - rushing to judgment.
Struggles with corrupted individuals and groups is also common under a Jupiter/Pluto Square.
Criminal underworld groups, and their associates often war against one another in the perceived struggle for "power," without understanding the dire future implications of their violent acts which, in time, will return upon the very people involved in these evil affairs.
There can be dubious spiritual practices featuring over-optimistic false spiritual, religious and political beliefs shaped by the realization that there are large-scale forces at work that the individual (s) have been forced to see as a result of changes in lifestyles.
The square aspect in this respect can be positive if the individual (s) remember to not act in haste or impulse in accepting too easily that which is being realized.
Under the cardinal crisis transits, there are efforts by others to remake or coerce others to partake in evil behaviors - effectively using people to do the things which "appear" to advance the interests of those who agree to take part in actions, or groups.
After the 2010 Jupiter/Pluto Square comes another one by mid-2013 into the year 2014.
This will be part of the Grand Cardinal Cross of 2014 showing powerful cardinal inclinations of haste, and impulse that feeds into the coming Uranus-Pluto Squares of the 2010s.
Again, there is a sense that things are not changing as quickly as people would like them to, and the ramifications of the decade of the 2000s continue to persist into the early years of the 2010s.
Unless the problems of rampant past corruption - especially in the financial sector - then this world Grand Cross, with Jupiter now in Cancer, as part of another series of cardinal crisis configurations - will return to bite back with a vengeance in 2014.
- Jupiter Oppose Saturn -
2010-2012
Bad Business Timing, Questionable Tactics & Promised Favors Undone
Pisces/Aries - Virgo/Libra
Jupiter at 0-10 degrees Taurus
While this takes place, many people will see their own personal and professional responsibilities increase; while wages continue to stagnate from the lack of resources, which will be limited because of prior economic corruption and waste.
The opposition of Jupiter to Saturn can test what the true balance really is between being optimistic, and being pessimistic. Much will depend on the ability of the individual to be creative, and patient, while the opposition is underway.
Many of these people will be older, and due to the transit of Saturn, will exhibit rigid views without realizing that in a short period of time after the opposition has waned and passed; that they themselves will receive similar treatment from the very people whom they denied opportunities and relief.
The conflicts which come about during 2010-2012 under the Jupiter/Saturn opposition will tend towards ethics; morals; joint finances, family responsibilities, friendships, associations, romantic relationships, partnerships and corporate struggles that will test the reliability and strength of relationships in general.
The Jupiter/Saturn opposition will begin to weaken in February 2012, and by the end of March 2012, will move out of orb.
Pisces/Aries - Virgo/Libra
Jupiter at 0-10 degrees Taurus
Jupiter/Saturn oppositions arrive every 20 years. The last one took place in 1990-91. They usually always feature an economic recession, usually deep ones, which can take several years to emerge out of before conditions gradually improve.
Such will be the case with the 2010-2012 opposition of Jupiter/Saturn. During these oppositions expect business to suffer as the generational transition continues over the course of Jupiter's opposition to Saturn.
Because of the poor economic climate some people may resort towards using questionable tactics to get ahead and make money.
Such will be the case with the 2010-2012 opposition of Jupiter/Saturn. During these oppositions expect business to suffer as the generational transition continues over the course of Jupiter's opposition to Saturn.
Because of the poor economic climate some people may resort towards using questionable tactics to get ahead and make money.
With the business climate contracted, some will seek shortcuts and dubious actions to get ahead while others continue to face competition with limited resources.
The desired expansion of business is fraught with frustration after frustration, red-tape, barriers, blocks, delays, and legal problems. Rising defaults & bankruptcies increase as a result of past mismanagement of resources and corruption with credit conditions tighter than normal.
The desired expansion of business is fraught with frustration after frustration, red-tape, barriers, blocks, delays, and legal problems. Rising defaults & bankruptcies increase as a result of past mismanagement of resources and corruption with credit conditions tighter than normal.
It is an unfavorable time to expand business concerns, or to take chances because of the uncertainty of finances, contracts and commitments from others, who tend to be unreliable due to limited resources, confusion, lack of planning, procrastination, and a general lack of honesty and fair play.
The crush of competition, fighting for a limited amount of customers, with resources lacking can further cause disruptions in professional and personal lives to the point of some leaving entire industries for good.
The crush of competition, fighting for a limited amount of customers, with resources lacking can further cause disruptions in professional and personal lives to the point of some leaving entire industries for good.
This will continue under the inclinations of Jupiter's opposition to Saturn.
It is a poor time to seek favors from others, as the business climate of 2010-2012 will continue to suffer from immense commercial & residential real estate losses, double-digit unemployment, and a general sense of malaise from an aging generational establishment.
Those seeing support from official institutions, such as federal, state, and local agencies, may find themselves frustrated with the lack of help usually expected from these offices.
It is a poor time to seek favors from others, as the business climate of 2010-2012 will continue to suffer from immense commercial & residential real estate losses, double-digit unemployment, and a general sense of malaise from an aging generational establishment.
Those seeing support from official institutions, such as federal, state, and local agencies, may find themselves frustrated with the lack of help usually expected from these offices.
This is because those in positions of power are either on their way out the door themselves, or have become cold and unsympathetic to those in need; preferring instead to look out only for themselves.
While this takes place, many people will see their own personal and professional responsibilities increase; while wages continue to stagnate from the lack of resources, which will be limited because of prior economic corruption and waste.
The opposition of Jupiter to Saturn can test what the true balance really is between being optimistic, and being pessimistic. Much will depend on the ability of the individual to be creative, and patient, while the opposition is underway.
It will not last forever, so those who are looking for opportunities during this time should be aware to remain cautiously optimistic, while clearly seeing what the true barriers to success will be during 2010 to 2012.
Most, if not all of the barriers are those held by people with cold, conservative and uncompromising attitudes. Hypocrisy and distorted moral values is also common under a Jupiter/Saturn opposition.
What used to make sense, and would be expected as normal modes of operation and procedures is perverted by the unyielding attitudes of uncompromising people.
Many of these people will be older, and due to the transit of Saturn, will exhibit rigid views without realizing that in a short period of time after the opposition has waned and passed; that they themselves will receive similar treatment from the very people whom they denied opportunities and relief.
The conflicts which come about during 2010-2012 under the Jupiter/Saturn opposition will tend towards ethics; morals; joint finances, family responsibilities, friendships, associations, romantic relationships, partnerships and corporate struggles that will test the reliability and strength of relationships in general.
The Jupiter/Saturn opposition will begin to weaken in February 2012, and by the end of March 2012, will move out of orb.
By this time, those who were frustrated, or blocked from advancement will find an easier go of things gradually in 2012 as Saturn moves out of opposition to the outer planets, and brings a sense of relief by 2013.
However, memories will be still fresh from the red tape, delays, and barriers put up by those with unyielding attitudes. This will come back to haunt those who denied others the potential for advancement during the 2010s, and leads into the coming Uranus/Pluto squares of the 2010s.
The relief in 2013 doesn't last long due to Jupiter's motion out of tropical Gemini, and into tropical Cancer where Jupiter will transit to oppose Pluto in Capricorn - initiating yet another chapter of the Cardinal Crisis Years.
- Jupiter Oppose Pluto -
August 2013 - June 2014
Cancer/Capricorn
Part of the Cardinal Grand Cross of April 2014
Forced Reforms, Business Clash, Coercions, International Tensions & Revolts
By the end of June 2013, transiting Jupiter will have moved out of tropical Gemini, and enter Cancer. Making a nice trine to transiting Saturn in Scorpio by early July, it would appear that the struggles, and tensions of the previous two-and-a-half years are over.
However, this is not so according to the world transits. This is simply a breather with more to come by the following month of August, when transiting Mars conjoins Jupiter in Cancer and oppose Pluto in Capricorn.
Jupiter's opposition to Pluto is a time of what appears to be continued stresses around finances, economics, and what policies should be enacted, and which should not.
There can be tendencies to push things too quickly, to overreach with big plans, and grandiose ideas without firming up foundations.
During the period of the Jupiter-Pluto opposition, it is important to take time to make certain that the practical matters of business and personal life are attended to by balancing one's sense of organization against one's desire to push out and expand.
Under this influence come attempts to force, to coerce, or to remake others - claiming one's desires to reform other while not paying attention to one's own need for it personally. This is also extended internationally.
A fine balance must be taken under a Jupiter-Pluto opposition before initiating wide reforms carelessly without prior deep thought, insight, and understanding of the long-term consequences.
Jupiter is in Cancer - the home sign of the United States - so in 2013 and 2014, the opposition to Pluto can indicate tensions from the people towards government, or, to an administration in power at the time as well as international tensions abroad.
The areas highlighted are those around political policies, philosophical ideology, education, religion, and cultural beliefs and norms clashing against anything that appears to be autocratic in nature.
The strongest date of the opposition is in the year 2014, when transiting Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto form a Grand Cross in the cardinal signs of Aries, Libra, Cancer, and Capricorn. The peak of this grand cross is in April 2014.
Jupiter will oppose Pluto, while in square aspect to both Uranus in Aries, and Mars, retrograde in Libra by April 2014. Tensions are high and this grand cross speaks of both international and national tensions at a peak under yet another Cardinal Crisis.
Mixed with a sense of over-optimism, underneath the public feelings at this time is also impatience, and a strong lack of practical common sense that allows many to jump to conclusions - which is part of the cardinal inclinations of haste and impulse once again coming to the fore.
The sense of adventure and grandiose idealism at this time is marked by a hesitancy seen by the retrograde of Mars in Libra at this time.
There are unexpected hostile dealings with foreigners for those outside their home countries, and those overseas tend towards being unpredictable and unreliable.
Spring 2014 into summer 2014 is not a good time for overseas travel. Moreover, the diplomatic tensions are high, so diplomats may come into contact with those in foreign states those who may be difficult to contend with at this time.
Prudence, tact, and foresight is strong advised among all parties, be they individuals, groups, companies, organizations or nations.
The Grand Cross of 2014 signals a sort of "peaking" of the previous cardinal transits of 2010 and 2011 with inclinations of demanding freedom at all cost without taking on the mantle of patience, and responsibility that comes along with demands.
Before 2014, the sense of optimism fueled by the coming and going of the year 2012 when the world did not come to an end, and the inclinations of the year 2013 with a sense of new-found, but cautious optimism, is met by April 2014 with a sense that rebellion and revolt is once again on the horizon.
The international tensions at this time in 2014 will stem from former disagreements and beliefs among nations which appear to have undermined future matters by ignoring principles with empty words - saying one thing, but doing another.
This obviously leads to international clashes when trust appears to be broken between some nations. This shows in world transits of 2014. It is the year of the diplomat.
Mars' retrograde in Libra (March 1, 2014 to May 19, 2014) plays a strong role in the Cardinal Grand Cross of that year.
Wise decision-making is at a premium; so heads of state, and their diplomats should be careful not to overreach, nor to promise more than they can deliver, but to balance threats with peaceful acts, and with careful solutions via prudent diplomacy and tact.
Mars' opposition to Uranus in Aries in 2014 speaks of conflicts, and clashes among states, organizations, friends, and family who take sides on the broader issues of the times. The transit of Mars in Libra (December 7, 2013 to July 25, 2014) is a long one.
The retrograde of Mars from March to May 19, 2014 takes part during the strongest months of the Cardinal Grand Cross in April & May.
Decision-making is important here, and, with Mars declining in Libra, it is essential to have the right players in position during this time of global transits. The wrong personalities involved as "diplomats" are apt to make things that much worse simply because of their personal and political ideologies.
It is wise to remove ideological hotheads in critical positions at this time in 2014 and to replace them with calm, cool, and smart diplomats who can be trusted and relied upon to create atmospheres for leaders where positive progress can be made.
Compounding this will be a total Lunar eclipse at 25-Libra during the early morning hours of April 15, 2014 that will be visible over the Americas, the Pacific, and east Australia.
The degrees indicated by Sabian symbols say ~
- 25º Libra - "The sign of an autumn leaf brings to a pilgrim the sudden revelation of the mystery of life and death."
- 26º Libra - "An Eagle and a large White Dove Turning into each other."
My forecast is for an international conflict at this time of the Grand Cross, that continues into July 2014, before either being resolved fully, or which escalates into warfare.
The choices indicated here by Jupiter's opposition to Pluto show that successful advance diplomacy must be made prior to spring 2014, and that signs of the coming conflicts will be seen in late 2012, and early 2013.
Spring 2014 in the northern hemisphere is a tense time of international tension that should be resolved by carefully handling the energies with proper decision-making, diplomacy, and a fine balance between leadership and international cooperation.
In this way, President Theodore Roosevelt's advice to "speak softly but carry a big stick" applies very well at this time in the world. The energies of the solar year of 2014 are about the promotion of peace, calm, and wise diplomacy.
Though the ignorant may propound immediate military action; the consequences are far-reaching into the future - so leaders at this time in 2014 will need to exercise wise restraint while carefully balancing the advice of doves and hawks to come to a solution that will satisfy everyone.
Compounding the problem at this time is the fifth exact square between Uranus and Pluto which occurs in April 2014. This is part of the Global Grand Cardinal Cross that year. We will now take a look at the roles these two outer planets will play, along with their powerful inclinations.
- Uranus Square Pluto -
2011-2020 overall
Rebellions, Revolts & Revolutionary Sentiments
Aries/Capricorn
early Taurus/Capricorn
If anything defines some of the more tense cardinal energies of the 2010s, it will be the Uranus transit of Aries in global square to transiting Pluto in Capricorn.
Handling this world square will not be an easy matter after the failures of the past generation to resolve many of the outstanding issues of the end of the 20th century, and the decade of the 2000s.
By July 2011, transiting Uranus will come very close to performing a near-exact square to Pluto in Capricorn, but Uranus will station retrograde on July 9, 2011 - delaying the first exact square with Pluto for 11 more months.
Uranus and Pluto, as slow moving outer planets, will remain in orb for most of the decade of the 2010s. Their most powerful inclinations occur from 2011 to the year 2018.
The first of seven (7) exact squares begins officially on June 24, 2012 with Uranus and Pluto square at 8-Capricorn. This is the first in a series of very powerful world square aspects between both planets relative to the Earth.
The Uranus/Pluto Cardinal squares lasts, overall, from 2011 to 2020.
An unprecedented Seven (7) exact squares occur in just three (3) years: 2012 to 2015
(*) = significant dates
1. June 24, 2012 – first global square at 8-degrees Aries/Capricorn
2. *September 18-19, 2012 – second square at 6-degrees Aries/Capricorn
3. May 20, 2013 – third square at 11-degrees Aries/Capricorn
4. November 1, 2013 – fourth square at 9-degrees Aries/Capricorn
5. *April 21, 2014 – fifth square at 13-degrees Aries/Capricorn
6. December 14-15, 2014 – sixth square at 12-degrees Aries/Capricorn
7. *March 16-17, 2015 – seventh global square at 15-degrees Aries/Capricorn
The last time Uranus and Pluto met in global square aspect was during the 1930s. This was a decade of reactionary, extreme right-wing politics, revolutionary socialism, rising crime, rebellions, revolts, and restrictive laws gradually reducing freedoms throughout Europe and the then-Soviet Union.
The Bank Crisis and Stock Market Crash of 1929-33 fueled the early years of the Great Depression with rising waves of petty crime and bank robberies. The resulting foreclosures of homes, businesses and family farms amid a depressed global economic system cast a dark shadow over the world.
The NYSE reaching its lowest trading point in history. Weather anomalies under the influence of Uranus in Aries led to the hottest year in U.S. history in 1933-34 with drought and dust storms raging across the American Midwest.
Meanwhile, political extremism ensued with the rise of tyrants, as Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany while in Japan, radical forms of militarism spread so much that it was being openly taught in elementary and high schools.
The revolts, rebellions and revolutionary sentiments under the Uranus/Pluto squares thus paved the way for the Second World War that followed by the end of the 1930s.
Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn revolve their squares worldwide for much of the 2010s, but the most powerful periods are between 2012 through 2015.
This is a time of great upsets within nations which have now experienced at least four to seven years in the wake of the global economic crisis.
Uranus' penchant for sudden change against Pluto's desire structure in Capricorn for a kind of transformational war that butt heads over the "kinds" of new changes to be realized and those not to be supported.
While this is happening, populations around the world seem to have had it to their chins with the constant disruptions of their lives; the losses of lifestyles over the years.
They react powerfully by demanding immediate changes without question while the forces of the status quo and old establishment refuse to yield - deciding to procrastinate even more.
Groups, organizations and individuals have become radicalized by the events since 2008. So much so, that by the time (June 2012) of the first of seven exact Uranus/Pluto square social unrest is a certainty in regions around the world.
There are increasing signs of rebellions, revolts and foreboding examples of revolutionary sentiments expressed in various nations upset with the status quo, represented by Pluto in Capricorn.
Groups, organizations and individuals have become radicalized by the events since 2008. So much so, that by the time (June 2012) of the first of seven exact Uranus/Pluto square social unrest is a certainty in regions around the world.
There are increasing signs of rebellions, revolts and foreboding examples of revolutionary sentiments expressed in various nations upset with the status quo, represented by Pluto in Capricorn.
It seems everything is on the table here: economic, social, political and religious structures are be challenged from all sides. People want change, and intend on getting it.
The headstrong inclinations of Aries, with Uranus in it's 7-year transit in this sign, squaring Pluto can indicate sudden deaths coming about unexpectedly; usually through acts of violence, and from common accidents, and unexpected large-scale disasters related to weather extremes.
Past associations, friendships and relationships can become radically changed under Uranus and Pluto's cardinal squares. It is at this time, between 2012-2015 that companies that were hanging on by a thread financially - can suddenly break and fall into bankruptcy.
The entry of Neptune into tropical Pisces in February 2012 will impress dissolution on failing companies afterward, with a slow, but gradual death into the mid-to-late 2010s.
The sudden losses associated with Uranus' transit in Aries can bring about greater financial losses than expected while corporations continue to witness power struggles as the generational transition picks up speed in the early to mid-2010s.
The revolutionary sentiments inclined by Uranus/Pluto come about as a result of the frustrations of the decade of the 2000s.
The global economic crisis, and the resulting societal effects have angered many populations who feel that their governments and representatives were not representing them, but corporate monied-interests that pilfered society's resources.
The resulting backlash featured under the Uranus/Pluto squares of the 2010s will be widespread, and quite unsettling for those involved in the mismanagement of trillions of dollars and euros over the previous decade.
Rising crime can be a problem; also fueled by the lack of resources because of the Banking Crisis of 2008-2012.
The headstrong inclinations of Aries, with Uranus in it's 7-year transit in this sign, squaring Pluto can indicate sudden deaths coming about unexpectedly; usually through acts of violence, and from common accidents, and unexpected large-scale disasters related to weather extremes.
Past associations, friendships and relationships can become radically changed under Uranus and Pluto's cardinal squares. It is at this time, between 2012-2015 that companies that were hanging on by a thread financially - can suddenly break and fall into bankruptcy.
The entry of Neptune into tropical Pisces in February 2012 will impress dissolution on failing companies afterward, with a slow, but gradual death into the mid-to-late 2010s.
The sudden losses associated with Uranus' transit in Aries can bring about greater financial losses than expected while corporations continue to witness power struggles as the generational transition picks up speed in the early to mid-2010s.
The revolutionary sentiments inclined by Uranus/Pluto come about as a result of the frustrations of the decade of the 2000s.
The global economic crisis, and the resulting societal effects have angered many populations who feel that their governments and representatives were not representing them, but corporate monied-interests that pilfered society's resources.
The resulting backlash featured under the Uranus/Pluto squares of the 2010s will be widespread, and quite unsettling for those involved in the mismanagement of trillions of dollars and euros over the previous decade.
Rising crime can be a problem; also fueled by the lack of resources because of the Banking Crisis of 2008-2012.
Hasty and impulsive actions to acquire money through illegal acts become more public as law and order seems to be failing to take hold of the rising tide of criminal acts perpetuated by career criminals let out on the streets after being released from prison, but not reformed.
State officials, under pressure financially, are forced to release thousands of prisoners in the early 2010s to relieve the system from overcrowding.
State officials, under pressure financially, are forced to release thousands of prisoners in the early 2010s to relieve the system from overcrowding.
State lawmakers all over the U.S., who say they need to save money from the devastating losses in state revenues say must release tens of thousands of convicts from prison in the 2010s, including drug addicts, thieves and violent criminals.
If there has been little reform of the system during the time of incarcerations, then obviously the lingering effects of the economic crisis that awaits convicts on the street can be a threat to public safety under the Uranus/Pluto squares.
By the spring of 2014, things become quite tense again globally with another Cardinal Cross - this time a Grand Cross configuration featuring Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto in the Signs of Libra, Cancer, Aries and Capricorn.
Grand Cross configurations in cardinal signs seek immediate release of strong, emotional pent-up energies.
If there has been little reform of the system during the time of incarcerations, then obviously the lingering effects of the economic crisis that awaits convicts on the street can be a threat to public safety under the Uranus/Pluto squares.
By the spring of 2014, things become quite tense again globally with another Cardinal Cross - this time a Grand Cross configuration featuring Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto in the Signs of Libra, Cancer, Aries and Capricorn.
Grand Cross configurations in cardinal signs seek immediate release of strong, emotional pent-up energies.
By April 2014, there is a sense among populations that they have had enough. They eject the usual explainations behind the causes of the economic crisis, which, by this time, will have persisted at various levels significantly enough to cause outright revolts in some nations.
At the same time, international tensions are sure to be high as well. There is a strong need for calm, but strong diplomacy as the Cardinal Grand Cross energies peak by April & May 2014.
Resolution of conflicts between nations can occur by utilizing cooperative stances, as well as using the carrot and stick method to bring unwilling parties to the bargaining tables to resolve differences.
The energies of Uranus Square Pluto can be violent. Accidents, and deaths are caused by haste, impulse, and the refusal to be patient, and tolerant.
Aries is the Sign of haste/impulse, while Pluto seeks general transformation, but through a gradual and steady use of the authority, forms, disciplines and structures of Capricorn.
The clashes between pre-revolutionary forces and those managing the old systems of structure can meet in the middle, but this can only be accomplished through diplomacy, understanding with all sides being flexible.
Uranus' transit in square to Pluto will undoubtedly shape much of the international climate of the 2010s to the point that presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, national leaders, CEOs, managers, and all those in executive positions will have to carefully determine how best to handle their respective leadership roles over the next 10-12 years.
It will not be easy. Those who make the effort to plan ahead, and who are flexible in their thinking, and their attitudes, will do much better than those who are not.
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