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Friday, October 5, 2012

The Cardinal Crisis Years: Jobs & The Global Economy: A Mundane Forecast 2013-2016 > World Transits Of October 2012: Saturn Enters Scorpio > Also, Jupiter's Detriment Transit In Gemini > Austerity, Europe, The United States & Future Of The World Economy > A Coming Revolution In Greece & Spain? > The Real Class Warfare Is Baby Boomer Generation Vs. Younger Americans: Hey Kids, Mom & Dad Are Screwing You > Baby Boomers: The Reason For America's Social Decline? > And Featuring: What's Next: Generation X


The Cardinal Crisis
Uranus Square Pluto: A Spanish woman cries out as she bleeds from her head after she and other Spanish citizens are attacked by Spain's National police just outside the Spanish Parliament in Madrid on Tuesday, September 25, 2012. Well over 100,000 Spanish people surrounded their own parliament building calling for removal of the government as Spain readies for a new round of unpopular austerity measures in the 2013 budget. Violence flared in the center of Madrid as baton-wielding police charged people as they fired rubber bullets at demonstrators who tried to surround Spain's parliament building. Some 32+ people were injured, including several police officers and dozens of Spanish citizens were targeted after Spain's police attacked the "Surround the Parliament" demonstration against Mariano Rajoy's government. Several hundred protesters remained peacefully on Madrid's streets near the parliament building late that Tuesday night. They are demanding the resignation of the government and the king, as well as a rewrite of Spain's constitution.
Image: Susana Vera/Reuters

World Transits of October 2012:
Saturn Enters Scorpio

And,

The Cardinal Crisis Years, Jobs & The Global Economy:
A Mundane Forecast
2013-2016

Also,

Jupiter's Detriment Transit In Gemini


Plus,

Austerity, Europe, The United States & Future Of The World Economy

Including,

A Coming Revolution In Greece & Spain?
Madrid, Spain - September 2012

And,

The Real Class Warfare Is Baby Boomers Vs. Younger Americans: 
Hey Kids, Mom & Dad Are Screwing You

Also,

Baby Boomers: Reason For America's Social Decline?

Featuring,

What's Next:
Generation X

Global Astrology
By
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

Peace & Goodwill To All Humanity

Praise & Glory Be To Ineffable, IAO, The Immortal God

"When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you will surely die,' and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. 
"But, if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin - but you will have saved yourself." ~ Ezekiel 33:8-9

As the cardinal crisis transits continue to increase their frequencies on the Earth, this edition of Global Astrology focuses on the ongoing generational and class warfare that is part and parcel of what is truly happening worldwide.

I continue to warn those of their wickedness in this world; for these evil acts have consequences for their souls.

We all are being watched by the Immortal God - very carefully - from above - as always.

This edition focuses in-depth on how world transits impact our world. We focus in this edition on the global economies of scale of many nations.

You will find this edition of Global Astrology packed with astrological information I hope will be helpful and of use to the world public at large.

Back in 2006, I based my advance forecasts on the global economic crisis solely on what I saw by means of astrological world transits.

One of the major problems for those who are ignorant of serious Astrology is that they claim 'astrology' is not real. This comes from a 'pop culture' view of the divine science. Many are unable to even clearly explain just what they mean when they use the term 'Astro-logy.'

This is especially true for those who claim 'scientific knowledge' since all conventional disciplines attempt to 'predict' in one form or another; yet often do so using faulty methods, the best of which are statistical and the worst - that of guessing.

Simply put, Astrology is a priori-based science that deals with a body of facts and truths that are systematically arranged to show the operations of the general planetary/stellar laws that influence natural life and human affairs on Earth. These are the laws of physics.

By use of the highest form of mathematics - variable mathematics - the systematic astrological  knowledge built up over many centuries was gained by direct observation of planetary/stellar laws that operate in and on our physical world.

This is seen most easily by the forecasting of world events by means of stellar observations, as well as the forecasting of climate and weather - and the effects on the physical world.

The so-called 'rationalists' and 'nonbelievers' of Astrology weakly argue that heavenly bodies cannot influence human affairs without even noticing the silliness of that statement. 

It is well known, for instance, that the Sun, Moon and Earth are heavenly bodies that certainly have 'influenced human affairs' since the dawn of time itself.

For there would be no Time without the revolutions and influences of the heavenly bodies, according to the words of Plato, himself a very rational man.

One of the reasons why today's version of 'rationalists' and 'nonbelievers' are unable to forecast is because they are irrational. They do not believe the very laws of physics that underpins the foundation of the science of Astrology. That is why they fail. 

But facts do not cease to exist because they choose to ignore them.

On this decade & global events - 

As always, I wish that I could be more positive; however, for years I continued to warn about the signs I saw astrologically as they related to economics, finance, the climate, social life and geopolitics.

The declining global conditions of the Twenty-Tens reflects what amounts to a major generational dysfunction that has led to decline in many sectors of life worldwide. That's really what it all comes down to in the final analysis.

The global economic crisis -  a deadly mix of debt-forced deflationary/inflationary spirals - sees worsening levels of poverty among populations and their nations weighed down by sovereign debt by a corrupted generational establishment that should receive exacting punishment for the crimes they have – and continue to – commit.

My forecast for the years 2013 through 2016 is not favorable, though again, I wish that it were not so. But, the facts of the mundane matter as I see them are that many nations are now entering the Great Depression years of the early 21st Century.

Despite who wins the next U.S. presidential election - know that by this time next year, in 2013, we will officially be in a great economic depression.

In brief, my rather gloomy world forecast:

Global double-digit unemployment worsens, leading into Great Depression
Trade Drought Fosters Export Glut
Climate/Weather Conditions To Worsen
An overheated Chinese economy leads to inflation with China's 'hard economic landing'

Corporations Cut Back Amid Major Business Slowdown
Stock Markets To See Steep Earnings Slide early in 2013
Continued disintegration of the European Union & the Euro currency

Deflation Leads to Inflation By mid-Twenty-Tens
Larger mass demonstrations worldwide demanding change of status quo
Hue-and-cry protests in many nations & widespread revolutionary sentiments 

Multiple investigations of massive banking corruption
Increased social stresses & geopolitical upsets in various nations
Food price shocks, hunger & famine

At this time, it is my mundane advice for anyone reading this to be calm, cool and collected, but also to think ahead and see that the next several years will require common sense, teamwork, prudence and preparation.

Times are changing and world transits confirm my forecasts that there is a rough ride into the middle years of this decade. Things are about to go from bad to worse. That is the truth as I see it. I will not mislead anyone.

There are things we all can do to make things better, but it will also require telling the truth and facing those who have wrought the decline and distress upon the nations of the world.

The climate and weather events in the second half of 2012 will continue to make world news with powerful storms affecting millions of people.

So we must not turn away from the needy, but rather help one another. The transits of 2012-2013 show a great and widespread need for compassion, understanding, love and for extending helping hands to those in need.

We also must not allow those who have caused these crimes to get away Scott-free. Indeed, they all must be chased down, caught, bound, tried and then punished fully for their evil acts.

Back in 2006 and even after the 2008 economic crisis, I was ridiculed by economists who not only laughed at astrological forecasting, but told me that there would be no economic recession. I asked them by what measure did they use to say that there would always be happy days? 

Quite the contrary to my astrological global economic forecast, even after the economic crisis of 2007 and 2008, these economists said an economic recovery was taking place in 2009 and 2010. They said that the 'markets' would work magic on their own and that a 'recovery' was ongoing.

Yet, repeatedly, I used my measure -  the science of advanced astrology - and I saw no 'recovery' whatsoever in my astrological analysis of the global economic situation.


In my mundane view, the economic, societal and geopolitical effects will be very painful in that the outgoing boomer establishment and their aged oligarchic parents have wholly ruined public and private institutions to the tune of untold wealth of the many that has been transferred to the few who are not a bright as they like to think they are.

I have been warning people for years to prepare for what amounts to an economic depression of global scale. It may have felt to others that I was simply doing nothing but offering ‘doom and gloom’ however, my mundane advice was and continues to be based on the rock-solid principles of mundane astrology.

In this edition of Global Astrology, we will examine the fallacies of the baby boomer generational establishment and the dire effects that their narcissist, corrupt, greedy, criminal and insane ‘leadership’ that has led to the demise of the American and global economy.

I also remind all that we have the power within ourselves to make the world a better place than it is now. Remember that it is within our power to fight against the dark forces that weigh the world down in ignorance, hate, evil and greed. The transits of the universe will work with you - if you know how to work with it.


In this edition of Global Astrology, we take a look at the World Transits of October 2012 as Saturn Enters Scorpio Jupiter's Detriment In Gemini.

We also explore The Cardinal Crisis Years, Jobs & The Global Economy - A Mundane Forecast: 2013-2016.

Also in this edition, Austerity, Europe, The United States & Future Of The World Economy.

The dire events in Europe are examined in A Coming Revolution In Greece & Spain?

And in this edition, The Real Class Warfare Is Baby Boomers Vs. Younger Americans: Hey Kids, Mom & Dad Are Screwing You.

Featuring, The Reason Behind America's Decline and What's Next: Generation X.

Recent Global Headlines









The Cardinal Crisis Years
World Transits Of October 2012:
Jupiter in Gemini
Saturn Enters Scorpio

Forecast By
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

We are now in a time of significant world change that is historic. For years I have been forecasting by means of the planets and stars what was to come in the cardinal crisis decade of the Twenty-Tens. We are now in this era of time.

The global 'change' is mainly generational, but also ideological in the sense that two generations are now passing as two new generations rise.

The era we are currently in is a 'transitional era' fraught with corruption, bloodshed, murder, cultural dysfunction, societal stress, international maladministration and evil.

The autumn months open the second half of the year 2012. The significant transits of October, November to the winter solstice of mid-December 2012 features the second act of the cardinal crisis years.

In the month of September, the world witnessed the start of the second Uranus/Pluto world square that formed its most recent exact aspect on September 19. Their third exact square will arrive 20 May 2013. 

The feature of Uranus' squares from Aries to Pluto in tropical Capricorn sees increasing societal stresses by means of economic, political and religious radicalism battling a cold-blooded aged establishment bent on maintaining the status quo.

The last time Uranus, a planet of sudden shocks, surprises and revolutionary sentiments, was in tropical Aries was in the 1930s. Uranus in this Sign signals sharp reversals of fortune that can easily shatter what was considered to be unbreakable. The early 1930s also marked the last time Uranus in Aries was square to Pluto.

By May 2013, when transiting Jupiter will be at 20-21 degrees of tropical Gemini, and still in detriment, we will also see the 9 May 2013 solar eclipse in Taurus, where Jupiter transits sidereally. This affects banks, finances, money, economics. People must remember the illusion that many big banks worldwide are solvent - when many clearly are not.

The eclipse is followed on 25 May 2013 by a lunar eclipse in Sagittarius. Both Uranus and Pluto engage in their third exact world square on 20 May 2013.

So we can expect to see sharp market shifts just as Uranus transits in the sector of stock world markets and as Pluto in Capricorn represents interest groups attempting to maintain the illusory status quo.

The 'cardinal crisis' years reflect the ever-widening differences of the outgoing establishment elite rushing to shake their stagnant ideological views from the cultural/geopolitical legacy of the late 20th century against the revolutionary sentiments and calls for change of two new generations in the early 21st century.

The key to successfully navigate autumn 2012 in the northern hemisphere and the spring season in the southern hemisphere is to create change by acts of common sense and extensive planning.

One of the problems over the last two decades has been that society has been seriously fractured by cultural/religious extremist reactionary ideology its wars that have no value other than to disrupt and destroy future progress.

Personal and professional association with partners will have either strengthened or become weaker over the two-and-one-half years Saturn has been in tropical Libra.

Now that Saturn enters Scorpio, those personal/professional relationships that have not improved must end so that one of the partners can move forward as the other stagnates.

Saturn's peregrine transit in Scorpio to the year 2015 causes a 'fixation' on matters of the mundane eighth house. More on that below.

The month of October opens during a full moon cycle that took place at 7-Aries on Sept. 29, 2012. That cardinal Aries moon featured violent inclinations that signals a need for careful entry into October - a month with a number of important world planetary ingresses and motions.

October 1 - Lunar Nodes begin the month at 26-Scorpio/26-Taurus
October 3 - Venus enters Virgo

Oct. 4 - Jupiter stations retrograde at 16-Gemini
Oct. 5 - Mercury enters Scorpio
Oct. 5 - Saturn enters Scorpio (until Sept. 2015)


Oct. 7 - Mars enters Sagittarius
Oct. 8 - Last Quarter Moon Week Begins at 15-Cancer
Oct. 11 - Saturn trines Neptune


Oct. 15 - New Moon Week Begins at 22-Libra
Oct. 22 - First Quarter Moon at 29-Capricorn


Oct. 23 - Sun enters Scorpio
Oct. 28 - Venus enters Libra
*Oct. 29 - Full Moon Week Begins at 6-Taurus
*Oct. 29 - Mercury enters Sagittarius

October 31 - Lunar Nodes end the month at 26-Scorpio/26-Taurus

Saturn enters Scorpio
Friday, Oct. 5, 2012 at 4:34 p.m., EDT
Manhattan, New York
click on horoscope to enlarge

Transiting Saturn entered tropical Scorpio on Friday, 5 October 2012, at 4:34 p.m., EST, as seen in the Saturn ingress chart above, at Manhattan, New York. 

I have covered Saturn's influences during its transit in Scorpio from October 2012 to September 2015 in several previous editions of Global Astrology. Type in 'Saturn In Scorpio' in the Global Astrology edition finder to read previous editions where I write extensively on the influence of Saturn's transit in Scorpio.

Saturn will transit among the stars of Scorpius and the constellation Ophiuchus until September 2015. A peregrine transit, Saturn's energies will be channeled by Scorpio's ruler, the lesser malefic, Mars. 

In the chart above, we can see Saturn make ingress in the Mundane Eighth House. This is a 'fixed' house that governs deaths, taxes, probate, inheritance, losses, international finance and multi-national corporations among other sectors like weather events, military and armed services with Uranus in Aries, as well as foreign affairs along with domestic and foreign debt.

Mars, on 5 October, just as Saturn enters tropical Scorpio, will be at 29-degrees Scorpio. The mundane signification of this with Mars, conjoined to the Lunar North Node in Scorpio and both positioned in Ninth Mundane House and in semi-sextile to Saturn depicts how international relations are highlighted with this ingress of Saturn.

Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, is Kronos, the planetary ruler of physical time. As Saturn leaves tropical Libra and enters Scorpio populations can easily feel the change in world atmosphere. Things cannot remain as they are as economic and social systems is seriously out of balance.


Saturn's very nature is to encourage 'economy' and 'want' and its inclinations for 'limitation' and 'restriction' are powerful when it comes to any fears of change. Taking risks, as far as the outgoing establishment is concerned, means that the obvious appearance of change is considered far worse than in keeping the status quo.

The inclinations of Saturn, which 'wanders' by peregrine transit from 0-27 degrees of Scorpio, will channel its power through Mars through to the year 2015.

This means that the transpersonal, or wider power of Saturn, is applied by Mars, the ruler of Scorpio, into the lives of others over the next three years. The best way to deal with Mars is to avoid inclinations of hostility as Mars is a violent planet that seeks to express its own nature by means of hostile acts.

Saturn's ingress into tropical Scorpio along with Mercury at the time of Saturn's ingress is significant for the climate and weather seeing that the mundane Fourth House of Gemini is ruled by Mercury.

The transits of Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune in October 2012 indicates powerful weather events where a full storm moon at 6-Taurus on Oct. 29, 2012 shows very stormy weather for the eastern U.S. coast.

We see this presaged in the Fourth House of the Manhattan, New York chart above; where 24 days before the arrival of the full storm moon in Taurus, at the time of Saturn's entry into Scorpio on Oct. 5; we find the Moon and Jupiter conjoined in the climate Sign of Gemini - another significator of stormy and very windy weather affecting millions of people.

Saturn will emerge from the far side of the Sun on Oct. 25 which further confirms dangerous weather during the full moon week of Oct. 29-Nov. 7. The ingress of Saturn into Scorpio on Oct. 5, just prior to the last quarter Moon (Oct. 8) is therefore favorable for those seeking to make significant changes in relocation with the Moon and Jupiter conjoined in stormy Gemini.

With this in mind, the early days of the month of October 2012 is best used to prepare - for the following year of 2013 will be very challenging in light of my forecast for a worldwide economic depression.

In fact, the economic depression has already started, but those in positions of power would like you to think otherwise as they work to keep the illusion of 'recovery' alive for their own vested purposes.

Know that by 2013, the entire globe will be in a powerful deflationary climate with threats of monetary inflation to come by the middle years of this decade.

With Jupiter in detriment, in tropical Gemini, the retrograde of Jupiter (Oct. 5 - Jan. 30, 2013) increases its electromagnetic influence on the Earth. The impact on the months ahead to June 2013 will be significant.

Times are about to change even more.

Let's take a closer look at Jupiter's influence during the second half of 2012 and into the first half of the year 2013.


The Cardinal Crisis
Jupiter's Detriment Transit In Gemini

Forecast By 
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

In early December 2012, the giant planet Jupiter will make its closest approach - a Perijove - to Earth. 

The next closest approach will not arrive until the year 2021-2022. Jupiter will be in opposition - called aphelion - to the Sun as the earth will pass between Jupiter and the Sun. 

Because of Jupiter's elliptical orbit, the planet will appear bigger and shine brilliantly in the December 2012 and January 2013 night skies.

The conjunction to Earth will be exact on 1-2 December 2012 in the tropical constellation of Gemini and the sidereal constellation of Taurus.

Jupiter’s closest approach to Earth will always fall on or near Jupiter's aphelion to the Sun. In 2012, Jupiter conjoins the Earth on December 1, at 15 hours Universal Time (UT) at a distance of only 378 million miles - that's 609 million kilometers - away from Earth.

Jupiter stations retrograde on October 4 and will turn direct on January 30, 2013. During this time, the planet's conjunction to the Earth can bring about a wide range of inclinations due to the proximity of it's orbit.

Viewed worldwide, Jupiter will be the brightest object in the night skies from dusk to dawn throughout December 2012 and January 2013.

By early winter 2013, populations in the northern hemisphere will see more of Jupiter because the planet will appear rising in the east just as the Sun sets in the west.

Jupiter Rises in East As Sun Sets - December 2, 2012
click on chart to enlarge

In the year 2011, Jupiter was at its closest position to the Sun, at perihelion, so Jupiter is 50 million miles closer to the Sun than when at its furthest point, or aphelion, which it will be in December 2012. 

Jupiter will be at its furthest from Earth on 19 June 2013, when Jupiter will be behind the Sun from the view of the Earth. Jupiter arrives at opposition to the Sun about every 13 months just as the Earth takes this time to travel once around the Sun relative to Jupiter's orbit. 

Detrimental Effects Of Jupiter In Gemini

What you will read here in this edition of Global Astrology will require you to concentrate.

You live in an era where the attention spans of many people have been reduced to that of a fly.

If you are able to FOCUS as you read these long, but critical entries in this edition, then you are bound to wake up. And in waking up, you will be free to actually think - critically - about the people and the world all around you.

The effects of Jupiter's Perijove - its closeness to the Earth - with Jupiter also retrograde, increases the magnetic tonality of its influence.

Transiting in tropical Gemini, but also in detriment in this Sign, expect Jupiter's many influences associated with Gemini to take place over the course mainly between October 2012 through 25 April 2013.

Overall, Jupiter transits sidereal Taurus and tropical Gemini from June 2012 to 27 June 2013. The sidereal movement of Jupiter in Taurus affects finances, economics and the economies of nation-states along with their banks and financial systems.

When Jupiter entered Gemini on June 11, 2012, it immediately made a square aspect to Neptune in Pisces. 

In mundane astrology it is well known that this kind of square allows for confusion on a wide spectrum in society. This made it difficult over the summer of 2012 in knowing just what to believe and from whom. 

Those inclinations mixed with overall world transits to produce a lack of emotional and mental clarity that is based mainly on the clouding of the mind via generational propaganda by means of radio, print, television, through advertisements and dysfunction in society at large.

The square between Jupiter in Gemini and Neptune in Pisces in the early degrees indicates frauds, cons, scams, and scandals - mainly financial - hidden, but revealed later to be of epic proportions. 

Gemini rules the mass media, so what the media has expounded on is wildly overblown by means of propaganda; while what is very important for the public to know receives little to no attention by the media. This will have been the case with the widespread corruption of the banks and the financial markets.

The mutable (releasing) inclinations of Jupiter's transit in Gemini brings about rapidly changing conditions with multiple issues to juggle all at once. 

Jupiter in Gemini effects: jack of all trades... and master of none.

The detriment shows the inability to stay disciplined on a specific course of action. 

Under Gemini, matters become diffused and hard to follow through. People will present many new ideas with promises of action and initiative but which then are not implemented. This wastes valuable time and energy in the process.

Texting and cell phone conversations while driving, or even engaging with a person physically in front of you are all inclined under Jupiter's detriment in Gemini.

In reality, only few talented people are able to multi-task effectively. 

Yet, in our technological-congested society it is well known that most people are not able to concentrate and complete the most simple tasks fully while attempting to multi-task.


After Jupiter's passage through tropical Gemini is complete by late June 2013, most people will discover, to their chagrin, that few projects were actually finished over the previous year of 2012.

One of the effects of Jupiter's detrimental transit in Gemini is that most people are unable to stay focused on what is important. During the year from June 2012 to June 2013, what many people will notice about others who are affected is that they confuse talking with working. 

Inconsequential discussions consume a lot of time with little actual progress made. Numerous short trips are often made to multiple locations - consuming more time than necessary.

Scientific studies show that the brains of most people do not perform well when they are faced with more than a single complex task at a time. 


What actually is observed is that the brain switches back and forth between tasks much like that of an inexperienced juggler. This almost always results in confusion and the slowing down of the brain. 

 Not only does multi-tasking impede mental clarity; it also makes people much less efficient.

And that is exactly what occurs under the climate of Jupiter's detriment transit in tropical Gemini. If one looks and observes people in society under this atmosphere, you can easily see this to be true.

The keys to protecting oneself from this under Jupiter's detriment is to focus. 

Once you begin a project, set a predetermined point where you will stop. There is no need to finish the entire task before you can feel accomplishment. Once you have reached your point for the day, then switch gears and relax.

By breaking down tasks into easy small ones you can finish, you will then be able to set up those tasks that are directly connected to what you need to complete but in smaller chunks. 

Allow time to give your brain a break and do something that is different than you have been doing without giving in to the detriment climate of doing too many things at the same time while you are out.

Since the last decade of the 2000s, I noticed that each year brought about a lack of concentration by many people as Jupiter neared to square Neptune. 

The best way to cure the negative octaves of the inclinations of Jupiter and Neptune is to allow yourself the time to gain peace of mind.

Distractions from others - usually by means of communication devices (Gemini) = another form of addiction - causes disruptions that confuse, cloud and clog the ability to concentrate and think clearly.

It is well known by educators that distraction and interruptions are the number one causes of failure to learn and retain information and knowledge.


This lack of concentration often results in some saying that another is 'long-winded,' but what is really happening is that those people are unable to concentrate. They have been poisoned by the distracted world around them so they are unable to focus. 

Short attention spans found in adults are always a malady of the mind that can be cured, but the person must first be able to see this truth.

 Reflection, to take time out to think clearly cures the effects of Jupiter's detriment transit in Gemini as well as the negative octave effects of Neptune's transit in Pisces.

Treat cell phones, texting and social media technologies as tools; as you leave devices behind as you walk and enjoy nature helps. Spending 'get real' time with yourself and others also helps to remove addiction to technological devices that interrupt, disrupt and distract.

This allows for the mind to clear so that you are able to concentrate on more important matters which require critical thinking and your keen attention. Your mind is a terrible thing to waste.

'Funny Money' Business In High Places?

By 
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

Neptune in Pisces shows 'nebulous forces' at work by means of Pisces' negative octave. This can give way to clouded thoughts, distractions and short attention spans that can make one victim to insidious advertisements, sitcoms and all manner of mass media-directed propaganda and lies.

Both planets, Jupiter and Neptune, have been operating out of a 13-year phase that started in May 2009 but was felt the year before as it approached.

That was when highly suspect and very unusual national & international emergency fiscal and monetary stimulus helped to re-inflate chosen Wall Street investment banks after the financial crisis of the summer of 2007 followed by the crushing economic emergency of autumn 2008. 

The mystery of the fiscal emergencies of 2007 and especially 2008 continue to interest those who want to know the true causes of the economic crisis.

In a letter to Congress from then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo dated 23 April 2009, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke was mentioned along with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in allegations of fraud concerning the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America. 

Cuomo's letter alleged that the extent of the financial losses at Merrill Lynch were not disclosed to Bank of America by Bernanke and Paulson. 


When Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis told Paulson that Bank of America was not going to go through with the merger and would invoke the "Materially Adverse Change" (MAC) clause, Paulson reportedly freaked out and immediately called Lewis to a face-to-face meeting in Washington D.C. 

At the meeting, which allegedly took place on 21 December 2008, Paulson told Lewis that he and the entire Bank of America board would be replaced if they invoked the MAC clause. 

Lewis was also told by Paulson not to reveal the extent of the huge losses to shareholders. Paulson stated to Cuomo's office that he was directed by Ben Bernanke to threaten Lewis in this manner. More on Bernanke and the Federal Reserve further in this edition of Global Astrology.

October 1, 2008 - a month before the presidential general election, a fiscal 'emergency meeting' was held at the White House by then lame duck President George W. Bush, seen here sitting between eventual winner Barack Obama and his rival John McCain.

The too-big-too-fail banks and the markets then became addicted to the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve's quantitative drug easing with expectations of an immediate 'rescue' each and every time prices decline anywhere toward bear market territory. Can you still believe the illusion that the Dow Jones Index - in this economy - hovers above 13,000 points? 

The markets have been falsely pumped up and betting is on a drop by buying shares. At 13,000 it is unsustainable. Simply speaking the market has been propped up by big trading houses and the Federal Reserve itself.

Think of it. In the last four years since 31 December 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average went from 8,776 to over 13,000. And, is it mere coincidence that the world's central banks have pumped nearly $7 trillion into the stock markets?

Stay with this line of common sense. Now, in most recessions and economic downturns, central banks try to strengthen the economy by lowering interest rates. But when times are so bad that banks won’t lend money and/or borrowers will not borrow - then that means lowering interest rates simply does not work.

The central banks have followed the lowering of interest rates to near zero along with a policy of flooding the world with cheap money - to hold up the too-big-too-fail insolvent banks.

Reggie Middleton of BoomBustblog.com says "insolvent institutions need to fail," but they are being propped up with "unlimited" printed money, "We're going to end up starting from scratch anyway," he says.

"Either you believe in the magic of the Fed or the math of the real world. Magic simply doesn't work." 

The only thing that is really being accomplished, according to Middleton - is the "destruction of the economy." Join Greg Hunter of USA Watchdog.com as he interviews American investor Reggie Middleton.


And To quote the New York Times from Summer 2012

“... in those circumstances, central banks turn to what economists call 'quantitative easing’ - unorthodox methods of pumping money into an economy and working to lower the long-term interest rates that central bankers do not usually control.

 

"The most usual approach is large-scale purchases of debt. The effect is the same as printing money in vast quantities, but without ever turning on the printing presses. The Fed buys government or other bonds and writes down that it has done so - what is called 'expanding the balance sheet.'

Wall Street's junkies and their banker addicts have been out in force desiring ever more from the government and international central banks. These people expect the poor and Middle Class to simply accept "austerity" as these wannabe oligarchs and elite plutocrats steal more and more as they give less and less to society.

And, as with any addiction, every succeeding fix has less of an impact than the one before.


One of the most famous examples in mundane astrology when it comes to finances, economics and markets was the Jupiter transit in Gemini between June 1929 to June 1930 - the year of the beginning of the Great Depression. 

The markets, under Jupiter's detriment in Gemini, reflected the 'highs and lows' of the markets during that time as the era of 'The Roaring Twenties' came to a sudden and crashing end in 1929. 

It is well known in mundane astrology that planets that station retrograde can also bring about reversals in fortunes and trends. Some retrogrades, depending on the planet involved and the Sign it posits relative to the Earth, can work out to the advantage of some; while working to the disadvantage of others. 

Consider that transiting Jupiter turns retrograde on October 5, 1929. This was less than three weeks before the Crash of 1929 began on 'Black Thursday,' 24 October 1929. 


On that fateful day, Mars was in Scorpio conjoined to the South Lunar Node opposed to Chiron in Taurus conjoined to the North Lunar Node - with Jupiter, retrograde, in reversal mode and in detriment, in Gemini.

 Wall Street was said to have hit bottom on 13 November 1929, when Jupiter returned to the Gemini degree it was at on 3 September 1929. 

In our era, Jupiter stations retrograde on 4 October 2012 at 16-degrees tropical Gemini - this is exactly where Jupiter stationed retrograde back in October 1929.

In the tropical Mundane Third House of Gemini, Jupiter also affects sectors like economics and finance, but also commerce, trade, communications, sports organizations, transportation, the movement of materials/products; the education system and the military.

Sectors influenced are worldwide with impact on foreign affairs, imports, long distance travel, the legal and court system, universities and religious sentiments. Jupiter and Saturn are the primary business planets in advanced astrology. Both Jupiter and Saturn define the overall economic and market cycles. 

Jupiter wants growth, but Saturn contracts and limits by forming blocks and barriers that can result from caution and pessimism. Saturn desires to conserve and take things slow; while Jupiter seeks to get on with things and to expand.

The problem with Jupiter in detriment is the issue of too much growth, too fast. It is of the kind that can be impulsive, leading to exacerbate what is already in trouble because of the lack of forethought in how to channel expectations and promises properly. 

This can lead to conditions that are excessive thus bringing about sudden acts of capriciousness and panic. The energies of tropical Gemini depicts 'duality' in society by means of being always in motion. Jupiter's position in tropical Gemini is in detriment because here, in this Sign for a year, Jupiter is dysfunctional. 

Gemini can operate in the mundane world by means of the diluted circulation of information in all its forms: idle talk, the diffusion and inflation of products; disruptions of services and wasting of valuable time by means of short attention spans with impulsive movements of people to and fro. 

The main effect of Jupiter's detriment in Gemini will also be in communication, the use of information and misinformation and propaganda - used and misused by interest groups, power brokers and others to lead people astray and/or to intentionally misinterpret and warp data to the general public. 

Large scale issues of critical important under Jupiter's detriment transit in Gemini will tend to be in a constant state of flux because Gemini's changeable inclinations makes it much more challenging to decide whom to trust and to follow.

We can observe this in the growing crisis in global trade for instance; with major declines in exports among competing nations. This is quite typical of Jupiter's detriment transit in Gemini.

Consider the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) - the main index of trade overseas between nations by freight measure that shows the health of global trade.

In searches online, you will see Jupiter's detriment in action by means of those who claim that the BDI has run its course of usefulness, but the truth is that the Baltic Dry Index continues to show how the global economic crisis is worsening going into 2013. I forecasted this over two years ago here on Global Astrology.

The misinformation around the BDI is used by those who try to hide the truth of how international trade continues to shrink precipitously. This is common behavior with Jupiter in detriment in Gemini.

As Jupiter in Gemini will incline toward a wealth of information with conflicting data - one has to search for the truth through a clutter of misinformation.

Here's the truth on the BDI -

Falling Freight Trade Puts Shipping in Disarray

By Nizam Ahmed

September 30, 2012 - A falling freight rate due to an ongoing slowdown in Europe has put shipping trade in disarray across Asia including Bangladesh, which has a tiny fleet of private and state-owned merchant vessels engaged in international trade, industry sources said on Friday.

The freight rate has been falling over the past several years when costs for bunkering, port dues, wages for crew etc have been rising up putting the shipping industry in dire straits.

"A slowdown in Europe has reduced imports to the continent drastically, putting the shipping companies in Asia in disarray," Syed Amirul Haque, managing director of the Chittagong-based Seacom Shipping Lines Limited, told the FE.

"There is no chance of improvement unless Europe rebounds," Mr Haque, a former director of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said. 

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI), that scales freight rates, was 744 on Friday against 1100 on average in 2008. BDI is issued daily by the London-based Baltic Exchange, that makes "assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea". 

With the fall in freight charge, rising costs of other expenses including port dues, expenses of shipping agents, crew wages etc, are also compelling the ship owners to switch over to other business abandoning ships, industry sources said.

There are 22 private shipping companies having some 70 vessels and the state-owned Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) owns some 13 other decades-old vessels engaged in international trade.

All of them together handle a part of Bangladesh external trade of some 45 million tonnes a year. The total cargoes handled annually include only 5.0 million tonnes of export cargo, according to data of the country's main Chittagong port that handles some 90 per cent of the country's external trade.

Besides the bulk cargoes, some nearly 1.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent containers) are handled a year at the Chittagong port where nearly 2,500 ships call a year.

Most of these ships shuttle between Chittagong and trans-shipment-points in Singapore, Colombo and Kalang ports, industry sources said.

The private ship owners now face a grim struggle in the wake of falling freight charges, while the BSC has been facing huge losses due to overhead expenses and gross mismanagement.

The grim outlook for Asia's shipping market will likely carry over next year as lower freight rates, narrowing cash flow and limited access to liquidity continue to plague the sector, according to Singapore News. 

Experts at the Marine Money Conference in Singapore on September 25 said a potential upturn could only be seen by second half of 2013.

The shipping market's deterioration has not spared First Ship Lease Trust, which leases container ships, tankers, and dry bulk carriers to marine firms.

In Bangladesh due to lower import of food grains and luxury items, the rate of import growth in the country fell drastically in the first month of the current fiscal year (FY) 2011-12 over that of the same period in the previous fiscal.

Recent fall in imports has also reduced business of the ships shuttling between Bangladesh ports and trans-shipment points, shippers said.

The import growth rate came down to 1.65 per cent in the FY '12 from 33.02 per cent in the previous fiscal, according to data of the Bangladesh Bank.

The growth of export was also sluggish in the last fiscal year due to slowdown in Europe. However, following four months of negative growth in a row, the country's export earnings witnessed a positive trend in July with over 4.0 per cent growth.

The overall export earnings rose to $ 2.439 billion in July, the first month of the current fiscal year (FY 2012-13) from $ 2.339 billion in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, according to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) statistics.

Total exports for the latest fiscal year rose 5.9 per cent to $24.3 billion, falling short of the government's target of $26.5 billion as demand for garments from key Western markets waned.

The exports in the last FY included garments exports worth $19 billion, with a growth of some 6.6 per cent.

However, the plight of the ship owners has apparently delighted the ship-breakers, who dismantle vessels for steel recycling, mainly in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China.

So, we can see here how the Baltic Dry Index has been showing large freight slowdowns for years since the global economic crisis has begin. The pressure though, with Jupiter in Gemini, is for some to 'expand' but as with all detriments, this desire is warped thinking. 

This is because of the nature of the detriment. Decisions made when a major business planet like Jupiter is in detriment, in a Sign like Gemini, returns to backfire badly on those pushing for stronger export numbers. 

The BDI reflects the truth of the matter, but those who want to 'misinterpret' the information for their own interests falsely believe that facts will change if they ignore them. 

Big Fiscal, Social & Geopolitical Troubles in 2013 & Beyond

Forecast By 
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

My vision of the future from the effects of the outgoing establishment is not pretty. With Jupiter in detriment in Gemini as Uranus squares Pluto and Saturn enters Scorpio the signs are clear.

The structures of many parts of the world have been corrupted and are in decline. This requires fresh and hopeful visionaries, but not under the generational establishment that helped to bring the decline about.

The baby boomer generation - now the outgoing establishment - that caused many of the problems we face in society are surely dysfunctional.

We are in serious need of new positive leadership with a healthy framework to build out from the poisonous cultural, ideological and geopolitical wars of the past 43 years.

All of the planetary inclinations that are in play during the Twenty-Ten clearly show that reform has long been overdue. The decade of the 2000s under the baby boomer establishment was the worst decade in modern history for America's middle class. 

According to a report from the Pew Research Center, the median household income for America’s middle class fell from $72,956 in 2001 to $69,487 in 2010.

While all sectors of society experienced a decline in income, the middle class is the only sector - the biggest one - that also got smaller. The middle class shrank in size from 61 per cent of adults in 1971 to 51 per cent in 2011.

The cardinal crisis years are really the result of decades of very poor management by two generations, that of the baby boomers and their parents. The lack of vision for the future; coupled with excesses all around featuring all manner of sin surely bodes ill for the near-term future.

And with Saturn to transit Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn from 2012 to the year 2020 as Neptune works to dissolve what remains of the late 20th Century we could be in for a rough decade if the systemic and criminal activity continues to works its declining powers on society.

Financial markets are easily more at risk to extreme volatility with sharp price moves as Jupiter expands over-optimistic sentiments. 

Saturn's influences are those of 'want' and 'economy' with limitations, isolation and pessimism. Peregrine during its transit through most of tropical Scorpio from October 2012 to September 2015, the wanderings of Saturn channels its energies through Mars, the ruler of Scorpio. 

Jupiter's transit through tropical Gemini to late June 2013 and then into Cancer over the second half of 2013 and into 2014 along with Neptune's transit in Pisces sees wild fluctuations in commodity prices – ranging from food, corn and the many products that are produced from corn. 

Liquids and forms of energy under Neptune, including crude oil, gas, chemicals and products and industries that fall under Neptune, such as drugs, hospitals and health care - show dire signs for the future unless important and radical reforms are undertaken.

The looming Uranus-Pluto world squares will continue to play a critical role between generations and class wars fraught with pitched battles of the status quo against the forces of change. 

All of these planetary forces also impact geophysical effects like as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. Climate conditions will be extreme in the last 3-4 years of solar-forced global warming. 

The climate extremes - from drought and extreme heat waves; to heavier than normal precipitation with severe storms causing sudden floods along with high gusting winds to thick fogs - all are a feature of the cardinal crisis years of this decade.

Prelude:
Major Slowdown Ahead In 2013

My astrological analysis shows a major business and corporate slowdown ahead in 2013.

The combination of planetary transits amid economic trends clearly indicates that tens of thousands of people will be laid off in light of the global economic slowdown. Moreover, additional municipalities will be forced to file for bankruptcy as pension demands drain city coffers.

Jupiter's detriment in Gemini can easily 'warp' sectors ruled under Gemini such as:

All sectors related to communications and technology; such as enterprise technology and mobile devices like iPods and iPads. 

A big business slowdown is just ahead for traditional Information Technology corporations and personal-computer makers. I am forecasting significant declines in personal computer demand worldwide. 

Disruptions of computer networks and servers that require constant exponential growth to handle burgeoning bandwidth needs. Companies that depend on sales of personal computers will be squeezed by falling demand in the mobile era, according to my forecast.

I expect corporate technology companies to begin to lay off tens of thousands of workers in 2013-2014. For instance, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has lost more than two-thirds of its value since 2010. HP's stock will haven fallen to nearly 40% by mid-2013. This means HP will have to fire about 35,000 of its workers.

There are international hackers formed into groups by national governments who attack the information/commerce/financial systems of other nations, such as the recent September 2012 attacks on finance infrastructure networks of banks in the United States.

Jupiter's detriment sees a need to expand and to increase sales, but the economic crisis shows overproduction and overpricing. This leads to reduced levels of absorption and thus, oversupply.

This is typical of Jupiter's position in tropical Gemini. Moreover, the overall phase of Jupiter's square Neptune in summer 2012 signaled that inflation in the medium-to-long term is a greater risk than deflation.

While the boomer establishment has been trying to not deal with the 'downside' of facing insolvency of its biggest banks and companies, what central bankers have done is to flood the world with cheap money to fight deflation.

Under Jupiter's transit in Gemini, the continuation of this experiment means that the world could easily face hyper-inflation by 2015-2016.

Another problem with Jupiter is that by means of the mundane Third House, there is simply too much information that overloads people's ability to make heads or tails of what is true and useful and what is not.

Under Jupiter's detriment in Gemini the tendency to talk too much, to gossip with much of the talk superficial and useless while wasting valuable time for the future. 

Meanwhile, big events, much of it behind the scenes  among the largest global banks can be revealed during Saturn's transit in Scorpio which wakes up the American people to the widespread and enormous amount of corporate and government corruption by the outgoing baby boomer elite establishment. 

Jupiter's transit shows this in exploiting tax shelters, subsidies and loopholes along the lines debt and murky financial transactions like those found in derivatives trading.

By the time transiting Jupiter completes its transit in tropical Gemini at the end of June 2013 and enters tropical Cancer, the markets will have felt the full effects of the previous detriment and those who mistakenly expanded with see the crushing realities of why patience is also prudence.

By the time that Jupiter makes a water trine to Saturn in the fixed Sign of Scorpio in summer 2014, the stock market will have suffered the consequences since this particular water trine is unfavorable for Wall Street while being very favorable for the common man and Main Street. 

I expect the markets to reach new lows by that time - coming out of Jupiter's Gemini 2012 detrimental effects of autumn 2012 and winter 2013 - where I forecasted a 'turning point' for the global markets and the global economies of nations toward economic depression.

The combination of the cardinal crisis transits of the Twenty-Tens as we enter the second half of 2012 and head towards the middle years of this decade can being about so breaking news with so much information that it easily can race around the world causing geopolitical disruptions.

The outer planets, as they operate in this crisis mode really can shake things up.

Global boundaries by means of debt spread as it dissolves via Jupiter and Neptune while Uranus in Aries is a shocking wildcard player that can force events.

Cold-blooded Pluto acts as the criminal kingpins - the ruler of debt - while Capricorn depicts these unyielding effect on society's structures - public and private.

Now, we delve even further to examine the cardinal crisis years, the demise of the aged global economy and its impact on populations worldwide.


The Cardinal Crisis
The Cardinal Crisis Years & The Global Economy
A Mundane Forecast:
2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016

Global Forecast By 
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci 

Let’s get down to brass tacks. 

The mundane chart you see above is a world transit chart for Spring 2014 - a Grand Cardinal Cross that means serious business.

Back in the late 1990s, I began a major mundane cycle series review of world transits into the future. That is, I cast hundreds of mundane horoscopes looking at a wide variety of issues over say, a 20-year period - from 2000 to the year 2020.

What I saw did not make me happy in the least. 

I knew the dot.com and NASDAQ crash was on the horizon as early as 1997. In astrological charts, I saw the real estate bubble coming; along with the subsequent crash and economic crisis that followed.

I issued my warnings issued on the Internet in late 2005 and early 2006 to great criticism of being a 'gloom and doom' forecaster - which I am not.

Meanwhile, economic activity in the U.S. did slow in autumn 2006, as forecasted. The investment bank financial emergency of summer 2007 came on time as well. 

Then, after this, economic activity fell further into late 2007 and then into the Economic Emergency of Autumn 2008 which continued into 2009 at a pace not seen since the Great Depression. 

 Since then, despite many economists opinions to the contrary, economic activity in the U.S. has been bouncing around up and down with help from the Federal Reserve and U.S. government stimulus but unemployment and deflating economic activity continued into 2010, 2011 and 2012.  

The U.S., according to my forecast and continued analysis remains stuck in a worsening structural contraction of its economy. Economists who continue to project on the federal budget deficit and the truth of solvency of the banking system base their assumptions on wishes of positive economic growth.

Again, the central banks are kicking the can down the road to Generation X and Generation Y - effectively forcing the debts of the Baby Boomers onto two new generations that have had little to no say in the matter.

I continue to maintain that according to my astrological projections over the medium-term, that the growth the boomer establishment wish for will not happen.

Rather, the economic contraction will continue onwards into 2013 and will significantly worsen fiscal conditions and the liquidity of banking system.

Difficult years are ahead for many populations because of corruption that has led to the decline of the economies of nations weighed down by criminal levels of sovereign and personal debt. 

There are four (4) major problems for all economies of scale:

Deflation: This is a decrease in prices of consumer goods and services connected to a contraction of credit and of money in circulation. The Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke have taken on a policy to fight deflation by inflating the money supply. This is also being done worldwide.

Inflation: The prices of consumer goods and services connected to an increase of money in circulation. This is the tool that central banks are using to not face the realities of the deflationary climate we are currently in.

Hyperinflation: This is an extreme case of inflation where for all intensive purposes currency becomes worthless.

Double-Digit Unemployment - this is actually the key to it all. The capital markets need to be liberalized to increase the velocity of money and free up credit. The only way that happens is by labor - that is jobs. The baby boomers are too old and are not the future of the world's economies. Old people don't spend money.

Young people do.

It is the young who are the future in order for the world economy to return to health. And for that to happen money must get liquid. The only way out of the global economic crisis is for the markets to be liberalized so people can get back to work.

The Saturn-Pluto Era: 1982-2020

Saturn and Pluto conjoin every 38-40 years. At present, Saturn is now in a waning aspect to Pluto from their November 1982 conjunction in tropical Libra. Their new conjunction will occur in January 2020 in Capricorn.

The features of conjunction, waxing square and waxing opposition to waning square to new conjunction in our present time is between 1982 to 2020. This was the time that Europe began to integrate itself into a monetary union by means of the Euro currency.

During the waxing opposition, that took place between August 2001 to May 2002, the United States was mired in the events of the September 11, 2001 attacks that impacted the world.

Saturn and Pluto had their waning square in 2010 as transiting Saturn in Libra squared Pluto in Capricorn. This signaled the continuation of the economic crisis and stagnation of political will to fight the international generation of bankers who have compromised the financial systems of nations.

We are now entering a time when Saturn, in topical Scorpio is in a last quarter phase to Pluto in Capricorn working toward a sextile aspect before reaching conjunction with Pluto in January 2020.

In 2012, Saturn is now in its waning phase from square to waning sextile to Pluto in 2013 before the new cycle begins in 2020. 

Saturn in Scorpio, during the waning sextile to Pluto shows that privy councils, reforms and investigations into the criminal activity on a high level will be underway.

During the waning years of the 2013-2020 Saturn Pluto cycle the breakdown of events since 1982 becomes more obvious as populations explore how the world has changed and how it is to be run in the a non-boomer establishment era.

The 1983 deal of Social Security and the Ronald Reagan tax buts for the American wealthy are what cemented wealth redistribution upwards. Taxes were shifted onto the middle class and off of the wealthy. 

Nearly every major problem directly comes from shift in American's financial health. When this happened, right after the Saturn-Pluto conjunction - health care costs started to increase significantly. 

Deficits and debt began to rise; education started to slip as the burgeoning health care costs created serious problems with Medicare/Medicaid.

In the 1980s, this rising income inequality, along with the ballooning CEO pay, continued into the 1990s and 2000s as the wealthy received ever lower tax rates that allowed executives and their minions to keep incredible levels of pay and then send it out of the country into offshore tax havens.

In the United States for instance, Richard “Dick” Cheney once famously said: “Reagan proved that “deficits don’t matter." Baby Boomer former President George W. Bush and boomer vice-president Cheney pushed hard for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, but did not try to pay for them. They pushed hard for multiple wars and did not even try to pay for those either.


They supported Medicare expansion and No Child Left Behind, and as with the rest of the boomer elite, but they simply threw the costs onto the national credit card - in effect running up huge bills for a future president and future generation to pay. 


The baby boomer establishment inherited a large national surplus. 

They then turned that into a massive deficit

They took an American budget that was on track to actually eliminate a national debt and instead the boomer elite added $5 trillion to it - in a little over eight years.


The day Barack Obama became President of the United States, he found a $1.3 trillion deficit sitting smack dab on his Oval Office desk – a little gift from the baby boomer elite establishment.

The boomers are busting the entire U.S. economy and the economies of other nations. All to serve themselves in the present by leasing BMWs and living high on the hog to feel 'rich' - of course, at the expense of all non-boomers - including their own spawn, that's their own children.

How's that for 'groovy, man?'


Moreover, the so-called 'recovery' in jobs has only benefited those above the age of 55 - the baby boomer generation, as there were no baby boomers born in the 1960s - despite boomer statistical lies to the contrary.


Moreover, the boomer generation has been weighing down their own children, who have been college students - with massive debt as well - in order to finance their own lives.

The hypocrisy of this is hard to believe to - but it is happening.

Consider this:


A record number - close to 1 in 5 American households now have student loan debt, according to a September 2012 study by the Pew Research Center. 

Overall, 19-percent of all households carried student debt in 2010. This, up from 15-percent in 2007. 

Borrowers on average owed more than $26,000+ - this is double to what they owed in 1995.


Student loan debt has the largest impact on poor and middle class Americans, who devote large chunks of their household incomes to student debt. 

The poorest fifth of all American students have debt which amounts to roughly a quarter of their entire household income; while the share is much lower for wealthier Americans:

The richest share of households is better able to pay as college costs accounted for only 3.3% of their household income. 

But, student loan debt ate up nearly a quarter of the entire earnings of the poorest fifth, the study found. 


Total student loan debt is expected to pass $1 trillion in 2012, and that will surely ruin college students’ ability to make the same easy transition into the workforce and economy that the baby boomer generation made without the crushing burden of debt.

An earlier report discovered that the growing student debt  is playing a role holding back America's recovery.


The Cardinal Crisis Middle Years:
2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016

Forecast By
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

Consider this:

Investors who hold stakes in banks and in their wealth management and financial services want lower risk; but boomer shareholders and pensioners still demand higher returns and yields despite knowing that the economy is very weak and that the markets cannot support their greed and illogical desires of immediate high rate of returns. 

Corporations and banks continue to hold more capital than they know what to do with since the boomer establishment does not care for venture opportunities they demand high returns from.

In effect, they have been standing over seeds demanding for the seedlings to grow mature right away.

This, as central banks continue to pump liquidity in the form of fiat money into the economy to keep up the illusion of a 'recovery' wishing for millions of jobs to appear out of thin air to solve what is truly double-digit unemployment.

High unemployment and weak consumer demand sees existing companies refusing to invest because of future uncertainty; while some banks, many of them run as criminal operations, generate income on customer fees and by redesign of their credit books forced by stronger regulations to rein in graft, corruption and greed. 

Large companies, including the too-big too-fail banks have been playing games as they hoard cash all the while as their books are weighed down by crap mortgage-backed securities in the untold billions that the Federal Reserve has been purchasing as they give money to insolvent banks with that mortgage crap on their balance sheets - at near zero interest.

When banks do not have enough capital reserves, they hoard cash and are unwilling or are unable to lend money. All the money supply data as of October 2012 clearly shows the same trend - that banks in the U.S. and Europe continue to be very reluctant to lend. But isn't that what banks are in business to do? 

For instance, in Europe, the European Central Bank (ECB) has taken extraordinary positions to give banks cash - offering three-year loans on very easy terms. But the ECB cannot make those very banks provide credit to consumers, or give loans to businesses who would then hire workers that would fuel job growth and create economic expansion.

The European Union, as an example of what I am saying here, has allocated €100 billion, or nearly $124 billion to recapitalize insolvent Spanish banks. But the money has not been spent because there are no mechanisms in place.

The European Banking Authority continues to encourage weak banks to rebuild their cash reserves, but many say that the agency’s requirements are not strict enough to restore confidence in the banks’ health.

The social effects of so many years of poor economic performance are “very worrisome,” said a professor of economics. “We know that societies lose their cohesion when growth is very subdued.”

It's all baby boomer establishment madness and it's all going to end very badly. 

How could it not?

This hoarding of cash is something the corporations and banks believe will save them – but it won’t – not according to world transits. 

Then, we have the U.S. Federal Reserve, whose chairman, Ben Bernanke, said on 1 October 2012 that he renewed his pledge to sustain record financial stimulus - even after the U.S. expansion gains strength, but he couldn't say when that would be.

"We expect that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economy strengthens," Bernanke said in a speech to the Economic Club of Indiana.

Federal Reserve Chairman and baby boomer Ben Bernanke
image: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

But, Bernanke says, policymakers' forecasts to hold the main interest rate near zero until at least mid-2015 "doesn't mean that we expect the economy to be weak through that year."

Bernanke's Federal Open Market Committee ( FOMC) announced on September 13, 2012 that it will buy $40 billion of mortgage debt a month in yet a third round of Quantitative Easing (QE III) until the U.S. labor market shows what Bernanke calls, "sustained improvement." 

The Committee also extended its horizon for low interest rates from a previous date of late 2014.

What this means is that Bernanke, a scholar of the Great Depression, has deployed what amounts to the most aggressive monetary policy since the Federal Reserve was founded in 1913. 

Bernanke said that five years of record-low interest rate policies, "have not led to increased inflation," and the public's expectations for price gains "remain quite stable." 

He added that Fed officials have the necessary tools to tighten when needed to prevent "inflationary pressures down the road."

In September 2012, Bernanke said he wanted stronger growth and improvement in the labor market, which he characterized as a "grave concern." 

The American economy added a paltry 96,000 jobs in August 2012. This is much less than what was forecasted by economists and was sharply down from a 141,000 increase that was reported in the mainstream media in July 2012. We are sure to hear of so-called 'good news' in the September U.S. jobs report, but it will be another statistical lie for certain.

The actual U.S. unemployment rate is closer to Great Depression levels - that's 23% - much higher than the officially reported 8-percent.

courtesy of Shadowstats.com

The Fed's third round of quantitative easing has no end date or fixed total amount. 

This is unlike the first two programs of the Fed's bond purchases. 

In the first QE in 2008, the Federal Reserve bought $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities including $175 billion of federal agency debt and $300 billion of Treasuries.

In the second round of quantitative easing in November 2010, the Fed bought $600 billion of Treasuries.

Some Federal Reserve officials disagree with the new asset purchases. 

For instance, Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, who has dissented from every single FOMC decision this year, said on Sept. 15 that he opposes new easing for mortgage-backed securities because allocating credit should be the province of fiscal authorities such as the U.S. Treasury or Congress.

Charles Plosser of the Philadelphia Fed said in a September 25 speech that more quantitative easing probably won't boost growth and may jeopardize the Fed's credibility. 

Then, James Bullard of the St. Louis Fed told CNBC in a Sept. 27, 2012 interview that policymakers should have held off on new bond buying until they had a "clearer picture of the global economy."

But Bernanke says he doesn't buy into the criticism. 

He says that complaints that Federal Reserve policies enable "bad fiscal policy by keeping interest rates very low and thereby making it cheaper for the federal government to borrow" are not persuasive, he said.

"Responsibility for fiscal policy lies squarely with the administration and the Congress," Bernanke said. "Using monetary policy to try to influence the political debate on the budget would be highly inappropriate. For what it's worth, I think the strategy would also likely be ineffective."

Now, according to some, who study what Bernanke is trying to do, we hear that ...

“ Quantitative Easting is an effective manner to manipulate the stock market higher, often on anemic volume, creating the illusion of wealth and an improving economy. And since people vote with their portfolio pocketbooks, such investors are more likely to buy stocks in such a stealth bull market environment - creating a further illusion of wealth.”

"If the economy were a patient with a brain tumor, the central banks are injecting the patient with morphine to make the patient feel better, but meanwhile, the tumor continues to grow. The price to pay for providing temporary feel good solutions without dealing with the tumor is catastrophic. And, the end result may be disastrous stock market results which is indicative of a disastrous economy.”


All astrological indicators have long since proven to me that 2013 and 2014 will be difficult economic years straight into the middle years, 2015 and 2016 - of this decade.

In the sixth year since 2007's economic slowdown and the fifth year since the economic emergency of 2008, the year 2013 will see the first true depressive economic year of the Twenty-Tens. 

The world transits of 2013 reflect anemic economic growth with declining stock values, corporate cutbacks, including financial sector lay-offs amid lowered consumer and business confidence. 

May 9, 2013 - New York
click on mundane chart to enlarge

My analysis of the spring months of 2013, the mundane sunrise chart set for New York, clearly shows tensions in the financial sector and markets.

The chart above shows Thursday, May 9, with transiting Saturn in Scorpio opposed to a stellium of planets, a collection of planets together in one Sign, the Financial Sign of Taurus.

In this mundane chart, the Second House of Finance is at 16-degrees Gemini, the degree where Jupiter had stationed retrograde back in early October 2012. 

The chart reveals that the September 13, 2012 decision by the Federal Reserve to start Quantitative Easing III was designed to forestall an expected crash of the stock market and banking system during the general election season of 2012.

Jupiter, in the chart above is located, now direct, in the Second House with tense semi-square aspects (45-degrees) to the East Point in Taurus, signifying fears of having reached the 'fiscal cliff."

The Sun, Moon, Venus, Mercury, Mars and the South Lunar Node are all posited in Taurus, prior to the market opening in New York that May day, with the Moon in last quarter cycle just before a New Moon and annular eclipse of 10 May 2013.

These transits show increasing financial pressures, not only in New York, but throughout the world's markets and arrives 10 days before the third Uranus-Pluto square on 20 May 2013.

The signs of my forecast can already be seen in early October 2012 with this report from Reuters:

Executives of U.S. small businesses have less confidence in the 2013 economic outlook than they did three months ago, weighed by uncertainty over the November elections and the so-called fiscal cliff, a new survey showed.

Vistage International, a business advisory firm, said its Vistage Confidence Index dropped to 89.0 for the July to September period, down from 92.8 during the second quarter and 105.1 in the first quarter.

The index, which stood 83.5 in the third quarter of 2011, shows the fears of the "fiscal cliff," the across-the-board spending cuts and tax raises set to take effect in the new year if Washington does not take action.

Just over half of the 1,504 CEOs surveyed said they are taking the threat of the fiscal cliff "very seriously," with another 593 taking it "somewhat seriously," Vistage said.

And 57 percent of the respondents said an expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts for those making over $250,000 per year would affect them and their business.

Over four-fifths of the executives said the $16 trillion debt burden the U.S. carries is affecting their business growth.

MORE OF THE SAME FOR 2013?

Half of the CEOs said economic conditions are largely unchanged since a year ago, and 45 percent expect next year to be about the same. 

Still, half the executives said they expected to hire new employees over the next 12 months. Only 9 percent anticipated layoffs, and two-thirds saw a likely increase in their firms' revenues.

CEOs said economic uncertainty is the most significant business issue, with 30 percent saying it was a major concern. Another 17 percent pointed to political uncertainty, and 17 percent more said that hiring, training, and retraining staff was their biggest burden.

Politics and the overall economy overshadowed the importance of credit for the executives. Only 6 percent of those surveyed said paying or accessing credit was the biggest challenge to their business.

Most firms did not expect to increase prices, and retaining and attracting new customers was the day-to-day challenge reported by the most executives.

The weak economic conditions are reflected in world transits of 2014 when the third powerful phase of the cardinal crisis years takes place during the spring of 2014. This is when the economic, social and geopolitical crisis really starts to heat up worldwide.


Grand Cardinal Cross - April 2014

click on mundane chart to enlarge

The astrological signatures of 2014 are powerful as we see in the chart above set for Wall Street, New York. The configuration of the squares shown in the red lines form what is known in astrology as a Grand Cardinal Cross - a very powerful astrological configuration.

That configuration will revolve worldwide during the spring of 2014 and will have far-reaching consequences for the remainder of this decade.

The main players: Mars in Libra, Jupiter in Cancer, Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn.

The configurations that form the Grand Cardinal Cross of 2014 are shown in the chart below in an isolated mundane diagnostic.
click on chart to enlarge

The mundane chart above shows the Grand Cardinal Cross of 2014. Below are some of the keywords of the major planetary players working in combination - at the same time - which makes these energies very powerful and dangerous.

Jupiter in Cancer opposes Pluto in Capricorn

Autocratic promotion & attempts to reform others while neglecting one's own problems; coercion in the name of ideology, religion, causing social breakdowns; fraud and deception in financial dealings; conflicts over corporate position, money; ideological and nationalistic power struggles

Jupiter in Cancer square Uranus in Aries

Financial corruption; difficulties in long journeys and with foreigners; wanting freedom without responsibility; unrealistic attitudes; eccentric, unreliable people about; impractical idealism, lack of prudence, poor organization & discipline; disturbing religious/cultural ideologies; association with cults & organizations of dubious nature; unwise financial partnerships; get-rich-quick schemes, cons, financial frauds, losses in corporate business enterprises; ill-considered investments; business failures.

Mars in Libra square Jupiter in Cancer

Narrow-minded and fanatical viewpoints; proselytizing by aggressive religious groups; inflated sense of importance; unethical business profiteering; misdirected energies; civil wars in foreign lands and trouble with foreigners; difficulties with long-distance commerce; unfavorable time to start new initiatives; physical risks lead to accidents & deaths; dangers while traveling.

Mars in Libra opposes Uranus in Aries

Drastic changes in national emergency situations; outbursts of tempers during negotiations and diplomatic sessions; emotional, physical & nervous stress reaching boiling points amid conflict and rash actions; impulsiveness, impatience cause hardships in reaching goals & objectives; difficulties in economic matters, business & corporate affairs, insurance, technology and engineering sectors; caution in use of machines, electricity, explosives, firearms; vehicles.

Mars in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn

Aggressiveness, anger, attempts to force others; danger of death in situations of gang wars, criminal street battles, in wars, revolution, natural disasters; others subject to evil domineering, dictatorial persons and organizations, criminal drug cartels, repressive governments; sexual violence and jealousies; power struggles involving money, position, political, professional and military affairs are likely.

Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn


Revolutionary sentiments with desire to overthrow existing power structures; unexpected financial losses; abrupt end to organizational ties; assassinations; people meaningful may die suddenly and unexpectedly; perilous and dangerous contacts; lives changed by large-scale forces beyond the individual's control; riots, radical groups and organizations; coups against governments; unfavorable for crowds and crowd control.


The Uranus-Pluto square revolves worldwide - lasting overall from 2012 to 2018. This cardinal synod has an amazing seven (7) exact squares between them in short span of time - a three-year period:

1. June 24, 2012 – first exact global square at 8-degrees Aries/Capricorn
2. September 19, 2012 – second exact square at 6-degrees Aries/Capricorn
3. May 20, 2013 – third exact square at 11-degrees Aries/Capricorn

4. November 1, 2013 – fourth exact square at 9-degrees Aries/Capricorn
5. April 21, 2014 – fifth exact world square at 13-degrees Aries/Capricorn
6. December 15, 2014 – sixth exact square at 12-degrees Aries/Capricorn
7. March 16-17, 2015 – seventh exact global square at 15-degrees Aries/Capricorn

Uranus' transit into tropical Aries has effects on the world-at-large through social restlessness, rebellions, sudden revolts and unexpected shocks. The Uranus/Pluto square creates an electrically-charged geopolitical and stressed global social climate for much of the Twenty-Tens.

Pluto's transit in Capricorn represents government structures, corporations, criminal organizations and radical political groups that can act out in cold-blooded methodical ways. Power struggles that result in death are common when Pluto is in unfavorable aspect.

The square from Uranus challenges existing power groups that are represented by Pluto in Capricorn. What is happening are that upsets and disturbances to the status quo are forced by Uranus' electric, sudden, and unexpected challenges that can easily cause significant breakdowns in outworn structures.

The maverick shocks from Uranus' inclinations shows that populations in many nations will have had enough of what they see as direct attacks on their lives.

Regular people group together to fight back and are quite persistent about it. Torches, hound dogs and pitch forks. Even the most hardened criminals fear an angry community seeking vigilante justice. On a national scale - it is called a revolution.



Criminal organizations and repressive governments would be wise to truly fear the minds of unified communities bent on justice. Under a Uranus-Pluto square, people easily are able to form into mass groups to protest and challenge what they see as evil power structures. Think of the end of 'Frankenstein' for a picture of what that looks like.

The frustrations come from the power of cardinal sign inclinations to 'build from scratch,' to 'begin anew' - to force the breakdown of power structures. Frustrations result by not being able to bring about significant changes fast enough to satisfy everyone.

If desire for change are stymied in any way by existing power structures then under Uranus square Pluto populations are forced to react. The frustrations encourages rebellious sentiments to expand quickly into hue-and-cries, popular mass revolts and in some cases - outright revolution. 

With Uranus square Pluto, the lives of individuals can suddenly and unexpectedly be altered by larger forces beyond individual control.


* wars, terrorist attacks, violent social disturbances
*rebellions & revolts
* inner corporate & government power struggles
* significant and sudden financial losses
* revolutionary sentiments & unexpected deaths
* break-up of long-term friendships & associations
* disturbing psychic influences
* dangerous & persons, xenophobic political parties, radical groups & organizations

How to Navigate

* adjust goals & objectives to meet new challenges
* form associations with people of common purpose
* seek new positive opportunities 
* avoid time wasters, lazy & unreliable people
* shift relationships to focus on building trust, love & respect
* acts of tolerance and use of conflict resolution techniques
* avoid pettiness, bad attitudes, rudeness
* exercise caution in extended travel 

The effects on the transits of individuals will occur mainly for those natives with positions in the cardinal signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn. The power of the transpersonal planets (Mars through Pluto) onto natal positions can bring about high levels of stress and at times, can force major adjustments to be made in one's life.

Be Emotionally & Mentally Ready for Change

This is easy to say, but hard to do for some people. The best way to start is to take time to think what it is that you want to do in this new decade. Prepare a personal/professional list of the pros & cons of choices and decisions you feel that you may have to make.

One of the inclinations of a Uranus/Pluto square is impulsiveness and hotheadedness. This can also come about by others who resist change by any means necessary.

As you can see with the context of the cardinal crisis years; the Grand Cardinal Cross of the year 2014 features wholly unfavorable configurations that affect the entire world.

By 2014, what is happening globally is that the economic, ideological, religious, social and geopolitical pressures form into an explosive brew which requires outlet of expression - as cardinal signs are prone to do.

The best way to cure these powerful cardinal transits is for calm heads to prevail, but those calm heads cannot be the same reactionary and ideological heads that have led the world into the mess it is now in. A change in establishment is necessary in order to forestall what is surely coming down the road in 2014.

All of the global craziness is a direct result of the dysfunctional generational class warfare by the outgoing baby boomer elite on the rest of the world.

The markets that have been controlled by the former 'peace and love' generation are highly restrictive, exclusive and protectionist to a major fault.

The fact of the matter is that the markets are not liberalized which is why unemployment rates are so high for anyone under the age of 55 and especially for youth - who have the highest rates of unemployment in the world.

That is why tens of millions of youth are unhappy, protesting and ready to set the streets on fire. Under the influences of the cardinal world transits - especially Uranus square Pluto - it is to be expected.

As establishment government cuts spending by means of austerity with double-digit unemployment, I expect the U.S. gross domestic product to level at just below 2-percent in 2013 despite weak attempts of stimulus to prop up the banks.


And, with rising pressure on society because of GDP-to-deficit ratios' the ever-widening economic recovery without the political will to radically reform a corrupt financial system sees a fiscal cliff just ahead. 


In Europe, the situation will go from bad to worse, according to my mundane calculations.



The 'Euro-zone' experiment has nearly reached its end-game as 2013 nears. 

From public debt to private debt to sovereign debt - the generational establishment that has been ‘kicking the can down the road’ eventually is about to see that road come to an end.  

Wait until my prior forecast on Germany's economy begins to show signs of validation. Germany depends on exports and has been one of the only European nations so far to be in a position of strength when it comes to the Euro and Germany's economy.

But not for long.

The cardinal crisis years impacts the trade that Germany depends on. That is the real strength of Germany's economy - exports. But when there is a severe economic crisis in the U.S. and China and with European nations suffering under the heavy weight of sovereign bank debt with double-digit unemployment; then you will see how the falling export number in Germany start to seriously worry German society.

Once that begins, and it really already has, then consumer demand in Germany also gets hit and Germany enters onto the long list of nations in an economic crisis.

Every single nation in the world run by the outgoing boomer establishment has been pushing the serious problems they created into the future - onto younger generations - for the sake of living in the present and keeping the status quo while everyone else suffers.

How that for 'peace' and 'love?'

Global markets need to be liberalized to get liquid. That is the answer.

By liberalizing markets, companies and entrepreneurs can then hire millions of workers because money wants to move around and be liquid.

But, for that to happen, it means the old baby boomer establishment has to be out of executive management - not running things anymore - including at corporations, the banks and in Congress - and therefore out of jobs.

That is why there is a global economic crisis with double-digit unemployment, sadness, stress, rising suicides, families suffering, riots, rising crime with companies laying off workers, failing and going bankrupt.


It is generational. The boomers need to go. It's just that time in history.

Their refusal is typical of an old-age 'Scrooge' generation - it becomes rigid, fearful, unyielding, conservative and stagnant. Consuming nearly all resources for itself, not spending money like young people do the velocity of money slows down considerably. That's why there is a credit crisis.

That's why local, regional, national and international economies are depressed. That's why business and consumer confidence is low. That's why there are no jobs. That's why many people are broke.

Me, me, me: Baby boomers don't like bicycle lanes in car-congested New York City

The 'hum-bug' generation the baby boomers have become does not add anything positive to economic growth. They are simply making things worse the longer they refuse to get out of the way.

Their markets are restrictive, slow, conservative and non-liquid. It is weighted down, uncreative and incredibly wasteful. Old people don't spend and invest money like younger people. A generation like that surely has lost any ability to inspire, to be creative, to be visionary and to lead. 

Meanwhile, China fights to cool down its overheated economy as the centrally run government attempts to prevent inflation from getting out of control. Chinese exports to other countries in the west have already slowed and is impacting China’s trading partners.

All economies of scale have struggled mightily since my forecast of the economic crisis. My forecast on China is also being validated. Corporations that thought consumer orders from countries like China, India and Brazil would save them are in for a big surprise.

For China, their efforts to rein inflation to about 5-6% means that limitations of growth in the Chinese economy are already apparent. The constraints will affect China’s trading partners into the middle years of this decade. Moreover, reduced exports from China to Europe and the U.S. points to even weaker world economic growth and export glut for China.

The volume of freight traffic in China itself is trending downward.

click on graphic to enlarge

My forecast was that the Chinese economy would slow after being overheated for years. This means that the demand for commodities will be unsustainable at China's high growth rates which their government is purposely trying to contain.

The oversupply in China I reported on here on Global Astrology in summer 2012 – an oversupply that built up during China’s heady boom years - will lead to a collapse of commodities prices - this is also a feature of a great economic depression.

The transit of Uranus in Aries in square to Pluto in Capricorn shows that even the commodity rich continents of Africa and Latin America along with their mining companies will be seriously affected by the global economic debt crisis.

This will leave many exploration projects simply unfinished. China receives its economic double-whammy – both at home and abroad.

Because of the exclusiveness of the boomer establishment and capture of market share in jobs from Generation X (1961-75) and Generation Y (1981-95) the lack of jobs and low wages means that there simply is not enough labor income.

So, there is not enough consumption. This means that companies who produce will be forced to tighten even more by laying additional workers off while increasing prices which will further depress economies of scale worldwide.

As Jupiter begins to slow to its retrograde at 16-Gemini on October 4, 2012, the world economy will have begin to begin its trek towards its nadir – or the bottom – which will occur in the year 2016.

That year, 2016, is the nadir of the worst effects of the economic depression years.

This means that if you are reading this in 2012, then there about about three-and-a-half years before we get some sign of light returning to the economies of nations, but not for all, for we still have the cardinal crisis years to contend with - leading to the cardinal climax - that takes place in the year 2020.

The U.S. economy grew much less than expected in the second quarter of 2012 while the gross domestic product (GDP) was revised lower to 1.3% - this from an earlier forecast of 1.7%.

The facts are that the truth of the corruption that led to the economic decline and double-digit unemployment along with the resulting fall in American consumer spending and the lack of bank lending for small business investment – all this combines to force down the American economy further.

The boomer executives continue to fail to forecast at all have consistently said since 2009 that the United States and thus the global economy was in recovery - when this was far, far from the truth.

These economists and boomer forecasters said that we were to have a ‘robust recovery’ in the second half of 2012 into 2013, but according to my mundane forecast that simply was not true.

And I will prove it with the following reports of late September 2012 that validates my prior economic forecasts.


More Proof The U.S. Economy Is Falling Apart?

GDP Revision A Grim Surprise

By Abram Brown 
Forbes 

September 27, 2012 - A series of new economic figures cast fresh gloom on the health of the U.S. economy. The economy grew much less than expected in the second quarter, new Labor Department estimates show.

Second quarter GDP was revised lower to 1.3% from an earlier 1.7%. (Economists believed that GDP would be revised lower to 1.6 %.)

Declining consumer spending and business investment combined to weigh mightily on economic activity.

More troubling still is what this suggests about the third quarter. Little has surfaced to point to a pick-up, meaning that it’s unlikely the economy will grow much more than before.

In short, today’s data sends “a notable red flag for U.S. growth,” says Action Economics‘ Michael Englund.

U.S. economic growth turned even more anemic after the first quarter, when GDP grew by 2%. Manufacturing, a key driver of the economy earlier in the recession, has cooled, the result of an uncertain U.S. political outlook and slowed global demand.

Caterpillar the world’s largest maker of mining and construction equipment, earlier this week said next year would likely be little better than 2012 and slashed profit forecasts for 2015. Another U.S. manufacturer, Cummins, lowered its sales outlook in July.

“The global economy has slowed,” CEO Tom Linebarger said.

What’s more, durable goods orders, a measure of factory activity, plunged last month in the largest drop in more than three years, data released by the Commerce Department this morning shows.

Orders fell 13.9%. The last time that factories slowed this much: January 2009, when the economy was in the depths of the recession.

This data point also stymied economists, who predicted that orders would fall only 5%.

Transportation equipment saw demand drop the most. Those orders declined 35%, after gaining 13% in July. Excluding transportation figures, which tend to be volatile, core orders declined 1.6%.

Economists had predicted a 0.2% increase in core orders. It adds up to “suggest restrained investment spending beyond just a short lull,” says Citi’s Steven Wieting.

Boeing‘s troubles neatly underscore the current situation. Boeing, the largest U.S. aircraft maker, received only a single order in August - down from 260 a month earlier.

”The latest durable goods report was bloodied by aircraft orders. Putting aircraft aside, though, we see a clear downward trend continuing in business capital demand,” says IHS economist Jim Dorsey.

“Businesses have become more pessimistic as we approach the fiscal cliff with no resolution in sight. But even if we avoid it, there is still China and Europe weighing on our export markets.”

Further signs of a global slowdown have come from comments made by transportation companies.

Norfolk Southern said coal shipments would hurt its earnings in the third quarter. Earlier, FedEx also warned that its profits would be less than expected.

The nature of the shipping business - thousands of miles of connections across continents - allow these corporate giants to assess the health of the world’s economy.

Concerns about the ability to avoid the fiscal cliff later this year has dampened business spending and optimism. This has left businesses little desire to ramp-up production or increase capital expenditures.




The Cardinal Crisis
Austerity, Europe, The United States & Future of the Global Economy
Uranus square Pluto: Spain's national police attacked demonstrators who ringed the Spanish parliament in Madrid on Tuesday, September 25, 2012. Over 100,000 Spanish citizens gathered for a march against austerity and poverty that they tagged, "Occupy Congress."

By
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

For years now, I have consistently forecasted that the world is living in historic times. This has more or less been true since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

However, the opportunities that were afforded the world with the end of the Cold War were squandered by a wholly narcissistic generational establishment bent on serving itself. That baby boomer generation is old, worn down and out of solutions. They have become stagnant, rigid, rude, corrupted and outright mean.

It is time for them to retire.

And, at the end of this establishment, we all can easily witness the result - economic, religious, societal and philosophical decline.

As you can see in the video above of the events taking place in Madrid, Spain and in other cities around the world, the global transits of the cardinal crisis are surely well underway as has been forecasted here on Global Astrology.

September 25, 2012 - Spanish citizens are attacked by police during the demonstration organised by Spain's "indignant" protesters crying out against a severe economic crisis brought on by a government they say has "kidnapped" democracy.
Image: Pierre-philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images

We will witness ever more mass demonstrations that will morph the sizes of riot police and even armies as the years progress.

It is only a matter of time before those responsible for the worsening world economic crisis are overwhelmed by populations and the clock is ticking. There is no turning back and as anger rises among populaces there will be no way to refuse their demands.

What anyone who has been paying close attention to the global economic crisis will notice - especially what is happening in Europe - is the debt creditor's - in the form of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC) - have been forcing nations in the European Union to destroy their own nations by paying off 'debt' accumulated in Euros after these nations gave up their own sovereign currency in 1999.

The sovereign debt repayment is basically a form of international loan-sharking tactics that demands severe cuts - called austerity measures - that have led to extreme levels of unemployment; especially for those under the age of 50 - and rising poverty - a recipe for overwhelming anger, empty stomachs, social decay and ultimately revolutionary sentiments.

Austerity
The Greek people continue to seethe in anger at austerity forced on their nation.

Just what is this 'austerity' that we keep hearing about and seeing mass demonstrations the world over?

Well, austerity is a rather simple concept. If you have ever run up credit card debt and then as a result had to cut expenses or take an additional job to pay it off then you have taken on “austerity measures.” 

 Likewise, when a government takes austerity measures, it does so by either cutting spending (services, entitlements, defense, etc.) or by increasing income (taxes, tariffs, permits, fines, etc.)

In a home situation, if in the process of taking austerity measures, the parents decide to cut their cable, cell phone plans for the kids, entertainment budget, food budget, and allowances, then the kids get upset and “riot” in response if they don’t have jobs to take care of their monetary wants on their own. 

 The more money that the kids make on their own, the less affected they’ll be by the austerity measures and the less intense their 'rioting'will be.

Likewise, when Greece cut spending, people who had government jobs, government retirements, and who were on welfare got upset and rioted. 

 People who depended on the government for all, or the majority, of their needs and wants are a very large percentage of the population in Greece, with some reports showing the number of pensioners and the number of taxpayers being roughly equal at just over 2 million apiece!

This is caused by two core issues: 

 Greece has a culture of tax evasion and Greece has a culture of depending on the government rather than preparedness and personal responsibility. The government is not only seen as providing a safety net, but also for many basic needs and wants of the general population.

It’s obviously a very complicated issue. People entered into a social contract where they were told that they would not need to save and invest and could spend most every dime they made and still be taken care of by the government. 

At this juncture in the cardinal crisis years, just before we enter 2012, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission in Brussels are slowly coming to the obvious observation that 'austerity' may be a done deal in Europe.

The cardinal crisis years are entering into a new phase in 2013-2014. We can see how things in European party politics are trending now in the second half of 2012.

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was an austerity follower of German Chancellor Angela Merkel lost his re-election bid in May 2012. He was replaced by a more willing new president François Hollande, who treads carefully not to ruffle the same French voter feathers on austerity that Sarkozy did.

 In Greece’s parliamentary elections last June, the radical left and anti-austerity Syriza Party emerged as the official opposition. The fact of the matter is this - 

That Europe, the fringe parties that see austerity and the Euro currency as threats to their own nations are rising in popularity. There is Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy. And in France, the Mélenchon party. In Greece, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn have strewn their party with xenophobic statements. 

All in all, the Uranus-Pluto square, among the other cardinal crisis transits that will be with us in the Twenty-Tens, clearly proves my prior forecasts of what was to come.


But it comes down to the fact that countries, like families, can’t spend more than they make for an extended period of time without serious negative consequences. Doing so eventually makes it necessary to restructure debt, make more, spend less, get bailed out, or go bankrupt.

This is not only the case with Greece, but with the U.S. as well. If American elected officials don’t streamline things to increase GDP and quickly get spending under control, we shouldn’t be surprised to see austerity riots in the U.S.

 To look at Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland and say, “We’re different…it can’t happen here.” Is just plain wrong. 

 Excuse me for being a little crass, but the best analogy that I have been able to come up with in the last 2 years is that in a toilet of large volume currencies, the Dollar is simply the shiniest turd that happens to stink a little less than the rest. If the Dollar doesn’t stop being a turd, it’s going to get flushed just like the rest of them.

Until then, as smaller economies around the globe implode, a portion of their wealth flees into Dollars, which props the Dollar up. It’s not that the Dollar is the best option—it’s that when all of the choices are bad, the Dollar is the least bad in comparison.

In light of Reuter’s August 10, 2012 article revealing hush-hush government meetings held with the five too-big-to-fail-banks, it is surely the time to look at the possibility that the U.S. may experience similar austerity measures imposed on parts of Europe.

Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase were advised to have a game plan in place to head off an economic collapse.

Think on this.

After all those banks did to get themselves insolvent, that is broke - and then how they were 'bailed out' in 2008-2009 - and then restricted loans and ruined the credit and lives of tens of millions of American middle class after being saved by them?

Do you think that the American public is going to let that generational elite establishment running the banks and Wall Street to simply slide off into the sunset so easily under the cardinal crisis world transits?


Despite the talks about Qunatative Easing number 3 (QE III)  being announced in Jackson Hole, Wyoming  by the Federal Reserve on September 13, 2012, the banks were allegedly told that there will be no more bailouts for them.

Essentially, the too-big-to-fails were warned they would receive no more 'free money?

The out-of-control spending of the American public's money and the corrupt lending practices of banks; along with disastrous monetary policies and trade deficits have contributed to drive American GDP down to alarming levels compared against an exploding deficit.

Since the U.S. currency is based on faith in and on the credit of the U.S. government, rather than by precious metals like gold or silver, it could easily become a reality that the Dollar loses its value rather quickly. It is already being debased by the Federal Reserve.

 As trust in U.S. solvency erodes, it brings us closer to the harsh reality of economic collapse, and with it, the budget cutting austerity measures meant to keep a sinking ship afloat.

Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain’s Waterloo has already happened and their experience can tell us what we might expect if austerity measures are imposed  on America.

Let's look at the economic disasters facing some of the countries of the European Union as well as the United States.

Greece On Verge Of Revolution

One of the hardest hit nations of sovereign-forced debt, the nation of Greece was forced to begin a series of severe austerity measures before they were granted their first Euro bailout in 2010. 

Now, in the autumn of 2012, Greece is on the verge of revolution.

In yet another example of my forecast made years ago about the rise of revolutionary sentiments against the power of international bankers and the decline of the Euro, it was reported on 4 October, 2012 Greece's Defense Ministry was stormed by hundreds of protesting dockworkers. A scene not witnessed in the modern era. 

As I have been forecasting on Global Astrology for years, Greece is on the edge of collapse and revolution after nearly three years of a European Union drama of crushing debt and forced austerity on the cradle of democracy.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said the economic crisis that envelopes Greece is so bad that "democracy itself is now imperiled," as he shockingly warned against the popular rise of a neo-Nazi party in his country.

Worried about revolution: Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras

"Greek democracy stands before what is perhaps its greatest challenge," he told the German newspaper Handelsblatt in an interview hours before it was announced in Berlin that for the first time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Athens in the second week of October.

The widespread anti-austerity rage comes just before another punishing round of EU-IMF-mandated austerity measures. The worsening economic, political and social crisis has many thinking that Samaras's fragile coalition might not survive.

Resorting to what amounted to very unusual language from a man who is said to speak carefully,  Samaras mentioned the rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party to show just how dire things are in the country, stating that Greek society "is threatened by growing unemployment, as happened to Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic".

"Citizens know that this government is Greece's last chance," said Samaras, who repeatedly appeals for international lenders at the EU and IMF to relax the brutal austerity conditions of the Euro bailout. 

Samaras says the government will run out of cash by the end of November 2012

With the second 2012 bailout, Greece remains on very shaky ground as strikes and massive protests along with a change of national leadership has made it difficult for Greece's government to implement austerity measures being foist upon the nation. 

Greece’s agreement of austerity measures included a 22% cut to minimum wage, firing 15,000 civil employees and a halt to job guarantees. Greece’s economy has imploded by nearly 25% with an unemployment rate at Great Depression levels - that's 23.1%. 

Basic medical needs are no longer assured as pharmacies find it harder and harder to fill life-saving prescriptions.

Recently it has been reported that there was growing concern over Greece’s ability to continue providing electricity and natural gas to its citizens as the nation's insolvency continues.

On Sept. 26, 2012, European markets shuddered once again as protests erupted across Greece while demonstrators surrounded Spain's Parliament for a second day to protest the austerity program of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Image: Angelos Tzortzinis/New York Times

In Athens, trade unions called a nationwide strike of Sept. 26, 2012 to contest billions of dollars in new salary and pension cuts being discussed by the government and its international creditors. It was the first such walkout since a conservative coalition led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras came to power in June 2012.

Mr. Samaras is negotiating a $15 billion austerity package needed to persuade Greece’s so-called 'troika' of lenders, that is the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission - to release nearly $40.7 billion in financial aid that the country needs to stay solvent.

The proposed cuts in Greece have ignited new anger, with many people talking openly of increased impoverishment as the nation grapples with a third round of austerity measures in three years. 

The Sept. 25, 2012 protests in Athens were peaceful in the morning, as civil servants, teachers, medical personnel, bank employees and lawyers made their way to the city center. A police spokeswoman put the turnout at 35,000 to 40,000 people, modest by Greek standards.

But violence broke out shortly after 1 p.m. that Wednesday as a group of protesters wearing black masks hurled gasoline bombs at police officers on Vasilissis Sofias, a wide avenue abutting Parliament, sending bursts of flame and black smoke into the air. Firebombs were also thrown at the Finance Ministry and into the lush National Gardens next to Parliament.

Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Officers wielding batons responded with bursts of tear gas, scattering demonstrators and tourists as police helicopters circled overhead and flares exploded.


Many cursed the police with cries of “traitors” and “Merkel’s pigs” - a reference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the country widely blamed for insisting on Greece's tough austerity measures in exchange for financial aid.

Mr. Samaras was scheduled to meet on Sept. 27, 2012 with his coalition partners to seek a common line regarding the $15 billion austerity plan. Representatives of Greece's troika left Athens last week after fighting with the government over the depth of cuts planned for salaries and pensions. 

Poul Thomsen (grey suit) the I.M.F.'s lead negotiator for Greece, is shown arriving at the Greek Finance Ministry in Athens.
Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The two sides need to reach an agreement before the lenders can issue a report in October 2012 that grades Greece’s ability to mend its finances. Additional aid depends on a positive assessment, and is critical to lifting confidence that Greece will remain in the euro zone.

A senior official at the European Central Bank (ECB) on Sept. 25, 2012 dismissed an idea raised by Athens that Greek bonds could be rolled over to bridge a fresh financing gap in the debt-wracked country.

Executive board member Joerg Asmussen told the Die Welt daily: "The ECB could not take part in such a debt restructuring because this would be forbidden monetary financing."

Asmussen then called on the Greek government to close the gap in their finances identified this year and next with "robust measures on the expenditure and income side."

"Even if Greece closes the budgetary gap, there might be a need for an additional external financing, because the growth and privatization revenues are lower than expected," the official noted.

Such additional external financing "can only be agreed by the member states of the Eurozone," he said.

Asmussen's comments came after Deputy Finance Minister Christos Staikouras told parliament in mid-September 2012 that the maturity of Greek bonds owned by the ECB that are worth about 28 billion euros ($36 billion) could be extended by mutual agreement.

"Greek bonds worth around 28 billion euros that are held by the Euro system mature between 2013 and 2016," Staikouras said in a document to the chamber.

"In order to meet the financial gap, the possibility of rolling over these maturities will be examined, within the framework and the legal restrictions of the Lisbon Treaty," Staikouras said.

Greece has struggled to apply a fiscal overhaul mandated by the EU, the IMF and the ECB in return for bailout loans; meaning that deficit and recession forecasts have been repeatedly revised by the so-called 'troika' of Greece's creditors.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde also noted on Sept. 24, 2012 that delays in implementing Greece's bailout program, including privatisations, have expanded the country's financing shortfall. "My preference is that Greece remains in the euro. But the country must work hard, the key lies in Athens," concluded Asmussen.

Anna Afanti, 50, a Greek secondary school teacher, removed the surgical mask she had been wearing to ward off the tear gas to denounce Greece’s foreign creditors. “They just want to impoverish us, to bring our salaries down to the level in India and swoop in and buy everything on the cheap,” she said, referring to planned privatizations of Greece's assets.

Portugal

In 2011, Portugal received 78 billion in loans with the condition of their putting austerity measures in place. 

Since the austerity measures went into effect, their unemployment rate is 15%. 

Many of those still employed have had their salaries cut. Increased taxes, and reduced social and unemployment benefits has placed a growing number of Portuguese families in poverty.

In a recent move, the government subjected the Portuguese people to yet another wage cut by raising workers' social security contributions from 11 to 18 percent of their salary. 

Employers' contributions, meanwhile, were reduced from 23.7 to 18 percent. The measure implies "an alarming social injustice, which harms workers and favors large companies," Pedro Santos Guerreiro, director of the business daily Jornal de Negocios, wrote in the Spanish daily El Pais. 

"We are hungry! We are hungry!" yelled an elderly woman participating in one of the recent demonstrations. 

She said that she was supporting two unemployed sons with a pension that the government's spending cuts had reduced to 420 Euros a month. Similar stories are being told all over Portugal, where unemployment has soared to a historic record of 15.7 percent. 

Only 55 percent of the unemployed receive some kind of financial assistance from the state. The government is so unpopular that ministers have increased security measures to protect themselves from protesters throwing eggs or tomatoes. 

"This government will leave a trail of bodies on the streets," said military bishop Januario Torgal Ferreira. The main opposition Socialist Party, meanwhile, withdrew its support from the government and announced that it will vote against the 2013 budget. 

Prime Minister Passos Coelho is coming under heavy criticism even from the ranks of his own centre-right Social Democratic Party. His conservative coalition partner CDC has remained conspicuously silent, sparking speculation that the government would collapse and a snap election would be held. 

Applying the EU and IMF's advice as thoroughly as possible "is the way to avoid a new rescue" by the two institutions, Coelho argued. "We are enjoying a credibility that we could not count on a year ago, when we were bankrupt," the premier said. 

The EU and IMF are now expected to reward Portugal's efforts by relaxing its budget deficit targets.

 Coelho has gone beyond the demands of the EU-IMF Troika under the terms of Portugal’s €78 billion Euro loan package, winning plaudits from Europe’s austerity troika.

The Portuguese people have put up with one draconian package after another – longer working hours, 7-percent pay cuts, tax rises, an erosion of pensions - all of this amounts to a net fiscal squeeze of 10.4 of GDP so far in cyclically-adjusted terms.

Portuguese citizens have protested peacefully, in marked contrast to the Greeks, even though the latest poll by the Catholic University shows that 87% of the population say they are losing faith in Portugal’s democracy.

Yet Mr. Passos Coelho’s rash decision to raise the Social Security tax on workers’ pay from 11% to 18% got him called to account.

Portugal's Premier, Pedro Passos Coelho

Coelho was 'invited' to explain himself in front of Portugal's Council of State – a kind of privy council of elders and wise men – for a showdown in mid-September 2012. Eight hours later Coelho emerged humbled. He admitted defeat and said that his social security measure would not go forward.

Francisco Louca from left-wing Bloco suggested that the prime minister cannot survive: "The government is dead," he said.

Unemployment in Portugal has reached 15.7% and is a whopping 36.4% for young people. Citigroup expects the economy to contract by 3.8 percent for 2012; then a further 5.7%  in 2013 and then another 1.3% in 2014.

The slump will be so severe that the budget deficit will rise, not fall. This means that shrinking tax revenues will certainly outweigh gains from spending cuts. Citigroup adds that Portugal's deficit will be 5.1% of GDP in 2012, 4.9% in 2013 and 5.4% in 2014.

This will play havoc with Portugal's debt dynamics as their public debt will explode to an amazing 134% of GDP by 2013.

All the signs surely show Portugal to be heading down into the same fierce economic spiral as Greece and Spain while debt-enslaved deflation kills the finances of the nation. Portugal's total debt level is over 360% of GDP and its international investment position is over 90% of GDP - that means that it is deep in the red.

It is obvious to this mundane astrologer that countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal cannot recover by dealing with the suffocating austerity demands of the IMF, ECB and European Commission.

The only way out is to leave the monetary union, the Euro, and for those nations to restore their own sovereignty by liberalizing their own economies.

Italy
October 5, 2012 - Turin, Italy

The Uranus-Pluto square also affects Italy. At the end of 2011 when Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Monti, took the helm, he increased the already existing austerity measures on freezing public salaries and hiring and reduced regional funding. 

New austerity measures include increased health care fees, a decrease of pension benefits for those with higher earnings, and raised taxes for those with higher incomes. 

Today, Italy’s unemployment is an official 9.3%, while youth unemployment is a staggering 32%. Italy is also burdened with soaring electric and gas prices as mortgage foreclosures continue to rise.

Although Italy ranks as Europe’s third-largest economy, it also ranks as the country with the highest childhood poverty - with nearly two million children considered to be living in poverty, thus forcing a growing number of children to work as farm laborers.

On 5 October 2012, thousands of students protested against Italy's austerity clashed with riot police in Rome, Milan and Turin. The Italians took part carrying banners. One slogan read:

"No to the Crisis and Austerity! Let's take back our Schools and Cities!"

Image: ALESSANDRO DI MARCO/ EPA

The demonstrations were focused on Mario Monti's recent cuts to local government spending and his freeze on public sector hiring, as well as cuts made by his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi.


Scuffles broke out in several cities during the October 5, 2012 demonstration. AFP reports that four officers were lightly injured in Rome, and five students were injured in Milan. Fifteen protesters were also briefly detained in Milan.

Ireland

When the Irish Republic received their bailout, they vowed to cut the Irish deficit by six billion Euros. 

 To accomplish this, Ireland increased capital gains by 25%, reduced public wages by 5%, made a deep cut to social welfare child’s benefits, increased cigarette taxes, added carbon taxation and introduced a water tax. 

In 2012 the nation of Ireland suffers from the fifth highest unemployment rate at 14.2%.

Meanwhile, shocking news in September 2012 occurred that shook up Dublin's hope for easing on their debt repayments. 

Germany, Finland and the Netherlands poured cold water on plans to use the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to pay for the cost of bailing out banks.

Finance ministers from the three countries issued a joint statement saying the ESM should not be allowed to use any of the €500 billion fund to pay for previous bailouts. 

"The ESM can take direct responsibility of problems that occur under the new supervision, but legacy assets should be under the responsibility of national authorities," said Germany's Wolfgang Schaeuble, the Netherlands' Jan Kees de Jager and Finland's Jutta Urpilainen following a meeting in Königstedt Manor outside Helsinki.

The Irish Government's economic strategy is based on reaching a deal to reduce the cost of Ireland's debt. A summit in June 2012 saw EU leaders promise to look at suggestions proposed by Mr Noonan. 

A deadline to discuss these suggestions passed earlier this month. 

Mr Noonan has said any cash injection to save Spanish banks should force Europe to offer something similar to Ireland. A Government spokesman said in Dublin that the promise to look at some sort of deal on Ireland's debt still stood, regardless of the statement out of Helsinki. 

"Remember, on the 29th of June, a decision was taken by the European Council. In the absence of any other decision, I have no further comment to make," the spokesman said. 

A Department of Finance spokesman added that the "technical discussions remain on-going on how we can improve the sustainability of Irish financial system, in line with the June Summit mandate and in line with the principle that similar cases will be treated equally." 

The ESM is set to go into operation next month. 

The euro area now still considering whether to allow the ESM to recapitalise banks directly, rather than requiring countries to apply on their financial sector's behalf. 

The three ministers reiterated their belief that bank recapitalisation "should take place based on an approach that adheres to the basic order of first using private capital, then national public capital and only as a last resort the ESM." 

They also reiterated that such direct bailouts will only be possible once the euro area establishes an effective bank supervisor, to be housed at the European Central Bank

"Direct bank recapitalisation by the ESM should take place based on an approach that adheres to the basic order of first using private capital, then national public capital and only as a last resort the ESM," they added. 

Euro-area governments will start paying into the ESM next month, raising its capital to €80 billion by mid-2014. 

The first €75bn of investments by the fully capitalized fund will be restricted to a "general eligible assets list", with amounts beyond that available to purchase securities from an "enlarged" list that includes bank bonds. 

European Commission vice president Viviane Reding told a Dail committee yesterday that the ESM was a sail pulling troubled economies out of danger. 

She yesterday moved to assuage fears that France and Germany were controlling the EUagenda. Ms Reding, who is an advocate of stronger ties between the 27 member states through political union, said the optics of "shoulder clapping" between French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the wrong image. 

"We are 27, we are not two," she told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Union

Spain
Madrid, Spain, Sept. 25, 2012 - Protesters try to shield each other as Spain's police attack.
Image: Andrea Comas/Reuters

Spain’s unemployment now stands at 25%, the highest in Europe, and this is before the government begins lay-offs of the public sector with youth unemployment a staggering 50%. 

Public outcry over economic fears has brought millions to march in the streets in protest.

Reuters reports that July brought a rush on the banks as consumers and firms withdrew their money. At the same time, deposits took a hit of nearly 5%. In June of 2012, Spain accepted a 125 billion dollar bailout.

Recently, Spain included a 21% tax rise within a budget package to reduce their deficit by 80 billion, despite their earlier concerns that this measure might stifle consumer spending. 

Since 2007, poverty in Spain has risen by 15% and tens of thousands have lost their homes to bank foreclosures with more to come. 

Coming Troubles
Downtown Athens, Greece

The city of Marinleda, Spain may be a harbinger of things to come as more and more countries’ take an economic tumble. 

Reported by Reuters, in response to the hunger of the townspeople, Mayor Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo organized a raid on supermarkets. His stated he wanted to draw the attention to the plight of the common worker in Spain.

Gordillo announced “The conservative national government has only made matters worse, by introducing austerity measures that have worsened the workers’ lives, while bailing out the bankers and capitalists who caused the crisis in the first place.”

The United States

In the U.S, roughly four million families lost their homes to foreclosure between the beginning of 2007 and early 2012 with nearly 600,000 more home foreclosures on hold as lenders scramble for answers.

According to the article in Zillow Blog titled Home Value Declines Surpass Those of Great Depression, “Along with the snow and cold, November brought continued declines in home values. 

In fact, the Zillow Home Value Index has now fallen 26% since its peak in June 2006. That’s more than the 25.9% decline in the Depression-era years between 1928 and 1933.” 

 As David Morris has written about before, the real estate market STILL has another 40% to drop before the market will be able to stabilize and reflect true value.

New York City

In the U.S., poverty has risen to 46.2 million Americans - a growth of 2.6 million in just the last 12 months. 


This is the largest increase that we have ever seen since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.


Food stamps have doubled since 2008 and are at an all-time high of 46 million people.

According to expert financiers, the U.S. has not hit bottom yet. 


It’s possible we will go the way of the EU. If so, we can expect to see austerity measures headed our way that could include lowered minimum wage, public sector job losses, cutbacks on government aid, and higher taxes. 

If the EU is any example of what austerity measures will ultimately bring us, we should be prepared for accelerated home foreclosures, higher poverty, and escalated unemployment.

Manhattan, New York

Are you ready for such an eventuality? 

Do you have food storage and necessary preparedness goods set aside? It’s SO important to take whatever steps that you can now to prepare by doing what you can to make yourself and your community more resilient. 

 There are solid basics like growing your own food, storing as much food as is practical, figuring out emergency water solutions and fuel/power for heating and refrigeration.

What else can you do? 


 Plug into local food coops. If possible, buy whatever groceries that you can from local sources and not just for political reasons, but so that you have supply chains in place for your family that have a high probability of still working after a currency collapse or other major disaster.

John Williams of ShadowStats.com offers this advice on the barter system in times of economic crisis:

"With standard currency and electronic payment systems non-functional, commerce quickly would devolve into black markets for goods and services and a barter system. Gold and silver both are likely to retain real value and would be exchangeable for goods and services. 

 Silver would help provide smaller change for less costly transactions. One individual indicated to me that he had found airline bottles of high-quality scotch to be ideal small change in a hyper-inflationary environment.

Other items that would be highly barterable would include full bottles of liquor or wine, or canned goods, for example. Similar items that have a long shelf life can be stocked in advance of the problem, and otherwise would be consumable if the terrible inflation never came. Separately, individuals, such as doctors and carpenters, who provide broadly usable services, already have services to barter.

A note of caution was raised once by one of my old economics professors, who had spent part of his childhood living in a barter economy. He told a story of how his father had traded a shirt for a can of sardines. The father decided to open the can and eat the sardines, but he found the sardines had gone bad. Nonetheless, the canned sardines had taken on a monetary value.

Howard J. Ruff, who has been writing about these problems and issues since Nixon closed the gold window, rightly argued that it would take some time for a barter system to be established, and suggests that individuals should build up a six-month store of goods to cover themselves and their families in the difficult times."

 Once you have got solutions figured out then you will be able to make your own family more resilient as well as able to help other families as well. The more prepared and resilient families are, the less affected they will be by crisis and disasters and the quicker they are able to recover.
~

Oh yes, and it gets worse, as we shall see. The thing about truth is that it is better taken all at once so when they shock of it wears off there still may be time to actually DO something positive to forestall disaster - in this case - generational disaster that comes from a generation that just doesn't want to get it.


The Uranus-Pluto Square:
Baby Boomers' Fear Of Aging & A Young Planet
A Baby Boomer says, "It’s fear. Fear of not having enough. Fear that when we boomers are done with the world, there’ll be nothing left for the generations that follow us. Fear that our out-of-control consumerism will waste so many of the earth’s resources that we’ll endanger life itself. Fear that we have already irreparably damaged the environment and then we’re just going to die and leave the younger generations to clean up our mess."

By 
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

What the boomer establishment has always been fearful of is aging - in fact, the entire baby boomer establishment (1939-1953) along with the Echo Boomers (1953-1960) are either already in their senior years or just entering it.

The baby boomers tagged themselves 'the youth generation' in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This belief that they would never age has always been disturbing to witness over the decades since it is obvious that all people age. 

So, the dysfunctional behavior of a generation with such a false and maladaptive belief of never aging easily gives way to exclusion of anyone 'younger' them themselves. This is what has been happening increasingly since the 1990s.

The baby boomers have aged. As their time as ruling establishment ends a paradox emerged - the 'freedom-loving' and 'war-hating,' the so-called 'peace & love' and 'youth generation' - has become the most criminal, perverted, reactionary and exclusionary generation the world has ever known.

In their embrace of their beloved ideological counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s; the baby boomer generation adopted a tribalistic radical individualism that denounced industrialized progress in the Space Age as they broke with the cohesive bonds of social structures such as school, church, and the family. 

Rather than to accept cultural progress and intergenerational responsibility to future generations - the baby boomers did as they pleased and perverted it while simultaneously practicing exclusivity - thus rejecting inclusivity.

What is happening now is that many baby boomers (1939-1953) are essentially broke with an elite part of the boomer generation stealing wealth the likes of which has never been seen before in human history.


By altering the economies of nations over the past two decades by means of debt - featuring widespread corruption, graft, legislative/political/corporate 'capture' to enrich themselves, gorging on resources and blowing all the money - the boomer generation has effectively ruined much of the world.

After placing the bulk of their own money into real estate bubbles and as they gambled away the rest on the markets; the majority of the boomer generation are now holding onto their jobs and pensions for dear life.

The oldest baby boomer, born in 1939, turned 73 years old in 2012. The youngest baby boomer, born in 1953, turns 60 years old in 2013. The Baby boomer generation is the first truly consumerist generation that has moved into their retirement years.

But many boomers worldwide have not paid off their mortgages nor been able to come to terms with their high-flying financial gambles.

Because of their false belief that they were the 'youth generation' and were going to 'live forever' they are part of a consumerist/materialistic generation that only believes life to improve for them. The bigger the bubbles, the better

The baby boomer generation has never experienced a severe economic depression as their parents did as children. At well over 60 years old they are under the illusion that they are still 'young' seeing anyone younger then themselves as 'excluded' in their narcissistic view of the world.

Baby Boomer 'bling'

Back in 2007-2008, when the economic crisis in the U.S. it was discovered that the majority of baby boomers were still paying off mortgages that had doubled since the mid-1990s during the start of the real estate boom.

The incredible run-up in house prices dwarfed the true value of properties along with boomers using home equities schemes to spend wildly on 'living large' which they did in massive numbers.

The fallacy of never aging but carrying debt in later life is that many boomers used their home equity as ATM's and maxed their credit cards and are in reality in heavy levels of debt.

Since they are comfortable with debt and in denial about aging, many boomers believe that they will carry their debt into eternity since they will never die.

Now, we all know that human beings get old and that we pass on, but with the boomer generation you would be hard-pressed to hear a majority of them admit that time has passed them by and that they are indeed - now old. It happens.

Being exclusive, rather than inclusive during their time as the establishment of nations since the early 1990s, they have also broken the intergenerational contract by refusing those under the age of 55 the very rights that the boomer establishment claim only for themselves.

The theft of generational finances and resources by the cabal of plutocratic boomer international bankers of the establishment and their dying oligarchical parents will only lead to further global economic, fragmentation and societal decline. 

This 'decline' has been exacerbated by world transits, mainly those of the outer planets that affect populations, their nations and international relationships between nations.

The outgoing boomer establishment and their dying oligarchy will be remembered in history as the worst two generations known to humanity since the generation of the deranged Roman emperor Caligula.

Detroit, Michigan
~

Silverfiddle comments

I have often thought that ten years of war would get us past the baby boomer mindset and forge a new generation of leaders: Non-ideological, with the ability to face problems head on and to do what works. 

That is what troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan had to do. Military experience in a war zone (even for support guys like me) involves seeing the situation as it really is, and then doing whatever needs to be done to overcome. Nobody in Washington knows how to do that.

Here's a voice from America's next Greatest Generation:

"I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation."

They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations. (War vet Thomas Day, Quoted by WRM - Listen Up Boomers)

The baby boomers burst onto the leadership scene in 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton. George W. Bush did his part to further besmirch that generation, and Obama is it's narcissistic, useless apotheosis.

Not every baby boomer is blameworthy. In fact, most of them never protested a war, smoked pot or indulged in any of the other tie-dyed, patchouli-tinged hippy-dippy hoopla that generation is infamous for. 

Like their parents before them, they went to work, raised families and contributed to their communities, so all of our problems cannot be laid at the feet of the boomers.

Some of our ills stem from the WW II-era's unquestioning respect for authority and hero-worship. 

"The Greatest Generation" can also be blamed for pampering and swaddling it's boomer progeny, shielding them from every hardship, ill and trial that shaped the rock-hard depression-era and WW II generation into such an impressive cohort of Americans.

Unfortunately for the majority, a small minority has defined the Baby Boomer Generation

The movie The Big Chill foisted the boomers upon our consciousness, with it's whiny navel-gazing, self-indulgent introspection and narcissistic cultural chauvinism, and the cultural boomers have been wearing out their welcome ever since. 

This is the generation that brought us Viagra commercials on TV during family hours -  introducing our children to new and interesting phrases for a male physiological drug-induced phenomena that lasted more than four hours?


This is the generation that mainstreamed porn, marketed 'slut-wear' to our daughters and encouraged our boys to be pimps. They taught not to think but to put narcissistic self-esteem above actual achievement.

I know, baby boomers are not the authors of our current social dysfunctions, but they were the libertines who stormed the Bastille, unleashing the corrosive social forces that made these dysfunctions possible. 

Then, as grown-ups they agnostically market this trash to the masses in worship of the almighty dollar.

We are now suffering the ill effects of the "anything goes, if it feels good do it" culture that this adolescent, incontinent generation has foisted upon us as they brought about the decline of our political, social and religious institutions - which are crumbling.


The level of vulgarity in everyday life is unprecedented and our inflated sense of egotistical self-entitlement knows no bounds. Instead of building upon the foundation of the Greatest Generation, boomers took a bulldozer to it and left a giant Woodstock-like mud pit in its place.

Baby Boomer Richard Berry blames them for the economic crash as well...

"The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification and a rollicking sense of entitlement. 

"Our efforts to be responsible citizens in this crisis are ridiculed and shouted down: exclude from the bail-out the pork and the payoffs to interest groups? 

How dare we! 

Include measures that might actually spur badly needed growth in the tough times now surely coming, like cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes? Leave the room!

"This is all merely typical of the smug, cocksure Boomer Elite. 

"This is a group that breaks things. 

It has set the wrecking ball to institutions that are the essential glue of our society (marriage and the family), the basis of our political system (federalism and the separation of powers), the engine of our prosperity (the free market), the guarantor of our freedom (the military), and the glory of our history (the Constitution, participatory democracy). (The Great Boomer Comeuppance)

"We haven't heard the last of the Boomers, even as they shuffle off to hippie Valhalla retirements planned by their parents and funded by the greatest transfer of wealth from young to old in the history of the world."

My hope is that subsequent generations give them their due for the good they have done while learning from their mistakes.
~

The Cardinal Crisis
The Real Class Warfare is Baby Boomers Vs. Younger Americans:
Hey Kids, Guess What?
Baby Boomer Mom & Dad Are Screwing You

By 
Nick Gillespie

Hey kids, wake up! Stop playing your X-Box while listening to your Facebooks on the iPod and wearing your iPad with the cap turned backwards with the droopy pants and the bikini underwear listening to Snoopy Poopy Poop Dogg and the Enema Man and all that!

Take a break from getting yet another tattoo on your ass bone or your nipples pierced already! And STFU about the 1 Percent vs. the 99 Percent!

You're not just getting screwed by billionaires and plutocrats. You're getting screwed by Mom and Dad

Systematically and in all sorts of ways. Old people are doing everything possible to rob you of your money, your future, your dignity, and your freedom.

Here's the irony, too (in a sort of Alanis Morissette sense): You're getting hosed by the very same group that 45 years ago was bitching and moaning about "the generation gap" and how their parents just didn't understand what really mattered in life.

Hence, many of the early pop anthems of the baby boomers - technically, those born between 1946 and 1964 but or all intents and purposes folks 55 years and older - focused on how stupid old people were ("don't criticize what you can't understand") and how young people would rather croak themselves then end up like their parents ("I hope I die before I get old"). 

"We are stardust, we are golden," sang Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at Woodstock. "We got to get ourselves back to the garden."

Baby Boomer math: 40 is the new 30, or 20 and 60 is the new 40 and 70 is the new 50 and so on and so on...

Flash forward four or five decades, a couple of hundred pounds, the odd organ transplant, random arrests and jail stints, and the only garden David Crosby is getting back to is the Olive Garden with its unlimited pasta bowls and bread-sticks. What small parts of American life and power the boomers don't yet run they will soon enough. 

Did you read that New York Times op-ed that called for a brand-spankin' new military draft and national service plan? "Let's Draft Our Kids," by veteran (read: old, born in 1955) journalist Thomas Ricks, is symptomatic of the new vibe, a kind of reverse Logan's Run scenario In that godawful 1976 flick, when you turned 30, you were killed for the common good. 

Nowadays, it's more like life begins at 30. Which is confusing, because according to baby boomer math they say that 40 is the new 30, or 20 and that 60 is the new 40 and that 70 is the new 50 and so on and so on...

The important thing: Youth is no longer to be wasted on the young.

Ricks suggests letting high-school grads pick from either 18 months of military service or two years of civilian service, in return for free college tuition and subsidized health care and mortgages (libertarians, he notes, could opt out of service by forfeiting benefits though apparently not avoiding taxes). 

Beyond all the obviously great and good and wonderful things that come of forced labor, Ricks suggests that "having a draft might...make Americans think more carefully before going to war." Sure it would. Just like it did in the past when we actually had a draft.

Expect this sort of plan to get more and more respectful hearings if unemployment stays high for another few weeks. 

Or as former hippies and punks get up there in years. Last year, during an appearance I had on Real Time with Bill Maher, the host and other guests (all of us well north of 30) thought mandatory service was a fine notion. 

Back in the 1980s and '90s, national service was a pet project of folks such as Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and right-wing icon Bill Buckley (who wrote a book, 'Gratitude,' on the topic).

Oddly, back in the actual 1960s, one of the few things that hippies and Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan could all agree on was that conscription was a really bad thing. For god's sake, Richard Nixon created a commission to end the draft. But that was then, and this is now.

And right now, old people are not going gentle into that good night.


They know they're going to need younger people to change their diapers and pay their bills for them, literally and figuratively.


As Hillary Clinton put it in 1999, nobody's going to do that if they have any option not to. Speaking to a National Education Association meeting, Clinton explained one of the great benefits of old-age entitlements was that they meant you didn't have to live with your goddamn parents.

"In a very real sense," she said, "Medicare and Social Security say to our older people: We're going to help you remain independent ... We're going to free up the resources that might otherwise have to come directly to you from your family, so that they can do what you did - raise the next generation, send their children to college, hold down the jobs that enable them to move forward."

You got that? 

The author of It Takes a Village, a paean to the intricate bonds across and among generations, thinks one of the great selling points of Social Security is that it means you don't have to make room for granddaddy. 

Goddammit, we need that room for a home office! "There would be many families who would have to choose between supporting a parent--an elderly parent--and sending a child to college." 

She mused, "That would cause a lot of difficult decisions in our lives, wouldn't it?" 

Yes, it would, so it makes sense to give old people enough of other people's money so you don't have to see them except on holidays.

As a point of fact, retirees aren't particularly "independent" if they rely on tax dollars for income, are they? 

But here's the real rub, kids: 

You're getting screwed by Social Security, a program that is now more sacrosanct to aging boomers than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

You're paying more into the system than you're ever going to get out. No wonder it's mandatory. 

C. Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane put out a study for the Urban Institute that should have caused far more riots than anything that happened at Zuccotti Park. 

They document that folks making average wages who retired in 2010 will get a raw deal over the coming decades. The deal will only get worse if you retire in, say, 2030. 

Read it and weep, kids, and don't believe it when old people who are either already on Social Security or about to join that club tell you it's part of a generational bargain that can't be changed even if retirees are totally wealthy compared to you.


Indeed, be wary of folks telling you that means-testing old-age entitlements is insulting and un-American.

Because the fact of the matter is that between 1984 and 2011, the only households that did well are those headed by people 55 years or older - that's baby boomers.

 click on graphic to enlarge

Fact is, you're coughing up 12.4 percent of your compensation for a system that will give you less money than you gave it.

And that's assuming the system is still around in recognizable form when you're ready for retirement.

click on graphic to enlarge

On top of that negative return, expect to read more articles like this one by Spy co-creator Kurt Anderson (b. 1954) in which the one-time snark-meister bemoans the fact that the 1960s made us "all shamelessly selfish." 

Huh? Who's we, kemo sabe? 

Those of us either too young or too unborn to remember the 1960s aren't being selfish if we call attention to a system that loots the relatively young and relatively poor to give money to the relatively old and relatively rich. We're being fair.

So kiddos, you're getting screwed by old people who expect you to maintain a system that benefits them at your expense, regardless of their needs or yours. Thanks, Mom and Dad!


And we just might be in the early stages of a bring-back-the-draft-movement, where you would get to choose between painting military barracks for 18 months or sharpening a teacher's pencils for two years.

Then chew on this: One of the primary ways that President Obama (born 1961) is making the so-called Affordable Care Act affordable is by having you foot more than your share of the bill.

Think it through for a moment, especially given that younger voters seem to really dig him. The younger you are, the less likely you are to need health care, much less insurance (there is a difference). 

The smart move for most generally healthy younger people is to take out a catastrophic coverage plan that would cover you in the event of a big accident. 

Thanks to Obamacare, you've got to get covered, either by your parents' plan or otherwise. The predictable result is that plans for younger people are getting more expensive precisely at the moment they are required by law (finally, a case where correlation meets causation!). 

That all plans are going to have to conform to higher-than-before benefit schedules ain't helping things either. Some colleges are dropping student plans as a result.

And just wait until those price-capped government-run health-care exchanges finally get set up. 

By law, the exchanges can't charge their oldest beneficiaries more than three times what they charge their youngest beneficiaries.

That's despite the actuarial reality that the older group costs insurers six times as much. So you're helping balance the books there, too.

Welcome to community rating, kids

Another way you're helping balance the books: 

It will be your future earnings that will pay the taxes to cover the massive amount of debt that local, state, and federal governments have rung up over the past few decades.

Even before the Great Recession, the feds were spending like a drunken sailor (no disrespect to drunken sailors). 

Nowadays, the feds are borrowing something like 40 cents of every dollar they're spending. That bill is going to come due eventually and when it does, the people who spent it will be long dead.


And so will the economy, suffering from a "debt hangover" that all the Advil in the world won't help. 

We're getting perilously close to the debt-to-GDP ratios that economists Carmen M. Reinhart, Vincent R. Reinhart, and Kenneth Rogoff say will significantly retard economic growth for an average of 23 years.

It should go without saying that it doesn't have to be this way. 

And don't buy into the idea that the way things are is just part of the circle of life. 

You're the mark here, the chump who's believing in Bernie Madoff even after the graft has been revealed. 

There's not going to be a bigger idiot to come along and keep the pyramid scheme alive.

You can tell yourself that this is all part of living in a society, that's it for the common good, that there's simply no way a class of people with only 45 times the amount of household income as you do can get by without you sacrificing so much. But you're kidding yourself, kiddo.

More to the point: 

Older generations don't need to mop up all the gravy from their kids' bowls. 

Those of them who can afford to should pay their own way and, in a generational exchange observed for hundreds of generations, could even leave things for their heirs (this is impossible with Social Security, of course). 

The days when being old universally meant being poor or sick are thankfully behind us and old-age entitlements should change to reflect that reality.

We can help the truly needy among us without creating a system in which young people's already small incomes and savings are reduced further to prop up the relatively plush living standards of older Americans 

The young shouldn't be sacrificed to the real and imagined needs of the old.

The one thing I know for damn sure as a parent (b. 1963) is that I would never want to charge my existence onto my kids' credit card. If that means we need to start living within our means as a society, that's not really a tough call, is it?
~

I've been covering the events in Europe here on Global Astrology over the past several years for a very good reason. By means of astrological world transits I know things few know, or would even accept, until it is too late.

One of the things I knew was that the hue-and-cries and mass demonstrations I saw coming on the horizon with the configurations of the outer planets relative to Earth would magnify. 

The 'cardinal crisis' years of this decade for Spain are more than simply challenging, but downright revolutionary considering the plight of a country that has an incredible 50% unemployment among its young population. 

Nowhere on earth is the generational class warfare, neglect and repression from Europe's aged baby boomer establishment towards non-boomers more crystal clear than it is in the nation of Spain.


The Cardinal Crisis
The Coming Revolution in Spain
Outside the Spanish Parliament, Tuesday, September 25, 2012
image: Sergio Perez/Reuters

Spain Recoils As Its Hungry People Forage Trash Bins For Their Next Meal

The New York Times

On a recent evening in Madrid, Spain, a hip-looking young woman was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down for the night.

At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no. The young woman was looking through the day’s trash for her next meal. Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby.

“When you don’t have enough money,” she said, declining to give her name, “this is what there is.”

The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. 

She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.

Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. 

The unemployment rate among young Spanish people is over 50-percent. There are about 11 million Spanish citizens living in poverty as well as 30,000+ homeless people and 3.5 million uninhabited houses.
Image:Samuel Aranda/NYT

So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.

A report this year by a Catholic charity, Caritas, said that it had fed nearly one million hungry Spaniards in 2010, more than twice as many as in 2007. That number rose again in 2011 by 65,000.

As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets, it has been forced to embark on the same path as Greece, introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink.

Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two percentage points on many food items, making life just that much harder for those on the edge. 

Little relief is in sight as the country’s regional governments, facing their own budget crisis, are chipping away at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for low-income families.

For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.


At the huge wholesale fruit and vegetable market on the outskirts of this city recently, workers bustled, loading crates onto trucks. But in virtually every bay, there were men and women furtively collecting items that had rolled into the gutter.

“It’s against the dignity of these people to have to look for food in this manner,” said Eduardo Berloso, an official in Girona, the city that padlocked its supermarket trash bins.

Mr. Berloso proposed the measure last month after hearing from social workers and seeing for himself one evening “the humiliating gesture of a mother with children looking around before digging into the bins.”

The Caritas report also found that 22 percent of Spanish households were living in poverty and that about 600,000 had no income whatsoever. All these numbers are expected to continue to get worse in the coming months.

About a third of those seeking help, the Caritas report said, had never used a food pantry or a soup kitchen before the economic crisis hit. For many of them, the need to ask for help is deeply embarrassing. In some cases, families go to food pantries in neighboring towns so their friends and acquaintances will not see them.

In Madrid recently, as a supermarket prepared to close for the day in the Entrevias district of Vallecas, a small crowd gathered, ready to pounce on the garbage bins that would shortly be brought to the curb. 

Most reacted angrily to the presence of journalists. In the end, few managed to get anything as the trucks whisked the garbage away within minutes.

But in the morning at the bus stop in the wholesale market, men and women of all ages waited, loaded down with the morning’s collection. Some insisted that they had bought the groceries, though food is not generally for sale to individuals there.

Others admitted to foraging through the trash. 

Victor Victorio, 67, an immigrant from Peru, said he came here regularly to find fruits and vegetables tossed in the garbage. Mr. Victorio, who lost his job in construction in 2008, said he lived with his daughter and contributed whatever he found - on this day, peppers, tomatoes and carrots - to the household. “This is my pension,” he said.

For the wholesalers who have businesses here, the sight of people going through the scraps is hard.

“It is not nice to see what is happening to these people,” said Manu Gallego, the manager of Canniad Fruit. 

“It shouldn’t be like this.”


In Girona, Mr. Berloso said his aim in locking down the bins was to keep people healthy and push them to get food at licensed pantries and soup kitchens. 

As the locks are installed on the bins, the town is posting civilian agents nearby with vouchers instructing people to register for social services and food aid.

He said 80 to 100 people had been regularly sorting through the bins before he took action, with a strong likelihood that many more were relying on thrown-away food to get by.

But Mr. Berloso’s locks created something of an uproar across Spain, where the economic crisis is fueling more and more protests highlighting hunger. 

A group of mayors and unionists in southern Spain, where unemployment rates are far above the average, recently staged Robin Hood raids on two supermarkets, loading carts with basic foods and pressing them to donate more food to the needy.

More than a dozen people are facing prosecution for theft over the stunt. But they are unrepentant and appear to have huge local support. 

“Taking some food and giving it to families who are having a really hard time, if this is stealing, I am guilty,” one of the men, Francisco Molero of the farmworkers’ SAT union, told the local news media afterward.

Some politicians say Girona’s locks are really all about protecting Girona’s image. Dominated by medieval buildings and the picturesque cobblestone streets of a beautifully preserved former Jewish quarter, the city of about 100,000 derives most of its income from tourism.

“The social workers or civil agents could refer people to the food distribution center without having to lock bins,” said Pia Bosch, a Socialist councilor in Girona. “It’s like killing a fly with a cannonball.”

The unemployment rate is still relatively low in Girona -14 percent over all, compared with 25 percent for the country as a whole. But more and more families have no income. Of the 7,700 unemployed in Girona, Mr. Berloso said, 40 percent have now run out of benefits.

Many, he said, were “people who never expected to find themselves in this position.”

Ramon Barnera, who runs the Caritas programs in Girona, said the organization realized early on that shame was a factor preventing people from coming forward to ask for food. 

So three years ago, it helped create food distribution sites that looked more like supermarkets, and removed the charity’s name from the outside of the building.

“We looked for a system that would give dignity,” Mr. Barnera said. “This is not easy for people.”

On a recent morning, Juan Javier, 29, who had come to collect milk, pasta, vegetables and eggs from one of the distribution centers, was one of the few clients who would discuss his circumstances. A former printer, he has been out of work for two years. “I would like to have a job,” he said, “and not be here.”

In a nearby soup kitchen, Toni López, 36, waited quietly for a free lunch with his girlfriend, Monica Vargas, 46, a beautician. 

The couple recently became homeless when they fell two months behind on their rent. “All our lives we have been working people,” Mr. Lopez said. “We are only here because we are decent people. The landlord was knocking on the door demanding the rent, so we said, ‘Here, here are the keys.’ ”

Mr. Lopez, who gets occasional work these days in restaurant kitchens, said he had a sister but had not gone to her for help. “I can’t bear to tell her,” he said. “I have always pulled through. I’ve always managed to get by.

"This is new.”

~

We can see the results of these dire times in Spain by means of the rising mass movements against generational repression as witnessed in September 2012.

The Cardinal Crisis
Two Spanish police officers drag a young Spanish woman near the Spanish Parliament during a mass demonstration in Madrid on Tuesday, September 25, 2012.
Image: Susana Vera/Reuters

Protesters Encircle the Spanish Parliament


The pressures facing the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy mounted on several fronts on Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2012 as thousands of demonstrators besieged Parliament with Spain’s two largest regions taking steps which underscores their deepening economic troubles and displeasure with his austerity plans.

On that Tuesday, Spain's Parliament took on the appearance of a heavily guarded fortress as 1,400 police officers ringed the building to keep back thousands of demonstrators. 

Presenting the biggest domestic political challenge to date, the leader of Catalonia, Spain’s most powerful economic region, called an early election for November 25, 2012 that could turn into an unofficial referendum on whether to split from the rest of the country.

Downtown Madrid - September 25, 2012
Image: Pierre-philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images

Catalonia’s demands for more autonomy have been fueled by its own financial problems, which forced the Catalan government last month to request $6.5 billion in emergency aid from a fund of $23.3 billion set up by Mr. Rajoy’s government to help regions meet their debt financing obligations.

Underlining its deepening financial difficulties, another region, Andalusia, said that it was preparing to request $6.3 billion from the fund.

The developments unfolded as police officers and protesters clashed before the Parliament building and as Mr. Rajoy comes under intense pressure from investors and his European counterparts to clean up Spain’s banks and public finances, particularly at the regional level.

An injured protester is carried on a stretcher after thousands of Spanish citizens were attacked by police outside the Spanish parliament in Madrid on September 25, 2012
Image: Andrea Comas/Reuters

The problems in the regions - both political and economic - appear only to be intensifying, as Catalonia’s move demonstrated Tuesday, two weeks after Catalans held a huge pro-independence rally in Barcelona.

“The voice of the street needs to be moved to the ballot boxes,” the president of Catalonia, Artur Mas, told lawmakers at the regional Parliament. “We want to have the same instruments that other nations have in order to develop their own collective identity.”

Following the Sept. 11 rally in Barcelona, Mr. Rajoy called on regions and their politicians to avoid raising tensions and instead to close ranks and help Spain emerge from its economic quagmire. Last week, in an unusual political foray, King Juan Carlos I also published a letter urging national unity.


“Mas has been under intense pressure to calm things down, even from the king, but what we now see is that far from taking any step back, Mas is in fact seeking a fresh mandate from voters to move things forward,” said Josep Ramoneda, a Catalan political commentator and philosopher. 

The result of the vote, Mr. Ramoneda added, “will determine exactly how far and fast Catalonia moves toward independence.”

Economists warned that the call for a Catalonia election added yet another element of uncertainty for Spain.

“Once comforted in power after elections, the government could then work more constructively towards a redefinition of the relationship between the central government and the regions,” said Gilles Moëc, an economist at Deutsche Bank in London. 

“Still, in the meantime, political turmoil in Spain’s richest region could generate the kind of market reaction which would precipitate a request for European support by Madrid.”

Mr. Rajoy has been debating whether to tap into a new bond-buying program proposed by the European Central Bank on Sept. 6. 

While such additional European help would considerably alleviate Spain’s debt financing problems, Mr. Rajoy finds himself in an increasingly tight bind between Spanish voters who oppose any more austerity cuts and investors and EU finance officials demanding reassurance that Spain can meet budget deficit targets.

The organizers of the recent mass protest said in their statement that they had no plans to occupy Parliament, but wanted to surround the building to show that “democracy has been kidnapped and needs to be saved from the hands of inept politicians."

Protesting against austerity, Spanish citizens raise their hands as riot police wait at the other side of the fence.
Image: Jasper Juinen/Getty Images

Using truncheons, Madrid's police scattered some of the protesters to keep approaches to the Parliament building open.

Catalonia is the third Spanish region to call for early elections; with the Basque region and Mr. Rajoy’s home region of Galicia also set to hold separate votes in October 2012.
~

So what does this all say about the impact of the baby boomer generation? Let's read excerpts from social historians who have studied this generation and have come up with reasons for their widespread dysfunction and maladaption that has especially brought American society to decline.


The Cardinal Crisis
The Reason For America's Social Decline

BABY BOOMER HIPPIES: THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIAL MORALITY IN AMERICA

Compiled & Edited By
Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.S

There have been constant fluctuations of cultural trends in America but none more as radical as that of the Baby Boomer 'Hippies' of the 1960s and 1970s.

The baby boomer generation found its voice in free love and drugs as well as political involvement. 

These middle class, white, college-educated young adults, not the fringes of society, rebelled so loud and profoundly, that it could not be ignored. Their counter-culture with its ideas of life facilitated the liberalization of sexuality and started the sexual revolution. 

Their indolent philosophy on industrialization led them toward a more rural tribalistic life thus removing them from the American social sphere [the early-to-late 1970s.]


The pattern of recreational drug use in the Hippie movement negated the spiritual professions talked about by many by marking them as induced. 

Over time the lack of social structure and morals in the Hippies' environment led to the destruction of the family unit, causing a rise in crime. 

All of these factors share the commonality of the social degradation of society through the destruction of moral social structures such as school, church, and family. The connection between the baby boomers of the 1960s counter-culture led the way to the demoralization of America.


The connection between the Hippies facilitated the liberalization of sexual expression thus sparking the sexual revolution. Through the adoption of Marxist class rule ideology, people no longer needed to adhere to the upper class standards.

The ideas surrounding this sexual unleashing were that the American capitalist system suppressed sexuality through the industrious nature of the system. 

The liberalization of sexuality created a new identity for sex.


The fact that one may have intercourse for recreation or liberation was beyond the social standards at the time. The Marxist political ideology behind the sexual revolution was adopted on the basis of an adolescent rebellion. 

Because Marxism is in such stark contrast to American capitalism, the rebellion seemed that much more of a leap away from the norms of society. During this time sexual promiscuity among young women became more common. 

The journal of the marriage and the family asserts, “The extent of change was particularly dramatic for females; especially in the area of premarital sexual behavior.” 

The lack of sexual inhibitions for women in turn led to the homosexual deviancy of the sexual revolution. 


This pairing of promiscuity with homosexuality tested the waters in an already stirred social atmosphere.

The homosexual tendencies of a man were not acceptable in society because of America’s Christian heritage. 


The Bible states in Leviticus, “You shall not lay with a male as one lies with a female - it is an abomination.”(18:22-23.)

This strong homophobic sentiment led to an obtrusive deviancy in spite of disapproval out of rebellion. The sexual promiscuity surrounding the counter culture of the 1960s strays from social norms which are the guidelines for a civilized society. 

The deviancy is therefore ill suited for society and has in turn been detrimental in today’s society with an additional moral burden.

The societal bonds between Hippies and their revolution romanticized the agrarian lifestyle while discounting American industrialism. 

The connection between the Hippies allowed them to try a tribalistic nature where it was not in what was produced, but the way in which one lived. 

This philosophical approach to life is not civilized in the sense that no complex society can therefore exist.


Franklin Foer, via his insight into the common arena of soccer and social atmosphere asserts that, “Through the late twentieth century, liberal political thinkers, from the philosopher Martha Nussbaum to the architects of the European Union, have blamed nationalism for most of modernity’s evils. 

 But tribalism, in a more modern guise - they denounced it.” 


This nature brings to the youth isolation from outside influences that only further giving credence to a counter-intuitive moral structure. 

Through this familial connection of baby boomer ideology within the community, the Hippies isolated themselves from contradiction in philosophy. 

By not understanding and associating with other ideas one cannot fully grasp truth from all angles. 

The pseudo-liberal thinking universities contributed to the idealistic nature of young baby boomers. This ideology, combined with the support of an entire cultural movement, blinded boomers to opposing ideas thus causing them to be swept up in a wave of de-industrialization.


In “Six Degrees of Separation,” Albert-László Barabási describes the interconnectivity of social networks; as a network the Hippies connected throughout the United States. 

The key to the Hippie social connection, Barabási asserts, “… lies in the highly interconnected nature of these networks.” 

This network made the unindustrialized attitude of the Hippie philosophy to damage the manufacturing and production centers of the United States. 


This damage was caused by the lack of workers in the age bracket as well as many university degrees being squandered in the pursuit of political retaliation. 

The liberal vision of freedom lacks the civic resources to sustain self-government. This defect ill-equips it to address the sense of dis-empowerment that afflicts our public life. 

The public philosophy by which we live cannot secure the liberty it promises, because it cannot inspire the sense of community and civic engagement that liberty requires.

A procedural republic which banishes moral and religious argument from political discourse makes for an impoverished civic life… Its image of citizens as free and independent selves, unencumbered by moral or civic ties they have not chosen, cannot sustain the public spirit that equips us for self-rule.


This tribal nature, along with the agricultural idealism it spawned combined to detriment the production of an entire generation and hurt much of the American economy."

The connection between the baby boomer Hippies of the United States led to today’s acceptability of recreational drug usage. Timothy Leary a CIA-funded Harvard professor, was one of the biggest authority figures to lead the charge of baby boomer ideology.


Morton L. Sussman, the United States Attorney against Leary in his trial for possession of marijuana said, “The appellant continues his publicized activities involving the advocacy of the use of psychedelic drugs by students and others of immature judgment and tender years.” 

This profession of divinity by intellectual authority figures in academia, if not enough for drugs, and then the vast accessibility of marijuana made it the drug of choice.

Along with the mental repercussions of drug use, the lack of industry in the ideals of the counter-culture led to increased levels of drug consumption.


These recreational users led by example, making drug use seem merited. 

This example incited people who would never have otherwise tried drugs to step into that role because the social norms had already been broken. The use of hard drugs led to the moral and mental deterioration of an entire generation. 

Professor Leary propounded that, “LSD opened up a ‘limitless’ internal world of ‘space-time’ dimensions.”


The drugs of the counter culture overshadowed the people, taking what could have been intellectual individuals and turning them into easily manipulated pawns of social change. 


This trend of recreational drug use spread into the modern atmosphere, where many states have decriminalized marijuana. Allowing people recreational drug use goes against the traditional American values and lessens our prosperity. 

The interconnection between Hippies in their social atmosphere, in place of traditional family and social structure, led to a rise in criminality over time. The starting point of the Hippies cultural slide was the experimentation of addictive drugs.

Progressing downward to sexual vulgarity and homosexuality, all of which descend past American social values. 


With this descent, other more basic social values are put aside in the name of freedom of expression. Anthony Walsh and Lee Ellis profess in their book “Criminology: An Interdisciplinary Approach” that, 

‘When norms and values break down in response to the stresses and confusion of rapid social change, social bonds, i.e., ties to families, schools, work, religion, and so on, that serve to constrain anti-social behavior are fractured, then people are freed to satisfy their avaricious appetites by any means, fair and foul.’

This lack of social structure and value system invariably yields a significant growth in crime. 

The radical system of boomer ideology fractured the very social structure that is family through its lessening inhibitions toward individualist need/take response. 

The free love of the baby boomer movement, regarded as a sexual revolution, lessened inhibitions against marriage - causing many rushed relationships to falter. 


The journal of marriage and family defends that, “the divorce rate in the United States increased by 101% from 1960 to 1993,” – this, causing a rise in crime.

“The increasing divorce rate (perhaps itself a consequence of the breakdown of the moral consensus) had a lot to do with the increasing crime rate during that period.” 

America has the following which has all been contributed to the baby boomer culture:

The highest percentage of single-parent families in the industrialized world.
The highest abortion rate in the industrialized world.

The highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases in the industrialized world. The rates of syphilis and gonorrhea transmission are almost 500% higher than the highest rates in the other industrialized nations.

The highest teenage birth rate in the industrialized world.
The highest rate of teenage drug use in the industrialized world.


All of this, the lack of social support and community morals, led to the demoralization of a country and the social acceptability of the immoral and unethical.

The Hippie generation, and their counter-culture revolution: liberalized sexuality, denounced industry, romanticized drug use, and demoralized a society, lessening the family social structure’s influence. 

All of this, in the aim of what was referred to as “spiritual enlightenment.”


Homosexuality, Marxism, and the social acceptability of promiscuity marked the sexual revolution, making the ideal morally contemptuous. 

Hippie communes professed that industry was evil, due to a sheltered life of academia and economic prosperity.


The drugs that played such an important part in the baby boomer movement was preached by intellectual authorities, openly accessible, and only progressed - worsening the condition of addiction throughout the American population. 


The sexual revolution made people forget the social repercussions of an action to simply fulfill a need, eventually leading to a rise in crime. All of which is apparent today due to the social atmosphere of perversion and immorality. 

The baby boomers were a generation who had led sheltered academic lives. Never having been exposed to the cruelty of the world, they adopted a radical liberality; combined with mind-altering drugs, the boomer generation proceeded toward the path of moral degradation.

This tragic social scenario could have been avoided had the baby boomer child lived in a more realistic environment as opposed to the quiet hillside of suburbia.
~



What's Next?
Generation X

In the end, a new generational establishment – Generation X (1961-75) - will have to clean up the incredible mess the baby boomer generation and their parents made. 

Generation X – a capable generation that will have to apply common sense, action and facts into what actually works - will have to put confidence and liquidity back into the economic, educational and social systems. 

Generation X as children in the 1970s

Liquidity is controlled and managed by society, its leaders as well as small and large businesses because the real strength of any monetary system is in honest to God real goods and services – not in corruption, ideology, debt and greed. 

The decline in society and within public and private institutions worldwide has been caused by the corrupt and dysfunctional culture of the baby boomer generation, whose elite establishment have ruined the progress that came out of the Industrial Age into the Space Age.

Generation X as New Establishment
Generation X girl in 1969

Those who know what is coming will have to get this:


Anyone who has been involved in the graft, corruption, theft and murder over the past 20-30 years had better find a new planet to inhabit because as Generation X solidifies its power base - and they shall - they will certainly will NOT be in any mood for the lies, debasement and rampant ideology that has wreaked havoc on the world.

Generation X in 1977

For decades, members of Generation X have suffered, but have also gained invaluable life experience being excluded by the boomer elite establishment who kept Gen X members out of the decision-making process that affected their own lives.


By doing so, the boomer elite has tripled the power of the 'X' factor - an unknown quantity in mathematics -given to the children born in 1961-75 and the Echo Xers born 1975-1980.

Generation X in the 1970s

The Baby Boomers at New York Magazine said this -

"Earlier generations have weathered recessions, of course; this stall we're in has the look of something nastier. Social Security and Medicare are going to be diminished, at best. Hours worked are up even as hiring staggers along: 

Blood from a stone looks to be the normal order of things "going forward," to borrow the business-speak. Economists are warning that even when the economy recuperates, full employment will be lower and growth will be slower-a sad little rhyme that adds up to something decidedly ­unpoetic. A majority of Americans say, for the first time ever, that this generation will not be better off than its parents."

In words of response to that baby boomer comment, here's Gen X member Mat Honan

"Generation X is sick of your bullshit.

The first generation to do worse than its parents? Please. Been there. 

Generation X was told that so many times that it can't even read those words without hearing Winona Ryder's voice in its heads. Or maybe it's Ethan Hawke's. Possibly Bridget Fonda's. Generation X is getting older, and can't remember those movies so well anymore. In retrospect, maybe they weren't very good to begin with.

Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. 

Generation X also graduated during a recession. It had even shittier jobs, and actually had to pay for its own music. (At least, when music mattered most to it.) 

Generation X is used to being fucked over. It lost its meager savings in the dot-com bust. Then came George Bush, and 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Generation X bore the brunt of all that. And then came the housing crisis.

Generation X wasn't surprised. Generation X kind of expected it.


Generation X is a journeyman. It didn't invent hip hop, or punk rock, or even electronica (it's pretty sure those dudes in Kraftwerk are boomers) but it perfected all of them, and made them its own. 

It didn't invent the Web - but it largely built the damn thing. 

Generation X gave you Google and Twitter and blogging; Run DMC and Radiohead and Nirvana and Notorious B.I.G. Not that it gets any credit.

But that's okay. Generation X is used to being ignored, stuffed between two much larger, much more vocal, demographics. But whatever! Generation X is self-sufficient.


It was a latchkey child. Its parents were too busy fulfilling their own personal ambitions to notice any of its trophies; which were admittedly few and far between because they were only awarded for victories - not participation."

As you can see, Generation X will come in as the new establishment with a ton of work to do and a no-nonsense leadership attitude to boot in order to get the job done. 

Get ready for very little in the way of baby boomer ideology and much of a "get your ass over there and clean up that mess you made," attitude from Generation X. 

And when it comes to the American and global economy, here's more of why Generation X has to take names and kick ass.

The inevitable municipal and pension financial crisis I forecasted years ago on Global Astrology is now taking place. During the Twenty-Tens - once Generation Y (1981-95) that's the boomers' offspring - finally find themselves working for companies whose profits were diverted to plug gaps in pension plans that were not open to them or Generation X - then the real resentment begins. 

The demographic environment is now changing and this will become one of the biggest unexpected shocks [Uranus] to the baby boomer generation that has been exclusive during their 20 years [1992-2012] as establishment Those boomers who are left will have to survive against overwhelming demographic headwinds and it will be their own fault.

Because of the boomer and oligarchical corruption, the hypocrisy, entitlement and exclusivity, it is not going to be a pretty picture over the short and medium term future. 

What does hold great promise for the world in the early 21st Century is the leadership and vision of the new establishment - Generation X (1961-1975) and the Echo Xers (1975-1980.)

Generation X, along with Generation Y (1981-1995) will have to clean up plenty of messes worldwide to return common sense and balance out of the ideological chaos, economic depression and social decline brought on by the outgoing baby boomer establishment and their parents.

The world will need all hands on deck and plenty of prayers for years to come.
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