The Panama Papers
“I want these crimes to be made public”,
leaker “John Doe” to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
It turns out that very rich people have been hiding their money in secret bank accounts abroad. Why do they feel the need to do this? Either a) because the money is stolen or b) because they are avoiding taxes.
Let’s deal with b, which may initially appear less heinous. Look at it this way: through your taxes you pay to keep the streets safe, the police on the beat, the garbage collected, the army ready to defend you, the sick well and the poor fed — guess what, now you know, you’re not just paying your own share, you’re also paying for all those very rich people who don’t contribute. You are also keeping their streets swept etc. It’s bad enough if your town or city happens to be half-occupied by non-doms (rich people who don’t pay tax here because they only live here part time), but what if the rich doms are also failing to pay tax?
And what if one of those people happens to be your very own prime minister?
Then we can return to a) because it’s stolen. What if it also happens that your very own prime minister is stealing your country’s assets and sticking the proceeds in a bank in the British Virgin Islands?
It’s kind of annoying, isn’t it? The people of Iceland think so, and the people of China are not being allowed near the Panama Papers: it might make them cross to find that eight members of the politburo are hiding money offshore.
The Panama Papers have laid bare the way money is hidden by powerful, wealthy people. The revelation that top politicians from every corner of the globe have been hiding their money in secret bank accounts comes as no surprise really — but now we have the written proof. Over 11 million documents that show who has been hiding money to avoid tax, and who has been hiding dirty money, were leaked from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm.
It’s interesting that the clients of the law firm in question seem to be a mixture of politicians from around the globe, mega-wealthy individuals (such as sportsmen and Jackie Chan) and criminals, including the Brink’s-Mat robbers. It’s been said that politics and organised crime are simply two faces of the same coin.
The Panama Papers, first published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung on April 3 in Munich, Germany come as part of the trail of momentous events that have destroyed faith in the global financial system, since Pluto (the transformer) moved into Capricorn (the establishment) in 2008 and we had the collapse of the banks. More recently, of course, we’ve watched the euro staggers. Pluto has flipped over the stone of the Establishment (again) and shown us the parasites that lie under the rock.
I set the time for 7 am when the papers come out but I wouldn’t pay too much attention to that. It could have been much earlier.
When Uranus, the planet of awakening, moved into Aries, we saw the birth of Occupy. This was about the power of individuals joining together to create change, and focused on inequality. Uranus is always active in revolutions. It’s the planet of the people, associated with the humanitarian sign Aquarius. Occupy continues and its spirit breathed life into other political movements — Bernie Sanders bid for presidency in the United States and Podemos in Spain, for example. Uranus can be fiercely egalitarian — to the point of erasing individuality.
It does seem incredible that banking has still not be radically reformed. Instead politicians make do and mend — and the system carries on stitched together like Frankenstein. Starting in 2018 when Uranus moves into Taurus — a sign associated with money and banking — we may see genuine reforms.
Pluto and Uranus have been at a tough angle to each other for several years and they are still within a few degrees of square. But they are not the only outer planets involved with the Panama Papers. The opposition between Jupiter and Neptune is important too. We’d expect to see massive haemorrhages (of various kinds) with these two Piscean planets at odds — and now we have the biggest data leak in history. Virgo, the sign of details and information, currently hosts Jupiter the expander. Neptune helps to widen the hole from Pisces, the sign associated with gossip and slander.
The week before the leak was published Saturn made a hostile square to Jupiter. On that day, Saturn (boundaries) turned retrograde in Sagittarius (publishing): the embargo was lifted a few days later.
Let’s remember also that sifting through this data required the efforts of some 400 journalists across several continents — and — judging by the response from the politicians named so far — it seems as if they managed to keep it secret for the year it took to do the job. This kind of international co-operation is just what we need in the so-called information age.
The planet associated with journalism is Mercury, close to Uranus on the day of publication, and in that fiery sign Aries. Again it seems to be about individual actions adding up to make change happen in the collective. What I find especially interesting though is that the tightest aspect on the day is the opposition between Lilith and Mercury.
The Dark Moon Lilith is in Libra, the sign of justice. She is a wild one, a taboo breaker, the one who says what cannot be said, the crazy aunt at the wedding, the one who spills the beans. She is the creator of chaos, Kali… and she’s just lobbed a grenade… Above all, Lilith does not play by the rules. What the Panama Papers show is just how unfair the current global financial system is.
The shady dealings of Mossack Fonseca have been going on for decades. For example, Prime Minister David Cameron’s father Ian set up his financial management company, named in the Panama Papers, back in the early 1980s. So it’s not that anything’s worse — it’s just that now we have the irrefutable evidence.
David Cameron personally attempted to block EU attempts to make these “shell” companies more transparent. It’s been clear for some time — especially after the last budget — that he and his cronies are in government to protect their class — the .25%. You could look at it this way: Cameron’s elite schooling, which bought him the connections he has now, and set him on the road to becoming Prime Minister, was financed by his parents’ tax avoidance.
It’s worth noting that Mars — about to turn retrograde — will go back into Cameron’s second house of money. Cameron’s South Node (inheritance) is conjunct Neptune (smoke and mirrors) in this house. Although Mars won’t quite reach his natal Neptune, you can bet there will be more digging around in his financial affairs. How exactly did 12K turn into 31K in Daddy’s magic fund? That was quite an investment.
Being part of a country is a social contract. We agree to pay taxes in return for living in a reasonably civilised place, a country where the poor are cared for, the transport system works and nearly everyone can read and write. But, as the Prime Minister so memorably put it, “we’re all in this together”. What happens if the contract is broken?
We haven’t even dealt with a) the stolen money. Global corruption (unbridled Capricorn) is only possible when the tools, such as shell companies and weak laws, are available. The Chinese and Russian elites have learned from the British, who are after all masters of international finance.
Exposure to sunlight is one way of getting rid of parasites. Go Pluto.
This is a great article, thank you! I wish I knew the exact time the german newspaper got contacted and asked if they were “interested in data”.
*****
I’m interested to know the time the newspaper went on sale, or sale usually
Yes — some accounts say nine months ago; some a year. I’ll keep digging.
I would (almost!) bet that perhaps was around October 2014? Why? Well – in October 8th there was a full lunar eclipse at 15º Aries – and yesterday there was the new moon at 18º of Aries…
Very well said.
There are many methods to shelter money legally and illegally. The “Panama Papers” is only the most recent reveal. David Cameron chaired the 2013 G8 Summit that focused on tax evasion and The Guardian collaborated with with the Consortium of Investigative Journalists to unveil a large list coinciding with that 2013 G8 [ https://www.yahoo.com/news/tax-haven-data-leak-names-names-raises-questions-172346691–finance.html ].
Seems that everyone utilizes Google without condemning its legal tax sheltering:
“In 2010 it was reported that Google uses techniques called the ‘Double Irish’ and ‘Dutch Sandwich’ to reduce its corporate income tax to 2.4%, by funnelling its corporate income through Ireland and from there to a shell in the Netherlands where it can be transferred to a ‘Bermuda Black Hole’, which has no corporate income tax. The search engine is using Ireland as a conduit for revenues that end up being costed to another country where its intellectual property (the brand and technology such as Google’s algorithms) is registered. In Google’s case this country is Bermuda. The company also uses an avoidance structure in Asia called the ‘Singapore Sling’.
In 2009, Google made a gross profit of €5.5bn, but reported an operating profit of €45m after subtracting “administrative expenses” of €5.467bn. In classic economic analysis, if a company was spending 99.4% of gross profits on administrative expenses, the company would be considered to operate very inefficiently. Administrative expenses largely refer to royalties or a license fee which Google pays its Bermuda Headquarter for the right to operate. Google has uncovered a highly efficient tax structure across six territories so it paid just 2.4% tax on operations outside the US.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven
Google is just one of way too many companies and individuals that explore legal taxation loopholes. See this link for a list of USA’s top corporations avoiding taxes, http://www.businessinsider.com/tax-loophole-congress-google-apple-microsoft-2012-12?op=1
It’s appalling.
Wonderful data-hounding. Thank you!
How right you are, Christina. Wage nd salary workers not only pay their own taxes but end up subsidising the rich tax avoiders and evaders – both types of activities are criminal because the intent is the same. Thanks very much for this post. Much to contemplate and then to join the retaliatory action!
I suppose you’re right about Lilith in Libra (Venus = money).
On 3rd April the Sun was at 13 Aries (Cameron’s natal Lilith is at 12 Aries) and Venus was at 26 Pisces (Cameron’s Saturn is at 24 Pisces).
However, I wonder if anything will really have changed after all the dust has gone. The mighty and the rich of the world always find ways to come out on top somehow.
Christina, my MC is at 19 Aries and I’m having a conjunction of Uranus and Mercury and Uranus and the Sun to my MC. I can literally feel it. I can’t wait until Venus is going to be there.
mimi
Historically, when the rich forget the key lesson of staying rich (which is, never let a quorum of your subjects become so poor and so disenfranchised that they have nothing to lose), then the upheaval is complete. Cf.the fall of the Roman empire, the Russian revolution, the French revolution, several of the Chinese revolutions, Custer’s last stand, the Indian mutinies, etc etc etc.
The super-rich have forgotten to _husband_ the resources they feel they’re responsible for, that is, make them grow and expand and enrich the “soil” they depend on. (The implicit parallel between the underclasses and dirt is not irrelevant.) They have been too grasping and greedy, forgetting that greater wealth follows flow, not stagnation. They, and we, and really the whole planet, are going to pay the price.
Sadly, we wind up with the government the worst of us deserve. It’s too bad.
I’m not sure about the mighty and the rich finding a way to stay on top… names and faces tend to come and go. Maybe its just money which finds its own level, dams up for a while then flows on. About 10 years ago I was at a party and in one room alone there were people whose wealth added up to at least 29 BILLION £s. They had all made money from pretty ordinary things – pastry (yes!) sportswear, steel factories, retail, insurance – almost none of them were ex public school and almost all for them had provided a lot of work for other people. More revealing was the fact that none of their kids were especially successful (kids meaning adults in the 25-35 age) and there is a saying that by the third generation the money is lost. So someone else gets a turn I suppose. IMO money has its own levels, it sticks to some for a while and then it moves on. Consider lottery winers!
With Uranus and Venus about to conj the MC – you could risk a ticket!
Mimi, I would love to hear more. I am just sitting in a cafe right now waiting to see a play written by a friend who has had Uranus on the mc several times recently. Her career has rocketed.
Sorry I did not reply before.
Maybe your friend is a lot younger than I am. Whilst for her this is about her career, I am experiencing this New Moon and Uranus conjunct my MC in a more psychical way. It feels like my nervoussystem is getting rewired.
At times this is really awkward and no fun, at other times I get these flashes of sudden insight into things I never understood.
Something that struck me also : my Solar Return ascendant for this year is at the same degree as my natal ascendant but for 1 (one !) degree. It is like I am being born again.
mimi
Now I would like them to pay me and all the millions of other people, the huge some of money in taxes that they did not pay. Not paying taxes or paying less then you should is considered a penal crime. If I do not pay my taxes I can finish in jail…well then if the law is the same for all then I demand they all finish in jail and pay me, with interest, the money they have robbed me. And as a social amendment help all the refugees that are risking their lives to find a better living…
Why have they robbed you of money? They earned it, not you. Why are you entitled to it?Personally I don’t care if people evade tax because they are still more like to actually spend money somewhere and someone profits and the money goes back into circulation.
That’s inaccurate, in many respects. My finance and banking relatives have made this very clear.
1. They have not earned it. They have made use of financial tools which allow them to simply make money off of having money. They didn’t work for it; the money did. It’s self-perpetuating, once you have enough of it.
2. Evading tax at that level of wealth is a significant crime. Here’s why. Where a person making 100,000 pounds who evades tax is basically dumping a couple kids out of school and revoking the money for a few potholes (which, over time, means that all of us are being checked out by dafter and less coherent people behind the register, wasting everyone’s time and resulting in more mistakes costing more of us a few pence, and are having to fix our cars the sooner thanks to the axle damage or else waste fuel going longer ways around) .. a person who makes (not earns, makes) 1,000,000,000 pounds is effectively shutting down your neighborhood school, ripping up your roads, throwing your granny and her bestie out on the street to fight with the cats over scraps in the dumpsters, and not emptying the dumpsters.
Taxes pay for infrastructure. Infrastructure allows people to go to work and get things done. People going to work and getting things done creates more money for the super-rich, both directly by letting their employees get to work and their bankers get online, and indirectly by providing the customers and the population they depend on to get their money to make more money.
For the super-rich to fail to pay their taxes is a significant theft from the infrastructure and from the social safety net that keeps the country from wasting its treasure on incidental costs of homelessness, sickness, disability, and the effects of having deeply traumatised people wandering around with no help, no home, no hope, no income, and no reason to think that anyone gives a shit about them, so why should they give one about anyone who has more than they do?
Here in the US, our inferior social safety net has been shredded over the past 25 years, and the incidental costs of administration, police, fire, prison, hospitals, lost productivity, and softened tax base, even when corrected for technological advances, are absolutely devastating.
Go ahead and evade your taxes. I don’t care. You have to put up with the consequences yourself. But if your super-rich are evading theirs, you have every reason to be furious with them, because the damage goes wide indeed, and you are suffering for it.
All I can say is BS.
Rich people these day rarely earn their money, not in the sense you are making out, these days. The world is full of rentiers and various other financial parasites, and middle men taking their cut. They add nothing to GDP, and dont argue that they do when these types of people rarely produce actual things to sell.
Yes they ‘the financiers and rentiers’ do rob everyone of money. When TPTB put the interest rate so low, you may think that that you are saving money, but somewhere that money is recouped in another way. Every pound you think you are saving in interest only means you are paying two pounds more elsewhere. Savers are hit particularly hard earning very little to no interest. Where is that money going? To the financiers and bankers. Its a slow bail-in which we all have to pay for.
Actually no, they are not spending that money. It is a trickle down and suction up. More money goes up than down.
Did you realise that the government does not need anyone to be paying tax. They have a printing press and/or cheap money that can be borrowed.
Did you also realise that the real beneficiaries of the newly created money get to buy on the cheap. Because as soon as that money is introduced into the system by a purchase the price for everyone else increases due to currency devaluation. Yes the money creates currency devaluation. In other words inflation. Our wages do not increase in line with inflation/devaluation. This is a further silent and not oft thought about or mentioned by the MSM theft of money.
You wait until NIRP is implemented, not before banning cash of course, and you now have to pay the bank, with no choice as you cannot withdraw the electronic money.
NIRP is just around the corner…. yikes!
I strongly doubt that David Cameron is anything like the biggest offender in this Panama Papers case, and wouldn’t be surprised if it finally comes out that those with a political axe to grind are protecting others who are far worse than David Cameron. Nu Labour wasn’t exactly clean in the expenses scandal, and don’t forget who took us into a war in Iraq that had huge amounts of money and preparations poured into it at least a year before the parliamentary vote whether or not to invade. This whole thing is a lot bigger than just David Cameron. Compared with Blair, David Cameron is a decent person and prime minister. Yes he has done things that aren’t so good, but he didn’t order the dropping of bombs on innocent civilians based on some fake claim of weapons of mass destruction. That Jupiter Saturn square represents the unravelling of decades of sleazy politicians, and David Cameron is probably a very small part of it. I would feel more angry if these same journalists, are holding back on outing their “friends”. And if you get rid of David Cameron as prime minister, you won’t be able to find anyone better to replace him with.
Surely Tony Blair is the elephant in the room? Where does he keep his billions? How did he earn them?
There’s no elephant about Blair — we all know he’s as corrupt as hell. http://www.oxfordastrologer.com/2014/07/corruption-tony-blair.html
Ha ha! Good point. His wife has just seen her health business, Allele, go belly up. The Allele Fund, a private equity fund registered in the offshore tax haven of the Cayman Islands, is being shut down.
In all likelihood, investors who each poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into the fund will lose every penny. It is not clear how much money Mrs Blair invested personally in the scheme, but she was its co-founder and front woman, who launched the fund with great fanfare and vast ambition.
Of course no one is particularly interested in the losses incurred by people who invested! But the world of investment and banking works both ways and people do actually often lose huge sums. The money doesn’t evaporate – it has been used to pay employees while the business is being founded and run etc
So the investors lost out – but someone got paid. This is the thing about money – it just goes around! Weird isn’t it!
Just a note on the question in the article as to why the banking system hasn’t so far been truly reformed. I was pondering the same issue for a while, but then it occurred to me that one of the reasons for the lack of reform is how close the ties are between financial institutions and governments worldwide. Pluto exposes and brings things to light. I’ve come to the conclusion that therefore the lack of proper action from politicians on financial/banking reforms is Pluto in Capricorn showing us very clearly just how deep the ties between banks/business and politics go, and how much control the former have over the latter. It isn’t pretty, but it is at least much less hidden than it was.
As to why the political, banking and business worlds are being shown up as such an enmeshed web, I’m going to return to a theory I’ve come to recently about outer planet transits. From about 1900, Neptune has been moving through the signs ahead of Pluto, and there has been a distinct astrological pattern for the last century or so that goes thus:
1) Neptune moves into a sign and glamourises it, while spreading delusion and opaqueness about what the truth of the darker side of that sign actually entails.
2) Some time later [in the case of Capricorn, 30 years], Pluto enters the same sign and treads the same pathways where Neptune once did. In the process, the veils of delusions opaqueness and glamour are unceremoniously torn away, and Pluto brings the truth about the darker sides of that sign out from the depths, forcing people to take a long look at these truths in order to fully comprehend what they mean.
The process isn’t pretty, but I’ve found it seems to hold true for a lot of the 20th century. One of the most dramatic examples would be Neptune’s traverse through Cancer in the 1900s immediately prior to Pluto’s passage through the same sign. The Imperial age and the ideas and delusions of nationhood reached an apex in the 1900s, and then WW1 absolutely shattered the illusions.
Looking at our present situation, a lot of the deep and complex ties between politics, banking and big business were really supercharged in the 1980s and expounded further in the 1990s, during Neptune’s transit through Capricorn. Delusion, opaqueness and a certain mystique pervaded these areas. Pluto’s passage through Capricorn now takes the veil away and shows us just what it means when you allow government, finance and corporations to be too close to each other. Not everyone was fooled in the 80s of course – plenty of people could see the downsides and pointed them out in the decades since. But Pluto’s transit through Capricorn has brought these issues front and centre now, and as a result they’re pushed to the forefront of the collective psyche in a way that isn’t possible to ignore.
Very thought provoking analysis SD. Any thoughts on what Neptune in Pisces is currently glamorizing?
Regardless of the planets, it seems history is peppered with financial ups and downs. Astrologically, I look at money from a symbolic angle because what is greater than money is the psychology behind it. The gaining or losing presents other dilemmas. IMO Saturn Neptune is going to be a far greater challenge financially than Pluto in Capricorn. For me the culprit was Pluto in Sagittarius anyway because people became drunk on spending and credit. Pluto in Capricorn if anything has seen a lot of people brought to heel wth credit and many banks get in trouble because they extended to much too easily.
The whole of Europe may be unbalanced further if there is a Brexit, and a generation with Uranus Pluto conjunct in Virgo are going to find earning a living very challenging. This is an initiatory juxtaposition as it will expose a lot more than empty pockets.
The Saturn-Neptune opposition of 1720, saw two speculative bubbles dramatically pricked; the South Sea Bubble in London and John Law’s Mississippi Company in Paris. A lot of people were spectacular ruined. The money systems of both Britain and France were thrown into chaos as a result.
There;s a very interesting article here on Saturn Neptune and the US economy. http://www.stariq.com/Main/Articles/P0007170.HTM
Incidentally we might expect that a Pluto Saturn trine would be good for money – but at the peak of tulip mania, in March 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. It is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble when it burst. It seems incomprehensible now that people would loose their shirts over tulips! But they did. Propping up any financial situation is the psychology of the trade behind it. Behavioural economics is a term used for the psychology behind money. Astrology is so well equipped to analyse the psychology of money and it is more than just the banking system.
I do see the amazing procession since 1987 of the outer planets through the latter signs, with Saturn kicking in to receive first Uranus, then Neptune… that was so powerful on the personal level, – as a complex process of further education for the whole global society. There’s a book in there. They must, I believe, be taken together.
That is a really interesting analysis — and it does seem to work now that I think about it. I am thinking of the ridiculous glamorisation of capitalism we saw with Neptune in Capricorn… “the market is always right” etc
Thank you for sharing that.
SD, I think you are forgetting Uranus, which transits first and makes people aware of the fact that things have to change, then along comes Neptune, which deludes and makes a chaos of the until then existing society and finally Pluto comes along and really changes things.
mimi
Hadn’t thought of that, cheers. Adds another layer! Will look into that a bit more.
Good one, Christina! Bet Willard Mitt Romney turns up in the PP…and that Obama does not…
If you are very wealthy the chances are you are already paying a lot of tax. Hence the appeal of an offshore investment which allows you to keep something at a better rate. In the case of Cameron, he owned shares in a perfectly legal investment fund. There is no difference between his investment and an ISA for instance. In Cameron’s case we’re talking about what – 30k? This is spit in the ocean! He’s not a particularly wealthy man.
Laws vary internationally and people have always invested money offshore. If you live in the UK, you can pay less tax in the Isle of Man or Jersey. If you are very wealthy you can get a better tax deal in another country such as Barbados, South Africa, Portugal and countless others if your criteria fit. e.g if you have 500k Euros to spend on property and a pension you can have 10 years tax fee in Portugal. Portugal is awash with middle class Brits and now the French are moving there too for tax reasons. I think there is a big difference between not paying any tax and paying some and then investing to pay less. The “travelling community” doesn’t pay tax. It deals in cash. Farmers in the Uk don’t pay inheritance tax on land, The ownership and racing of horses is not a taxable activity for income tax purposes. It follows from this that any prizemoney is not taxable but conversely the costs of ownership and training are not tax deductible… and so on. And who has never paid their builder in cash…
I don’t think there is any planetary explanation other than this is an age when everyone is being turned against each other – lets call it the end of the Kali Yug. Throughout history there have been people who funded wars (Rothschilds) and people who have made and lost money on grand scales. Money has been around for a long time and doesn’t IMO fit into any one planetary influence. It is currency and it should flow – so the least you could say would be Neptune. But Saturn and Venus are monetary too. Pubic money possibly moon in conjunction with an outer planet.
Regards Pluto in Capricorn – its worth noting that Chinese capitalism has totally upset the world economy by overproduction of goods, taking manufacturing away from small nations etc in this time. Astrologically there is too much focus on the “rich” – because it’s easy. But if Pluto exposes dark underbellies, Pluto in Capricorn might remind us that populations out of control are also a problem. 7.125 billion and rising. The human species can no longer afford itself.
On Neptune and money –
“The last time Neptune entered Pisces was in February 1848, shortly after its discovery in 1845. 1848 is the year that the gold rush began in California, leading one reporter to complain that everyone in the state was under the spell of gold fever. It is also marked the birth of socialism and Marxism. This kind of utopian if not delusional thinking is very typical of Neptune in Pisces.”
buying
So here it is again but opposing the natal Uranus Pluto in Virgo of a generation.
“Some astrologers are linking the publication of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and The Revolutions of 1848 to Neptune entering Pisces, but we must not forget that Uranus and Pluto were conjunct in Aries during this same period. The kind of socialism that evolved into Communism is representative of the Uranian longing for equality and justice, although some of us would argue that in Communism that longing was carried to an untenable extreme. For this we can probably blame Neptune in Pisces in which the forces idealism can become clouded by illusion.”
IMO Neptune in Pisces opposing Uranus Pluto in Virgo will have a lot of people feeling they are financial victims and bleating about equality and financial justice but still preferring to be paid in cash!!! Their heroes will be micro farmers but not pioneers of contraception in Ethiopia! (the population doubled since Live Aid… almost 91m people squeezed into only 435,000 sq miles.) How micro can we get with 7.5 bn world wide and rising?
“Over the past year and especially over the past few months we have been discussing the power of Uranus in Aries to foster revolutionary (Uranus) fervor (Aries) in the Arab Spring of last year, and with both Uranus and Pluto in Aries (1848) the radicalism that we are seeing today would have been exponentially more powerful, even though neither Uranus nor Pluto had yet been discovered at that time. For this we can probably blame Neptune in Pisces in which the forces idealism can become clouded by illusion.”
Excerpts are from this article https://harenewscorp.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/neptune-in-pisces-and-marxism/
IMO outer planets may represent different monetary “institutions” – Neptune the institution of Marxism or socialism, Pluto the hidden meaning, which Freudian psychology has described well… money symbolises desire etc and Uranus is the inexplicable luck factor – it comes and goes but what it unearths by a sideswipe is the real story.
Thanks for all your interesting comments, Leonora. I’ve read them en bloc this morning. Great contribution to the debate on this site.
Have you read a book called Sapiens? It’s a history of humanity from a super-wide perspective, and he writes a lot about economics and how money really works…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-Humankind/dp/1846558239
I wrote about 1848 in 2011 here… http://www.oxfordastrologer.com/2011/02/2011-springtime-of-the-peoples.html
I think the Communist Manifesto has its roots in Neptune in Aquarius — http://www.oxfordastrologer.com/2012/01/astrology-of-now-goodbye-to-neptune-in-aquarius.html
I haven’t read Sapiens so thanks for the link Christina! The manifesto would certainly have grown out of Neptune in Aquarius – so the ideology began there and then spreads in Pisces? And as we write/speak we have had those positions revisited and the iron curtain has come down and China flies in the face pf Mao! I highly recommend Century of the Self – the documentary by Adam Curtis if you haven’t already seen it – traces Freud’s nephew taking his work to America and how it shaped advertising and politics! Brilliant stuff.
Yes, I have seen it. Really great. I blame Freud for a lot of stuff! I also love Curtis’ Bitter Lake.
Very well said Leonora. And envy has always existed, too…
Love your website, Christina.
I’m an Oxfordian astrologer, so we resonate. Economics is so tiresome, but as an evolved Marxist, the problem stateside is a primary one … production and distribution of the official medium of exchange, e.g. money … the Fed which as I understand it, since 1913 has been PRIVATE produces the money and charges the gov’t exorbitant rates AND since the Jackson Administration 1829 the PRIVATE banks are in charge of distribution of the PUBLIC’s official medium of exchange. Of course, I think the government should seize the means of production and distribution of LEGAL tender, it being in essence a government contract — and nationalize the banks and the Fed … making bankers government employees and therefore capping the salaries (take that Jamie dimon). I also hold that money is capital and a creation of the Market. The ancient Maya used cocoa beans and feathers as market money (cocao being theobromo — medicine from the gods? there is a spiritual side to money). And, as for taxes, every exchange of goods & services (eg use of official medium of exchange) is taxed at a basic rate which — i can’t run the numbers — seems that should be set to suffice for cost of government. EG if you can monetize it and take it to market … it must be taxed …
One of Gore Vidal’s books was about the Jackson administration and focused much on banking… not an easy read but interesting.
If you focus on charging tax on the exchange of goods, does that not disproportionately tax the poor?
I agree about the spiritual side to money & astrologically I think you can see that quite clearly in the 8th house.
In the UK and everywhere else though – it is the poor who largely benefit from taxes! Although they would buy less. So someone with a lot of money who spends it is paying more tax. We used to have Purchase Tax in the UK. Not sure when it was phased out – or if it just became hidden. Meanwhile there is VAT on goods. So the more goods you buy, and the more expensive they are, the more tax you pay. IS it fair? I have no idea!
But regards income, certainly in the UK the poorest households are largely in receipt of benefits and are taxed on their benefits – which have come from the rest of the work force.
the poorest fifth of households are clearly net beneficiaries from the tax and benefit system, to the tune of £2,151 a year, on average. At the other end of the scale, the richest fifth of households received £1,666 a year in income from the state, and so they are net contributors to the Government’s coffers, to the tune of £24,259 a year, on average.
The full breakdown here from the Institute of Fiscal Studies http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/4813
The issue now is not really about tax but about polarity ad division which is really worrying.
If VAT or purchase tax were phased so that essentials, like groceries, fuel for the home and car, medical equipment, and basic models of computers and cars and other infrastructure-access points, were very low; and tax on upper level lines, second homes per household and second cars per person, spa tubs in the absence of medical need, and so on, were taxed as luxuries; with a range of middle-range taxes for middle-class luxuries like lattes and dinner out, then it would be more realistic to consider VAT-type tax not to be a tax on the poor.
As it is, wealthier people pay an increasingly small proportion of their income on this type of tax because they can buy in bulk, buy high-end versions of things which last much better (cf. “Sam Vimes’s ‘boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness”) and inherit expensive objects such as furniture, interior dec, and some kitchen appliances, which they never have to pay tax on. So currently, VAT and its equivalents elsewhere is not proportional to income. It’s definitely a much higher burden on the poor, who have no choice about whether they’re going to have food, clothes, and furniture, but have to buy it.
‘When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income’. Plato wrote this a very long time ago. It remains true – could it be time for a radical rethink?
Perhaps when Uranus enters fiscal Taurus there will be changes that are in tune with the 21st century. Perhaps. Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn in 2020 should place a focus on banking, tax, and regulations. So far, Pluto in Capricorn has coincided with a phase in which the powerful hang on to power and maintain the status quo, such as it is.
Secondly, what’s ‘off-shore’ (Neptune) morphs into tangible assets on shore (Saturn) in the form of substantial property portfolios right here in Europe. Here’s what David Cameron said about this in a speech in July, 2015:
‘We need to stop corrupt officials or organised criminals using anonymous shell companies to invest their ill-gotten gains in London property without being tracked down.’
Complicated isn’t it?