The Cardinal T-Square Crisis
The Economy, Jobs & Real Estate
Plus,
Mystery Object Passing Earth?
Mystery Object Passing Earth?
California Earthquake Forecast
&
Mexico's Bloody Cartel Wars
Also,
Mundane World Forecast: 2010-2015
By Theodore White; mundane Astrolog.S
It is now mid-June 2010 and the world is about to face the first series of the Cardinal Crisis transit years.
In this post, I have also republished my mundane world forecast again because it is important for anyone who wants to know what potentials the next five years may bring.
In this post, I have also republished my mundane world forecast again because it is important for anyone who wants to know what potentials the next five years may bring.
We are now entering the second quarter of the astrological year which is the start of the Cardinal crisis years which last to the mid-2010s.
Global transits indicate that recriminations from the past meet up with the changing times of the present as the Cardinal T-Square configurations begin to form in earnest in June, July, and August 2010.
The Mexico Drug Wars post contains some disturbing images, so if you have a weak stomach, please take care to prepare yourself for the realities of what is happening in that country.
Also, unemployment continues to peak into the double-digits as tens of millions of people search for ways to break the hardships caused by the Bank Crisis which began in 2007. We are now three years into the global economic recession.
In the real estate markets, the world transits show that the consequences of widespread corruption and fraud is now beginning to peak with action by federal, regional and local officials around the world, particularly in the United States.
With such powerful global transits in our solar system, it is also not unusual to see the very unusual, such as the mystery object that continues to baffle scientists as it passes near the Earth.
What is this strange object coming near to the Earth?
~ Scientist Eric Diaz said May 28, 2010 ~
"An object was detected by astronomer S.J. Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea that was deemed not natural, i.e., not an asteroid.
The object dubbed 2010 KQ was first discovered by astronomer Richard Kowalski at the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey in the mountains just north of Tucson, Ariz., on May 16.
Below is an illustration of the object's trajectory and projected trajectory as well as a link from JPL explaining the object.
What I find odd about the object's trajectory, is that from about March 1st to April 1st the object's trajectory was inside Earth's orbit and then all of a sudden veers off to the outside of the Earth/Moon orbit.
Of course, we can't see the trajectory prior to the end of February, but considering the orientation of the object with respect to the sun, you would think that it would have followed a trajectory inside the Earth/Moon orbit and not outside.
In other words, there was nothing there besides the Earth and Moon to tidally perturb the object's trajectory to such a degree that it would be outside the Earth's orbit between May 1st and June 1st."
~
What do I think it is?
In unusual astrological times, with strong aspects between the outer planets, like those of the the next 4-5 years of the Cardinal Crisis, I believe the "mystery object" is a herald of sorts.
It is announcing a change of the times, as heralds often do. This one, of course, is celestial, as are most of the announcements of historic times, which I believe we are now living.
Global transits indicate that recriminations from the past meet up with the changing times of the present as the Cardinal T-Square configurations begin to form in earnest in June, July, and August 2010.
The Mexico Drug Wars post contains some disturbing images, so if you have a weak stomach, please take care to prepare yourself for the realities of what is happening in that country.
Also, unemployment continues to peak into the double-digits as tens of millions of people search for ways to break the hardships caused by the Bank Crisis which began in 2007. We are now three years into the global economic recession.
In the real estate markets, the world transits show that the consequences of widespread corruption and fraud is now beginning to peak with action by federal, regional and local officials around the world, particularly in the United States.
With such powerful global transits in our solar system, it is also not unusual to see the very unusual, such as the mystery object that continues to baffle scientists as it passes near the Earth.
~ Scientist Eric Diaz said May 28, 2010 ~
"An object was detected by astronomer S.J. Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea that was deemed not natural, i.e., not an asteroid.
The object dubbed 2010 KQ was first discovered by astronomer Richard Kowalski at the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey in the mountains just north of Tucson, Ariz., on May 16.
Below is an illustration of the object's trajectory and projected trajectory as well as a link from JPL explaining the object.
What I find odd about the object's trajectory, is that from about March 1st to April 1st the object's trajectory was inside Earth's orbit and then all of a sudden veers off to the outside of the Earth/Moon orbit.
Of course, we can't see the trajectory prior to the end of February, but considering the orientation of the object with respect to the sun, you would think that it would have followed a trajectory inside the Earth/Moon orbit and not outside.
In other words, there was nothing there besides the Earth and Moon to tidally perturb the object's trajectory to such a degree that it would be outside the Earth's orbit between May 1st and June 1st."
~
What do I think it is?
In unusual astrological times, with strong aspects between the outer planets, like those of the the next 4-5 years of the Cardinal Crisis, I believe the "mystery object" is a herald of sorts.
It is announcing a change of the times, as heralds often do. This one, of course, is celestial, as are most of the announcements of historic times, which I believe we are now living.
The Cardinal Crisis Months:
June, July, August & September 2010
World transits through the summer months in the northern hemisphere show a powerful collection of transits, particularly of the outer planets, in cardinal signs.
Their aspects configure as a T-Square relative to the Earth, and can incline towards unfavorable events should people allow themselves to be so inclined that is.
Their aspects configure as a T-Square relative to the Earth, and can incline towards unfavorable events should people allow themselves to be so inclined that is.
In Brief for 2010:
- Travel is unfavorable
- High seas dangerous
- Review military plans & options
- Use Caution, Prudence & Patience
- Use 2010 To Patiently Plan for 2011's Transits
I continue to urge that parents take care to watch their children this particular summer, as world transits are unusually strong featuring haste, impulse, and potential violence due to the inclinations of the Cardinal T-Square, and Cardinal Cross transits.
I also republish my California Earthquake Warning:
Astrological Transits Tending Strong
I am issuing an astrological alert for seismic activity affecting the U.S. west coast. Global transits show transiting Mars, and Saturn are on the nadir of the west coast of North America through the month of June, and July 2010.
The angles relative to southern California, and Mexico, from the cardinal transits involve Mars, Saturn, and Pluto, in that order, with Pluto descending on solar charts to the west of southern California, Saturn transiting towards the nadir, and square to Pluto.
It is my astrological forecast for this region, especially for southern California, for residents to take the proper precautions for a large magnitude earthquake to potentially strike in the month of June, and July 2010.
The Earth is nearing aphelion, its furthest approach from the Sun, as the planets continue to form their T-square alignment relative to the Earth over the summer months in the northern hemisphere.
There are strong stellar forces about.
The electromagnetic energies released by the aspects of planetary cardinal sign alignments, which are astrophysical, along with Earth's aphelion to the Sun, and the Moon's transits, have geophysical effects ~ such as potentially large magnitude earthquakes with powerful aftershocks along the US west coast and elsewhere.
We've seen these seismic events earlier this year. We've also witnessed the eruption of two volcanoes in Central and South America on the same day in May as Uranus entered Aries.
A month before, plumes of thick ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull Volcano shut down Europe, affecting millions of travelers around the world, as some government agencies and airlines clashed over the strict flight bans.
Swarming Earthquakes Reported Early June 2010: The USGS has recorded a series of at least 29 seismic events for southern California as of June 9, 2010.
Source: USGS
The planetary inclinations, along with the position of transiting Saturn, indicate a magnitude 7+ or greater seismic event in California, with effects along the coastal regions of the US west.
Saturn's angle is as such relative to the other planets and the earth that a strong series of earthquakes, usually preceded by smaller magnitude "swarms" offshore earthquakes, are indicators of increasing seismic activity.
Saturn, now direct in motion, will come to square Pluto in Capricorn, as Cancer is rising along with the stars Castor and Pollux, over the US west coast.
Both stars are associated in mundane astrology with powerful quakes, most recently seen in Haiti in January 2010.
The solar-earth-lunar-planetary alignments can cause weaken structures to give way. This is the cause of all seismic events on Earth.
Moreover, the transiting Lunar Nodes will be along the east/west axis of most regions of the world, including California, within orb, in late June, and conjunct by early July 2010.
Caution is urged.
I strongly advise residents of the US west coast update their emergency earthquake plans, and for those living and working in high-rise buildings to take extra care in updating your exit and evacuation plans along with updating your emergency preparedness procedures.
This is a good time to do just that. There's a New Moon in Gemini that arrives Saturday, June 12. If you start soon, use that weekend's new moon, into next week, and be a very busy bee if you live in southern California.
Go shopping, water, canned food, lots of energy & power bars. Dig out and freshen up that camping gear, clean the tent, pack some supplies. Buy new batteries. Get better communications and cellphone gear.
Take the time to update all your family's emergency and "what-to-do" procedures. Include all family members in the act. Do not take "no" for an answer.
Talk to everyone, and also to your neighbors to see who is ready and who may not be. Form up some quick networking community teams just in case. Be ready like Freddy.
Take a tip from a former explorer boy scout: Be prepared, not scared.
Watch this Eagle Scout video of what to do in an earthquake. Scouts are trained to save lives with easy to use info that is practical. Our Motto was: "Be Prepared." That's sums it all up. That's how lives are saved.
Here's a link for California Earthquake Preparedness Resources.
~
The Cardinal Crisis
Unspeakable crimes in Mexico Rage On: My sincere apologies for this revolting photo, however, the mainstream media has not been fully covering what obviously is a very serious and very sick time in this nation. The inhuman acts taking place in Mexico eclipses that of the vicious barbarians of old. An estimated 22,000+ people have been murdered in the most brutal ways by competing billion-dollar drug cartels. This crime photo depicts five men who were tortured, murdered and then decapitated. A note scrawled on the bloody floor warns of more to come.
Nowhere on Earth does this kind of inhuman violence, as inclined by world transits, can been seen in all its gore, transgression and sin than in Mexico. Remember, this is the year 2010.
Over the last 10 years, the drug wars between cartels have left a bloody trail of grisly murders in unspeakable fashion that defies the imagination; especially at present.
The graphic below shows how bad things have gotten in Mexico, and with the Cardinal Crisis transits I expect events to spiral out of control with more bloodshed in the months, and years to come without strong intervention to put an end to the senseless killings.
~ Consider this June 16, 2010 report from the Los Angeles Times ~
'June is Shaping up as one of the Grisliest months in Mexico's Drug War'By Daniel Hernandez
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO -- For nearly an hour Tuesday, gunmen and Mexican soldiers were locked a battle that left at least 14 dead near the picturesque mining town of Taxco, The Times reported.
The dead were all alleged gunmen, and authorities believe they were tied to a drug suspect named Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as "La Barbie."
Valdez's group operates in Guerrero state, where Taxco is located.
The popular tourist spot, with its steep hills, narrow cobbled streets and world-famous silver work, has increasingly been a "scene of cartel turf battles," noted the Associated Press.
Late last month, police discovered bodies in an abandoned mine near Taxco and eventually recovered 55, presumed victims of the drug wars.
Among those identified, as noted in The Times' report, was Daniel Bravo Mota, a state prison director who had gone missing.
Earlier this month near the resort city of Cancun, authorities discovered six bodies in a cave, some reportedly with their chests cut open and their hearts removed.
President Felipe Calderon went on national television Monday night to plead with Mexicans for their support the government's campaign against the cartels.
June is already close to being the deadliest month in Calderon's three-year war on drugs, news reports said.
And the grisly news keeps coming.
The AP reported that six decapitated bodies were found last week in the state of Durango.
The news agency added: "Three more victims with severed heads were found by police in the central state of Morelos.
A note left at the scene threatened people with ties to alleged drug trafficker Edgar Valdez Villareal, who authorities say is fighting Hector Beltran Leyva for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel."
Masked Mexican soldiers stand guard over captured Mexican cartel members.
In Nayarit state, where a record 32 people were killed over the weekend, the governor decided to end the public school semester on Friday, three weeks early.
Children targeted: A masked Mexican policeman carries a child to safety during a three-hour gun battle in 2008 outside a kindergarten in central Tijuana.
Credit: Reuters
On Wednesday, six people were reported killed at a rehabilitation clinic in Ciudad Juarez, the second attack on such clinics since Thursday, when 19 were killed in the city of Chihuahua.
-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City."
~
The Cardinal Crisis
California Earthquake Forecast
Start Emergency Preparedness:Astrological Transits Tending Strong
by Theodore White; mundane Astrolog.S
I am issuing an astrological alert for seismic activity affecting the U.S. west coast. Global transits show transiting Mars, and Saturn are on the nadir of the west coast of North America through the month of June, and July 2010.
The angles relative to southern California, and Mexico, from the cardinal transits involve Mars, Saturn, and Pluto, in that order, with Pluto descending on solar charts to the west of southern California, Saturn transiting towards the nadir, and square to Pluto.
It is my astrological forecast for this region, especially for southern California, for residents to take the proper precautions for a large magnitude earthquake to potentially strike in the month of June, and July 2010.
Astrologically Seismic Sensitive Dates are:
- June 17,18,19,20
- June 24,25,26, 27
- June 29-30
- July 3,4,5
- July 8,9,10,11
The Earth is nearing aphelion, its furthest approach from the Sun, as the planets continue to form their T-square alignment relative to the Earth over the summer months in the northern hemisphere.
There are strong stellar forces about.
The electromagnetic energies released by the aspects of planetary cardinal sign alignments, which are astrophysical, along with Earth's aphelion to the Sun, and the Moon's transits, have geophysical effects ~ such as potentially large magnitude earthquakes with powerful aftershocks along the US west coast and elsewhere.
We've seen these seismic events earlier this year. We've also witnessed the eruption of two volcanoes in Central and South America on the same day in May as Uranus entered Aries.
A month before, plumes of thick ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull Volcano shut down Europe, affecting millions of travelers around the world, as some government agencies and airlines clashed over the strict flight bans.
Source: USGS
The planetary inclinations, along with the position of transiting Saturn, indicate a magnitude 7+ or greater seismic event in California, with effects along the coastal regions of the US west.
Saturn's angle is as such relative to the other planets and the earth that a strong series of earthquakes, usually preceded by smaller magnitude "swarms" offshore earthquakes, are indicators of increasing seismic activity.
Saturn, now direct in motion, will come to square Pluto in Capricorn, as Cancer is rising along with the stars Castor and Pollux, over the US west coast.
Both stars are associated in mundane astrology with powerful quakes, most recently seen in Haiti in January 2010.
The solar-earth-lunar-planetary alignments can cause weaken structures to give way. This is the cause of all seismic events on Earth.
Moreover, the transiting Lunar Nodes will be along the east/west axis of most regions of the world, including California, within orb, in late June, and conjunct by early July 2010.
Caution is urged.
I strongly advise residents of the US west coast update their emergency earthquake plans, and for those living and working in high-rise buildings to take extra care in updating your exit and evacuation plans along with updating your emergency preparedness procedures.
This is a good time to do just that. There's a New Moon in Gemini that arrives Saturday, June 12. If you start soon, use that weekend's new moon, into next week, and be a very busy bee if you live in southern California.
Go shopping, water, canned food, lots of energy & power bars. Dig out and freshen up that camping gear, clean the tent, pack some supplies. Buy new batteries. Get better communications and cellphone gear.
Take the time to update all your family's emergency and "what-to-do" procedures. Include all family members in the act. Do not take "no" for an answer.
Talk to everyone, and also to your neighbors to see who is ready and who may not be. Form up some quick networking community teams just in case. Be ready like Freddy.
Take a tip from a former explorer boy scout: Be prepared, not scared.
Watch this Eagle Scout video of what to do in an earthquake. Scouts are trained to save lives with easy to use info that is practical. Our Motto was: "Be Prepared." That's sums it all up. That's how lives are saved.
Here's a link for California Earthquake Preparedness Resources.
~
The Cardinal Crisis
Mexico's Bloody Cartel Wars
Nowhere on Earth does this kind of inhuman violence, as inclined by world transits, can been seen in all its gore, transgression and sin than in Mexico. Remember, this is the year 2010.
Over the last 10 years, the drug wars between cartels have left a bloody trail of grisly murders in unspeakable fashion that defies the imagination; especially at present.
The graphic below shows how bad things have gotten in Mexico, and with the Cardinal Crisis transits I expect events to spiral out of control with more bloodshed in the months, and years to come without strong intervention to put an end to the senseless killings.
~ Consider this June 16, 2010 report from the Los Angeles Times ~
'June is Shaping up as one of the Grisliest months in Mexico's Drug War'
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO -- For nearly an hour Tuesday, gunmen and Mexican soldiers were locked a battle that left at least 14 dead near the picturesque mining town of Taxco, The Times reported.
The dead were all alleged gunmen, and authorities believe they were tied to a drug suspect named Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as "La Barbie."
Valdez's group operates in Guerrero state, where Taxco is located.
The popular tourist spot, with its steep hills, narrow cobbled streets and world-famous silver work, has increasingly been a "scene of cartel turf battles," noted the Associated Press.
Late last month, police discovered bodies in an abandoned mine near Taxco and eventually recovered 55, presumed victims of the drug wars.
Among those identified, as noted in The Times' report, was Daniel Bravo Mota, a state prison director who had gone missing.
Earlier this month near the resort city of Cancun, authorities discovered six bodies in a cave, some reportedly with their chests cut open and their hearts removed.
President Felipe Calderon went on national television Monday night to plead with Mexicans for their support the government's campaign against the cartels.
June is already close to being the deadliest month in Calderon's three-year war on drugs, news reports said.
And the grisly news keeps coming.
The AP reported that six decapitated bodies were found last week in the state of Durango.
The news agency added: "Three more victims with severed heads were found by police in the central state of Morelos.
A note left at the scene threatened people with ties to alleged drug trafficker Edgar Valdez Villareal, who authorities say is fighting Hector Beltran Leyva for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel."
In Nayarit state, where a record 32 people were killed over the weekend, the governor decided to end the public school semester on Friday, three weeks early.
Credit: Reuters
On Wednesday, six people were reported killed at a rehabilitation clinic in Ciudad Juarez, the second attack on such clinics since Thursday, when 19 were killed in the city of Chihuahua.
-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City."
~
The Cardinal Crisis
Mundane transits show the world is undergoing a generational transition at the very time of the Cardinal Crisis world transits.
This transition is part of the causes of the near-collapse of the economies of many nations, and has been one of the root causes of the current stagnation in society.
This will not last, of course, but the consequences of the last 36 overall, and the last 18 years in particular, will affect much of the 2010s until it is purged from the system altogether.
The Pluto in Leo generation of Baby Boomers is now at the end of its time as the establishment in 2010.
The consequences of the last 18.5 years has been playing out since the 1990s, but is now at sunset.
The changes ahead will come from a new generation, those with Pluto in Virgo born in the 1960s, and Pluto in Libra, born in the 1970s, representing both Generation X, and the first wave of Generation Y.
It will take some years to do, however, the changes ahead, if seen in this light of generational change, are promising for those willing to move forward into the future facing it, and not with their backs turned against it.
Forecasting economy crisis is not an easy thing to do, nor is it easy to take, but, in doing so for years, and warning about this time in history, it is obvious the world is entering a new global cycle, at least for the next several years of the Cardinal Crisis transits.
Aging is another matter. For the millions of Baby Boomers now heading into their years as seniors, the transits say that time is up as the establishment.
Aging rates throughout the world have risen due to the majority of those born with Pluto in Cancer and Leo, generations that have been the establishment since 1975.
~ The Business Insider Reports ~
"America's demographic problems are well known. But some states are particularly screwed.
There's New England with its Japan-level birth rate. Rural states that leak a steady stream of taxpayers to coast.
Retiree swamped states of the South East and the South West.
These states look forward to a diminished workforce. Tax receipts will shrink, while service costs rise. What jobs there are may involve taking care of the elderly."
For more, see 15 States Facing A Terrible Demographic Crisis.
~
The economies of nations will continue to undergo great transformations from years of abuse, neglect, and outright corruption. The times require fortitude, insight, vision, and courage to be able to work for the recovery of the world economy.
The Cardinal Crisis transits will not make this easy, but the transformations will take place nonetheless.
The Cardinal Crisis
Unemployment
New Times & New Realities
Unemployment figures remain high: in double digits in many countries, including the U.S., and western Europe, as well as in other regions worldwide.
It is part and parcel of the same generational transition that is now underway.
I am forecasting that unemployment figures will begin to rebound in the U.S. in 2011; but will continue to be sluggish at best until the generational transition is complete.
Spurred on by the bank crisis that started it all, the "system" as it is called, will begin to show signs of change. This change, again, is also generational.
Percentage of unemployed people out of work for an extended period has been steadily on the rise during the so-called "good times" for the economy since the year 2000.
Jupiter and Saturn are now in opposition, and will remain opposed from 2010 to mid-2012.
The next 2.5 years shows the result of 10 years of a bubble economy, economic contraction, financial corruption, and wage losses among the American worker.
The situation for younger workers aged 16-24 is poor with jobs few and far between. This summer of 2010 will be another difficult season for younger workers searching for work as the graphic below shows:
The fact of the matter is that Baby Boomers have been also taking the jobs of younger workers aged 16-24, who have seen their earnings plummet since 2000.
This situation continues to lead into a skills shortage of untrained younger workers who will lack the experience because of anemic job opportunities since the decade of the 2000s.
However, this will not last as the Pluto in Leo generation enters into retirement by the facts of life, which is aging.
Exceptional Baby Boomers will be able to continue to work, but the great majority of Boomers will have to contend with retirement, like it or not. It's just history.
I expect the job market to fully bottom out in the year 2012, with increasing improvement thereafter into the year 2013 in the employment sector.
The key for the economy to rebound is to get younger people back to work, as soon as possible, and to expand job opportunities double-fold to make a serious enough dent in double-digit unemployment figures that will make a difference down the road.
~ CNN Money reported June 4, 2010 ~
NEW YORK -- "A flood of temporary Census workers in May led to the biggest jump in jobs in ten years, the government reported Friday.
Employers added 431,000 jobs in the month, up from 290,000 jobs added in April. It was the biggest gain in jobs since March 2000.
But Census hiring was responsible for 411,000 of May's increase in employment. Private sector employers also added 41,000 jobs in the period, well below the 218,000 private sector job gains in April.
Government payrolls other than Census declined by 21,000 jobs in May, due largely to job cuts by state and local governments.
It was a disappointing number for private sector hiring, as economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast an overall gain of 500,000 in May.
U.S. stocks traded sharply lower on the report, with the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 200 points in midday trading.
"This is a timely reminder that, although the economic outlook is improving, the recovery is still pretty fragile," said Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics.
Despite the spike in hiring, the unemployment rate declined only modestly, to 9.7% from 9.9% in April. Economists had forecast it would decline to 9.8%.
After nearly two years of constant job losses, the U.S. economy has added 982,000 jobs so far in 2010, adding workers in every month, a sign that the labor market is improving beyond the short-term Census jobs.
But the modest gain shows that employers are still cautious about adding staff.
Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the lower unemployment rate was encouraging, even if the slowing of private sector job growth was reason for concern.
But Republicans were quick to criticize the report as proof that the Obama administration had taken the wrong path on trying to create jobs.
"Let me be clear -- during challenging times, a job is a job," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican Whip.
"Yet government jobs that are paid for by taxing small business people and borrowing from the Chinese are not signs of a healthy economic recovery."
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, said she was encouraged by the numbers in the report, and that it was important to recognize how much the labor market has improved.
"The job picture is very different from what it was a year ago," said Maloney, one of the chairs of Congress' Joint Economic Committee. "We're on an upwards trend. The road to recovery is bumpy, but we're trending in the right direction."
Shrinking Gains?
Just over half of private sector industries added jobs in the month, while 46% continued to shave jobs from their payrolls. Job gains in the private sector were far more widespread during the previous three months.
Manufacturers added 29,000 jobs in the month, but that was balanced out by a 35,000 job loss in construction. Retailers also trimmed 6,600 jobs and financial firms cut 12,000 jobs.
Some sectors that added jobs, such as leisure and hospitality or health care, posted their smallest gains in months.
The Census Bureau wasn't the only employer adding temporary jobs, as there was a gain of 31,000 jobs in temporary help services.
Scot Melland, CEO of Dice Holdings, a provider of specialized career Web sites, said he was surprised by the weak private sector hiring. A semi-annual survey by his firm had found employers in the process of stepping up hiring.
Despite the disappointing numbers, he still expects job growth to pick up through the rest of this year.
"You don't want to read too much into one months' results," he said. "It could be a month of digestion and we move on from here. The indicators are still positive."
Bright Spots?
The good news in the report beyond Census was in hours worked, which increased to an average of 33.5 hours from 33.4.
That helped to lift weekly wages and also cut the number of part-time workers who wanted full-time jobs by 343,000, as workers who had their hours cut during the recession were put back on full-time status.
Job seekers are also somewhat less discouraged, as the number of unemployed workers who wanted jobs but had stopped looking for work declined by 114,000.
Looking for work in tough times.
But the problem of long-term unemployment continued to worsen as those out of work more than six months rose to a record 6.8 million, or nearly half of all unemployed workers.
New Times & New Realities
Unemployment figures remain high: in double digits in many countries, including the U.S., and western Europe, as well as in other regions worldwide.
It is part and parcel of the same generational transition that is now underway.
I am forecasting that unemployment figures will begin to rebound in the U.S. in 2011; but will continue to be sluggish at best until the generational transition is complete.
Spurred on by the bank crisis that started it all, the "system" as it is called, will begin to show signs of change. This change, again, is also generational.
Jupiter and Saturn are now in opposition, and will remain opposed from 2010 to mid-2012.
The next 2.5 years shows the result of 10 years of a bubble economy, economic contraction, financial corruption, and wage losses among the American worker.
The situation for younger workers aged 16-24 is poor with jobs few and far between. This summer of 2010 will be another difficult season for younger workers searching for work as the graphic below shows:
The fact of the matter is that Baby Boomers have been also taking the jobs of younger workers aged 16-24, who have seen their earnings plummet since 2000.
This situation continues to lead into a skills shortage of untrained younger workers who will lack the experience because of anemic job opportunities since the decade of the 2000s.
However, this will not last as the Pluto in Leo generation enters into retirement by the facts of life, which is aging.
Exceptional Baby Boomers will be able to continue to work, but the great majority of Boomers will have to contend with retirement, like it or not. It's just history.
I expect the job market to fully bottom out in the year 2012, with increasing improvement thereafter into the year 2013 in the employment sector.
The key for the economy to rebound is to get younger people back to work, as soon as possible, and to expand job opportunities double-fold to make a serious enough dent in double-digit unemployment figures that will make a difference down the road.
~ CNN Money reported June 4, 2010 ~
NEW YORK -- "A flood of temporary Census workers in May led to the biggest jump in jobs in ten years, the government reported Friday.
Employers added 431,000 jobs in the month, up from 290,000 jobs added in April. It was the biggest gain in jobs since March 2000.
But Census hiring was responsible for 411,000 of May's increase in employment. Private sector employers also added 41,000 jobs in the period, well below the 218,000 private sector job gains in April.
Government payrolls other than Census declined by 21,000 jobs in May, due largely to job cuts by state and local governments.
It was a disappointing number for private sector hiring, as economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast an overall gain of 500,000 in May.
U.S. stocks traded sharply lower on the report, with the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 200 points in midday trading.
"This is a timely reminder that, although the economic outlook is improving, the recovery is still pretty fragile," said Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics.
Despite the spike in hiring, the unemployment rate declined only modestly, to 9.7% from 9.9% in April. Economists had forecast it would decline to 9.8%.
After nearly two years of constant job losses, the U.S. economy has added 982,000 jobs so far in 2010, adding workers in every month, a sign that the labor market is improving beyond the short-term Census jobs.
But the modest gain shows that employers are still cautious about adding staff.
Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the lower unemployment rate was encouraging, even if the slowing of private sector job growth was reason for concern.
But Republicans were quick to criticize the report as proof that the Obama administration had taken the wrong path on trying to create jobs.
"Let me be clear -- during challenging times, a job is a job," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican Whip.
"Yet government jobs that are paid for by taxing small business people and borrowing from the Chinese are not signs of a healthy economic recovery."
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, said she was encouraged by the numbers in the report, and that it was important to recognize how much the labor market has improved.
"The job picture is very different from what it was a year ago," said Maloney, one of the chairs of Congress' Joint Economic Committee. "We're on an upwards trend. The road to recovery is bumpy, but we're trending in the right direction."
Shrinking Gains?
Just over half of private sector industries added jobs in the month, while 46% continued to shave jobs from their payrolls. Job gains in the private sector were far more widespread during the previous three months.
Manufacturers added 29,000 jobs in the month, but that was balanced out by a 35,000 job loss in construction. Retailers also trimmed 6,600 jobs and financial firms cut 12,000 jobs.
Some sectors that added jobs, such as leisure and hospitality or health care, posted their smallest gains in months.
The Census Bureau wasn't the only employer adding temporary jobs, as there was a gain of 31,000 jobs in temporary help services.
Scot Melland, CEO of Dice Holdings, a provider of specialized career Web sites, said he was surprised by the weak private sector hiring. A semi-annual survey by his firm had found employers in the process of stepping up hiring.
Despite the disappointing numbers, he still expects job growth to pick up through the rest of this year.
"You don't want to read too much into one months' results," he said. "It could be a month of digestion and we move on from here. The indicators are still positive."
Bright Spots?
The good news in the report beyond Census was in hours worked, which increased to an average of 33.5 hours from 33.4.
That helped to lift weekly wages and also cut the number of part-time workers who wanted full-time jobs by 343,000, as workers who had their hours cut during the recession were put back on full-time status.
Job seekers are also somewhat less discouraged, as the number of unemployed workers who wanted jobs but had stopped looking for work declined by 114,000.
But the problem of long-term unemployment continued to worsen as those out of work more than six months rose to a record 6.8 million, or nearly half of all unemployed workers.
"The U.S. unemployment rate is likely to be higher for longer during the current recovery due to a structural mismatch between workers and jobs," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo Securities."
~ The AP Reports June 17, 2010 ~
'New Jobless Claims Up Sharply As Layoffs Persist'
By Alan Zibel
WASHINGTON – The number of people filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped last week after three straight declines, another sign that the pace of layoffs has not slowed.
Initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 472,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.
It was the highest level in a month and overshadowed a report that showed consumer prices remain essentially flat.
The rise in jobless claims highlighted concerns about the economic rebound — especially after a report earlier this week said home construction plunged in May after government tax credits expired.
"If layoffs persist, there's a concern that the June employment numbers may show a decline in private-sector jobs after five straight months of gains, said Jennifer Lee, an economist with BMO Capital Markets. "We've definitely seen the economic recovery hit a wall," Lee said.
First-time jobless claims have hovered near 450,000 since the beginning of the year after falling steadily in the second half of 2009.
That has raised concerns that hiring is lackluster and could slow the recovery.
The four-week average for unemployment claims, which smooths volatility, dipped slightly to 463,500. That's down by 3,750 from the start of January.
Kevin Logan, an economist with HSBC Securities, said many economists have been expecting claims to fall below 450,000 for several weeks now.
"The wait is getting longer and longer," said Logan. "As each week goes by, doubts about the underlying strength of the economic expansion grow."
A separate Labor report said consumer prices fell for the second straight month. The 0.2 decline in the Consumer Price Index was pulled down by falling energy prices — most notably a 5.2 percent drop in gasoline prices.
But core consumer prices, which strip out volatile energy and food, edged up 0.1 percent in May, after being flat in April.
Core prices are up only 0.9 percent over the past year — below the Fed's inflation target.
Additionally, the Commerce Department said Thursday that the broadest measure of U.S. trade rose during the first quarter to the highest point in more than a year.
Much of the widening deficit was due to higher prices on imported oil during the first three months of the year. Those prices have since come down.
And a private research group said its gauge of future economic activity rose 0.4 percent in May, signaling slow growth in the U.S. economy through the fall.
Turmoil in stock markets and a troubled housing market weighed on the Conference Board's leading economic index, while measures related to interest rates and an increasing amount of money in the economy tugged it higher.
The index is designed to forecast activity in the next three to six months.
Still, layoffs remain one of the biggest concerns for the recovery. Just this week, casino owner Wynn Resorts laid off more than 260 workers in its two Las Vegas casino hotels.
Julia Coronado, senior U.S. economist with BNP Paribas in New York, said current economic conditions suggest initial claims will stay at around 450,000 for some time.
That's because weaker segments of the economy are shedding jobs while stronger sectors are hiring.
Economists have said they don't expect to see sustained job creation until first-time jobless claims drop below 425,000 per week.
The number of people continuing to claim benefits rose by 88,000 to 4.57 million.
That doesn't include about 5.2 million people who receive extended benefits paid for by the federal government.
Congress has added 73 weeks of extra benefits on top of the 26 weeks typically provided by states.
All told, about 9.7 million people received unemployment insurance in the week ending May 29, the most recent data available.
The extended benefit program expired this month. The House has approved an extension of the benefits through November. The Senate has yet to act.
On Wednesday, Senate Republicans and a dozen Democratic defectors rejected a catchall measure combining jobless aid for the long-term unemployed, aid to cash-strapped state governments and the renewal of dozens of popular tax breaks.
Despite the loss, Democratic leaders predicted that a scaled-back version of the measure could pass, possibly later this week.
Adding to worries about the job market, the Labor Department said earlier this month that the economy generated only 41,000 private-sector jobs in May. That was down from 218,000 in April.
Temporary hiring by the Census Bureau added another 411,000 jobs. The unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent."
~
Out-of-work Job Applicants Told Unemployed Need Not Apply?
By Chris Isidore, senior writer, CNN Money
June 17, 2010 -- The last thing someone who is unemployed needs to be told is that they shouldn't even apply for the limited number of job openings that are available.
But some companies and recruiters are doing just that.
Employment experts say they believe companies are increasingly interested only in applicants who already have a job.
"I think it is more prevalent than it used to be," said Rich Thompson, vice president of learning and performance for Adecco Group North America, the world's largest staffing firm.
"I don't have hard numbers, but three out of the last four conversations I've had about openings, this requirement was brought up."
Some job postings include restrictions such as "unemployed candidates will not be considered" or "must be currently employed."
Those explicit limitations have occasionally been removed from listings when an employer or recruiter is questioned by the media though.
That's what happened with numerous listings for grocery store managers throughout the Southeast posted by a South Carolina recruiter, Latro Consulting.
After CNN Money called seeking comments on the listings last week, the restriction against unemployed candidates being considered came down. Latro Consulting refused to comment when contacted.
Sony Ericsson, a global phone manufacturer that was hiring for a new Georgia facility, also removed a similar restriction after local reporters wrote about it.
According to reports, a Sony Ericsson spokesperson said that a mistake had been made.
But even if companies don't spell out in a job listing that they won't consider someone who currently doesn't have a job, experts said that unemployed applicants are typically ruled out right off the bat.
"Most executive recruiters won't look at a candidate unless they have a job, even if they don't like to admit to it," said Lisa Chenofsky Singer, a human resources consultant from Millburn, NJ, specializing in media and publishing jobs.
She said when she proposes candidates for openings, the first question she is often asked by a recruiter is if they currently have a job. If the answer is no, she's typically told the unemployed candidate won't be interviewed.
"They think you must have been laid off for performance issues," she said, adding that this is a "myth" in a time of high unemployment.
It is not against the law for companies to exclude the unemployed when trying to fill positions, but Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the National Employment Law Project, said the practice is a bad one.
"Making that kind of automatic cut is senseless; you could be missing out on the best person of all," she said.
"There are millions of people who are unemployed through no fault of their own. If an employer feels that the best qualified are the ones already working, they have no appreciation of the crisis we're in right now."
Conti added that firms that hire unemployed job seekers could also benefit from a recently-passed tax break that essentially exempts them from paying the 6.2% of the new hire's wages in Social Security taxes for the rest of this year.
Thompson said he also thinks ruling out the unemployed is a bad idea.
But he said that part of the problem is that recruiters and human resource departments are being overwhelmed with applications for any job opening that is posted.
So they're looking for any short-cuts to get the list of applicants to consider down to a more manageable size.
"It's a tough process to determine which unemployed applicants were laid off even though they brought value to their company and which ones had performance issues," he said.
"I understand the notion. But there's the top x percent of unemployed candidates who are very viable and very valuable. You just have to do the work to find them."
~
The world transits, particularly the Saturn-Uranus opposition, and Jupiter-Saturn opposition, shows how ridiculous some so-called "employers" have become in these challenging times.
Just think of it: with double-digit unemployment, and with millions of gifted and talented people out there looking for quality jobs; some companies and recruiters say you've got to already have a job to get one?
Unbelievable.
What follows just reeks of ignorance, snobbery, and downright stupidity.
Check this out:
Out-of-work Job Applicants Told Unemployed Need Not Apply?
By Chris Isidore, senior writer, CNN Money
June 17, 2010 -- The last thing someone who is unemployed needs to be told is that they shouldn't even apply for the limited number of job openings that are available.
But some companies and recruiters are doing just that.
Employment experts say they believe companies are increasingly interested only in applicants who already have a job.
"I think it is more prevalent than it used to be," said Rich Thompson, vice president of learning and performance for Adecco Group North America, the world's largest staffing firm.
"I don't have hard numbers, but three out of the last four conversations I've had about openings, this requirement was brought up."
Some job postings include restrictions such as "unemployed candidates will not be considered" or "must be currently employed."
Those explicit limitations have occasionally been removed from listings when an employer or recruiter is questioned by the media though.
That's what happened with numerous listings for grocery store managers throughout the Southeast posted by a South Carolina recruiter, Latro Consulting.
After CNN Money called seeking comments on the listings last week, the restriction against unemployed candidates being considered came down. Latro Consulting refused to comment when contacted.
Sony Ericsson, a global phone manufacturer that was hiring for a new Georgia facility, also removed a similar restriction after local reporters wrote about it.
According to reports, a Sony Ericsson spokesperson said that a mistake had been made.
But even if companies don't spell out in a job listing that they won't consider someone who currently doesn't have a job, experts said that unemployed applicants are typically ruled out right off the bat.
"Most executive recruiters won't look at a candidate unless they have a job, even if they don't like to admit to it," said Lisa Chenofsky Singer, a human resources consultant from Millburn, NJ, specializing in media and publishing jobs.
She said when she proposes candidates for openings, the first question she is often asked by a recruiter is if they currently have a job. If the answer is no, she's typically told the unemployed candidate won't be interviewed.
"They think you must have been laid off for performance issues," she said, adding that this is a "myth" in a time of high unemployment.
It is not against the law for companies to exclude the unemployed when trying to fill positions, but Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the National Employment Law Project, said the practice is a bad one.
"Making that kind of automatic cut is senseless; you could be missing out on the best person of all," she said.
"There are millions of people who are unemployed through no fault of their own. If an employer feels that the best qualified are the ones already working, they have no appreciation of the crisis we're in right now."
Conti added that firms that hire unemployed job seekers could also benefit from a recently-passed tax break that essentially exempts them from paying the 6.2% of the new hire's wages in Social Security taxes for the rest of this year.
Thompson said he also thinks ruling out the unemployed is a bad idea.
But he said that part of the problem is that recruiters and human resource departments are being overwhelmed with applications for any job opening that is posted.
So they're looking for any short-cuts to get the list of applicants to consider down to a more manageable size.
"It's a tough process to determine which unemployed applicants were laid off even though they brought value to their company and which ones had performance issues," he said.
"I understand the notion. But there's the top x percent of unemployed candidates who are very viable and very valuable. You just have to do the work to find them."
~
The Cardinal Crisis
Personal Lives
The effects of the Bank Crisis on the lives of people has been nothing short of devastating.
With huge job losses, the economy in the United States continues to take a battering with millions of people looking for work amid double-digit unemployment figures.
As banks continue to hoard money while hiding their overdrawn balance sheets of debt from years of gambling in the derivatives markets the deep economic recession enters a new phase as we approach the first series of the Cardinal Crisis world transits.
Here are some personal stories of those struggling to find work:
Heather O'Neill, 38, from San Francisco is a writer/editor
"I was laid off from a job as a copy editor at a major technology magazine in April 2008 and then from another job in November of 2008.
I was really scared. I had student loans to pay, my boyfriend and I had just moved into a new apartment and I wasn't used to being unemployed.
I dove in [to the job search] like crazy. I was pretty convinced this wasn't going to be a long-term situation for me.
But as it turned out, it's been nearly a two-year process. I have sent out hundreds of resumes and come close to landing a handful of jobs, but the other person was always hired.
I am registered with every talent agency in the city, have a great resume and references and am more than presentable in interviews.
I have sort of given up. Where I used to spend hours every day at the computer, searching, I don't do that anymore.
I can't devote 4 hours a day to a job search. I'm not on unemployment anymore. I'm hustling to get freelance gigs. I have subsisted on freelance work for nearly two years. Still, in my heart of hearts, I would like to go back to work full time."
Bill Greenfield, 54, from Dyer, Indiana
"For eight years I worked for a bank as a mortgage loan officer, then I was working for a Mercedes dealer selling cars but I wasn't making any money so I quit. I've been out of work since June. I am qualified for so many jobs.
Due to my current situation, some bills have gone unpaid. Now my credit is in the trash. I was trying to get back into the mortgage business but it's been real frustrating.
I would spend about 4 hours every morning on my computer putting my profile out there but you get to the point where you aren't hearing from anybody.
I registered with a temp agency but I walked in and there must have been 50 people in there -- you could hardly get in the door. In the past few weeks I kind of let it go. I've been networking, but people just aren't hiring.
When I was in the mortgage business I made good money. I never thought I'd be like this in my life. In December we applied for food stamps -- that's how rough it's gotten. We've been getting food from our church every month and we have no health insurance."
Jessica Sawyer, 22, of Unionville, Connecticut looking for work in Communications or public relations
"I graduated from Bates College in May so I've been on the job search for a while.
Over the summer I had a couple of unpaid internships and I had some projects throughout the fall and applied to over 200 jobs, most of which I didn't hear back from.
By November I was burnt out so I stopped looking. I got a part-time job in a restaurant but even that was tough. I'm living at home with my parents right now. I took all of November and December off from searching.
Come the New Year I was motivated again. My New Year's resolution was to hopefully find a job by the end of the year. I just got another unpaid internship through networking and I'm also doing freelance reporting."
Patrick Meehan, 59, from Chicago, Illinois, looking for work in Sales management
"I've been out of work exactly one year now. I was laid off last February. I worked for the last 25 years in educational publishing.
With the economy, they decided to cut the whole executive team. It was a pretty major cut.
Since then, I've been on interviews; in fact just recently I made it down to the final three and just found out this week I didn't make the final cut.
I'm still looking in sales management but I've also applied for positions outside of the industry, but they want people with experience.
I'm at the point now of thinking about maybe starting my own business but I haven't decided what that will be yet. I enjoy what I do and I think I'm pretty good at it. There's just not a whole lot of opportunities.
I've kind of stepped back for a while now deciding what I'm going to do. I'm at the point now where I feel like I'm running into a brick wall.
I'm trying to reevaluate things. I have a family to support -- I've got a wife and four kids. Luckily my wife has a secure job."
Stephanie Carlino, 61, of Wantagh, N.Y. Looking for work with non-profit
"I've been out of a job since last March. I was constantly looking for something else and there's nothing. There are no jobs and companies are consolidating jobs and it's tough.
I had really been pounding the pavement. Looking for a job became my job. It's very demoralizing. I just hit the wall in November.
Now I'm volunteering and spending a lot of time at home, cleaning and preparing for the inevitable sale.
I'm going to sell my house as opposed to lose it to foreclosure because that's the only option I have. I have depleted my savings.
I'm taking a course in project management at Hofstra University and hoping that a change in career with credentials could lead to something, but you don't know."
There are ways to face, and, in fact, to thrive during these changing and challenging times. It is important to have your personal astrological transits for the 2010s read and interpreted by professional astrologers.
As the planets form their Cardinal Cross in 2010, and as the year progresses into 2011, expect many new opportunities to rise out of the ashes of recent years.
Astrologers can be of immense help to guide you through these years by offering alternatives to navigate what amounts to very strong celestial forces at work in the lives of billions of people.
The times will continue to be challenging in light of the global transits relative to the Earth, so patience is important.
For those interested in preparing, try to see 2010 as the end of an era since 1975. With the generational change from Baby Boomers to Generation X, this new era opens and brings with it exciting promises one can benefit from using patient insight, and a practical perspective for the years ahead.
My advice is to move ahead, and to see March 2011 as the month when the new global era begins for the 2010s.
There will other dates in the 2010s that open new doors into the future, however, March 2011 is the first year of a new generation entering as the new establishment. Their reign, that of Generation X, the Pluto in Virgo generation, will be until the year 2030.
One of the things that will become apparent over the coming 20 years is how the pressure to serve the growing elderly population will contrast against the urgent need to build, construct, envision, maintain, and grow new and old industries simultaneously in the 2010s and 2020s.
Credit: Image from Chicago Video Project for WTTW, Chicago
The world transits between 2010-2015 show a world in flux, with brilliant promises muted at times by the heavy weights of the past.
The idea is balance. By not allowing the weights of the past to cast such a long shadow, but treating it as an opportunity to embrace change, much progress can be made over the next five years.
However, the facts are that Baby Boomers are aging, and the angst of the times from this generation has been at the root cause for the current malaise in the global and local economies of the world.
This "malaise" cannot last. At some time, and this will happen sooner than later, the generation of Baby Boomers will come to realize that it is impossible to stop, or even delay, the passage of time.
No longer the "youth" generation, the Baby Boomers who fail to acknowledge this truth will not do very well in the 2010s.
Those who do, and who are able to live with the facts of life, will do much better.
The world transits of the outer planets as they affect personal lives will be extensive in the years ahead. In fact, it has already begun.
The Cardinal T-Square, and Cardinal Cross transits from 2010 to 2014 features a world struggling to forge a new forward, and away from the errors of the 20th century.
So, if you're reading this, have hope, and use 2010 to the best of your ability, while planning for new opportunities to show themselves this year as a preview of some of the changes and potentials to come next year.
The idea is not to regress into the past, but to use and apply the lessons of the past to make way for opening up new in-roads into the future. The key word is progression.
Let there be no doubt: times are changing. Global transits confirm this fact. The new decade ahead will be challenging for many people worldwide, but the opportunities which emerge out of the phoenix-like ashes of the recent past can lead to positive changes in the future.
This is best done with a positive and practical attitude, not setting your hopes too high, but feeling excited and looking forward to the future: not with "angst," nor with dread, but with hope and a sense of adventure that is both practical and progressive.
~
The Cardinal Crisis
This critical sector of the world economy is the most battered, and will remain so for some years until the real estate market is flushed of housing prices that have long been overvalued and inflated.
Despite 2009's muted "optimism," the fact of the matter remains that the generation poised to buy houses is Generation X ~ and they are not buying yet. They are waiting...
What are they waiting for? Well, from the looks of transits, they are waiting for the market to return to reality, which it has not yet, but soon will, once the market hits bottom.
And when will that happen? In my forecast, it does not happen in 2010, but will appear that way despite the discouraging numbers.
The positions of Jupiter, and Saturn especially, both in opposition to one another for the next 2.5 years shows there is more deflation to come. This will continue through to next year, and into 2012, before a true bottom arrives in the year 2016-17.
Even by the mid-2010s, the residential real market, in my astrological forecast, will continue to be sluggish as more and more homeowners who were "underwater" will have left their homes to foreclosures.
Moreover, the commercial bubble loans of the decade of the 2000s will reset between the years 2011-2014, throwing many smaller banks into receivership.
Large development projects backed by banks who specialized in commercial financing (some through derivatives) are about to see that bubble fully burst.
The deflation of the commercial real sector is also driven by the residential collapse, the collapse of bank credit, and the lack of employment strength, or of real wages earned throughout the past decade.
The world transits since the late 1990s through the bubble years of the early to mid-2000s depicts widespread corruption, fraud, and promises of easy wealth that contributed mightily to the global recession.
See "Breaking The Housing Crisis Cycle," a 2008 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Ohio.
It will take time for the deflation to fully deflate ~ and this means years of pain ahead for many regions.
~ Dr. Housing Bubble reports June 2010 that ~
"The housing market has been turned upside down with unprecedented amounts of government intervention that even the seasonal pattern has changed.
Keep in mind that spring and summer are usually the most optimistic selling times in any given year but this year with the tax credit ending and the Federal Reserve done buying up mortgage backed securities, the housing market will face weaker conditions in summer.
The amount of noise floating out in the current market is deafening.
How is it possible to have a market that is getting better when unemployment in many top housing bubble states remains at peak levels?
In California unemployment remains at 12.6 percent (a modern record high) and we have over 100,000 unemployed Californians that have now exhausted a stunning 99 weeks of unemployment benefits."
This is happening all over the country. There was a recent article showing that 40 percent of those employed nationwide are currently working at low paying service sector jobs.
Will these people bring on housing boom 2.0 with Wal-Mart wages?"
For more, see ~ 10 important real estate charts showing no housing recovery in 2010. Collapsing housing starts, Texas Ratio problems, construction spending at trough, and real estate equity evaporated.
Sign of the Times: An upside-down house in Trassenheideon, on the island of Usedom, Germany. A company from Poland was to complete this family house by summer 2008. All furniture was to be installed upside-down and the house was used for exhibition.
~ Associated Press Reports June 17,2010 ~
LAS VEGAS – "Some 500 people have been arrested in a nationwide crackdown on mortgage fraud, and federal officials pointed to Las Vegas as one of the centers of the scams that pumped up home prices until the housing market bubble finally burst.
"I heard this many times," said Scott Hunter, a Las Vegas FBI agent who has interviewed hundreds of so-called "straw buyers" lured into buying homes by unscrupulous real estate agents, brokers and loan officers.
"They said, 'Don't let your good credit go to waste. You can purchase these properties. This is how you acquire wealth.'"
"What happened here was, when the party stopped and they were not able to keep inflating the prices on these houses, the whole thing collapsed."
Nevada's U.S. attorney, Daniel Bogden, counted 123 defendants charged, convicted or sentenced in the Silver State since March 1, 2010 as part of a national crackdown dubbed Operation Stolen Dreams.
Bogden put losses in Nevada alone at almost $250 million.
In Washington, the Justice Department linked nearly 500 arrests nationwide to the crackdown.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the push the largest collective enforcement effort aimed at confronting mortgage fraud.
Holder said 1,215 criminal defendants had been netted in cases that uncovered more than $2.3 billion in losses, and said the Justice Department also engaged in civil enforcement actions to recover more than $147 million in the operation.
FBI Director Robert Mueller called mortgage fraud "a risk to our economic stability" as a nation.
FBI Director Robert Mueller
More than lending institutions were victimized, said Michael Gibson, a Los Angeles-based federal Housing and Urban Development inspector who has been investigating cases in Las Vegas.
Homeowners, taxpayers, reputable real estate industry officials and the Federal Housing Administration were also hurt, Gibson said.
"They're all victims in this. Every time you have a bad loan that's FHA-insured, the federal government pays that claim amount."
Real estate analyst Rick Sharga, of Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc., said places with the most foreclosures today were the most fertile places for mortgage scams during the housing boom.
"The states that had the highest fallout in foreclosure and price depreciation certainly didn't have markets built on sound business practices," Sharga said.
"The running gag was, you'd put a home on the market at breakfast and have three offers for twice the asking price by lunch.
We're seeing the consequences of that now. As soon as prices stopped going up, the whole house of cards came down," he said.
Prosecutors and investigators said schemes typically involved straw buyers with good credit buying homes at an inflated price or obtaining loans greater than the cost of the home. The resulting cash was skimmed by the person controlling the scheme.
Homes were "flipped," or quickly sold at inflated prices, driving up prices of comparable or neighboring homes, said Hunter, supervisor of the Las Vegas FBI white collar crime unit.
"If you didn't lie on your loan application, and you later go into foreclosure, there's no fraud there," he said.
"But if you lie about everything about the application, and you mislead a lender into believing that all the information on that document is accurate, that's what we're going after."
Foreclosures have decreased in Nevada during the last year, according Realty Trac. But the state continued to lead the nation in May, followed by Arizona, Florida, California and Michigan.
One of every 66 homes in the Las Vegas area received a foreclosure filing last month.
The Justice Department said the probe announced Thursday resulted in significant criminal cases in places like Duluth, Minn.; New Jersey and Atlanta.
Officials said that in Chico, California, a home builder sold houses built before the market cooled in 2006 to straw buyers at inflated prices, then rebated tens of thousands of dollars to shell companies controlled by the buyers' agents.
The lenders were unaware of the rebates. The Justice Department said that to date, 38 of the homes are in foreclosure.
In New Jersey, a servicing manager at U.S. Mortgage pleaded guilty in the fraudulent sale of more than $136 million in mortgage loans to Fannie Mae and other investors.
In Oregon, the U.S. attorney said the FBI had received almost 5,000 reports of fraud since the height of the housing market in 2006.
In Detroit, investigators broke up a "ghost loan" mortgage scheme in which conspirators recruited more than 108 straw buyers and obtained some 500 mortgages totaling more than $100 million.
In Minnesota, convicted mortgage fraud defendant Michael Fiorito was sentenced in April to more than 22 years in prison for conspiracy and mail fraud.
Prosecutors said he led homeowners who were in or near foreclosure to refinance or sell their homes, then stole their money.
An indictment in Miami accused two defendants of targeting Haitian-Americans, with one defendant also offering help with immigration issues.
In Las Vegas, Hunter said industry insiders controlling scams didn't spend their own money, but reaped cash from homes "like ATMs."
"They took as much money out of them as they could, and when they were done, they left southern Nevada in the wreckage," the FBI agent said. "Now it's our job to hold these people accountable."
~ Bloomberg Reports June 17, 2010 ~
NEW HAVEN, Conn.-- Federal authorities in Connecticut have charged 15 people, including attorneys, mortgage brokers and real estate agents, with participating in mortgage fraud schemes that they say contributed to the nation's banking crisis and a wave of foreclosures.
The charges announced in Connecticut Thursday came as the Justice Department announced that investigators have made nearly 500 arrests since March in a major nationwide crackdown on mortgage fraud.
Authorities said it involves 1,215 criminal defendants in cases that uncovered more than $2.3 billion in losses.
In Connecticut, U.S. Attorney David Fein said three separate mortgage fraud schemes led to lender losses of more than $6 million.
"The charges announced today, in conjunction with past prosecutions and several active and ongoing investigations, demonstrate the commitment of the Department of Justice and our federal and state partners to prosecute those whose illegal activity have contributed to our nation's recent banking crisis and helped to litter our cities and neighborhoods with foreclosed properties," Fein said.
Attorneys for those charged denied the allegations.
The schemes allegedly involved sham sales contracts, false loan applications, fraudulent property appraisals and straw purchasers.
Authorities say some of the participants obtained mortgages worth more than the properties, divided the proceeds and defaulted on the loans, letting the houses go into foreclosure.
Among those charged is 24-year-old Menachem Yosef Levitin of New Haven, who is accused of fraudulently buying more than 50 multi-family properties in New Haven. Authorities are seeking forfeiture of those properties.
Telephone messages were left for Levitin's attorney, William Dow III.
Prosecutors say 47-year-old Maurizio Lancia of Trumbull, an attorney and mortgage broker, was involved with some of the fraudulent real estate deals.
His attorney, Jim Bergenn, said those who admitted to crimes are hoping for lenient sentences by implicating Lancia in their own misconduct.
Thomas Gallagher, who operated an appraisal company in West Haven, created inflated appraisals of residential real estate in exchange for thousands of dollars per home, authorities said.
His attorney, Hugh Keefe, said Gallagher will plead not guilty and that appraisals are a very subjective business.
Prosecutors said Morris Olmer, whose law license was suspended in 2007, was involved in some of the closings on fraudulent deals. His attorney, Audrey Felsen, declined to comment.
Another attorney in New Haven, David Avigdor, was involved in closings on fraudulent deals and distributed fraudulent proceeds to a fictitious construction company, prosecutors said. His attorney, Howard Lawrence, said his client is innocent.
Agencies participating in the investigations include the U.S. Attorney's office, FBI, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Postal Inspection Service."
~
~ Bank Info Security reports June 17, 2010 ~
This week's high-profile mortgage fraud arrests should serve as a chilling wakeup call to banking institutions, experts say.
On Wednesday, authorities announced the arrest of Lee Farkas, once at the helm of wholesale mortgage lender Taylor Bean & Whitaker, charging him with a $1.9 billion fraud scheme tied to the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds.
And then on Thursday, the President's inter-agency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force revealed that since March 1, Operation Stolen Dreams has arrested 485 people for their involvement in mortgage fraud losses exceeding $2.3 billion.
The operation also has resulted in 191 civil enforcement actions, which have resulted in the recovery of more than $147 million.
Further, the FBI on Thursday released its 2009 Mortgage Fraud Report, which says reported incidents rose 5 percent (67,190 reports) in fiscal year 2009, when approximately $14 billion in fraudulent loans are estimated to have originated.
These events and numbers are staggering, but no surprise to industry experts who track mortgage fraud.
"When the stakes are high, people who are adept at manipulating their numbers, as well as their relationships, create massive risks for these types of events," says Mike Urban, senior director of global fraud solutions at FICO, a provider of decision-management and predictive-analytic solutions.
And yet, according to mortgage fraud expert Cindi Dixon, chief executive of Florida-based Mela Capital Group, not nearly enough institutions are heeding the warning signs.
"Many clients I am looking at really are not taking the proper steps," Dixon says. "I'm not seeing the sense of urgency that you would think we would see."
The Damage
According to the FBI's new report, the most common mortgage fraud schemes include loan origination, foreclosure rescue, builder bailout, equity skimming, short sale, illegal property flipping, reverse mortgage fraud and loan modifications.
Emerging trends in mortgage fraud include the defrauding of economic stimulus plans or programs such as TARP, property theft or fraudulent leasing of foreclosed properties and tax-related fraud.
In the Taylor Bean case, Farkas was indicted on charges of conspiracy and bank, wire and securities fraud for defrauding the Federal Housing Administration, private investors and TARP.
Authorities allege that Farkas filed false information to get TARP loans through Colonial Bank of Alabama, Taylor Bean's biggest lender. Colonial Bank failed last August - one of the biggest bank failures of the year.
Despite the negative global impact of foreclosures related to mortgage fraud, Dixon says most lenders continue to approve bad loans.
"When things are high and the economy is good, a lot is overlooked," she says. "When the economy is down, then you get more into the mis-manufacturing of numbers, such as for TARP loans, as an example."
Quality control and mortgage tracking through systems such as the Mortgage Electronic Registration System [MERS] should be a given -- MERS tracks borrowers who have applied for loans.
But Dixon says many mortgage lenders often don't want to use MERS because they fear it gives the competition too much information about their own loan-lending practices.
The Solutions
Urban says the need for more due diligence and proactive measures on the part of mortgage lenders is painfully obvious - underscored by the latest trends.
Among the solutions suggested by Dixon and former mortgage banker Robert Nolan, president of Ivystone Consulting Group LLC in Marietta, GA:
Regional Lending
Banks can learn from credit unions on this front. Leaning toward a more traditional loan-approval model, which relies on lending to borrowers the institution knows and property values the institution understands, is only possible when an institution lends locally.
"That's hard for large national banks, when they're really looking at generating profits," Dixon says.
People & Technology
Underwriters should double-check tax returns and loan documents via analytical tools and the Internet.
When systems are completely automated, fraudulent reports can slip through. "Technology should be used as an underlying layer for underwriting, and you've got to have good underwriters who know what they're looking for," Dixon says.
More Training for Loan Officers
Training staff to recognize the warning signs borrowers physically display when they are lying is key. "When they come in to get the loan, we should be catching it," Nolan says.
~
The internal battles in Greece because of heavy sovereign debt and deep austerity will re-ignite over the summer months of 2010.
The year 2011 is the start of a new cycle, mainly brought on by the official entry of Uranus into Aries, the first time in 84 years.
~ Mundane Review: 2010-2015 ~
- Saturn oppose Uranus -
Coercions, False Promotions, Litigation & Dishonesty
The Jupiter/Pluto Square acts much like that of Saturn's square to Pluto. Jupiter's motion into Aries in mid-2010, and then again in February 2011, will square Pluto in tropical Capricorn.
The same kinds of conflicts under Saturn's influence by square to Pluto comes into action with hasty, impulsive and headstrong promotion of one's opinions as facts to gain a perceived advantage over others.
An unprecedented Seven (7) exact squares occur in just three (3) years: 2012 to 2015
(*) = significant dates
1. June 24, 2012 – first global square at 8-degrees Aries/Capricorn
2. *September 18-19, 2012 – second square at 6-degrees Aries/Capricorn
3. May 20, 2013 – third square at 11-degrees Aries/Capricorn
4. November 1, 2013 – fourth square at 9-degrees Aries/Capricorn
5. *April 21, 2014 – fifth square at 13-degrees Aries/Capricorn
6. December 14-15, 2014 – sixth square at 12-degrees Aries/Capricorn
7. *March 16-17, 2015 – seventh global square at 15-degrees Aries/Capricorn
The last time Uranus and Pluto met in global square aspect was during the 1930s. This was a decade of reactionary, extreme right-wing politics, revolutionary socialism, rising crime, rebellions, revolts, and restrictive laws gradually reducing freedoms throughout Europe and the then-Soviet Union.
The Bank Crisis and Stock Market Crash of 1929-33 fueled the early years of the Great Depression with rising waves of petty crime and bank robberies. The resulting foreclosures of homes, businesses and family farms amid a depressed global economic system cast a dark shadow over the world.
The NYSE reaching its lowest trading point in history. Weather anomalies under the influence of Uranus in Aries led to the hottest year in U.S. history in 1933-34 with drought and dust storms raging across the American Midwest.
Meanwhile, political extremism ensued with the rise of tyrants, as Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany while in Japan, radical forms of militarism spread so much that it was being openly taught in elementary and high schools.
The revolts, rebellions and revolutionary sentiments under the Uranus/Pluto squares thus paved the way for the Second World War that followed by the end of the 1930s.
Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn revolve their squares worldwide for much of the 2010s, but the most powerful periods are between 2012 through 2015.
This is a time of great upsets within nations which have now experienced at least four to seven years in the wake of the global economic crisis.
Uranus' penchant for sudden change against Pluto's desire structure in Capricorn for a kind of transformational war that butt heads over the "kinds" of new changes to be realized and those not to be supported.
While this is happening, populations around the world seem to have had it to their chins with the constant disruptions of their lives; the losses of lifestyles over the years.
Nonetheless, expect the global square of Uranus to Pluto to be the prime cardinal inclinational force that will make world news time and again through the decade of the 2010s, and into the mid-2020s.
"I was laid off from a job as a copy editor at a major technology magazine in April 2008 and then from another job in November of 2008.
I was really scared. I had student loans to pay, my boyfriend and I had just moved into a new apartment and I wasn't used to being unemployed.
I dove in [to the job search] like crazy. I was pretty convinced this wasn't going to be a long-term situation for me.
But as it turned out, it's been nearly a two-year process. I have sent out hundreds of resumes and come close to landing a handful of jobs, but the other person was always hired.
I am registered with every talent agency in the city, have a great resume and references and am more than presentable in interviews.
I have sort of given up. Where I used to spend hours every day at the computer, searching, I don't do that anymore.
I can't devote 4 hours a day to a job search. I'm not on unemployment anymore. I'm hustling to get freelance gigs. I have subsisted on freelance work for nearly two years. Still, in my heart of hearts, I would like to go back to work full time."
"For eight years I worked for a bank as a mortgage loan officer, then I was working for a Mercedes dealer selling cars but I wasn't making any money so I quit. I've been out of work since June. I am qualified for so many jobs.
Due to my current situation, some bills have gone unpaid. Now my credit is in the trash. I was trying to get back into the mortgage business but it's been real frustrating.
I would spend about 4 hours every morning on my computer putting my profile out there but you get to the point where you aren't hearing from anybody.
I registered with a temp agency but I walked in and there must have been 50 people in there -- you could hardly get in the door. In the past few weeks I kind of let it go. I've been networking, but people just aren't hiring.
When I was in the mortgage business I made good money. I never thought I'd be like this in my life. In December we applied for food stamps -- that's how rough it's gotten. We've been getting food from our church every month and we have no health insurance."
"I graduated from Bates College in May so I've been on the job search for a while.
Over the summer I had a couple of unpaid internships and I had some projects throughout the fall and applied to over 200 jobs, most of which I didn't hear back from.
By November I was burnt out so I stopped looking. I got a part-time job in a restaurant but even that was tough. I'm living at home with my parents right now. I took all of November and December off from searching.
Come the New Year I was motivated again. My New Year's resolution was to hopefully find a job by the end of the year. I just got another unpaid internship through networking and I'm also doing freelance reporting."
"I've been out of work exactly one year now. I was laid off last February. I worked for the last 25 years in educational publishing.
With the economy, they decided to cut the whole executive team. It was a pretty major cut.
Since then, I've been on interviews; in fact just recently I made it down to the final three and just found out this week I didn't make the final cut.
I'm still looking in sales management but I've also applied for positions outside of the industry, but they want people with experience.
I'm at the point now of thinking about maybe starting my own business but I haven't decided what that will be yet. I enjoy what I do and I think I'm pretty good at it. There's just not a whole lot of opportunities.
I've kind of stepped back for a while now deciding what I'm going to do. I'm at the point now where I feel like I'm running into a brick wall.
I'm trying to reevaluate things. I have a family to support -- I've got a wife and four kids. Luckily my wife has a secure job."
"I've been out of a job since last March. I was constantly looking for something else and there's nothing. There are no jobs and companies are consolidating jobs and it's tough.
I had really been pounding the pavement. Looking for a job became my job. It's very demoralizing. I just hit the wall in November.
Now I'm volunteering and spending a lot of time at home, cleaning and preparing for the inevitable sale.
I'm going to sell my house as opposed to lose it to foreclosure because that's the only option I have. I have depleted my savings.
I'm taking a course in project management at Hofstra University and hoping that a change in career with credentials could lead to something, but you don't know."
The Cardinal Crisis
Astrological Help
There are ways to face, and, in fact, to thrive during these changing and challenging times. It is important to have your personal astrological transits for the 2010s read and interpreted by professional astrologers.
As the planets form their Cardinal Cross in 2010, and as the year progresses into 2011, expect many new opportunities to rise out of the ashes of recent years.
Astrologers can be of immense help to guide you through these years by offering alternatives to navigate what amounts to very strong celestial forces at work in the lives of billions of people.
The times will continue to be challenging in light of the global transits relative to the Earth, so patience is important.
For those interested in preparing, try to see 2010 as the end of an era since 1975. With the generational change from Baby Boomers to Generation X, this new era opens and brings with it exciting promises one can benefit from using patient insight, and a practical perspective for the years ahead.
- The year of 2010 is a year of transition.
- The year of 2011 is the year of new starts.
- This continues in 2012.
- The year 2013 brings cautious hopes of better times.
- The Cardinal Cross of 2014 signals more challenges & continued generational change.
- The year 2015, 2016 & 2017 signal transitions ahead during the 2020s.
My advice is to move ahead, and to see March 2011 as the month when the new global era begins for the 2010s.
There will other dates in the 2010s that open new doors into the future, however, March 2011 is the first year of a new generation entering as the new establishment. Their reign, that of Generation X, the Pluto in Virgo generation, will be until the year 2030.
One of the things that will become apparent over the coming 20 years is how the pressure to serve the growing elderly population will contrast against the urgent need to build, construct, envision, maintain, and grow new and old industries simultaneously in the 2010s and 2020s.
The world transits between 2010-2015 show a world in flux, with brilliant promises muted at times by the heavy weights of the past.
The idea is balance. By not allowing the weights of the past to cast such a long shadow, but treating it as an opportunity to embrace change, much progress can be made over the next five years.
However, the facts are that Baby Boomers are aging, and the angst of the times from this generation has been at the root cause for the current malaise in the global and local economies of the world.
This "malaise" cannot last. At some time, and this will happen sooner than later, the generation of Baby Boomers will come to realize that it is impossible to stop, or even delay, the passage of time.
No longer the "youth" generation, the Baby Boomers who fail to acknowledge this truth will not do very well in the 2010s.
Those who do, and who are able to live with the facts of life, will do much better.
The world transits of the outer planets as they affect personal lives will be extensive in the years ahead. In fact, it has already begun.
The Cardinal T-Square, and Cardinal Cross transits from 2010 to 2014 features a world struggling to forge a new forward, and away from the errors of the 20th century.
So, if you're reading this, have hope, and use 2010 to the best of your ability, while planning for new opportunities to show themselves this year as a preview of some of the changes and potentials to come next year.
The idea is not to regress into the past, but to use and apply the lessons of the past to make way for opening up new in-roads into the future. The key word is progression.
Let there be no doubt: times are changing. Global transits confirm this fact. The new decade ahead will be challenging for many people worldwide, but the opportunities which emerge out of the phoenix-like ashes of the recent past can lead to positive changes in the future.
This is best done with a positive and practical attitude, not setting your hopes too high, but feeling excited and looking forward to the future: not with "angst," nor with dread, but with hope and a sense of adventure that is both practical and progressive.
~
The Cardinal Crisis
Real Estate Markets
Foreclosures, Fraud & Federal Force? 
This critical sector of the world economy is the most battered, and will remain so for some years until the real estate market is flushed of housing prices that have long been overvalued and inflated.
Despite 2009's muted "optimism," the fact of the matter remains that the generation poised to buy houses is Generation X ~ and they are not buying yet. They are waiting...
What are they waiting for? Well, from the looks of transits, they are waiting for the market to return to reality, which it has not yet, but soon will, once the market hits bottom.
And when will that happen? In my forecast, it does not happen in 2010, but will appear that way despite the discouraging numbers.
The positions of Jupiter, and Saturn especially, both in opposition to one another for the next 2.5 years shows there is more deflation to come. This will continue through to next year, and into 2012, before a true bottom arrives in the year 2016-17.
Even by the mid-2010s, the residential real market, in my astrological forecast, will continue to be sluggish as more and more homeowners who were "underwater" will have left their homes to foreclosures.
Moreover, the commercial bubble loans of the decade of the 2000s will reset between the years 2011-2014, throwing many smaller banks into receivership.
Large development projects backed by banks who specialized in commercial financing (some through derivatives) are about to see that bubble fully burst.
The deflation of the commercial real sector is also driven by the residential collapse, the collapse of bank credit, and the lack of employment strength, or of real wages earned throughout the past decade.
The world transits since the late 1990s through the bubble years of the early to mid-2000s depicts widespread corruption, fraud, and promises of easy wealth that contributed mightily to the global recession.
See "Breaking The Housing Crisis Cycle," a 2008 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Ohio.
It will take time for the deflation to fully deflate ~ and this means years of pain ahead for many regions.
~ Dr. Housing Bubble reports June 2010 that ~
"The housing market has been turned upside down with unprecedented amounts of government intervention that even the seasonal pattern has changed.
Keep in mind that spring and summer are usually the most optimistic selling times in any given year but this year with the tax credit ending and the Federal Reserve done buying up mortgage backed securities, the housing market will face weaker conditions in summer.
The amount of noise floating out in the current market is deafening.
How is it possible to have a market that is getting better when unemployment in many top housing bubble states remains at peak levels?
In California unemployment remains at 12.6 percent (a modern record high) and we have over 100,000 unemployed Californians that have now exhausted a stunning 99 weeks of unemployment benefits."
This is happening all over the country. There was a recent article showing that 40 percent of those employed nationwide are currently working at low paying service sector jobs.
Will these people bring on housing boom 2.0 with Wal-Mart wages?"
For more, see ~ 10 important real estate charts showing no housing recovery in 2010. Collapsing housing starts, Texas Ratio problems, construction spending at trough, and real estate equity evaporated.
The Cardinal Crisis
'Operation Stolen Dreams?'
~ Associated Press Reports June 17,2010 ~
'Feds Announce Arrests In Mortgage Fraud Crackdown'
By Ken RitterLAS VEGAS – "Some 500 people have been arrested in a nationwide crackdown on mortgage fraud, and federal officials pointed to Las Vegas as one of the centers of the scams that pumped up home prices until the housing market bubble finally burst.
"I heard this many times," said Scott Hunter, a Las Vegas FBI agent who has interviewed hundreds of so-called "straw buyers" lured into buying homes by unscrupulous real estate agents, brokers and loan officers.
"They said, 'Don't let your good credit go to waste. You can purchase these properties. This is how you acquire wealth.'"
"What happened here was, when the party stopped and they were not able to keep inflating the prices on these houses, the whole thing collapsed."
Nevada's U.S. attorney, Daniel Bogden, counted 123 defendants charged, convicted or sentenced in the Silver State since March 1, 2010 as part of a national crackdown dubbed Operation Stolen Dreams.
Bogden put losses in Nevada alone at almost $250 million.
In Washington, the Justice Department linked nearly 500 arrests nationwide to the crackdown.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the push the largest collective enforcement effort aimed at confronting mortgage fraud.
Holder said 1,215 criminal defendants had been netted in cases that uncovered more than $2.3 billion in losses, and said the Justice Department also engaged in civil enforcement actions to recover more than $147 million in the operation.
FBI Director Robert Mueller called mortgage fraud "a risk to our economic stability" as a nation.
More than lending institutions were victimized, said Michael Gibson, a Los Angeles-based federal Housing and Urban Development inspector who has been investigating cases in Las Vegas.
Homeowners, taxpayers, reputable real estate industry officials and the Federal Housing Administration were also hurt, Gibson said.
"They're all victims in this. Every time you have a bad loan that's FHA-insured, the federal government pays that claim amount."
Real estate analyst Rick Sharga, of Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc., said places with the most foreclosures today were the most fertile places for mortgage scams during the housing boom.
"The states that had the highest fallout in foreclosure and price depreciation certainly didn't have markets built on sound business practices," Sharga said.
"The running gag was, you'd put a home on the market at breakfast and have three offers for twice the asking price by lunch.
We're seeing the consequences of that now. As soon as prices stopped going up, the whole house of cards came down," he said.
Prosecutors and investigators said schemes typically involved straw buyers with good credit buying homes at an inflated price or obtaining loans greater than the cost of the home. The resulting cash was skimmed by the person controlling the scheme.
Homes were "flipped," or quickly sold at inflated prices, driving up prices of comparable or neighboring homes, said Hunter, supervisor of the Las Vegas FBI white collar crime unit.
"If you didn't lie on your loan application, and you later go into foreclosure, there's no fraud there," he said.
"But if you lie about everything about the application, and you mislead a lender into believing that all the information on that document is accurate, that's what we're going after."
Foreclosures have decreased in Nevada during the last year, according Realty Trac. But the state continued to lead the nation in May, followed by Arizona, Florida, California and Michigan.
One of every 66 homes in the Las Vegas area received a foreclosure filing last month.
The Justice Department said the probe announced Thursday resulted in significant criminal cases in places like Duluth, Minn.; New Jersey and Atlanta.
Officials said that in Chico, California, a home builder sold houses built before the market cooled in 2006 to straw buyers at inflated prices, then rebated tens of thousands of dollars to shell companies controlled by the buyers' agents.
The lenders were unaware of the rebates. The Justice Department said that to date, 38 of the homes are in foreclosure.
In New Jersey, a servicing manager at U.S. Mortgage pleaded guilty in the fraudulent sale of more than $136 million in mortgage loans to Fannie Mae and other investors.
In Oregon, the U.S. attorney said the FBI had received almost 5,000 reports of fraud since the height of the housing market in 2006.
In Detroit, investigators broke up a "ghost loan" mortgage scheme in which conspirators recruited more than 108 straw buyers and obtained some 500 mortgages totaling more than $100 million.
In Minnesota, convicted mortgage fraud defendant Michael Fiorito was sentenced in April to more than 22 years in prison for conspiracy and mail fraud.
Prosecutors said he led homeowners who were in or near foreclosure to refinance or sell their homes, then stole their money.
An indictment in Miami accused two defendants of targeting Haitian-Americans, with one defendant also offering help with immigration issues.
In Las Vegas, Hunter said industry insiders controlling scams didn't spend their own money, but reaped cash from homes "like ATMs."
"They took as much money out of them as they could, and when they were done, they left southern Nevada in the wreckage," the FBI agent said. "Now it's our job to hold these people accountable."
~ Bloomberg Reports June 17, 2010 ~
'Feds Announce Mortgage Fraud Arrests in Connecticut'
By John ChristoffersenNEW HAVEN, Conn.-- Federal authorities in Connecticut have charged 15 people, including attorneys, mortgage brokers and real estate agents, with participating in mortgage fraud schemes that they say contributed to the nation's banking crisis and a wave of foreclosures.
The charges announced in Connecticut Thursday came as the Justice Department announced that investigators have made nearly 500 arrests since March in a major nationwide crackdown on mortgage fraud.
Authorities said it involves 1,215 criminal defendants in cases that uncovered more than $2.3 billion in losses.
In Connecticut, U.S. Attorney David Fein said three separate mortgage fraud schemes led to lender losses of more than $6 million.
"The charges announced today, in conjunction with past prosecutions and several active and ongoing investigations, demonstrate the commitment of the Department of Justice and our federal and state partners to prosecute those whose illegal activity have contributed to our nation's recent banking crisis and helped to litter our cities and neighborhoods with foreclosed properties," Fein said.
Attorneys for those charged denied the allegations.
The schemes allegedly involved sham sales contracts, false loan applications, fraudulent property appraisals and straw purchasers.
Authorities say some of the participants obtained mortgages worth more than the properties, divided the proceeds and defaulted on the loans, letting the houses go into foreclosure.
Among those charged is 24-year-old Menachem Yosef Levitin of New Haven, who is accused of fraudulently buying more than 50 multi-family properties in New Haven. Authorities are seeking forfeiture of those properties.
Telephone messages were left for Levitin's attorney, William Dow III.
Prosecutors say 47-year-old Maurizio Lancia of Trumbull, an attorney and mortgage broker, was involved with some of the fraudulent real estate deals.
His attorney, Jim Bergenn, said those who admitted to crimes are hoping for lenient sentences by implicating Lancia in their own misconduct.
Thomas Gallagher, who operated an appraisal company in West Haven, created inflated appraisals of residential real estate in exchange for thousands of dollars per home, authorities said.
His attorney, Hugh Keefe, said Gallagher will plead not guilty and that appraisals are a very subjective business.
Prosecutors said Morris Olmer, whose law license was suspended in 2007, was involved in some of the closings on fraudulent deals. His attorney, Audrey Felsen, declined to comment.
Another attorney in New Haven, David Avigdor, was involved in closings on fraudulent deals and distributed fraudulent proceeds to a fictitious construction company, prosecutors said. His attorney, Howard Lawrence, said his client is innocent.
Agencies participating in the investigations include the U.S. Attorney's office, FBI, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Postal Inspection Service."
~
~ Bank Info Security reports June 17, 2010 ~
High-Profile Arrests Point to Troubling Trend of Costly
Schemes
By Tracy Kitten, Managing Editor
This week's high-profile mortgage fraud arrests should serve as a chilling wakeup call to banking institutions, experts say.
On Wednesday, authorities announced the arrest of Lee Farkas, once at the helm of wholesale mortgage lender Taylor Bean & Whitaker, charging him with a $1.9 billion fraud scheme tied to the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds.
And then on Thursday, the President's inter-agency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force revealed that since March 1, Operation Stolen Dreams has arrested 485 people for their involvement in mortgage fraud losses exceeding $2.3 billion.
The operation also has resulted in 191 civil enforcement actions, which have resulted in the recovery of more than $147 million.
Further, the FBI on Thursday released its 2009 Mortgage Fraud Report, which says reported incidents rose 5 percent (67,190 reports) in fiscal year 2009, when approximately $14 billion in fraudulent loans are estimated to have originated.
These events and numbers are staggering, but no surprise to industry experts who track mortgage fraud.
"When the stakes are high, people who are adept at manipulating their numbers, as well as their relationships, create massive risks for these types of events," says Mike Urban, senior director of global fraud solutions at FICO, a provider of decision-management and predictive-analytic solutions.
And yet, according to mortgage fraud expert Cindi Dixon, chief executive of Florida-based Mela Capital Group, not nearly enough institutions are heeding the warning signs.
"Many clients I am looking at really are not taking the proper steps," Dixon says. "I'm not seeing the sense of urgency that you would think we would see."
The Damage
According to the FBI's new report, the most common mortgage fraud schemes include loan origination, foreclosure rescue, builder bailout, equity skimming, short sale, illegal property flipping, reverse mortgage fraud and loan modifications.
Emerging trends in mortgage fraud include the defrauding of economic stimulus plans or programs such as TARP, property theft or fraudulent leasing of foreclosed properties and tax-related fraud.
In the Taylor Bean case, Farkas was indicted on charges of conspiracy and bank, wire and securities fraud for defrauding the Federal Housing Administration, private investors and TARP.
Authorities allege that Farkas filed false information to get TARP loans through Colonial Bank of Alabama, Taylor Bean's biggest lender. Colonial Bank failed last August - one of the biggest bank failures of the year.
Despite the negative global impact of foreclosures related to mortgage fraud, Dixon says most lenders continue to approve bad loans.
"When things are high and the economy is good, a lot is overlooked," she says. "When the economy is down, then you get more into the mis-manufacturing of numbers, such as for TARP loans, as an example."
Quality control and mortgage tracking through systems such as the Mortgage Electronic Registration System [MERS] should be a given -- MERS tracks borrowers who have applied for loans.
But Dixon says many mortgage lenders often don't want to use MERS because they fear it gives the competition too much information about their own loan-lending practices.
The Solutions
Urban says the need for more due diligence and proactive measures on the part of mortgage lenders is painfully obvious - underscored by the latest trends.
Among the solutions suggested by Dixon and former mortgage banker Robert Nolan, president of Ivystone Consulting Group LLC in Marietta, GA:
Regional Lending
Banks can learn from credit unions on this front. Leaning toward a more traditional loan-approval model, which relies on lending to borrowers the institution knows and property values the institution understands, is only possible when an institution lends locally.
"That's hard for large national banks, when they're really looking at generating profits," Dixon says.
People & Technology
Underwriters should double-check tax returns and loan documents via analytical tools and the Internet.
When systems are completely automated, fraudulent reports can slip through. "Technology should be used as an underlying layer for underwriting, and you've got to have good underwriters who know what they're looking for," Dixon says.
More Training for Loan Officers
Training staff to recognize the warning signs borrowers physically display when they are lying is key. "When they come in to get the loan, we should be catching it," Nolan says.
~
Dates of Cardinal T-Square Transits
Mundane planetary configurations & dates 2010-2011
Compiled by Theodore White; mundane Astrolog.S 
- April 6-7 - Pluto stations retrograde at 5-Capricorn
- April 7, 2010 - Saturn re-enters tropical Virgo
- April 26, 2010 - Saturn opposes Uranus (4th opposition)
- May 23, 2010 - Jupiter opposes Saturn (first time since 1990-91)
- May 27-28, 2010 - Uranus enters tropical Aries
- May 30th, 2010 - Saturn stations direct motion at 27-Virgo
- June 5-6, 2010 - Jupiter enters tropical Aries
- June 6-7, 2010 - Mars enters tropical Virgo
- June 8, 2010 - Jupiter conjoins Uranus at 0-Aries
- July 5, 2010 - Uranus stations retrograde at 0-Aries
- July 8, 2010 - Jupiter turns North in declination
- July 11, 2010 - New Moon total eclipse at 19-Cancer (not seen in N. America)
- July 21, 2010 - Saturn re-enters tropical Libra for good
- July 23, 2010 - Jupiter stations retrograde
- July 25, 2010 - Jupiter Squares Pluto
- July 26, 2010 - Fifth Saturn/Uranus opposition
- July 31, 2010 - Mars & Jupiter turn S in Declination
- July 31 - Mars conjoins Saturn at 0-Libra
- August 3, 2010 - Jupiter, retrograde, Squares Pluto again
- August 6, 2010 - Venus turns South in Declination
- August 13-14, 2010 - Uranus re-enters tropical Pisces
- August 16, 2010 - Jupiter Opposes Saturn
- August 20, 2010 - Mercury retrogrades in Virgo
- August 21, 2010 - Saturn Squares Pluto
- September 8, 2010 - Saturn turns South in declination
- September 8, 2010 - New Moon at 15-Virgo
- September 8, 2010 - Venus enters Scorpio
- September 8-9, 2010 - Jupiter re-enters tropical Pisces
- September 12, 2010 - Mercury stations direct
- September 14, 2010 - Pluto stations direct
- September 14, 2010 - Mars enters Scorpio
- September 19, 2010 - Jupiter conjoins Uranus for first time in Pisces
- October 8, 2010 - Venus retrograde in Scorpio
- October 29-30 - Venus turns to "morning star" phase for ten months
- November 6, 7, 2010 - Neptune direct in motion
- November 18 - Venus stations direct
- November 18 - Jupiter stations direct
- December 5, 6- Uranus stations direct motion
- December 10-30 - Mercury retrograde
- January 4, 2011 - Jupiter conjoins Uranus a third time
- January 22, 2011 - Jupiter enters Aries
- Jan. 25, 26 - Saturn stations retrograde 17-Libra
- February 25, 2011 - Jupiter Squares Pluto
- March 3, 2011 - Transiting Lunar Nodes shift to Mutable Quality of Sagittarius & Gemini
- March 11-12, 2011 - Uranus enters Aries (first time in 84 years)
- March 28, 2011 - Jupiter opposes Saturn
~
Mundane Survey Of Global Events: 2010-2012
The Cardinal Cross of August 2010: This chart, set for London, England, shows the Cardinal Cross in action for most of the world as global transits rotate. August 2010 is a powerful month of conflicts, clashes, and global stresses according to my mundane forecasts.
World events are strongly highlighted. From the crisis in the Middle East, to crisis in Thailand, Greece, Europe, Asia, Korea, and North & South America.
The Cardinal Crisis is basically forcing long-standing, unresolved issues to the surface, demanding change, betterment, and, as a result, evolution, from how people live and work, to how public and private institutions serve their wider communities.
The events of the world from now to the mid-2010s are reflective of the decisions and actions of the 1990s and 2000s that are now being exposed by the global transits.
Geopolitical stresses will force leaders to tackle a host of challenging issues worldwide that require vision and a new way of looking at the world to promote peace and advance healthy progress into the new decade.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton with her diplomatic team in China in May 2010.
Credit: AP
The oil leak crisis in the Gulf of Mexico will become a epic disaster, casting British Petroleum into financial ruin, and threatening the future existence of the company.
By summer 2010, a hurricane will sweep through the Gulf, with hopes it will clear out much of the tens of millions of gallons of oil that has spread along the U.S. southern coasts.
May 2010 satellite image of BP's oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico.
Credit: NASA
The internal battles in Greece because of heavy sovereign debt and deep austerity will re-ignite over the summer months of 2010.
Groups battling severe economic austerity measures in Greece urge Europeans to "rise up" during the late spring and summer of 2010.
The crisis in the Middle East beckons between Israel, Gaza, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Arab states highlighted threatening war over international aid to Palestine.
The crisis on the Korean Peninsula will also continue to be tense, threatening to re-ignite a war between both those nations.
Thailand's crisis is far from over. The coalition government is due to fall from the repression of groups intent on ending what they see as a illegal killer government.
The economic crisis is also far from over. The pressures on Wall Street, bankers and hedge fund moguls will increase in 2010 and 2011 with calls for major, and sweeping financial reforms across the board, pitting the status quo against a very angry American middle class:
The climate & weather will become major news again with volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, climate extremes of hot and colder than normal temperatures, La Nina, droughts, and most of all floods, as world transits strengthen into 2010-2011:
Nature Erupts: Volcanic activity as Uranus enters Aries.
Criminal underworlds undergo vicious struggles: As Pluto transits Capricorn, and forms a T-square to Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, the drug wars raging in Mexico will expand, forcing ever more soldiers onto Mexican streets and pitting the average person against killer drug gangs.
Mexican Drug Wars: Mexican federal police & forensic experts inspect the scene after two men were shot dead by unknown gunmen in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on May 26, 2010. Ciudad Juarez has been hit by waves of very brutal drug-related violence, making it one of the deadliest cities in the world.
Credit: AP
The Markets
That 1,000 point drop: May 6, 2010 proved to be one of the strangest days in the history of the Dow Jones. A mysterious "1,000-point" plunge in the afternoon hours, blamed on a "fat finger," lost money for tens of thousands of traders and nearly collapsed the stock market. Federal authorities investigate, but the "glitch" still has not been explained nearly a month later.
The Markets
So, in my mundane perspective, the world is, in effect, dealing with the outworn views and methods of the past, while seeking to forge a new way forward into this new century.
The year 2010 is a transition year, and will be historic in my view. In 2010, we are in the predawn of a new age, and some are in the sunset of a old age, mainly that of the late 20th century.
The year 2011 is the start of a new cycle, mainly brought on by the official entry of Uranus into Aries, the first time in 84 years.
This cycle opens up the decade of the 2010s, and practically dominates it with a long-running square aspect to Pluto in Capricorn.
The year 2012 is a strong year. It is dominated by Gemini for the most part, as well as the popular-culture fears of the Mayan Calendar system and the "end of the world."
According to my calculations, the world will not end, but those who continue to press on with such foolishness will cause enough worry and concern among that some people will go about very upset through 2012, that is, until the year 2013 arrives on time.
Below, is my mundane forecasts on the major planetary configurations of the Cardinal Crisis Years:
~ Mundane Review: 2010-2015 ~
Forecast By Theodore White; mundane Astrolog.S
Θεόδωρος
There are six (6) major transits of the Cardinal Crisis Years - signified by the planets involved & their inclinations:
There are six (6) major transits of the Cardinal Crisis Years - signified by the planets involved & their inclinations:
- Saturn oppose Uranus -
2008-2010
Frustrating attempts to change existing conditions
The new versus the old
Virgo/Pisces - Aries/Libra
Negative attitudes within personal areas of responsibility against those of personal freedom. People generally demand strict obedience to their authority but will rebel against authority at the same time.
Much cooperation is needed to avoid falling into the unfavorable inclinations of Saturn's opposition to Uranus.
Much cooperation is needed to avoid falling into the unfavorable inclinations of Saturn's opposition to Uranus.
A sustained cycle where much insight, honesty, and awareness is needed to offset the powerful tendency to be rigid and unforgiving in personal and professional affairs.
Extreme viewpoints expressed by the ignorant and mentally ill fall under this influence. Loud public pronouncements shouted with wild mannerisms expressing inconsistent attitudes can be observed.
Common sights are: bugged-eye pundits uttering unsubstantiated personal opinions as facts; personal attacks, insults, and acerbic comments designed to bring attention to oneself.
Impulse, haste, snap judgments, immaturity, poor communication skills lacking any sign of social grace and basic manners can be observed.
Extreme viewpoints expressed by the ignorant and mentally ill fall under this influence. Loud public pronouncements shouted with wild mannerisms expressing inconsistent attitudes can be observed.
Common sights are: bugged-eye pundits uttering unsubstantiated personal opinions as facts; personal attacks, insults, and acerbic comments designed to bring attention to oneself.
Impulse, haste, snap judgments, immaturity, poor communication skills lacking any sign of social grace and basic manners can be observed.
Negative emotional attitudes bordering on signs of stress and mental illness is also quite common.
There is widespread conflict between the old order and the new emerging order. This is generational.
There is widespread conflict between the old order and the new emerging order. This is generational.
Groups and individuals battle against corruption of the old establishment, while the old establishment denies losing their clout, and remain fixated on old methods, rejecting anything "new" that threatens their established order.
Concepts and ideas in economic, business and political affairs tend to be impractical, unreliable, and eccentric. Economic life continues to run at a low ebb.
Concepts and ideas in economic, business and political affairs tend to be impractical, unreliable, and eccentric. Economic life continues to run at a low ebb.
See - Part 3 Of Spain Is Dying
These conflicts play out with professional and personal relationships in a pre-revolutionary manner - pushing relationships to breaking points.
Saturn's opposition to Uranus is unfavorable when dealing with joint accounts, finances, corporate business affairs, inheritances, insurance, and all economic matters important to organizations, groups, and individuals.
Saturn's opposition to Uranus is unfavorable when dealing with joint accounts, finances, corporate business affairs, inheritances, insurance, and all economic matters important to organizations, groups, and individuals.
The economic climate is highly stressed, with conflicts between the "old" and the "new" at extremes and waiting for the breaking points to arrive.
Selfish motives within organizations, and groups tend to be those where others try to take credit for the work of others in order to advance their own careers leading to estrangements between associates, colleagues and friends.
Selfish motives within organizations, and groups tend to be those where others try to take credit for the work of others in order to advance their own careers leading to estrangements between associates, colleagues and friends.
Ulterior motives abound, as do negative emotions, rampant cynicism; along with personal and professional betrayals. The feelings are quite intense, as oppositions tend to be.
Saturn's inflexibility grinds against Uranus' desire for significant change. The events that have taken place in the world since 2001 is now moving into the "release" phase and into the second decade of the 2010s.
As the fifth and last Saturn/Uranus opposition peaks by July/August 2010, we should observe strong emotions worldwide; seeking a "release" from the pent up energies, anger, and recriminations that have built up over the recent decade of the 2000s.
- Saturn Square Pluto -
2010
Power Plays, Plots, Cold, Evil & Unsympathetic People
Power Plays, Plots, Cold, Evil & Unsympathetic People
Libra/Capricorn
General signs of paranoia exists within groups and organizations is one feature of a Saturn/Pluto Square.
The large-scale implications of actions taken in government, business, and political groups often force people to face dangerous situations of a sinister nature.
The will power of those involved in personal and professional intrigues is heightened to the point of very negative inclinations with some people using coercive methods to achieve what they perceive as success.
Under Saturn/Pluto this can feature acts of blackmail, threats, and plots at the highest levels of government, within political groups, and corporations.
Paranoid individuals with extreme opinions, and viewpoints is also common under A Saturn/Pluto square.
The will power of those involved in personal and professional intrigues is heightened to the point of very negative inclinations with some people using coercive methods to achieve what they perceive as success.
Under Saturn/Pluto this can feature acts of blackmail, threats, and plots at the highest levels of government, within political groups, and corporations.
Paranoid individuals with extreme opinions, and viewpoints is also common under A Saturn/Pluto square.
The emotions can be deep, but the insights are often clouded by dishonorable associations and emotions to individuals and groups who do not have the best interests of others at heart.
Some individuals will find themselves battling against corruption and rampant dishonesty within organizations, or within associations, be they professional or personal with attacks on their reputation coming as a result of fighting dishonest persons and groups.
The coming revelations of widespread corruption in global financial markets, on Wall Street, and other stock markets will be under the Saturn/Pluto square.
Some individuals will find themselves battling against corruption and rampant dishonesty within organizations, or within associations, be they professional or personal with attacks on their reputation coming as a result of fighting dishonest persons and groups.
The coming revelations of widespread corruption in global financial markets, on Wall Street, and other stock markets will be under the Saturn/Pluto square.
Forcing major players to fight for their freedom because of accusations of the theft of tens of billions of dollars leading to a worldwide global recession.
Corporate power plays take center stage under the cardinal crisis transits with increasing political pressure and regulatory scrutiny on major banks, insurance companies, and those implicated in widespread financial malfeasance over the last decade.
The focus on these areas: unemployment, insurance, housing, stock markets, hedge funds, secret bank accounts, general economics, political and government affairs, alimony, and inheritances - is all common under the influences of Saturn's square from Libra to Pluto in Capricorn.
It is also common under these inclinations for opposing groups and individuals to use negative, dishonest, and evil means to obtain personal/profession advantages over others; or attempts to hide past acts of malfeasance to avoid implicating others involved in acts of corruption.
This often backfires under the Saturn/Pluto square and results in public scandal along with damage to the reputation and the careers of those who used negative means to gain what they "perceive" to be an advantage.
Nowhere does "do unto others as you would have them do unto you' applies more than under a Saturn/Pluto world square.
The effect on personal and professional connections can be long-lasting with people completely breaking off any further association with friends, family and colleagues.
Power struggles - both internal and external - is a main theme of a Saturn/Pluto Square.
Corporate power plays take center stage under the cardinal crisis transits with increasing political pressure and regulatory scrutiny on major banks, insurance companies, and those implicated in widespread financial malfeasance over the last decade.
The focus on these areas: unemployment, insurance, housing, stock markets, hedge funds, secret bank accounts, general economics, political and government affairs, alimony, and inheritances - is all common under the influences of Saturn's square from Libra to Pluto in Capricorn.
It is also common under these inclinations for opposing groups and individuals to use negative, dishonest, and evil means to obtain personal/profession advantages over others; or attempts to hide past acts of malfeasance to avoid implicating others involved in acts of corruption.
This often backfires under the Saturn/Pluto square and results in public scandal along with damage to the reputation and the careers of those who used negative means to gain what they "perceive" to be an advantage.
Nowhere does "do unto others as you would have them do unto you' applies more than under a Saturn/Pluto world square.
The effect on personal and professional connections can be long-lasting with people completely breaking off any further association with friends, family and colleagues.
Power struggles - both internal and external - is a main theme of a Saturn/Pluto Square.
The will-power is increased, but the personal judgment is often very poor. This gives way to intense emotions that are not clearly understood enough to make valuable judgment calls on all levels of decisions.
Often, decisions are based on perceived "associations" with others who are not one's friends, nor who share one's common interests, except to advance their own personal interests while using others as a means to and end. Very common under Saturn's square to Pluto.
After the square aspect passes, the events which have taken place under its influences are fully revealed, leading to permanent estrangements from those once trusted and valued as friends, associates, or lovers.
Saturn's continued transit through Libra (2010-2012) then features a full distrust and estrangement from those who used dishonest means during the Saturn/Pluto inclinations.
Often, decisions are based on perceived "associations" with others who are not one's friends, nor who share one's common interests, except to advance their own personal interests while using others as a means to and end. Very common under Saturn's square to Pluto.
After the square aspect passes, the events which have taken place under its influences are fully revealed, leading to permanent estrangements from those once trusted and valued as friends, associates, or lovers.
Saturn's continued transit through Libra (2010-2012) then features a full distrust and estrangement from those who used dishonest means during the Saturn/Pluto inclinations.
These estrangements will last a very long time and trust will never be restored after the world square aspect has moved out of orb.
- Jupiter Square Pluto -
Aries/Capricorn - 2010-2011
Opposition from Jupiter in Cancer to Pluto in Capricorn arrives 2013-2014
The Jupiter/Pluto Square acts much like that of Saturn's square to Pluto. Jupiter's motion into Aries in mid-2010, and then again in February 2011, will square Pluto in tropical Capricorn.
The same kinds of conflicts under Saturn's influence by square to Pluto comes into action with hasty, impulsive and headstrong promotion of one's opinions as facts to gain a perceived advantage over others.
Temptation is strong with inclinations to use dishonest means to get what one thinks they want.
Rampant litigation under Jupiter's inclinations lead to a rush toward legal wars without first seeing the bigger picture. With the Jupiter square to Pluto: it is the forest first, the trees second, but do make sure you count each tree.
The contradictions of this is simple:
Rampant litigation under Jupiter's inclinations lead to a rush toward legal wars without first seeing the bigger picture. With the Jupiter square to Pluto: it is the forest first, the trees second, but do make sure you count each tree.
The contradictions of this is simple:
Jupiter's square to Pluto, in combination to its conjunction to Uranus in opposition to Saturn, and by square to Pluto, and back, fully complicates matters, so as to act as a powerful feedback loop with amplifiers about to blow loudly if the volume of intensity is not turned down.
The energies of the Cardinal Cross transits are simply too strong. Patience, slowing down, and reposing are the keys to effectively neutralizing these powerful cardinal inclinations.
Under the Jupiter/Pluto square, serious mistakes are often made preparing legal cases without first laying down the proper practical groundwork.
Often, this comes about because of ego, and headstrong acts featuring arrogance and pride; but wholly failing to take into account the small, but very important details.
Often, this comes about because of ego, and headstrong acts featuring arrogance and pride; but wholly failing to take into account the small, but very important details.
The majority of litigation made under these influences will collapse like a house of cards after months of what seemed like a iron-clad case.
The only way to neutralize this transit, as with all the others of the Cardinal Crisis transits is to slow down, and to be strictly honest at all times in all personal and business affairs.
Also, the need to remain detached and practical while plodding step-by-step without ego, impulse, and haste. This is the antidote to the impulsive inclinations of cardinal transits.
Power-plays, and forced acts of coercion, with promotions of extreme expressions of personal, political and religious viewpoints is quite common under this global square.
Often, one's aspirations to remake others comes with neglecting one's own house while confused attitudes about ethics and morality are cast aside in favor of haste and impulse - rushing to judgment.
Struggles with corrupted individuals and groups is also common under a Jupiter/Pluto Square.
The only way to neutralize this transit, as with all the others of the Cardinal Crisis transits is to slow down, and to be strictly honest at all times in all personal and business affairs.
Also, the need to remain detached and practical while plodding step-by-step without ego, impulse, and haste. This is the antidote to the impulsive inclinations of cardinal transits.
Power-plays, and forced acts of coercion, with promotions of extreme expressions of personal, political and religious viewpoints is quite common under this global square.
Often, one's aspirations to remake others comes with neglecting one's own house while confused attitudes about ethics and morality are cast aside in favor of haste and impulse - rushing to judgment.
Struggles with corrupted individuals and groups is also common under a Jupiter/Pluto Square.
Criminal underworld groups, and their associates often war against one another in the perceived struggle for "power," without understanding the dire future implications of their violent acts which, in time, will return upon the very people involved in these evil affairs.
There can be dubious spiritual practices featuring over-optimistic false spiritual, religious and political beliefs shaped by the realization that there are large-scale forces at work that the individual (s) have been forced to see as a result of changes in lifestyles.
The square aspect in this respect can be positive if the individual (s) remember to not act in haste or impulse in accepting too easily that which is being realized.
Under the cardinal crisis transits, there are efforts by others to remake or coerce others to partake in evil behaviors - effectively using people to do the things which "appear" to advance the interests of those who agree to take part in actions, or groups.
After the 2010 Jupiter/Pluto Square comes another one by mid-2013 into the year 2014.
This will be part of the Grand Cardinal Cross of 2014 showing powerful cardinal inclinations of haste, and impulse that feeds into the coming Uranus-Pluto Squares of the 2010s.
Again, there is a sense that things are not changing as quickly as people would like them to, and the ramifications of the decade of the 2000s continue to persist into the early years of the 2010s.
Unless the problems of rampant past corruption - especially in the financial sector - then this world Grand Cross, with Jupiter now in Cancer, as part of another series of cardinal crisis configurations - will return to bite back with a vengeance in 2014.
- Jupiter Oppose Saturn -
2010-2012
Bad Business Timing, Questionable Tactics & Promised Favors Undone
Pisces/Aries - Virgo/Libra
Jupiter at 0-10 degrees Taurus
While this takes place, many people will see their own personal and professional responsibilities increase; while wages continue to stagnate from the lack of resources, which will be limited because of prior economic corruption and waste.
The opposition of Jupiter to Saturn can test what the true balance really is between being optimistic, and being pessimistic. Much will depend on the ability of the individual to be creative, and patient, while the opposition is underway.
Many of these people will be older, and due to the transit of Saturn, will exhibit rigid views without realizing that in a short period of time after the opposition has waned and passed; that they themselves will receive similar treatment from the very people whom they denied opportunities and relief.
The conflicts which come about during 2010-2012 under the Jupiter/Saturn opposition will tend towards ethics; morals; joint finances, family responsibilities, friendships, associations, romantic relationships, partnerships and corporate struggles that will test the reliability and strength of relationships in general.
The Jupiter/Saturn opposition will begin to weaken in February 2012, and by the end of March 2012, will move out of orb.
Pisces/Aries - Virgo/Libra
Jupiter at 0-10 degrees Taurus
Jupiter/Saturn oppositions arrive every 20 years. The last one took place in 1990-91. They usually always feature an economic recession, usually deep ones, which can take several years to emerge out of before conditions gradually improve.
Such will be the case with the 2010-2012 opposition of Jupiter/Saturn. During these oppositions expect business to suffer as the generational transition continues over the course of Jupiter's opposition to Saturn.
Because of the poor economic climate some people may resort towards using questionable tactics to get ahead and make money.
Such will be the case with the 2010-2012 opposition of Jupiter/Saturn. During these oppositions expect business to suffer as the generational transition continues over the course of Jupiter's opposition to Saturn.
Because of the poor economic climate some people may resort towards using questionable tactics to get ahead and make money.
With the business climate contracted, some will seek shortcuts and dubious actions to get ahead while others continue to face competition with limited resources.
The desired expansion of business is fraught with frustration after frustration, red-tape, barriers, blocks, delays, and legal problems. Rising defaults & bankruptcies increase as a result of past mismanagement of resources and corruption with credit conditions tighter than normal.
The desired expansion of business is fraught with frustration after frustration, red-tape, barriers, blocks, delays, and legal problems. Rising defaults & bankruptcies increase as a result of past mismanagement of resources and corruption with credit conditions tighter than normal.
It is an unfavorable time to expand business concerns, or to take chances because of the uncertainty of finances, contracts and commitments from others, who tend to be unreliable due to limited resources, confusion, lack of planning, procrastination, and a general lack of honesty and fair play.
The crush of competition, fighting for a limited amount of customers, with resources lacking can further cause disruptions in professional and personal lives to the point of some leaving entire industries for good.
The crush of competition, fighting for a limited amount of customers, with resources lacking can further cause disruptions in professional and personal lives to the point of some leaving entire industries for good.
This will continue under the inclinations of Jupiter's opposition to Saturn.
It is a poor time to seek favors from others, as the business climate of 2010-2012 will continue to suffer from immense commercial & residential real estate losses, double-digit unemployment, and a general sense of malaise from an aging generational establishment.
Those seeing support from official institutions, such as federal, state, and local agencies, may find themselves frustrated with the lack of help usually expected from these offices.
It is a poor time to seek favors from others, as the business climate of 2010-2012 will continue to suffer from immense commercial & residential real estate losses, double-digit unemployment, and a general sense of malaise from an aging generational establishment.
Those seeing support from official institutions, such as federal, state, and local agencies, may find themselves frustrated with the lack of help usually expected from these offices.
This is because those in positions of power are either on their way out the door themselves, or have become cold and unsympathetic to those in need; preferring instead to look out only for themselves.
While this takes place, many people will see their own personal and professional responsibilities increase; while wages continue to stagnate from the lack of resources, which will be limited because of prior economic corruption and waste.
The opposition of Jupiter to Saturn can test what the true balance really is between being optimistic, and being pessimistic. Much will depend on the ability of the individual to be creative, and patient, while the opposition is underway.
It will not last forever, so those who are looking for opportunities during this time should be aware to remain cautiously optimistic, while clearly seeing what the true barriers to success will be during 2010 to 2012.
Most, if not all of the barriers are those held by people with cold, conservative and uncompromising attitudes. Hypocrisy and distorted moral values is also common under a Jupiter/Saturn opposition.
What used to make sense, and would be expected as normal modes of operation and procedures is perverted by the unyielding attitudes of uncompromising people.
Many of these people will be older, and due to the transit of Saturn, will exhibit rigid views without realizing that in a short period of time after the opposition has waned and passed; that they themselves will receive similar treatment from the very people whom they denied opportunities and relief.
The conflicts which come about during 2010-2012 under the Jupiter/Saturn opposition will tend towards ethics; morals; joint finances, family responsibilities, friendships, associations, romantic relationships, partnerships and corporate struggles that will test the reliability and strength of relationships in general.
The Jupiter/Saturn opposition will begin to weaken in February 2012, and by the end of March 2012, will move out of orb.
By this time, those who were frustrated, or blocked from advancement will find an easier go of things gradually in 2012 as Saturn moves out of opposition to the outer planets, and brings a sense of relief by 2013.
However, memories will be still fresh from the red tape, delays, and barriers put up by those with unyielding attitudes. This will come back to haunt those who denied others the potential for advancement during the 2010s, and leads into the coming Uranus/Pluto squares of the 2010s.
The relief in 2013 doesn't last long due to Jupiter's motion out of tropical Gemini, and into tropical Cancer where Jupiter will transit to oppose Pluto in Capricorn - initiating yet another chapter of the Cardinal Crisis Years.
- Jupiter Oppose Pluto -
August 2013 - June 2014
Cancer/Capricorn
Part of the Cardinal Grand Cross of April 2014
Forced Reforms, Business Clash, Coercions, International Tensions & Revolts
By the end of June 2013, transiting Jupiter will have moved out of tropical Gemini, and enter Cancer. Making a nice trine to transiting Saturn in Scorpio by early July, it would appear that the struggles, and tensions of the previous two-and-a-half years are over.
However, this is not so according to the world transits. This is simply a breather with more to come by the following month of August, when transiting Mars conjoins Jupiter in Cancer and oppose Pluto in Capricorn.
Jupiter's opposition to Pluto is a time of what appears to be continued stresses around finances, economics, and what policies should be enacted, and which should not.
There can be tendencies to push things too quickly, to overreach with big plans, and grandiose ideas without firming up foundations.
During the period of the Jupiter-Pluto opposition, it is important to take time to make certain that the practical matters of business and personal life are attended to by balancing one's sense of organization against one's desire to push out and expand.
Under this influence come attempts to force, to coerce, or to remake others - claiming one's desires to reform other while not paying attention to one's own need for it personally. This is also extended internationally.
A fine balance must be taken under a Jupiter-Pluto opposition before initiating wide reforms carelessly without prior deep thought, insight, and understanding of the long-term consequences.
Jupiter is in Cancer - the home sign of the United States - so in 2013 and 2014, the opposition to Pluto can indicate tensions from the people towards government, or, to an administration in power at the time as well as international tensions abroad.
The areas highlighted are those around political policies, philosophical ideology, education, religion, and cultural beliefs and norms clashing against anything that appears to be autocratic in nature.
The strongest date of the opposition is in the year 2014, when transiting Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto form a Grand Cross in the cardinal signs of Aries, Libra, Cancer, and Capricorn. The peak of this grand cross is in April 2014.
Jupiter will oppose Pluto, while in square aspect to both Uranus in Aries, and Mars, retrograde in Libra by April 2014. Tensions are high and this grand cross speaks of both international and national tensions at a peak under yet another Cardinal Crisis.
Mixed with a sense of over-optimism, underneath the public feelings at this time is also impatience, and a strong lack of practical common sense that allows many to jump to conclusions - which is part of the cardinal inclinations of haste and impulse once again coming to the fore.
The sense of adventure and grandiose idealism at this time is marked by a hesitancy seen by the retrograde of Mars in Libra at this time.
There are unexpected hostile dealings with foreigners for those outside their home countries, and those overseas tend towards being unpredictable and unreliable.
Spring 2014 into summer 2014 is not a good time for overseas travel. Moreover, the diplomatic tensions are high, so diplomats may come into contact with those in foreign states those who may be difficult to contend with at this time.
Prudence, tact, and foresight is strong advised among all parties, be they individuals, groups, companies, organizations or nations.
The Grand Cross of 2014 signals a sort of "peaking" of the previous cardinal transits of 2010 and 2011 with inclinations of demanding freedom at all cost without taking on the mantle of patience, and responsibility that comes along with demands.
Before 2014, the sense of optimism fueled by the coming and going of the year 2012 when the world did not come to an end, and the inclinations of the year 2013 with a sense of new-found, but cautious optimism, is met by April 2014 with a sense that rebellion and revolt is once again on the horizon.
The international tensions at this time in 2014 will stem from former disagreements and beliefs among nations which appear to have undermined future matters by ignoring principles with empty words - saying one thing, but doing another.
This obviously leads to international clashes when trust appears to be broken between some nations. This shows in world transits of 2014. It is the year of the diplomat.
Mars' retrograde in Libra (March 1, 2014 to May 19, 2014) plays a strong role in the Cardinal Grand Cross of that year.
Wise decision-making is at a premium; so heads of state, and their diplomats should be careful not to overreach, nor to promise more than they can deliver, but to balance threats with peaceful acts, and with careful solutions via prudent diplomacy and tact.
Mars' opposition to Uranus in Aries in 2014 speaks of conflicts, and clashes among states, organizations, friends, and family who take sides on the broader issues of the times. The transit of Mars in Libra (December 7, 2013 to July 25, 2014) is a long one.
The retrograde of Mars from March to May 19, 2014 takes part during the strongest months of the Cardinal Grand Cross in April & May.
Decision-making is important here, and, with Mars declining in Libra, it is essential to have the right players in position during this time of global transits. The wrong personalities involved as "diplomats" are apt to make things that much worse simply because of their personal and political ideologies.
It is wise to remove ideological hotheads in critical positions at this time in 2014 and to replace them with calm, cool, and smart diplomats who can be trusted and relied upon to create atmospheres for leaders where positive progress can be made.
Compounding this will be a total Lunar eclipse at 25-Libra during the early morning hours of April 15, 2014 that will be visible over the Americas, the Pacific, and east Australia.
The degrees indicated by Sabian symbols say ~
- 25º Libra - "The sign of an autumn leaf brings to a pilgrim the sudden revelation of the mystery of life and death."
- 26º Libra - "An Eagle and a large White Dove Turning into each other."
My forecast is for an international conflict at this time of the Grand Cross, that continues into July 2014, before either being resolved fully, or which escalates into warfare.
The choices indicated here by Jupiter's opposition to Pluto show that successful advance diplomacy must be made prior to spring 2014, and that signs of the coming conflicts will be seen in late 2012, and early 2013.
Spring 2014 in the northern hemisphere is a tense time of international tension that should be resolved by carefully handling the energies with proper decision-making, diplomacy, and a fine balance between leadership and international cooperation.
In this way, President Theodore Roosevelt's advice to "speak softly but carry a big stick" applies very well at this time in the world. The energies of the solar year of 2014 are about the promotion of peace, calm, and wise diplomacy.
Though the ignorant may propound immediate military action; the consequences are far-reaching into the future - so leaders at this time in 2014 will need to exercise wise restraint while carefully balancing the advice of doves and hawks to come to a solution that will satisfy everyone.
Compounding the problem at this time is the fifth exact square between Uranus and Pluto which occurs in April 2014. This is part of the Global Grand Cardinal Cross that year. We will now take a look at the roles these two outer planets will play, along with their powerful inclinations.
- Uranus Square Pluto -
2011-2020 overall
Rebellions, Revolts & Revolutionary Sentiments
Aries/Capricorn
early Taurus/Capricorn
If anything defines some of the more tense cardinal energies of the 2010s, it will be the Uranus transit of Aries in global square to transiting Pluto in Capricorn.
Handling this world square will not be an easy matter after the failures of the past generation to resolve many of the outstanding issues of the end of the 20th century, and the decade of the 2000s.
By July 2011, transiting Uranus will come very close to performing a near-exact square to Pluto in Capricorn, but Uranus will station retrograde on July 9, 2011 - delaying the first exact square with Pluto for 11 more months.
Uranus and Pluto, as slow moving outer planets, will remain in orb for most of the decade of the 2010s. Their most powerful inclinations occur from 2011 to the year 2018.
The first of seven (7) exact squares begins officially on June 24, 2012 with Uranus and Pluto square at 8-Capricorn. This is the first in a series of very powerful world square aspects between both planets relative to the Earth.
The Uranus/Pluto Cardinal squares lasts, overall, from 2011 to 2020.
An unprecedented Seven (7) exact squares occur in just three (3) years: 2012 to 2015
(*) = significant dates
1. June 24, 2012 – first global square at 8-degrees Aries/Capricorn
2. *September 18-19, 2012 – second square at 6-degrees Aries/Capricorn
3. May 20, 2013 – third square at 11-degrees Aries/Capricorn
4. November 1, 2013 – fourth square at 9-degrees Aries/Capricorn
5. *April 21, 2014 – fifth square at 13-degrees Aries/Capricorn
6. December 14-15, 2014 – sixth square at 12-degrees Aries/Capricorn
7. *March 16-17, 2015 – seventh global square at 15-degrees Aries/Capricorn
The last time Uranus and Pluto met in global square aspect was during the 1930s. This was a decade of reactionary, extreme right-wing politics, revolutionary socialism, rising crime, rebellions, revolts, and restrictive laws gradually reducing freedoms throughout Europe and the then-Soviet Union.
The Bank Crisis and Stock Market Crash of 1929-33 fueled the early years of the Great Depression with rising waves of petty crime and bank robberies. The resulting foreclosures of homes, businesses and family farms amid a depressed global economic system cast a dark shadow over the world.
The NYSE reaching its lowest trading point in history. Weather anomalies under the influence of Uranus in Aries led to the hottest year in U.S. history in 1933-34 with drought and dust storms raging across the American Midwest.
Meanwhile, political extremism ensued with the rise of tyrants, as Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany while in Japan, radical forms of militarism spread so much that it was being openly taught in elementary and high schools.
The revolts, rebellions and revolutionary sentiments under the Uranus/Pluto squares thus paved the way for the Second World War that followed by the end of the 1930s.
Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn revolve their squares worldwide for much of the 2010s, but the most powerful periods are between 2012 through 2015.
This is a time of great upsets within nations which have now experienced at least four to seven years in the wake of the global economic crisis.
Uranus' penchant for sudden change against Pluto's desire structure in Capricorn for a kind of transformational war that butt heads over the "kinds" of new changes to be realized and those not to be supported.
While this is happening, populations around the world seem to have had it to their chins with the constant disruptions of their lives; the losses of lifestyles over the years.
They react powerfully by demanding immediate changes without question while the forces of the status quo and old establishment refuse to yield - deciding to procrastinate even more.
Groups, organizations and individuals have become radicalized by the events since 2008. So much so, that by the time (June 2012) of the first of seven exact Uranus/Pluto square social unrest is a certainty in regions around the world.
There are increasing signs of rebellions, revolts and foreboding examples of revolutionary sentiments expressed in various nations upset with the status quo, represented by Pluto in Capricorn.
Groups, organizations and individuals have become radicalized by the events since 2008. So much so, that by the time (June 2012) of the first of seven exact Uranus/Pluto square social unrest is a certainty in regions around the world.
There are increasing signs of rebellions, revolts and foreboding examples of revolutionary sentiments expressed in various nations upset with the status quo, represented by Pluto in Capricorn.
It seems everything is on the table here: economic, social, political and religious structures are be challenged from all sides. People want change, and intend on getting it.
The headstrong inclinations of Aries, with Uranus in it's 7-year transit in this sign, squaring Pluto can indicate sudden deaths coming about unexpectedly; usually through acts of violence, and from common accidents, and unexpected large-scale disasters related to weather extremes.
Past associations, friendships and relationships can become radically changed under Uranus and Pluto's cardinal squares. It is at this time, between 2012-2015 that companies that were hanging on by a thread financially - can suddenly break and fall into bankruptcy.
The entry of Neptune into tropical Pisces in February 2012 will impress dissolution on failing companies afterward, with a slow, but gradual death into the mid-to-late 2010s.
The sudden losses associated with Uranus' transit in Aries can bring about greater financial losses than expected while corporations continue to witness power struggles as the generational transition picks up speed in the early to mid-2010s.
The revolutionary sentiments inclined by Uranus/Pluto come about as a result of the frustrations of the decade of the 2000s.
The global economic crisis, and the resulting societal effects have angered many populations who feel that their governments and representatives were not representing them, but corporate monied-interests that pilfered society's resources.
The resulting backlash featured under the Uranus/Pluto squares of the 2010s will be widespread, and quite unsettling for those involved in the mismanagement of trillions of dollars and euros over the previous decade.
Rising crime can be a problem; also fueled by the lack of resources because of the Banking Crisis of 2008-2012.
The headstrong inclinations of Aries, with Uranus in it's 7-year transit in this sign, squaring Pluto can indicate sudden deaths coming about unexpectedly; usually through acts of violence, and from common accidents, and unexpected large-scale disasters related to weather extremes.
Past associations, friendships and relationships can become radically changed under Uranus and Pluto's cardinal squares. It is at this time, between 2012-2015 that companies that were hanging on by a thread financially - can suddenly break and fall into bankruptcy.
The entry of Neptune into tropical Pisces in February 2012 will impress dissolution on failing companies afterward, with a slow, but gradual death into the mid-to-late 2010s.
The sudden losses associated with Uranus' transit in Aries can bring about greater financial losses than expected while corporations continue to witness power struggles as the generational transition picks up speed in the early to mid-2010s.
The revolutionary sentiments inclined by Uranus/Pluto come about as a result of the frustrations of the decade of the 2000s.
The global economic crisis, and the resulting societal effects have angered many populations who feel that their governments and representatives were not representing them, but corporate monied-interests that pilfered society's resources.
The resulting backlash featured under the Uranus/Pluto squares of the 2010s will be widespread, and quite unsettling for those involved in the mismanagement of trillions of dollars and euros over the previous decade.
Rising crime can be a problem; also fueled by the lack of resources because of the Banking Crisis of 2008-2012.
Hasty and impulsive actions to acquire money through illegal acts become more public as law and order seems to be failing to take hold of the rising tide of criminal acts perpetuated by career criminals let out on the streets after being released from prison, but not reformed.
State officials, under pressure financially, are forced to release thousands of prisoners in the early 2010s to relieve the system from overcrowding.
State officials, under pressure financially, are forced to release thousands of prisoners in the early 2010s to relieve the system from overcrowding.
State lawmakers all over the U.S., who say they need to save money from the devastating losses in state revenues say must release tens of thousands of convicts from prison in the 2010s, including drug addicts, thieves and violent criminals.
If there has been little reform of the system during the time of incarcerations, then obviously the lingering effects of the economic crisis that awaits convicts on the street can be a threat to public safety under the Uranus/Pluto squares.
By the spring of 2014, things become quite tense again globally with another Cardinal Cross - this time a Grand Cross configuration featuring Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto in the Signs of Libra, Cancer, Aries and Capricorn.
Grand Cross configurations in cardinal signs seek immediate release of strong, emotional pent-up energies.
If there has been little reform of the system during the time of incarcerations, then obviously the lingering effects of the economic crisis that awaits convicts on the street can be a threat to public safety under the Uranus/Pluto squares.
By the spring of 2014, things become quite tense again globally with another Cardinal Cross - this time a Grand Cross configuration featuring Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto in the Signs of Libra, Cancer, Aries and Capricorn.
Grand Cross configurations in cardinal signs seek immediate release of strong, emotional pent-up energies.
By April 2014, there is a sense among populations that they have had enough. They eject the usual explainations behind the causes of the economic crisis, which, by this time, will have persisted at various levels significantly enough to cause outright revolts in some nations.
At the same time, international tensions are sure to be high as well. There is a strong need for calm, but strong diplomacy as the Cardinal Grand Cross energies peak by April & May 2014.
Resolution of conflicts between nations can occur by utilizing cooperative stances, as well as using the carrot and stick method to bring unwilling parties to the bargaining tables to resolve differences.
The energies of Uranus Square Pluto can be violent. Accidents, and deaths are caused by haste, impulse, and the refusal to be patient, and tolerant.
Aries is the Sign of haste/impulse, while Pluto seeks general transformation, but through a gradual and steady use of the authority, forms, disciplines and structures of Capricorn.
The clashes between pre-revolutionary forces and those managing the old systems of structure can meet in the middle, but this can only be accomplished through diplomacy, understanding with all sides being flexible.
Uranus' transit in square to Pluto will undoubtedly shape much of the international climate of the 2010s to the point that presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, national leaders, CEOs, managers, and all those in executive positions will have to carefully determine how best to handle their respective leadership roles over the next 10-12 years.
It will not be easy. Those who make the effort to plan ahead, and who are flexible in their thinking, and their attitudes, will do much better than those who are not.
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5 comments:
Theo,
Your blog is fascinating and it corroborates what other mundane astrologers have and are writing about the transits and shifts.
But I have one objection. You continue to write about a generational shift and how the “Pluto in Leo” generation is the cause for our economic, environmental, socio-political woes and they will soon be out of power. That is too simplistic.
First, let me point out that what we are experiencing the ending of a 30-year cycle that began in 1982 with Reagan-Greenspan-Bush-Cheney and all the men who run the World Bank and monetary systems throughout the world. Beginning with the Reagan years, a series of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy along with deregulation of banks, Wall Street, utilities and other industries enabled more wealth to be shifted to the wealthy and tax burdens shifted to away from all levels of the middle class and poor.
Second, most of these men who are responsible for this socio-economic-environmental debacle were from the Leo in Cancer generation as well as the “Pluto in Leo” generation. Greenspan is now in his 80s having retired after the election of Obama.
Third, there are still greedy, self-interested people across all generations so there is more going on here than passing the torch to a new generation that will do it better. Today I witnessed my neighbor a twenty-something Gen Y bring home brand new, oil & gas guzzling BMW. He walked around the car with pride and that age-old glint of greed and success equals a status-symbol new toy. No hybrid car or sign of green consciousness even in light of the Gulf oil spill…so much for generational enlightenment.
Finally, I have “Pluto in Leo” in my chart and my astrologer tells me that I am to be one of the leaders to lead us out of this mess and establish a fair and just structure that allows all to prosper and the planet to be respected and cared for. I am a woman and I have had to wait for the rise of women as we are now witnessing. This rise of the Divine Feminine will recognize that our way of leading will at last have the respect and the power to create a balanced planet through collaboration, respect for all humanity and care for the planet. The devastation wrought by centuries of patriarchy rule has demonstrated the falsehood of male superiority.
The shift is really a spiritual one and those who do not raise their consciousness will find themselves confused and frustrated by the changes to come.
While I understand your view, it is important to see that generations as establishment play direct roles in the decisions they make with the resources they control during their time as the establishment.
In mundane astrology, we closely monitor generational transits, which are signified by the outer planets.
Throughout world history, all generations, who have their outer planets in Signs, and configurations, are those that make history. It is far from "simplistic," but is a complex area of mundane astrology.
This is also true when it comes to the Pluto in Leo generation, which has been the establishment since 1993, and ends as the establishment in early March 2011.
The shift is not only "spiritual," but is generational. It is also more than "patriarchy" rule, as that view is based on gender politics, something the Pluto in Leo generation has constantly fought battles on within their own generation.
The "rise of women" has been something that started long before the birth of the Pluto in Leo generation. It was an earlier generation that won the right for women to vote.
Have no doubt about it, the era of the Pluto in Leo generation as establishment is now coming to an end according to the celestial signs. It is time for a new generation to become the establishment, and this will begin in about nine months.
As I said and many astrologists can confirm, the establishment that has been in power is really centuries old and beyond the Pluto in Leo generation. In the nearer term of US history, Greenspan and Reagan and others of their age group controlled the power and flow of money. Boomers are actually a sub-generation of the larger group of Pluto in Leos (P/Ls).
"P/L's karmic transformation (the ultimate plutonian process) is not possible without the integration of Leo's polarity, Aquarius. Not coincidentally, Aquarius rules the 2000 year Great Age we have just entered. It is the dharma of Pluto in Leos to become the new generation of Aquarian leaders.”
from spiritual astrologer, Judith Goldberg @ http://www.stariq.com/Main/Articles/P0006419.HTM
You seemed to miss my point about the patriarchy, the rise of the Divine Feminine, and spirituality. Patriarchy has enabled 2000 years of subjugation over half the planet that allowed a bastardized version of masculinity to overrule feminine strengths. So yes, the "Pluto in Leo" generation and all the prior Pluto generations did not make much progress here.
It is through spiritual enlightenment and the Aquarian awakening that will enable women to rise to an equal position creating new government and socio-economic structures while awakening men to end their brutish power-wielding behavior & attitudes. Here’s more from J. Goldberg
“,,,,, The Pluto in Leo generation's past life history as kings and aristocrats has left them with a critical need for karmic balance. Many in this group reincarnated together in former times. They were the arrogant, self-serving, leaders of Atlantis (the continent that sank during the Great Age of Leo, 12,000 years ago), those most responsible for the folly that led to its destruction. They were the pre-revolutionary French aristocracy and the robber barons of the Gilded Age. Today, these elitists find a home in the office of the corporate CEO. P/L's karmic transformation (the ultimate plutonian process) is not possible without the integration of Leo's polarity, Aquarius. Not coincidentally, Aquarius rules the 2000 year Great Age we have just entered. It is the dharma of Pluto in Leos to become the new generation of Aquarian leaders.
“Millions of souls are involved in the unfolding drama of birthing the New Age and not everyone will self express at the same level. In his groundbreaking work, Pluto: the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul (Llewellyn 1985) Astrologer Jeff Greene identifies four natural evolutionary states that determine at what level an individual is operating. Green's classifications are of ancient Indian origin. (The source of his statistics is unknown to this author.) The stages are: 1) Dimly evolved state—2-3% of humanity; very low level of personal awareness. 2) Herd state—75% of humanity; individual identities are an extension of societal norms, beliefs, custom and taboos; mainstream. 3) Individuated state—20%; those who question the norms, beliefs, customs and taboos of society. 4) Spiritual state—2-3%; those who aspire to understand nature, creation, their own lives and the lives of others in a holistic context.”
Your posts have something for any reader to ponder.
I see I have been a follower for some time now. I invite you to visit my blog and follow as well if you wish.
Hello Theodore,
my name is also Theodore which means Gift of God.
You posted your name in Greek and I wonder if you have a connection of some sort with Greece.
Best regards,
Theo Phalieros
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