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Life Arts    H4'ed 3/6/12

Uranus Square Pluto and the Cycles of Economic Recession and Depression

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Throughout history major conjunctions or planetary angles between the outermost planets have coincided with great historical eras. These planets beyond Saturn have been called Universal or Transpersonal planets. Because of their slow movement they relate to collective, generational, epochal, extraordinary experience as opposed to individual, everyday, ordinary experience. The most significant aspects are the conjunctions.  The two major conjunctions in the 20th century were 1) Uranus conjunction of Pluto, which happened in 1965. The 60's era was an extraordinary time period, with the Vietnam war conflict, the Civil Rights and Black Power movement, the Feminist and Gay rights movement, the environmental movement, and the emergent counterculture movement.

 There is no more perfect material illustration of the effects of Uranus (science and technology) conjunct Pluto (life, death and regeneration) than the advent of the birth control pill, the pharmaceutical revolution, and the experimentation of youth with psychotropic drugs in the 1960's.2) The multiple conjunction of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in January 1990 which coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the riots in Tiananmen Square, the end of the Cold War, the unification of Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The square aspect is a 90 degree angle between two orbiting planets, which occurs with twice the frequency (applying and separating squares) of the conjunction during the orbital period. The square produces friction, tension, and inner conflict. Due to the long orbital periods of the universal planets-(Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) these conflicts are a long time in the making and when the planets involved start applying a square, the conflict escalates to a crisis.

The influences of the Universal planets tend to disconnect us from the ego-centric reality structures with which we identify ourselves. Uranus represents the universal mind. It first manifested in the harnessing of electricity and in modern times it represents the advent of the technological age. It emphasizes individuality, autonomy. Its manner of action is sudden and shocking. Detached from cultural and personal approval, it seeks to liberate, breakdown old forms, and to shatter all barriers of social, political, philosophical moral and religious convention. Uranus represents the displacement as well as the profound personal and collective moral questions brought on by the advent of new science and technology. Uranus is also the rebel or revolutionary who plays no favorites, sees each person impersonally at the same level and espouses the credo "Let everyman (or woman) find his own path.
"
Pluto represents Universal Power or Will, the creation, destruction, regeneration and transformation of life. For purposes of this discussion, If Uranus is the scientist or social revolutionary. Pluto represents the holder of group assets. It supervises the economy of forces, allocating money to  burn the energy that fuels the economy of nation states. Its actions are  often obsessive, compulsive, hidden, secretive, infiltrative, and subversive. It manifested first in the advent of the atomic age, and the rise of organized crime, and now the fully emergent multi-national world corporate state, and the ascending concentration
of wealth into the hands of the few(Plutocracy) as well as the "muckrakers" (investigative reporters) that feel the obsessive need to expose their corruption and crimes. The interplay of these two universal planets will be discussed only in their historical economic relevance pertaining to specific events.
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Uranus's upsetting of the status quo, and Pluto representing the general economic well being and wealth creating dynamic of a country, has manifested historically in URANUS SQUARE PLUTO's economic recessions and depressions of various lengths throughout the history of the United States and general history of the world. These instances don't come at even intervals because of the irregularity of Pluto's orbit.
The three previous recession/depressions coincide with the three previous Uranus-Pluto squares: the Panic of 1819, the Panic of 1873 (called at the time the Long Depression), the Great Depression of the 1930's. The current downturn coincides with a new series of Uranus-Pluto squares which are still in their early phases and will last throughout this decade.
 
Both the current downturn and the Great Depression had seminal market events that later were recognized as precursors to those downturns. The first was the Stock Market crash of Black Tuesday, October 29th, 1929. If the same orb ( the deviation from a perfect 90 degree angle) of 11 degrees 14 minutes between Uranus and Pluto in the October 29th, 1929 crash was used in the 2008 economic collapse, the effective date of the beginning "08 collapse would be March 12th, 2008. Rather astonishingly this is very near the date that many credit as the  first " tip of the financial iceberg" became evident earlier that year, when on March 14th, 2008, J.P. Morgan Chase and the New York Federal Reserve board stepped in with an emergency cash bailout to save Bear Stearns from financial collapse.
An "orb' is an allowance for inexactness. If a square (or 90 deg. angle) is allowed a ten degree "orb." The faster moving planet will either be over 80 degrees while applying or under 100 degrees while separating from the slower moving planet. ã ‚¬ ‚¬


The Panic of 1819 (1819-1824 ) 10 Degree Orb
Oct. 27, 1817 -10 degree Orb
Mar. 02, 1819-(1.5 degree orb)
Jan.  01, 1820
May 10, 1820
Nov. 12, 1820
Aug. 02, 1821
Sep. 08, 1821
Dec.05, 1823  10 degrees out of orb
 

Uranus Square Pluto ( 1817- 1824 )

The Panic of 1819 was America's first great economic crisis and depression. The problems brought on by the panic were widespread and destructive. In 1819, the impressive post War of 1812 economic expansion ended. Banks throughout the country failed, and foreclosures skyrocketed, forcing people out of their homes and off their farms. Falling prices impaired agriculture and manufacturing, and unemployment reached new highs. Conditions were exacerbated by the influx of large quantities of foreign goods and slumping cotton markets in the South. State loans had been made to land speculators who were unable to pay, banks failed and depositors were wiped out.
Manufacturing also hit roadblocks and many American workers lost their job as result. But what might be more significant about this recession is that it ended an era of enormous economic expansion that the U.S. saw after the War of 1812. All regions of the country were impacted and prosperity did not return until 1824, but the effects carried over for a time that perhaps no one will be able to estimate.
Being the first financial crisis in the history of the U.S., this recession greatly challenged how the government handled such situations, and set a new precedent for the future. Europe was also in economic doldrums brought on by the end of the Napoleonic Wars and no longer bought American agricultural goods.

The Panic of 1873, "The Long Depression" ( 1873-1879- (1896?)

Uranus Square Pluto ( 1873-1879 ) ( 10 Degree Orb )
Nov 28, 1873- ( 10 Degree  Orb ).
Oct. 22 , 1876--Exact
Nov. 30, 1876
Feb. 12, 1877
Aug. 25, 1877
May 22, 1878- (.5 degree orb)
Oct. 10, 1879- 10 degrees out of orb

The economic downturn in 1873 was the first international depression and was experienced  by both Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fueled by the Second Industrial Revolution and the conclusion of the American Civil War. At the time, the episode was labeled the Great Depression, and held that title until the Great Depression of the 1930's. Though a period of general deflation  and low growth began in 1873 (ending about 1896), it did not have the severe "economic retrogression and spectacular breakdown" of the latter Great Depression.
The United Kingdom is often considered to have been the hardest hit; during this period it lost some of its large industrial lead over the economies of Continental Europe. While it was occurring, the view was prominent that the economy of the United Kingdom had been in continuous depression from 1873 to as late as 1896 and some texts refer to the period as the Great Depression of 1873.
In the United States, economists typically refer to the Long Depression as the Depression of 1873-1879, kicked off by the Panic of 1873, and followed by the Panic of 1893, book-ending the entire period of the wider Long Depression. It's estimated that in the U.S. it lasted  65 months, from October 1873 to March 1879.

The Panic of 1873 has been described as "the first truly international crisis." The optimism that had been driving booming stock prices in central Europe had reached a fever pitch, and fears of a bubble culminated in a panic in Vienna beginning in April 1873. The collapse of the Vienna Stock Exchange began on May 8, 1873, and continued until May 10, when the exchange was closed; when it was reopened three days later, the panic seemed to have faded, and appeared confined to Austria-Hungary. Financial panic arrived in America only months later on Black Thursday, September 18, 1873 after the failure of the banking house of Jay Cooke and Company over the Northern Pacific railway. The Northern Pacific railway had been given 40 million acres of public land in the West and Jay Cooke sought $100 million in capital for the company; the bank failed when the bond issue proved unsalable, and was shortly followed by several other major banks. The New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days on September 20, 1873.
The financial contagion then returned to Europe, provoking a second panic in Vienna and further failures in continental Europe before receding. France, which had been experiencing deflation in the years preceding the crash, was spared financial calamity for the moment, as was Britain.

The panic caused companies to hoard cash receipts rather than depositing them in banks, so payrolls could not be met. In previous decades, workers had concentrated on such issues as greenbacks, cooperatives, and the eight hour workday. Now, they simply sought to maintain their pre-depression wages or find unemployment relief. Some moved toward socialism. Worker unrest led to social class tensions and labor demonstrations, especially in northern urban centers.
 
President Rutherford B. Hayes had to send in federal troops to quell a railroad strike that left more than one hundred dead in 1877. One year later, fifteen thousand textile workers went on strike for two months in an unsuccessful attempt to halt wage reductions. Farmers encountered falling agricultural prices and land values, and they fell into debt as a result. Small farmers in mid western states began to join the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Granger movement, in larger numbers from 1870 until 1890 to prevent the high freight prices for agricultural products imposed on their group by the railroad industry. The Grange advocated strong railroad regulation, government controls to prevent currency inflation, a return to the gold standard, and putting a stop to high freight rates.

As so often with interplay of Uranus and Pluto, the new advances in science and technology create new winners and losers. The native American nations in the West resisted the occupation of their lands. But the U.S Army, mandated by the push westward facilitated by the railroads, strengthened by their victory in the Civil War, and their superior weaponry, defeated them after many battles. By the 1880's, most Native Americans were confined to tribal reservations.
 

The Great Depression ( 1929- 1941 )

Uranus Square Pluto (1929- 1937 ) 10 Degree Orb
Mar. 10, 1929 -  ( 10 degree orb )
June 21, 1931-( 1 degree orb)
Apr. 22, 1932- Exact
Sept. 02, 1932
Mar. 08, 1933
Nov. 05, 1933
Jan. 18, 1934
Jan.06, 1935-(2 degree orb)
Mar.1937 -10 degrees out of orb


The causes of the Great Depression are a matter of dispute among economists. The free marketer monetarists believe it was the failure of the government to regulate interest rates, control the money supply and curtail the widespread bank failures and those who believe that the state should play a more active economic role cite the free market system itself. Among those, the consensus was that a large scale loss of confidence led to a sudden reduction in consumption and investment spending. Once panic and deflation set in, people steered clear of the markets and held money as they realized that with prices dropping their money could buy more goods which even further contributed to a drop in demand. To the more free marketer monetarists, a normal recession was exacerbated by the monetary authorities particularly the federal reserve's policies causing a shrinking of the money supply and blowing a recession into a full blown Depression.
After a heady peak on Sept. 3, 1929, the U.S. stock market went into a tailspin until a day of climax selling on Black Tuesday Oct. 29th, 1929. The market did rebound from its bottom in 1930, but still at its high's was 30% below the Sept. 1929 peak. Then a severe drought was to come to the U.S. in summer of 1930

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Kirk Gallaway has been an astrologer for 40 years. He studied the humanistic approach to astrology under Dane Rudhyar, considered by many to be the most important and influential astrological writer of the 20th century. Gallaway then studied a (more...)
 
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Uranus Square Pluto and the Cycles of Economic Recession and Depression

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