Pluto and the World Economy

There are a lot of jitters in the world economy right now, because it’s so centred on what the US economy is doing, and the US economy is in need of some good housekeeping after living beyond its means for years and the huge scam of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Yes, it was a scam that all these blue-chip banks got involved in, selling mortgages to people who could never have afforded them and misusing their good name to sell on the dodgy debt to unsuspecting third parties all over the world. So no-one knows who’s liable, and no-one’s going to lend anyone else money just in case they are, so we have a credit crunch.


So will there be something like the Wall St Crash of 1929? After all, we have a Cardinal Uranus-Pluto square coming up, which is what we had then. I don’t reckon we will. The deity presiding over all this is Pluto, who is just about to make his move from Sagittarius to Capricorn. Now Sagittarius certainly can be about scams and bubbles, particularly when Jupiter is hanging about as he is now. We had the first Sagittarian bubble in 2000 – the dot.com bubble – and the present bubble is partly a result of that, Bill Clinton and others having told the American Public to spend their way out of the dot.com hangover.

But Capricorn is not about crashes, which are just as unrealistic as bubbles. Capricorn can be about recessions, in the sense of a well-earned hangover, but that’ll be as far as it goes.

If we look at the chart for the moment that Pluto enters Capricorn at the end of Jan 2008, we see a stellium of Pluto at 0 Capricorn, Venus at 2 Capricorn and Jupiter at 8 Capricorn. So a restraint (Capricorn) on monetary (Venus) excess (Jupiter) is certainly a theme of Pluto’s 15 year transit through Capricorn, but so is an expansion (Jupiter) of wealth (Venus/Pluto) on solid foundations (Capricorn). Initially, however, we will be dealing with the end of the party. In New York, Pluto enters Capricorn within 1/4 of a degree of the IC (see Chart), so it will be a very powerful Ingress for Wall St.

No doubt it will be painful, but it could be worse. If we head over to some traditional astrology, Pluto will be trine to the ruler of Capricorn (Saturn) and opposite to the exaltation ruler of Capricorn (Mars). So it fundamentally looks quite nice. We just have to come down to earth and do a few years basic housekeeping.


With Pluto in Capricorn for 15 years or so, it will be a time of thrift, of traditional economic values, but what we have will be much more firmly rooted in what we are actually producing, instead of what we can spend, or what might be possible. We have been told it’s OK to build up debt, that in some strange way it makes you a successful human being if you have debt, but deep down we all know it’s not so. Pluto in Capricorn will help restore a sense of financial security that is real. And probably a delusion that we can take it with us when we die. Expect mausoleums stuffed with gold and share certificates.

If you’re investing money, forget about property just now. That isn’t going anywhere. I think we are in an unusual situation, reflected by the Pluto-Venus-Jupiter stellium in Capricorn in January, where a defensive position (Capricorn) can also provide significant long-term growth (Venus conjunct Jupiter).

I think good places to invest are oil, gold, silver, copper etc, wheat, mining companies, mining equipment. These are all fairly safe, we will always need them, they are not luxuries. But at the same time, via China and India, demand for them is increasing, and is very likely to continue increasing, so these stocks are likely to be both safe and providing growth over the medium to long term. For now, avoid US stocks, because the dollar is likely to decline in value for a while yet. If you buy gold, it is priced in dollars, so this needs weighing up. If you are buying US stock, you could do worse than buy into firms that will be involved in rebuilding the infrastructure – roads, bridges etc (Saturn in Virgo). If you’re American, you can take advantage of the likely slide in the dollar by buying foreign stocks. Try Canadian oil sands companies.


One factor in the slide of the dollar is the strength of the Eurozone, which is economically bigger than the US, and whose currency, the Euro, stands a good chance of replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Some Arab countries have recently started putting their money into Euros rather than into dollars.

The US Progressed Saturn went retrograde for the first time ever about 10 years ago, pointing to a long-term decline in US pre-eminence. It looks like it is starting to bite. The coming shift is seismic.