Asteroid-World Winter 1991
Ray Beeson and Zip Dobyns
Money and the World
Ray Beeson
Recently, I attended a very informal and friendly gathering of people who were sharing their ideas about world politics and the state of the economy and how such things might relate to the world of astrology. I expressed my ideas about events that I felt had led up to such current affairs as the Persian Gulf crisis and the financial turmoil that we all seem to be facing on a personal level, and I was invited to present my ideas in the Asteroid-World.
A statement was made about what the cost of a war would do to our national debt and how ill prepared we are as a country at this time to meet this financial obligation without extreme pressures being placed on all sectors of our economy. But a feeling surfaced within me that we have lost any sense of proportion as to what our money is and what it is worth. This loss overshadows a war in the Gulf, and at the same instant may be a part of that very same problem.
I have been struggling for over 15 years to come to grips with what our money is and the direction it is going. Money, or its value, is related to the national debt, banking, trade balances, commodity exchanges, and subjective elements such as confidence levels, stability factors and God knows what else. I had to start some place and that place was the arena of banking and the national debt.
The national debt is now measured in such large figures that the reality of the debt has been lost. It has become synthetic, an illusion, disconnected from the world of ordinary people. This means that a poor working fellow such as myself finds it much more difficult to understand what is happening with our debt and how that relates to me.
As a small child, I remember a time when the word “millions” simply seemed awe inspiring and almost incomprehensible. Then I developed an interest in astronomy and the word “billions” seemed to overshadow millions. In the last few years, the term “trillions” has come to be commonplace and accepted, especially when talking about national costs or debts. Recently, I stacked some Federal Reserve notes (mostly 1’s and 5’s) just to illustrate what a trillion dollars is in terms of paper money. I had 40 paper notes in my wallet and in my house. Forty paper notes comes to about 1/2 inch in height. If those 40 notes were $1,000 bills, that pile would equal $40,000! Check my math on this if you don’t believe me. A pile of stacked $1,000 Federal Reserve notes equaling 1 trillion dollars would be a staggering 197.25 miles high!!!!
In order to understand what dollars mean in our daily lives, I came up with an economic statement that I think relates very well to what we all can understand and work with. It started with me thinking about how much I paid for my ’72 Corvette and how much the new ’90 Vettes are selling for and how I could relate this to my job and the amount of energy I would have to expend to buy a car. In other words, I was trying to get out of thinking in dollars and thinking in terms of effort and energy.
|
|
1972 |
1989 |
% of increase |
|
gross income |
$14,000 |
$44,000 |
314% |
|
fed income taxes |
$1,200 |
$13,200 |
1,100% |
|
state inc taxes |
$230 |
$3,400 |
1,478% |
|
gal gas unleaded |
$.55 |
$1.30 |
236% |
|
rent/year |
$1,400 |
$4,500 |
321% |
|
Corvette |
$5,500 |
$32,000 |
509% |
|
union dues |
$300 |
$2,300 |
766% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
months work to buy a new Vette |
5 months |
15 months |
300% |
As I was drawing up this table from actual figures, it began to hit me what had happened to my standard of living. The above figures do not indicate a 300% increase in the cost of a new Vette; these figures indicate a 300% INCREASE IN EFFORT!!! Or to put it more precisely, I now have to work 3 times harder to buy a Vette, doing the very same job that has increased in pay over 3 times in the last 18 years!!!!
I hate the terms “statistics” and “percentages.” Disraeli defined them as lies and more lies. We are bombarded with them from all sides; the cost of living is up this percent, the standard of living is down this percent, etc. etc..
It is a trap that statisticians, economists, politicians and any other miscreant can easily slip into. A percentage increase here is equal to a percentage increase there! Baloney!!! Believe me, if my wages had increased at the same rate as the cost of living and inflation, then I would work the same number of hours to obtain the same item!!!! I can guarantee you that in my profession, going to sea is actually more demanding, more stressful now than it was in 1972. This would further indicate that if all things were equal, I would now be putting out much much more than 300% additional effort to buy the same item I could have purchased in 1972!!!
So a person must learn to rethink what things cost now as opposed to what things cost in the past. Dollars have been so stretched, floated, deflated, inflated, depressed, supported, unsupported that we no longer have a means to measure today’s dollars with yesterday’s dollars. And not having a continuous medium to measure our wages, we no longer have a measurement of what our labor is worth! But the failure of a continuous measuring element has an interesting side effect: it obscures our tax structures and how the government spends money.
I always laugh at the economists because every so often they come up with what they refer to as a base dollar year. I remember in the 70’s they measured items in terms of 1960 dollars. Then when that reference became ugly to the people who have the power to change these definitions, they changed the base dollar to the 1967 dollar. They used to make such inane statements as “the 1975 dollar is now worth 63 cents in 1967 dollars.” And when the dollar had dropped to new lows; references were then made to the 1972 dollar. I’m not sure what the current reference dollar is today; probably the 1982 dollar, or the ’84 dollar, or whatever? The point is that the reference dollar is changed periodically so as to make the economic basis of living APPEAR to be stable, and increasing at a RATE that is palatable!
In my opinion, this matter of confusing what the dollar is worth is an evil intention and determination that politicians use against the people. By confusing what things cost and how much we pay in taxes, the politicians can then carry on with national and international policies that do not require them to take fiscal responsibility. And part of the problem is that the politicians become caught up in their own figures and it becomes even more synthetic and unreal to them than to the average working stiff.
There is a problem with governmental fiscal irresponsibility: it ALWAYS leads to wars. But that is a subject for an entire book, if not volumes!!!!
I went to the local library to research a few items for this article. And as I was mulling through the year books and statistical tables, it became more and more apparent to me that the figures that I wanted are not readily available, and difficult at best, just to uncover. Perhaps this is due to my own library inadequacy, or to the particular view that I use to look at economic data, or less likely, to some conspiracy to bury data. I wanted to find dates, places, events that were major turning points in our economic track. I wanted to unearth such events as the Bretton Woods Conference, the breakaway from the gold standard, President Kennedy’s appointment of the Comptroller of the Currency, statistical tables showing the amounts of U.S. dollars OUTSIDE the United States.
I found tons of books with prolific sleep-inducing statistics and meaningless statements that gave me headaches as they supposedly described what was happening or had happened but offered no clarity as to what it all meant!!
So I simply had to strive for those elements that I was aware of, and that were significant in my opinion.
There were two dates that I feel marked the present cycle of economic events. March 6, 1933 at 1:00 a.m. President Roosevelt declared a “banking holiday” that marked the bottom of the Great Depression and the start of a new money cycle. But it was actually February 1, 1934 that the “official” announcement was made devaluating the American dollar.
A tremendous zenith in our economic history occurred on July 1st through the 22nd of 1944 with the working out of details and the signing of the Bretton Woods Agreement in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. At the time, we were the most awesome and absolute economic force on this planet and we set the stage for the reconstruction and development of this entire planet.
It was a monumental action which was needed and which eventually brought about tremendously positive effects in Europe and Asia. It established the world banking system which worked for 25 years, but which, like the dinosaurs, has now become very outdated and obsolete. Unfortunately, the American government has been left with a mind set from that agreement that has continued into the 1990s, and today’s politicians probably don’t even know themselves that they are being directed by these policies and ideas.
A rather obscure action occurred on November 16, 1961. The young President Kennedy appointed James Saxon as the Comptroller of the Currency. (I believe that this position is quite possibly the most powerful one in the American financial system, that it is far more powerful than the much ballyhooed Chairmanship of the Federal Reserve System and more invisible than any American citizen could possibly suspect.) The policies that were established by Saxon destroyed and demolished most of the safe banking policies that had grown out of the Great Depression. But even more importantly, he set the “mood” for bank- think that has directly lead up to the numerous bank failures of 1990.
In the wake of the astronomically naive financial policies of the ‘60’s, President Nixon was confronted with horrific financial crises that appeared to come on a weekly basis. A point in time that clearly marked the direction of conditions occurred on August 15, 1971 at Camp David, when Nixon’s advisors agreed that the American financial status in the world would have to be officially recognized as a limited force in world markets, not the supreme world bank manager.
The world was slipping into financial chaos because of American financial policies and the American leaders were literally forced by other world leaders to confront U.S. past irresponsibilities on December 18th and 19th of 1971 at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. The Smithsonian Agreement publicly announced the weakened status of the U.S. in world financial matters.
Unfortunately, this really didn’t have any impact on the policies and spending of the American government. With the oil crisis disrupting world finances in mid 1973, as that decade wore on, the U.S. appeared to be slipping down the dark hole of runaway inflation and financial chaos.
There was a point that I feel most represented what was happening at that time. Nelson Bunker Hunt and a few of his pals started buying silver in December of 1973. By January 17th 1980, he had amassed several billions of dollars worth of silver and threatened to collapse financial markets on a worldwide level. Silver had gone from $3 an ounce in 1973 to $50 an once in January 1980. On March 25, 1980, with the aid of Prime Ministers, presidents, kings, and financiers, the Hunt’s gamble failed. On March 27, 1980, “Silver-Thursday” the Hunt takeover was publicly recognized when they were unable to meet a $1 billion margin call on silver futures.
October 5, 1979 is a date that has not become widely recognized. Meeting in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the leaders of the world publicly declared that the American dollar was no longer a medium controlled and manipulated by American politicians, but that it would remain a means of international exchange with its value set by market forces in other countries of the world and not by the United States.
This leads to my question about the amount of money in circulation.
You can go to any bookstore or magazine stand and buy a Business Week. Inside the first few pages you will find the weekly tables showing the amount of money in circulation inside the U.S. This figure is VERY carefully monitored and theoretically controlled by the Federal Reserve Board. What you can’t find is the amount of money in circulation OUTSIDE of the United States.
In 1970, when I first developed an interest in these matters I was fortunate to come across an article showing that over 1 billion dollars were outside America at that time. During the 70’s we had the oil debacle, and after that mess, we operated on a negative cash flow of 5 billion dollars a month just for oil. By 1980, the amount of dollars outside the U.S. had grown to over 1 trillion.
While the Federal Reserve so carefully and stodgily tries to count every penny and dime in circulation inside the U.S., no one counts the money outside, and it’s very difficult to find sources indicating how much there is!!!
In the 90’s we are now saddled by such oxymorons as “the trade balance improved last month because the deficit declined.” Just look at these inane statements carefully, and you may begin to understand, (and to shudder in terror as I do), at the stupidity of our reporting experts. Let’s say that for a month in 1990, we had a trade deficit of 15 billion dollars; meaning of course, that 15 billion dollars more flowed out of the U.S. than flowed inward. For the next month the trade deficit was a mere $10 billion. In that month, our trade deficit improved?????? In some perverted form of logic, this means that we were really very financially responsible that month. The stock market rallied on this news and the whole world sighed in relief (!?) simply because we lowered our negative cash flow??????
Imagine how this would relate on the personal level. Last month you earned $2,000 and spent $3,500. So you had a negative cash flow of $1,500. This month you earned $2,000 and spent $3,000. Whooppee, you are becoming more responsible???? If you were the town banker you could probably go on for a while. But eventually the town is going to get upset financially in some form or fashion, don’t you think???? But how many months could you go on spending more money each month than you made? Now, imagine the United States spending more money each month than it made, every month since June of 1973.
What does this all mean?
We are now a third world country!
Third world countries have a certain modus operandi. It becomes somebody else’s playground, its money becomes a two-tiered system (always a lesser value outside the borders than inside), the local politicians become lackeys to foreign interests, and extreme disparities begin to develop between the poor and the wealthy. Foreign investors have more financial power than local investors. The more powerful manufacturing entities of that country are purchased by foreign entities. Sound familiar?
As little as 4 months ago I read an article in the Minachi Times (printed in Japan and not issued in the United States), in which the Japanese were bluntly and smugly stating that the United States was nothing more than a land of resources. We supply their raw materials.
Examples: A Japanese real estate consortium buys 12 residential homes in the Los Angeles area EVERY DAY. Over 40% of the residential homes in L A County are owned by foreign concerns as reported recently in the L A Times.
The Japanese cattle ranches in California employ only Japanese workers and they export 100% of their beef to Japan. No other form of American beef is allowed to go to Japan!!
It’s not just the Japanese. The Taiwanese government was found last year buying gold in gold shops in the amounts of 10 million dollars a month, thus, covertly trying to downplay the trade deficit we have with them.
What is even more insidious is the two-tiered American dollar.
There is value for the dollars outside the U.S. and then a different value inside the U.S. Because I have been sailing in a commercial capacity for the last 20 years, I can relate numerous cases of this discrepancy. But I can well understand a person living inside the U.S. not knowing what is happening and has happened to our currency. It was only recently that I finally began to realize why a TV set in Japan costs more to me when I’m there than the same TV set here; why the same bicycle in Taiwan costs more in Kaohsiung than here. Why a computer in Hong Kong made in Hong Kong costs more in Hong Kong than here.
I also know why 300,000 Taiwanese demonstrated in Tai-pai last year when the Taiwan government threatened to devalue the American dollar in relation to the won! The Taiwanese textile workers were very much aware of dollar exchange rates, but what about American textile workers?? I keep thinking about the Mexican ladies I see waiting for the buses in downtown L.A. at 6 o’clock every evening after the sweat shops close. And I wonder if they are as well informed as their counterparts in Taiwan, or if they would march on L.A. City Hall if President Bush were considering strengthening the U.S. dollar???
Our government sells its Treasury Bills each Monday morning, mostly to foreign holders, who then use that profit against American companies, entrepreneurs, and corporations. Thus, our government is subsidizing foreign interests against its own citizens in a losing battle to keep up with our mounting federal debt. But this also is a topic for a book.
Imagine the scenario. Governments around the world who up until the last decade tried to support the dollar no longer care if it is up or down. Workers in other countries demonstrate against devaluing the U.S. dollar further to prevent the loss of jobs in their countries. And in the interim, our government just keeps blindly trudging forward like a drunken elephant staggering through the jungle. Too big to stop.
The way the world has balanced out, the financial house of cards doesn’t have to collapse. The other countries of the world now have enough money outside of the U.S. to manage international exchange without the interference of American politicians. American politicians don’t have to answer to a constituency that is unaware of what is happening. That life within the United States will continue to deteriorate is a strong probability. The army we have in the Gulf is probably nothing more than mercenaries, bought and paid for not by American tycoons but by other countries who own us. They don’t have to send their men. They don’t have to confront dissenting minorities. They won’t have a war burden. As long as American citizens are willing to die for foreign potentates, why should anyone else in the world attempt to change the present order????
Continuing comments
Zip Dobyns
I thought that Ray’s ideas might be of interest to Asteroid-World readers, and I was especially delighted to get the time of the banking holiday. I had seen a chart for a different time, but Ray’s historical source was very definite that Roosevelt signed the bill at 1 A.M. on March 6, 1933. I am including the chart progressed to January 15, 1991, the date of the U.N. deadline, to see whether it points to an effect on our economy from a war in the Gulf area. The U.S. Congress voted today to give Bush the power to use “any necessary means” to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. The Senate vote was the crucial one since it was much closer than the House of Representatives. The announcement that the Dole measure had passed occurred just a few seconds before noon today, January 12, 1991. That chart is also included along with very brief comments. It may prove useful in the ongoing saga of the struggle over power between Congress and the Presidency.
The horoscope for the banking holiday features a mutable dilemma with Sagittarius rising, a Virgo stellium in the ninth (Sagittarius) house opposing a Pisces group in the Gemini house, and Vesta in early Gemini in its own Virgo house to form a wide mutable grand cross. The issue of the day centered on faith and ethics. People “run” banks (rush to take out their money) when they lose faith in the system. Of course, the money is not in the bank since it has mostly been loaned out. The bank insurance bills which came soon after Roosevelt’s inauguration restored the faith of the public in the banks though this has been shaken in recent years by the publicity about failing banks that were insured by private companies rather than by the federal government. Other keys in the chart which point to the 1933 insecurity include the square of the Moon in its own sign to Mercury in the Moon’s house. The primary meaning of letter four is the need for emotional security. Uranus is also in the fourth house and it squares Pluto in its own eighth house in the Moon’s sign, an additional indication of the insecurity of the time. Letter eight (Pluto, Scorpio and the eighth house) symbolizes joint funds or resources, including debts, taxes, savings, return on investments, etc. Saturn in the second house (money and other material pleasures) is still another indication of the climate of fear which the bill was designed to control before any more banks bit the dust.
There are some striking aspects in the recent and current progressions. P Sun has been square natal Saturn since April 1989. Venus squared Saturn for much of 1987-8 when we had the dramatic one-day drops in the stock market and the beginning of fears about the S&Ls. P East Point was conjunct P Saturn at the same time. P Moon formed a T-square to Saturn and P Sun in October-November 1990 as our armed forces built up in the Gulf and the magnitude of the banking threat got increased attention. As the Gulf war hangs in the balance, P Moon is about to start a square to P Venus but, more seriously, in February it will oppose P Saturn which is on Pallas, our political asteroid. P Saturn has been conjunct Pallas for years as the politicians have run up our debt. But I do not feel that we can just blame the politicians. We elect the candidates who promise to give us more services without raising taxes. The Reagan boom gave us more debt than all our previous history put together with the motto “don’t worry, be happy.” Now we are worrying. It is Karma, report-card-time with the Saturn aspects.
P Pluto has held a square to Uranus since the bill was signed, and P Juno (another Pluto) has retrograded to oppose P Uranus, both setting the stage for challenges to our emotional and financial security. The emphasis on the Mars-ruled “letters” (Aries, eighth house) fits the potential of the threat being intensified by war or other power struggles such as the trade wars now being discussed. Hoover’s memoirs make it clear that the “great depression” of the 1930s was made much worse by the economic fighting between the major countries of the western world. I think we would have had our current depression sooner if the major (G7) countries had not been cooperating, attempting to keep the system going. In the banking holiday chart P Pallas and P Antivertex have been moving together but they are now approaching an opposition to P Mars to repeat the message of potential war whether trade war between G7 countries, or internecine war between Arabs, or religious wars, or?. P Ascendant is approaching a quincunx to P Mars and its trine to Vesta adds to the potential for ruthlessness though a constructive expression of the principle would involve hard work and increased productivity with the help of new technology. P MC was trine Pluto through part of 1988 to 1990 as the authorities assured us that everything was under control. Now, as of January 15, 1991, it is just reaching an opposition to Chiron which signifies faith, like a mini-Jupiter. By late April, the P MC will quincunx P Uranus, this time without benefit of the reassuring trine to Pluto which was present with its quincunx to natal Uranus. By mid-1992, P Mercury will reach Uranus and square Pluto. In the fall of 1993, P Sun will square P Saturn. It will take time to dig out of the hole created by the Reagan reign.
Of course, there are lots of asteroids in the chart, but as usual, we are already over our goal on space so I will just mention a few. P Hoover (named for the President who presided over our great depression) is on the IC for some years, opposite the MC, square the East Point, octile Saturn (and many other natal or progressed factors in 11 degrees of the fixed signs.) P Russia is now at 11 Aquarius on natal Saturn while in the natal chart, Megaira (slaughter) and Tezcatlipoca (Aztec god who demanded a human sacrifice every day) were at 11 Taurus. P Herbert, also named for Herbert Hoover and currently standing in for George Herbert Walker Bush, is quincunx P Hoover from 27 Leo. It is also conjunct natal Atlantis, our asteroid for the abuse of power. P ARA, also named for Herbert Hoover (who directed the American Relief Association which saved millions of Europeans from starvation) and P Tokio are both opposite the Ascendant and P Metis (wisdom) with all of the preceding square natal Mars. Natal ARA was on Chiron. P Nemesis at 15 Leo opposes Pallas, P Saturn, and Icarus (often overreach and a crash) and it squares P Venus. The P Moon will conjunct Nemesis for much of February and March 1991, so it will share the other aspects. P Chaldaea (Iraq) and P Winchester (guns) are currently conjunct in the eighth house with a quincunx to the Pallas-P Saturn-Icarus group. P Arabia at 15 Libra in the tenth house is trine the Aquarius group, square P Chaldaea, and quincunx P Venus and natal Sun to form a yod. A lot of Americans have misgivings about the new role we are taking on as mercenaries to rich dictators while talking about our great cause to save freedom. P America is on the natal Antivertex and Dresden, a non-military city that was destroyed in fire-bombing by the U.S. and England in World War II. It also forms a T-square to P Uranus and P Juno. Ironically, the asteroid America was also named in honor of Herbert Hoover’s work to aid starving people—in this case, the people of Russia in the early 1920s. To the rest of the world, Hoover was a hero while U.S. citizens blame him for failing to counter the great depression though it was Congress which blocked many of his efforts to help. Gaea (earth) and Iphigenia (a teen-age girl who was sacrificed to appease a goddess and win the Trojan War) are both on the P south lunar node with P Mars in our allowed one-degree orb of a conjunction to Iphigenia. It is hard to know when to stop! P Icarus opposes P Jupiter which is conjunct P Nippon (Japan). P Attila (the conquering Hun) at 9 Virgo is conjunct Mars and square the Ascendant and previously mentioned asteroids. Natal and P Irakli (which is “working” for the country) are on P Ra-Shalom (named for the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel) with all of them opposite natal Jupiter, our beliefs, values, ethics, and judgment.
Moving to a very quick look at other recent actions, the chart for the Senate vote to let Bush go to war had the Moon in the eighth house exactly trioctile the Ascendant in Washington. Calculating the chart for Baghdad put the Moon in the fourth house with Pluto close to the IC in the third house, Mars just past the MC in the tenth house and just over one degree from an exact square to the Ascendant. P Ascendant reaches the one-degree orb square to Mars in April 1991. When Aziz met the press after the talk with Baker (at 9:02 P.M. Geneva time), Mars was on the MC within a half degree while Arabia was on the IC along with Dolores (sorrow). Bush opened a cabinet meeting at 2 P.M. EST, an hour before the end of the Baker-Aziz talks, with Pluto quincunx the MC to the degree and the Moon exactly square Jupiter.
By now, of course, everyone knows that we did not have any major earthquakes in early December as Ibn Browning predicted. We did have a few other dramatic events which fit the state of emotional instability in the world.
At this point, I’m just watching the unfolding drama, but I’m also taking off for a cruise between Sydney, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand so I’ll be gone most of February. I was offered a chance to lecture on astrology on the Love Boat and I’ve been wanting to go to New Zealand for years. So, I’ll be back in time to work on the Pisces Mutable Dilemma. And we now have a few full size mandalas plus more valuable information from Seraphita on the sources of asteroid names. [Not in the web archives.]
