“Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy”

I have read contradictory accounts by competent astrologers of what a stationing planet (i.e. standing still) means. It is perfectly plausible to say that when a planet stations, it is weakened in its effects, because its movement, its dynamism, is no longer there. It is also plausible to say that when a planet stations, it is as if it stops and stares at us, and this increases its power.

I prefer the latter interpretation. A planet beginning to station is a time of reckoning, you see the outcome of the previous months of direct or retrograde movement. The planet’s effects intensify for a while.

Pluto is beginning to station. He will stand still on April 3rd, and is now within ¼ of a degree of his stationing point. And we read the above headline in today’s New York Times.

Pluto’s entry into Capricorn has been quite remarkable. There has been no gradual build up as he moves through Capricorn. Pluto has hit the ground running, and begun his demolition work immediately.

I think the intensity can be explained by Pluto’s interaction with the concurrent Saturn-Uranus opposition: Saturn rules the sign that Pluto has entered, and Uranus is in the early stages of a square to Pluto (they will move within 6 degrees of the square this summer).

Anyway, here is an extract from the article headlined above:

As government data revealed that 651,000 more jobs disappeared in February, a sense took hold that growing joblessness may reflect a wrenching restructuring of the American economy… In key industries — manufacturing, financial services and retail — layoffs have accelerated so quickly in recent months as to suggest that many companies are abandoning whole areas of business.

“These jobs aren’t coming back,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia in Charlotte, N.C. “A lot of production either isn’t going to happen at all, or it’s going to happen somewhere other than the United States. There are going to be fewer stores, fewer factories, fewer financial services operations. Firms are making strategic decisions that they don’t want to be in their businesses.”

This dynamic has proved true in past recessions as well, with fading industries pushed to the brink during downturns before others emerged to create jobs when economic growth inevitably resumed. But with job losses so enormous over such a short period of time, some economists argue that the latest crisis challenges the traditional American response to hard times.

“The current pace of decline is breathtaking,” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at the research and trading firm ITG. “We are now falling at a near record rate in the postwar period and there’s been no change in the violent downward trajectory.”

This rapid deterioration has prompted talk that some industries are being partly dismantled. Layoffs are multiplying because of dysfunction in the financial system, which is prompting even healthy companies to shed workers and shut down operations out of concern they may soon lose access to credit.

We are living in extraordinary times. No one knows how far this thing is going to go. No amount of government intervention in any country seems to make any difference. In the UK, the government has just decided to print £75bn of new money (‘quantitative easing’) to try to stimulate the economy. But even they admit they don’t know if it will work. This crisis has a mind of its own.

And Pluto stationing points to the start of a new phase. The frightening extent to which the US economy is being dismantled is becoming clearer.

Saturn and Uranus have done just 2 of their 5 exact oppositions. Pluto is only 1 year into Capricorn, and only a few months into Capricorn on a full-time basis. Uranus and Pluto have begun sparring, but the real fight is a couple of years away. The world is changing, and even the politicians are no longer pretending to be in control. The next few years will see the biggest changes in any of our lifetimes, except for those of us who were around in the 1930s and 40s.

I don’t know why, but I have an OK feeling about it, like the world is being taken on a necessary journey, and we need to trust in that. Maybe it is because Pluto’s entry into Capricorn was nice: Pluto conjunct Venus and Jupiter, and trine to its ruler Saturn.