In 2010, the Tea Party movement elected a sizable number of Republican Congressman who took a pledge from the Grover Norquist's American Taxpayer Association not to vote for any additional taxes. This caused a political showdown in August 2011 when the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party first refused to raise the debt ceiling, and expressed a willingness to risk a lowering of the U.S. bond rating. Finally a last-second compromise was brokered by which the critical cuts that the Tea Party wanted would be deferred to a bi-partisan Congressional " Super Committee." This as it turns out didn't stop Standard and Poor from dropping the U.S. credit rating by a small increment. In November 2011, the Super Committee met and deadlocked on their refusals to compromise on recommendations for cutting the government deficit, and admitted defeat, ending up only agreeing to disagree.
At present, true unemployment is well into the double digits, as the private sector has railed at the government's attempts to create jobs and stimulate the economy. As a result of corporate America's massive layoffs and the exporting of jobs overseas, and record low personal and corporate taxation, there is record corporate profits, yet little willingness from the corporate sector to hire because of a paucity of demand.
Uranus closed within a 10 degree orb of its recent square with Pluto on April 22nd, 2008. As stated earlier, this corresponds within a month to the event that is now said to be the first exposure of the 2008 financial tip of the iceberg, 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.
The first near exact square (within one degree) of Uranus and Pluto occurred on August 5th, 2011. At that time the markets plummeted as result of ECM Euro crisis. The European common market is facing its first real challenge, as the economically stronger nations are trying to force stronger rule-based fiscal discipline on the more profligate countries with their debt problems. It's uncertain just how much austerity these countries can absorb if there is further stress from deeper global recessions. Currently Greece is in the process of negotiating painful debt restructuring that will force it to make very tough choices. This is the second round of restructuring, as a similar smaller crisis surfaced with Greece only a year earlier. Doubts have arisen as to whether the restructuring will produce any lasting effect or simply "kick the can further down the road" and end up devaluing the Euro even further, causing a much worse fallout to the world markets in the future. There is also concern that a number of other European economies, namely Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland, may eventually need bailing out as well, possibly precipitating the breakup of the European Common Market.
The protests are fueled in part by a disappointment in President Barack Obama's seeming inability to regulate the banking industry (even though at one point, the banks themselves would have accepted much greater regulation) or bring to justice any of the fraudulent perpetrators of this banking crisis, despite his campaign promises to do so. Instead Obama has exacerbated the problem of banks being "too big to fail" by continuing the policies of his predecessor, President Bush, and allowing the consolidated big banks (that absorbed the smaller banks' debt problems in the banking crisis) to continue in their present form.
While the big banks have been bailed out, millions of mortgages are still under water and are not currently being modified by those very same banks who sold their loans out in the open market. The phrase "the 99% " refers to 99% who are paying most of the price for bailing out the mistakes of a tiny minority, ( the1%) who hold the vast concentration of wealth.
The protests are also against corporate influence in Washington that promulgates a globalist corporate agenda that encourages the flight of American jobs overseas to nations with lower labor costs and poor regulations over working conditions.
Unfortunately the close squares of the Uranus- Pluto square are only beginning. Exact squares will now predominate over the next four years (starting on June 24th of this year through December 2015) and will come into greater focus on the peak dates mentioned above.
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