Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Sept. 23, 2008

Is it the Week-end yet? Is it even Hump Day yet?

"Bailing Out." That term is used for sinking ships and for leaving relationships. Now it has new meaning which we apply to the people who hold our money in safe keeping. The Feds have proposed a 700 Billion Gazillion Dollar Fix-It Doohickie to the Bankers. Hell, we could stay in Iraq for 700 more days on that figure...

Where is all this damn money supposed to come from?

They're dropping Acid into the water supply, aren't they?

The Opening Bell Charts right now have shrewd Scorpio Rising and Courageous Leo Midheaven. Resources of Speculation/Risk and Investments/Taxes/Other People's Money is dominant. The rulers of these angles, Sun and Pluto are in challenging square aspect and are on the Aries Points.

Transiting Venus, natural ruler of Banking through Taurus/2d House is still rising over the Ascendant as the Market opens. What is different this week from last is that Venus and Pluto now rule the Ascendant and Descendant. Last week they were ruling each other's houses.

First I'd like to propose my own creative fix. Why don't they just fire all the Bankers who failed and let everyone's Grandparents take care of the till? There's nothing like years of experience and living on a fixed income for a few years to show a person how to manage money. Problem solved.

There is talk that some of the fix could actually come with reward in the way of high interest return for investors. That's great unless there's massive inflation coming up. But I think this idea is only part of the journalists and isn't part of the Feds' plan anyway.

Terry Gross gave another great interview on NPR today with a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson which sort of "focused" (Pluto word) the problem for me. The problem is the money, of course. But, I was struck by how well Morgenson described Pluto's transition from Sagittarius to Capricorn. Lack of enforcement of regulations in the mortgage industry and the repeated lack of oversight is the Problem. Sagittarians are so much fun but they don't like setting the rules. They don't want to be the meanie. Morgenson used words like "No oversight" "Lax Lending" "Anything Goes" attitude towards dealing with money. Easy going Jupiter stuff. I was born to two Jupiter-Pluto people. They will try anything. It's a whole lot of fun but the Chapter 11s aren't.

Morgenson even said something like (can't quote verbatim because I was driving) "This inevitably leads to a Doom & Gloom situation." That's sounds like Pluto in Capricorn to me. This is just so typical of the passage of Pluto (Crisis, Emotions, Debt) from Sagittarius into Capricorn. You get the feeling that the transition from some signs to others signs is kind of fun, like from Scorpio to Sagittarius would be such a well deserved release. But some are awful. The transitition from Leo to Virgo did me in. Maybe it is the transition from Fire to Earth. It's the Crash and Burn part of the cycle.

It looks like what we need right now is for the people's interests to be taken into account. Morgenson's criticisms of the Feds are that The Feds want very limited oversight for how they bail the Financial System out. Since they are the ones who led the Markets into this mess and apparently didn't have a clue what was coming up, they should be held on very short leash, shouldn't they?

Tomorrow's Opening Bell will have Moon in Leo conjunct the Midheaven. Hopefully this will bring the American Public's well being into focus.

Terry Gross' interview with Gretchen Morgenson on Fresh Air is here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94928783