Inflation & the Planets

        Contrary to popular belief, history shows that there is no single cause of inflation. The Roman Empire’s ruinous inflation demonstrated that a gold standard would not prevent it. Price controls and man-made laws have failed to stop it. It is not always caused by “too much money chasing too few goods,” as inflation during the Black Plague demonstrated.
        In some instances, inflation has been a scapegoat for other problems—for example, today’s gas price spikes are blamed on oil producing nations or growing demand from emerging nations. But we have long known that oil is a finite resource and that demand was growing. Why the US Government did not prepare for this inevitable crisis has to do with the lure of oil company profits. Brazil, by contrast, began switching from oil to sugarcane ethanol in the mid-1970s and is now poised for a surge of prosperity.
        In 1947, a gallon of gas cost 25 cents. That same gallon of gas now sells for around $4.50.   A house that cost $14,100 in 1950 now sells for $213,000 or more. An ice cream cone that cost a nickel in 1950 now costs $2.50. Not all things inflate at the same rate.
Inflation robs from some and benefits others. It robs most from those on fixed incomes, the working class and creditors. It benefits governments, property owners and debtors.
        This redistribution of wealth is by no means socially beneficial, for these different factions of society are interdependent and often overlap. A worker devastated by inflation may also be a property owner benefited by the same inflation. A large lending institution may be deep in debt to another creditor, and both may go under due to working class people forced to default on mortgages.
        Inflation’s ripple effect throughout a society can be more devastating than invading armies. While a government may benefit from a reduction of its debt, it may be left with an ungovernable society in rebellion or chaos.
        Is there a planetary pattern that has coincided with past inflations? If such a pattern can be found, we can know ahead of time when to take steps to minimize the ravages of future inflations. I have found such a pattern for great depressions (see “Grand Cross and Great Depressions” www.robertgover.com.)
        History shows that most—but not all--inflations occur under Saturn-Neptune and/or Saturn-Uranus oppositions. In some cases, Pluto in hard angles to Saturn and/or Uranus has been extant.
        We were under the latest Saturn-Neptune opposition during 2006 and 2007 as the dollar was devaluing against other currencies and the present inflation was gathering momentum. As I write this in the summer of 2008, inflation has hit hard as we come under a Saturn-Uranus opposition—the second most frequent pattern coinciding with past runaway inflations.
            Saturn-Neptune oppositions occur every 36 years on the average; Saturn-Uranus oppositions occur every 45 years. Planets are said to be in opposition when, from our perspective here on Earth, they are 180 degrees apart, putting we earthlings between them.
Saturn is the influence of established systems. When opposed by Neptune, the established tends to become confused or eroded. When opposed by Uranus, the established may be overthrown by unexpected change or revolution.
        In the economic realm, these oppositions precipitate whatever conditions are ripe to manifest. Two Saturn-Uranus oppositions ago, in 1918, World War I created the conditions that brought inflation, although that case was not as severe in the USA as the historic instances experienced in Germany and Russia.
        The present Saturn-Uranus opposition will become precise by Election Day, November 4, 2008. It will make four more successive “direct hits” during the coming two years: February 5 and September 15, 2009, and in 2010 April 26 and July 26. The mood it brings will last through 2008 to the end of 2010.
        This Saturn-Uranus opposition is likely to bring more drama than any in the USA’s past because it will be part of a grand cross pattern to the USA’s natal Mars-Neptune square. This pattern has a long history of coinciding with stock market panics. (See “An Astrological History of Stock Market Panics,” www.robertgover.com).
        The inflation that coincided with the downfall of the Roman Empire occurred under a Saturn-Uranus opposition, beginning around year 150. The Roman government had slowly but steadily devalued its coinage over the previous several hundred years. This inflation, although not sudden and dramatic, led Western Europe into the Dark Ages.
        The inflation that characterized the end of the American Revolution also occurred under a Saturn-Uranus opposition. Not often emphasized in American history books is that the British printed fake Continental bills and flooded the colonies with them. The Continental got the colonies through the Revolutionary War but the inflation caused by British counterfeiting led into the USA’s first great depression.
        The inflation that began in Europe in 1501, when tons of gold and silver were being imported from the newly discovered Americas, occurred under Saturn square Uranus and Saturn opposite Pluto, with Pluto also square Uranus to form a T square.
        By August 2010, we will be under another T square formed by Saturn in Libra opposite Uranus and Jupiter in Aries, with both square Pluto in Sagittarius. This T square will, in turn, afflict the USA’s natal Venus and Jupiter in the second house, which is nicknamed “the house of money” by astrologers.
        This does not mean we are doomed to repeat the horrors of the early 1500s in the Americas. History repeats but does not rhyme, as Mark Twain observed. A new Administration will take power in January 2009. If this new Administration makes immediate and effective changes in the monetary system, we will avoid the worst.
        Notable inflations that have happened under the Saturn opposite Neptune pattern:
        1720 in France, brought on by what history now calls “John Law’s Mississippi Bubble.”
        1784: French Revolution, when Saturn was simultaneously also opposite Pluto.
1862: the American Civil War. This was brought on by European bankers aggressively selling money to Southern rebels while the Union Government created its own money, the “Greenback.”
        1917: Russia’s Communist Revolution.

1937: China’s Communist Revolution.

        From the summer of 1945 to the summer of 1946, post-WW II Hungary’s currency inflated by a startling 400 octillion. Saturn was square Neptune through 1944 and 1945.
        In 1350, inflation coincided with Saturn opposite Pluto and the Black Death pandemic in Europe. This pandemic killed 20 million, one-third of Europe’s population at that time. This wasn’t another case of “too much money chasing too few goods.” The money supply remained constant. Commerce came to a near standstill because of the bubonic plague. Pluto opposite Saturn transforms established orders. The plague left European serfs freed from slavery and able to demand wages.
        The inflation that is probably the best known today—1923 in Germany when the mark devalued to practically zero—is a curious case. In 1923, Saturn was opposite the asteroid Chiron, while Uranus, Pluto and Jupiter formed 120-degrees trines to each other, and trines normally bring good times.
        However, the German inflation that climaxed in December 1923 actually began during World War I. Astrologically, there was a Saturn-Pluto opposition in 1914, followed by a Saturn-Neptune opposition in 1915, which in turn was followed by a series of Saturn-Uranus oppositions 1918-1920. From 1917 to 1922, wholesale commodity prices rose 182 to 45,205 (based on 100 in 1914). By the end of 1923, prices had rocketed up to 142,905,055,447,917. (1)
        Simultaneous with the build-up to runaway inflation in Germany was the Russian Revolution, when, under Saturn-Neptune and Saturn Uranus oppositions, Russia suffered a dramatic devaluation of the ruble. The Bolsheviks dreamed of a world without money and—under the Saturn-Neptune opposition of 1917—used newly printed rubles to buy foods from peasants and transport these to industrial workers in cities. Peasants constituted 79% of the population then, and were largely self-sustaining. During the series of conflicts that resulted in the revolution, retail prices in Russia went from 1.00 in 1913 to 17,100,000,000 by 1924.
        According to some sources (1), the Bolsheviks’ idea was to continue printing money until it became worthless, “thus allowing money to commit suicide.” The result was a thriving black market in consumer goods. This trend was arrested in 1921 when a market economy was reintroduced, with the government in control of banking, major industries and foreign trade.
        With the industrial revolution beginning around 1776, inflations steadily increased in frequency and severity. Before paper currencies became ubiquitous during the 20th Century, periods of inflation were rare. The dollar is based on “the full faith and credit” of the US Government, not gold or silver or any other tangible asset. However, during the 20th Century “black gold,” oil, arose to become the basic measure of all currencies.
        Americans are told by the mass media that they’d be paying even more for a gallon of gas if they lived in Europe. What this propaganda omits is that it now takes about a dollar and a half to buy one euro worth of gas. A hundred euros now buys about a hundred and fifty dollars worth. If the present downward trend of the dollar against the euro continues—and there are plenty of reasons to bet it will—the cost of gas in the USA will continue to rise. The ripple effect of the dollar’s devaluation could cause runaway inflation throughout the US economy. Big agricultural corporations now ship food thousands of miles to markets, so rising fuel costs jack up food costs, as well as the cost of plastics now used in a variety of products.
        If American politicians were not so dependent upon big corporate campaign contributions, the USA could have begun decades ago to end our “addiction” to oil, as Brazil did.
        Once inflation is precipitated and building momentum, a government trying to stop it is comparable to the apocryphal King ordering ocean tides to stop rising. It also illustrates the astrological reading of Saturn opposite Neptune: the established order eroded by a subtle, relentless, watery assault. Unlike rising tides, inflation is man-made. Yet past a certain point, inflation becomes like a force of nature.
        The first use of faith-based paper money was in China. The time of its origin is disputed. Probably it was first used in 177 BC. It was also introduced during the Song Dynasty from 960 to 1279 when the Chinese governmental aparatus of “mandarinates” produced notes of credit,and declared them legal tender. This issue of paper money was easy to conterfeit. The resulting inflation drove the Chinese of that time to prefer bank checks, which eventually caught on around the world.
        Despite much opinion to the contrary, paper money cannot be blamed for inflations. What makes paper money vulnerable is that it’s cheap to make and requires faith in a strong central authority. Governments, when threatened, tend to speed up the printing presses to produce the paper money needed to overcome the threat. This results in inflations which are often followed by deflations, crashing into depressions.
        The fault lies not with what the money is made of, but how a government manages its monetary system. Commodity money—cattle, tobacco, silver, gold, etc.—is valuable in and of itself. Even in times and places where gold was not used as money, it was valued by artists and craftsmen. When gold has been minted into coins used as a society’s means of exchange (money’s most basic use), it has proven vulnerable to inflation caused by clipping, “sweating” or blending with cheaper metals. The inflation that laid low the Roman Empire—primarily caused by the government devaluing its coin money by blending—was also blamed on coin clipping and sweating (a way of using heat to leach the precious metal out of coins).
        What astrology can tell us is when certain planetary patterns will bring certain moods. The mood under Saturn-Neptune and Saturn-Uranus oppositions bring inflation—where conditions are ripe for inflation.
        People who don’t believe in astrology point to current events to explain the present spike of inflation in the USA. From an astrological perspective, planetary cycles act on the invisible causal realm to manifest such events in our material reality. Today’s devastating inflation is manfesting the latest Saturn-Neptune opposition. What will be happening by 2010-2012 will be manifesting the Saturn-Uranus oppositon that is now forming.
        Modern inflations tend to build like ocean waves. We can trace a slow but relentless inflation building in the USA since 1914 when the Federal Reserve System began operating. It has had smaller crests and troughs over the last century but now appears poised to become a huge breaker crashing onto the beach, and leaving a swash of deflation, depression.
        Since the Fed was created, the dollar had devalued (and/or inflated) by 1,929% by 2006. Something that cost $100 in 1914 cost $2,029 by 2006. Since the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008, the rate of inflation has risen steeply.
        The last time the Saturn-Neptune opposition formed was 1971-72, when American society was focused on the War in Vietnam and the Nixon Administration. There certainly was an erosion of the established order, but in the political and artistic realms, not the monetary realm.
        The latest Saturn-Neptune opposition impacted the financial realm because that had become our focus of attention. Neptune’s eroding of established Saturnian systems will most impact whatever we are most focused upon.
        There is also a string of causes and effects at work, as one primary planetary pattern morphs into another and another, ad infinitum. The social mood changes accordingly, manifesting the material events that we perceive as causes and effects.
        Simultaneous with the forming Saturn-Uranus opposition is the now-forming Uranus-Pluto square. By August 2010, these outermost three planets will form a T square pattern: Saturn will be opposite Uranus (and Jupiter briefly) and square Pluto, while Uranus and Jupiter will also be square Pluto.
        This pattern, in turn, will give way to the Uranus-Pluto square tightening to nearly exact during the 2000-teens, and simultaneously forming a grand cross pattern with the USA’s natal Sun-Saturn square.
        Past squares formed by Pluto in Capricorn (where it now is) to Uranus in Aries (where it soon will be) have coicided with the American Revolution and the pandemic that swept the Americas after the arrival of Columbus and company.
        Pluto arrives in Capricorn every 248 years, on the average. You can look back in history and note major changes when Pluto moves through Capricorn. Some changes are more major than others. When Pluto in Capricorn has squared Uranus in Aries, the changes have been the most dramatic. i.e., both Europe and the Americas were transformed by Columbus’ “discovery”; the American Revolution led to other nations declaring independence from colonial dominance.
        Which brings us to what is likely to follow the present inflation. Since 1900, most inflations have lasted only 3 to 7 years, whereas in ancient times, inflations slowly grew over decades or centuries. If we project that the present inflation will be uncommonly severe because it has been building for over a century, the question becomes what will American society look like by 2020? If the government’s present lackadasical attitude toward the oil crisis is prolonged, life as we know it could rapidly become another relic in the dustbin of history. If a new administration launches a massive effort to overcome our dependence on oil by developing new sources of energy, it could springboard us into a higher quality of life.
        In other words, we are on the cusp of another Pluto-in-Capricorn time of transformation. Whether that transformation will be positive or negative depends on what decisions we make during the decade that began in January 2008. The times demand radical change. The question is, can politicians resist serving their big-money campaign contributors and save the nation from disaster?
        Even if a President Obama acts swiftly and forthrightly, overcoming the resistence of conservatives, and we invent our way out of the present oil crisis, we are still in for major social and economic transformations.
        “This year, emerging markets are overtaking the U.S. in consumption of oil for the first time, and it won't be long before they consume more than the entire developed world. At the same time, internal demand is rising in major oil producers and exporters. Over the last three years, oil consumption among OPEC members has grown by more than 5% a year. Hence, their exports go down and prices go up. So while America's car sales may be hitting the skids, 6.6 million to 10 million new cars, trucks and vans will hit the roads in China this year. India will probably grow at an even faster pace, percentage-wise. Bottom line: They'll use every barrel of oil we don't.” (2)
        Whoever discovers or invents the renewable energy source of the future may literally save the world.
        Endnotes:
        For an in-depth examination of this subject, see An Analysis and History of Inflation by Dan Pearlberg, Praeger, Westport, CT, 1993. This book of only 186 pages sells for around $100, a price that reflects Pearlberg’s exhaustive scholarly research in rare combination with his abiltiy to explain this complex and highly technical subject in common American English.
“Oil Crisis Worsening. What’s Next...?” by Sean Brodrick, Money and Markets 2008 Archive, July 2, 2008.

return to top