City Mouse and Country Mouse

I've been wondering why with all our Institutions of Higher Learning allow the U.S. Economy to be so accepting of Slave Labor. We seem to need Slaves. We talk about them as if they are Saints and accept their suffering. The jails are overloaded with people who can't handle being a Slave. I don't want to be a Slave and I don't want to walk down the street and think that anyone else is a Slave. Isn't it odd that this is such an impossible problem to cure?

So, I thought I would try to understand Economics, a Noble Ambition for sure, Dude. Bought a History of Economics tape and thoroughly enjoyed Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. But, truth is, after a 1/2 hour of hearing about them I was climbing the walls. And then with the later guys the Humanity got sucked out of the Theory and replaced by Vocabulary. And the lecturer said that Karl Marx was a grump which I always suspected and I gave up. And it's easy to see why Economists don't mind the Slaves. They don't have a word for the Slaves and these guys are all about words. Slaves are a part of the pie chart that isn't filled by the rich.

So it helped that Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize this year. He's a Muslim Banker in Bangladesh who decided to help very poor people get loans in order to build a better life. His winning the prize advertised the fact that some Economists, Academics and Bankers do think about these things. I started studying his chart with the idea of maybe understanding how Economists help the poor and I'll come back to it later. Yunus' chart led me back to the two men who first created Credit Unions which is the seed of Yunus' practice. I've never understood the idea of a Credit Union, actually thought they were some kind of Socialist Support Group for people who move to California from New York. HaHa, straight from the Comet's Ass. Here we go.

Two Germans created the First Credit Unions in order to help the Working Poor who were being eaten alive by Loan Sharks back in early 19th Century Germany. I've decided to call them City Mouse and Country Mouse because one Guy helped the Urban Poor like Tradesmen, Shop owners and Artisans, and the other Guy helped the Farmers out in the Country. I'm still not sure how Credit Unions work, something about relying on cooperation in one's community that relies on a philosophy of self-help. I still don't understand why the U.S. needs to import Illegal Immigrants and Slaves, but this is a start.

City Mouse:

Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch
b. Aug. 29, 1808 Delitzsch, Prussian Saxony (Germany?)

Sun 6 Virgo; Moon probably in Sagittarius; NN 16 Scorpio

Country Mouse:

Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen
b. May 3, 1818 Hamm/Sieg, Germany

Sun 13 Taurus; Moon probably in Aries; NN 9 Taurus

Earth Suns. Fire Moons. Their Nodal Axes are the same but opposite almost to the degree; both in the Money Signs, Taurus and Scorpio, as one would expect for money lenders. Country Mouse has Sun conjunct his NN and City Mouse has Saturn conjunct his NN.

So these guys were good at business, especially in Money Lending and really into self-sufficiency (Scorpio). Where's the Good Will stuff come from though? I'm going to start with Pluto. Pluto was in Pisces and was strongly aspected in both of their charts. Neptune and Pluto working together, you had better be well-intentioned, purifying and compassionate with this combination. City Mouse had a conjunction of Jupiter with Pluto (so trendy, how Urban). This conjunction was exact to the degree and exactly (to the degree) opposing Venus (Banking planet) and Sun. It also trined the Saturn-NN conjunction in Scorpio. Country Mouse had a much more agrarian set-up. Pluto was conjunct Saturn and Chiron in Pisces. He obviously required the quiet and reserve of the Country. This conjunction trined Mars in Cancer and squared a Uranus-Neptune conjunction in Sagittarius.

City Mouse organized and developed the first "People's Bank" in Germany in 1850 in Delitzsch. He was trained as a Lawyer, quit his Government job out of frustration and wanted to bring about "co-operation" in the German culture. Country Mouse created the First Credit Union, a cooperative lending bank, in 1864 based on the idea of cooperative self-help. He understood the psychology of the small communities where he was doling out the cash. Towns of 2000 people will know who they are dealing with. A person's reputation is very important to maintain so he will probably be more responsible about repaying his loan. It does sound like a completely different clientele than what the City Mouse was dealing with. The two men disagreed on different aspects of lending, as one can well imagine.

City Mouse really did have a more Urban Chart. First there's the Jupiter-Pluto opposing Venus-Sun. Then there's Mars in Leo square Uranus in Scorpio. Mercury was also in Leo. He could handle risk and excitement, handing out the gold with a whoosh of the hand.

Country Mouse had Sun in Taurus, Mars in Cancer. Venus and Mercury were in their own signs and in conjunction on the Taurus-Gemini cusp. You could imagine that he would prefer the stability and honesty of the Country life.

So, then there's Muhammad Yunus who's alive and well and, better yet, well-intentioned.

b. June 28, 1940 Bathua, Chittagong, Bangladesh

Sun 7 Cancer; Moon probably in Aries (maybe Pisces); NN 17 Libra

Sun conjunct Venus and Chiron in Cancer with Mars also in Cancer.

Mercury conjunct Pluto at 2 Leo square Jupiter 9 Taurus conjunct Saturn 12 Taurus.

Yunus was educated in the U.S. and then returned to Bangladesh after it declared its Independence on December 16, 1971 in order to help develop a new nation. Supposedly giving loans to poor people is especially successful when new communities are being developed as it can take advantage of people's hopes and optimism. That sounds like a good use of all those Cardinal Cancer planets in Yunus' chart. There was a Famine in 1974 which fueled Yunus' desire to fight poverty. Yunus started a new bank in Dec. 1976 and renamed it on Oct. 1, 1983 as Grameen Bank. Grameen means "of rural area" or "of village." To ensure payment the bank uses "solidarity groups." I don't know what that means. In the U.S. it means "Gangs" or "Mafia" but I guess they know what they are doing. Yunus went on the help set up the Telecommunications systems along with educational programs for students in order to keep the country competitive with other countries. Self-dependence is very important to him. He wears only simple clothes.

Am I really gonna hit the publish button on this one?