financial crisis

Blogging in the time of Pluto in Capricorn

celebrity journalismWhen I started this blog in 2005, celebrity journalism was all the rage.  A good part of my posts were spent analyzing whether or not the latest celebrity relationships would last, or why the bimbo of the month had her latest meltdown.  Celebrity gossip as a media force has been around for a long time, but that force reached a point of hysteria when Pluto was in Sagittarius, which among other things rules entertainment and celebrity.

Pluto takes a long time to go through a sign, anywhere from twelve to twenty years, and while Pluto is going through a sign we tend to see the matters that are ruled by that sign become intensified and glorified, but we also see the dark underside of these areas of life emerge.  Sagittarius is the sign of expansion and optimism, and when Pluto moved through Sag between 1995 and 2008 we witnessed the darker side of perpetual optimism which led to unsustainable economic expansion and a relentless refusal to acknowledge the limits (Capricorn) of this kind of growth.  This of course is what led to the economic downturn in which we now find ourselves.

Under the glittering celebration of Pluto in Sagittarius, so many people, feeling the pressure of this expansiveness, longed to live like the celebrities whose every move was followed and studied.  This obsession with celebrity journalism was called a “virus” by the mainstream press who feared celebrity news would crowd out legitimate news.

Of course the destruction and transformation (Pluto) of journalism and news (Sagittarius) was something to be expected when Pluto went through Sagittarius, but now that Pluto is in Capricorn celebrities just don’t seem as interesting.  After all, how much can we really read about Lindsay […]

Share this article...
By |2020-02-27T09:54:53-05:00January 5th, 2011|People|2 Comments
Read More

Stocks fall sharply as the Saturn/Pluto square approaches

This is what I’ve been warning about as Saturn and Pluto create an atmosphere of doom and gloom:

Stocks and interest rates tumbled Wednesday as investors around the world took a bleaker view of the U.S. economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 265 points, its biggest drop in six weeks, and all the major indexes fell more than 2 percent. The yield on the Treasury’s 10-year note fell to its lowest level since March 2009 as investors worried about the economy and avoiding stocks sought the safety of government securities.

Companies across a wide range of industries dropped Wednesday. Only 442 stocks rose on the New York Stock Exchange, while 2,627 fell, a sign that investors expect all businesses to suffer if the economy continues to weaken.

Investors’ gloom deepened a day after the Federal Reserve said it would begin buying government bonds as a way to stimulate the economy. News of slower industrial growth in China and a disappointing economic indicator in Japan helped send stocks plunging first in Asia, then in Europe and the U.S.

Saturn was the planet of death before Pluto came along, and Saturn and Pluto are not the most joyful of planets.  Saturn is all about reality testing, and Pluto seeks to destroy anything that is corrupt and rotting, so when the two of them meet in an energetic square we can generally expect the mood to dim.

I don’t see this as a bad thing, because it’s important to face the reality (Saturn) of the current worldwide economic situation rather than have blind hope for a return to the unrealistic growth of the past twenty years.  For investors this might turn out to be a very good thing, as the exact square of Saturn […]

Share this article...
By |2010-08-11T17:40:26-04:00August 11th, 2010|Money and markets|2 Comments
Read More