Federal Reserve

The Dow at a 2-year high: can it last?

Wall Street loves a good Republican victory, and yesterday the financial press said that the market was up in anticipation of the Republicans taking the House.  Today the story was that a market reached a new high after the Federal Reserve decided to buy up $600 billion in Treasury securities.

Deborah at Wall Street Weather called this last week in her “Trick or Treat edition” and explained why it won’t work:

Photo from Huffington Post

Halloween is all about all kinds of terrifying creatures, ghosts and zombies (the living dead) roaming around. And what’s truly “unbelievably terrifying” to quote GMO’s Jeremy Grantham’s “Night of the Living Fed” is that every voting member of the FOMC has become a zombie except Thomas Hoenig.

The Fed acts like zombies because they continue to do the same thing over and over again. Fed Chairman Bernanke’s mentor is “Chief Zombie” Alan Greenspan who taught him that when one bubble bursts, another one needs to be conjured to create the “wealth effect.” In addition to promising near zero interest rates for an “extended period,” the Fed talks of the treats of QE2 and inflation targeting, so that all that debt (Scorpio/Pluto) left over from when the last bubble burst just over one Mars cycle (2 years) ago becomes cheaper to service.

The Fed wants investors to become zombies like them, under the illusion that reflating asset prices makes investors feel wealthier so they’re more likely to spend and employers are more likely to hire and grow their businesses. As PIMCO’s Bill Gross writes in his latest Investment Outlook: “The Fed, on Wednesday, however, will decide that it is better to keep the patient on life support with an adrenaline injection and a following morphine drip than […]

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By |2010-11-03T18:23:13-04:00November 3rd, 2010|Money and markets|Comments Off on The Dow at a 2-year high: can it last?

“Fed survey shows recession may be over”

And I’m as big an optimist as anyone so I’d like to believe it.  The Federal Reserve surveyed businesses around the US and “found economic activity stabilizing or improving in most regions.”  However, this growth is dependent upon consumer spending and people can’t spend money when they’re not working.

I have been saying for the past few months that until we see employment numbers rising, the economy will not have turned around.  People without jobs cannot spend money, and as long as the US economy is fueled by spending we will remain in the recession.  Much of the spending that fueled the boom in the Pluto in Sagittarius era (1995 through 2008) came from borrowed money, and that money had dissolved into thin air.

The Fed’s survey found a pickup in the demand for temporary workers, which could presage the hiring of permanent workers. Saturn will enter Libra at the end of October, leaving the sign of Virgo which is the sign that regulates work and the work environment, as well as health and other issues that have been under stress for the past couple of years.  However, Saturn will immediately form a square to Pluto which is rarely a happy combination.  Saturn gives us a reality check and Pluto forces confrontation in any area where things are not working well, so that could be a big wake-up call in areas of the economy that are fueled by speculation and optimism alone.

The Saturn/Pluto square will peak in November and then again in February, making this period a challenging economic one.  However, a sextile from Jupiter (good fortune) to Pluto (transformation) in February will soften the blow and encourage a sense of expansion.  However, February also marks the […]

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By |2009-09-10T18:39:15-04:00September 10th, 2009|Money and markets|Comments Off on “Fed survey shows recession may be over”

Interesting timing of bank stress test results

Evidently the Federal Reserve will disclose the results of the “stress test” on May 7, the day that Mercury turns retrograde.

While bank executives are still muddling through stress-test results, their communication managers are wrestling with the question about how and what to tell the public.
The big day for the unveiling of the results is Thursday, May 7.
Interviews with heads of corporate-communication and public-relations departments at a number of the 19 stress-tested banks revealed an intense struggle to come up with a plan to reassure investors, counterparties and customers. Communications from the banks may be critical even for those whose bill of health is reasonably clean.  Those deemed short of capital face a daunting task to keep their heads above water, PR executives and lawyers said.
Banks are under a gag order from regulators not to disclose anything about the stress test, but the Federal Reserve, which conducts the test, has made clear that it will disclose certain details about the capital position and capital needs of individual banks.

This is a good example of what Mercury Retrograde periods are good for: looking backwards to see what can be done to improve a given situation.  This particular exercise is likely to lead to a certain amount of financial instability, but at least it will be known which banks are in trouble which will help lead to a solution to the bank problems.

Any retrograde turn of a planet can cause reversals in the financial markets  which have been doing pretty well lately (the Dow rose 7% in April).

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By |2009-05-01T08:28:17-04:00May 1st, 2009|Money and markets|Comments Off on Interesting timing of bank stress test results

Who is Timothy Geithner?

Timothy GeithnerTimothy Geithner is the man that Barack Obama has entrusted with the challenging task of rescuing our economy from a global recession that astrologers have been expecting for many years.  I have some doubts as to how much rescuing can actually be done until the diseased underlying system is rebuilt, but I am very curious to know more about Mr. Geithner.

Very little is known about Mr. Geithner, but there is no doubt that he has been a part of the financial establishment that is now in so much distress.  He began his career with Kissinger and Associates, and then worked in the International Affairs division of the US Treasury.  He was a Senior Fellow for the Council of Foreign Relations, and most recently was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Geithner’s astrological chart (born 8/18/1961, no known birthtime) shows an interesting combination of the bold and the cautious.  Like Obama, he has the Sun in cheerful and energetic Leo, and it conjuncts Uranus almost exactly revealing an iconoclastic streak and an inventive approach to life.  Mercury is present too, making this a triple Leo conjunction with Uranus at its center. The Sun/Mercury conjunction typically denotes an extremely bright individual, and Uranus tends to add a component of brilliance that is often found in the charts of inventors and great thinkers such as Marcel Proust who has been called the greatest novelist of the 20th century.

It’s interesting that he grew up abroad in Zimbabwe, India and Japan which likely informed his world view, which judging from his chart would embrace a wide variety of beliefs and ideas.

Saturn in Geithner’s chart is retrograde AND in Capricorn, the sign ruled by Saturn, all of which show that Saturn is very pronounced in […]

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By |2009-01-28T20:35:21-05:00January 28th, 2009|Politics|Comments Off on Who is Timothy Geithner?