An Astrological History of Hyper-Inflation: by Robert Gover, USA
An Astrological History of Hyper-Inflation: by Robert Gover, USA
An Astrological
History Of
Hyper-Inflation
By
Robert Gover, USA
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reasons for why it was their wisdom and expertise that ended it.
In some instances, inflation has been a scapegoat for other problems—some people
blame today’s gas price spikes on price manipulations in the financial community. Many
blame growing demand from emerging nations. Few connect it to the devaluation (and/or
inflation) of the dollar.
It’s long been known that oil is a finite resource, and that demand for oil is growing.
Why didn’t the US Government prepare for the inevitable? The answer has to do with the
powerful influence, in the form of campaign contributions, of oil companies on Congress.
Oil companies have been the big winners in the recent spike of oil prices. The big loser has
been the American middle class worker and consumer. Higher prices at the gas pump raised
the price of food and other
‘Other hyper-inflations have occurred commodities that rely on
transportation. This coincided
under Saturn-Uranus or Saturn-Pluto
with a simultaneous crisis in real
oppositions. These planetary aspects do not cause estate prices which rippled
inflation. They coincide with inflations that are throughout the financial
ripe to happen.’
community and impacted big
banks and a variety of investors,
foreign and domestic.
To deal with the mortgage crisis, the Bush Administration “socialized the debt” by
taking control of Fannie May and Freddie Mac on Sunday, September 7, 2008, piling new
debt on old and transferring this new debt to future generations of taxpayers. This delayed
the day of reckoning, virtually guaranteeing a potential monetary catastrophe. Socialism for
the rich and free enterprise for the rest of the American population is likely to lead to
revolution around 2015.
This latest inflation 2006‐2008 occurred under a Saturn‐Neptune opposition. Neptune
erodes the status quo which Saturn strives to preserve. By mid‐2008, a Saturn‐Uranus
opposition was beginning to have its effect. Other hyper‐inflations have occurred under
Saturn‐Uranus or Saturn‐Pluto oppositions. These planetary aspects do not cause inflation.
They coincide with inflations that are ripe to happen. The stars influence but do not compel.
Nations respond differently to the same celestial influences.
Brazil responded to the oil crisis of the 1970s by beginning to switch from imported oil
to sugarcane ethanol. By 2007‐2008 when the US economy was threatened by inflation of
commodities and deflation of home prices, Brazil was poised to create greater prosperity.
The Saturn‐Neptune opposition erodes status quos which have outlived their
usefulness. Inflation occurs when it’s the nation’s monetary system that is ripe to erode.
When you examine the nuts and bolts of any period of inflation, it’s difficult to find a
single reason to satisfy the rational mind. In the USA, there has been a long, steady, century
of single‐digit inflation which happened so slowly, most people didn’t notice—until the price
of gas per gallon went from around $1.50 to $4.50 in 2008.
Back in 1950, a gallon of gas in the US cost around 25 cents. An ice cream cone that
cost a nickel in 1950 now costs $2.50. This price rise happened so gradually that most
Americans weren’t aware of it—until, perhaps, they went shopping to buy their first house
and learned that the house their parents bought for, say, $25,000 was now priced at around
$450,000.
Not everything inflates at the same rate. During the 20th Century, real estate inflated
much more than most other things because homeowners are allowed a large tax deduction
for mortgage costs. This drove home prices up by 3,000% or more since 1914.
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I nflation robs some and benefits others. It generally robs most from those on fixed
incomes, the working class and lenders/creditors. It benefits governments, property
owners and borrowers/debtors. It enables borrowers to repay loans with devalued
money. Lenders compensate by raising the cost of loans with a variety of fees.
These different factions of society often overlap and are in any case interdependent. A
teacher whose salary is devastated by inflation may also be a property owner benefited by
the same inflation. A large lending institution may be deep in debt to another creditor, and
both may go under due to working class people forced by job losses to default on mortgages.
This in turn impacts the ability of companies to borrow the money needed to expand, which
means laying off more workers, causing more mortgage defaults, further constricting bank
loans, and so on.
Inflations come in a variety of severities. During the 20th Century a little inflation—
4% to 6% a year—came to be seen as beneficial, at least by some economists. We want the
value of money to be consistent, but the value of any form of money, in any time in history,
has never been static. The
price of bread rises or falls
‘Astrologically, the Fed was “born” with Sun
with the weather—a good
harvest lowers the price, a bad opposite Pluto (hidden conspirators opposed to the
harvest raises the price. Government) and Jupiter opposite Neptune
Periods of expansion are (economic expansion confused, or confusing to
inflationary as more money is
issued into the economy and others). By 2008 when this latest financial crisis
people buy things they would hit, Pluto had moved around the Zodiac to be
not buy in recessions or opposite where it was when the Fed was born.’
depressions. During
expansions, lenders lend money and borrowers borrow. When an economy constricts,
lenders stop lending and few wish to borrow, reducing the amount of money in circulation,
causing deflation.
Deflation favors lenders over borrowers. Falling prices may result from too much
supply or too little demand. Too much supply can be a good thing. Too little demand is
almost always bad. During inflations, borrowers pay lenders in dollars that won’t buy as
much as when the money was loaned. During deflations, borrowers pay lenders in dollars
that will buy more than when the money was loaned.
But, since deflations usually occur during recessions or depressions, borrowers may be
forced to default on loans. For example, in 2008 as the home‐loan bubble of the previous
years was deflating—even while gas prcies were driving inflation—a record number of
homeowners were defaulting on mortgages, especially Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs).
Millions of homeowners suddenly found they had to pay doubte or triple their oriiginal
monthly rate for homes that were rapidly losing market value. This combination of inflation
of gas and other commodities at the same time real estate was deflating was excacerbated by
a rise in unemployment. Government was urged to do something, anything, to avoid the
dreaded “D word,” depression.
“For a while the bad‐debt overhead can be bailed out by creating yet more debt,
backed by public guarantees in what even the Wall Street Journal acknowledges is “socialism
for the rich,” that is, privatizing the profit and socializing the losses...What ultimately supports the
price of these mortgage packages is the price of the real estate pledged as collateral. And
despite Mr. Greenspan’s celebration (as few years ago) of soaring housing prices as “wealth
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creation,” it really was debt creation. As housing prices plunge, the debts remain in place.”
(“The Next Big Bailout” by Michael Hudson, www.counterpunch.org.)
The present monetary situation is further complicated by the huge and growing gap
between rich and poor which has dramatically expanded in recent years. What we now have
worldwide is what I call the Bifurcated Economy. The wealthy few live in a very different
reality than the impoverished many. Statistics show that 2007 was one of the best years
ever—for the wealthy few—as the global economy grew 4.9% to $66 trillion. At the same
time, the impoverished many faced a rise in diseases and a growing scarcity of water and
food, among other hardships.
Ripple Effects
W hen a government feels threatened, a little inflation tends to turn into rampant
hyperinflation because governments print more currency to deal with
emergencies. Runaway inflation’s ripple effect throughout a society can be
more devastating than invading armies. While a government may benefit from repaying its
debt in cheaper money due to inflation, it may be left with an ungovernable society in
rebellion or chaos as people struggle to make ends meet with rapidly devaluing money. Wars
pump tremendous amounts of new money into society while destroying things of real
wealth.
The US Government privatized control of the US monetary system in December of
1913 when it created the Federal Reserve System, owned and operated by a small group of
bankers with a fiduciary responsibility to provide profits for their shareholders. For the crisis
building in 2008, that means big trouble ahead for the USA as a nation, as the Fed
traditionally privatizes profits and socializes losses.
Astrologically, the Fed was “born” with Sun opposite Pluto (hidden conspirators
opposed to the Government) and Jupiter opposite Neptune (economic expansion confused,
or confusing to others). By 2008 when this latest financial crisis hit, Pluto had moved around
the Zodiac to be opposite where it was when the Fed was born. The conspirators of the Fed
are now, it seems, poised to be undone by their own conspiratorial machinations. The
International Monetary Fund has announced it will audit the Fed and render its report in
2010.
During and after the last great depression, the belief arose that the Fed could, and
should, exert controls that prevent inflation. By the end of the 20th Century, such controls
were beginning to resemble a comic strip. The stock market crashed? Okay, lower interest
rates to bring it back up. Whoops, the lowering of interest rates created a real estate bubble,
which burst and rippled throughout the financial community, collapsing big banks. The Fed
saved big banks with infusions of money to be repaid by future taxpayers, practically
guaranteeing much worse future problems. And this little scenario omits global warming
and the steady rise of more devastating weather events.
Money systems, once instituted, seem to develop a destiny of their own in sync with
subtle forces beyond human control.
Since around 1900, periods of inflation have led to deflation. Under the Saturn‐
Neptune opposition of 2006‐2008, the world watched commodity prices inflate while real
estate prices deflated, war profits soared and weather‐related catastrophes multiplied.
Government allocated huge sums of money which were swallowed up by the rich and well
connected, and never reached those in need. Hurricane Katrina became a bonanza for well‐
connected companies without helping hurricane victims. This evidence, and more, indicates
the USA’s monetary system has become dysfunctional and is ripe to fall under the
upcoming Saturn‐Uranus opposition.
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Historically, Saturn has been found in harsh aspect to the other outermost planets
when either rampant inflation or depression hits. In an article titled “Grand Cross and
Great Depressions,” (See Saptarishis Astrology Magazine Vol. 3, August 2008) I covered
Saturn’s role in past great depressions. Let’s now look for Saturn’s role in periods of
hyperinflation since year 1. The following list is of the worst, which leaves out many lesser
inflations, including in the USA the OPEC spike of the 1970s.
1862 American Civil War Saturn and Jupiter conjunct in Virgo opposite Neptune in
Pisces
1965 Indian Inflation Saturn in Pisces opposite Uranus and Pluto conjunct in
Virgo
devaluing dollar to drive prices up at gas pumps, while at the same time real estate prices
were deflating dramatically.
Saturn rules established systems. When opposed by Neptune, the established tends to
become confused or problematic, fraught with dilemmas. When opposed by Uranus, the
established may be overthrown by unexpected change or revolution. When opposed by
Pluto, a major cultural change begins.
In the economic realm, these oppositions precipitate whatever conditions are ripe to
manifest. Two Saturn‐Uranus oppositions ago, in 1918, conditions in both Germany and
Russia were ripe for revolution,
accompanied by wild spikes of inflation.
Saturn in Libra T sq. Uranus in Aires In the USA, women got the right to
sq. Pluto in Capricorn 2010 vote—although this wasn’t a bloody
revolution like the one taking place in
Russia, it certainly changed status quo
politics in the USA.
The present Saturn‐Uranus opposition will become precise by Election Day,
November 4, 2008. It will make four more successive “direct hits” during the coming two
years: February 5 and September 15, 2009, and April 26 and July 26, 2010. The mood it brings
will last through 2008 to the end of 2010.
This Saturn‐Uranus opposition is likely to bring more drama in the USA than
elsewhere because it will be part of a grand cross pattern to the USA’s natal Mars‐Neptune
square, which has a long history of coinciding with stock market panics. (“An Astrological
History of Stock Market Panics,” www.robertgover.com).
T he inflation that coincided with the downfall of the Roman Empire ramped up
during a long Saturn‐Uranus opposition from 149 to 151. The Roman government
had slowly but steadily devalued its coinage over the previous several hundred years.
This inflation led Western Europe into the Dark Ages. Back then, economic events that
now happen in weeks or months, happened in years or decades or centuries. By 411, when the
495‐cyclical Neptune‐Pluto conjunction occurred coinciding with what most historians cite
as the end of the Roman Empire, the Roman monetary system was a wreck.
The inflation that characterized the end of the American Revolution also occurred
under a Saturn‐Uranus opposition. Not often emphasized in American history books is that
the British printed fake Continental dollar bills and flooded the colonies with them. The
newly created Continental dollar got the colonies through the Revolutionary War but the
inflation caused by British counterfeiting led into the USA’s first great depression.
The inflation that began in Europe in 1501, when tons of gold and silver were being
imported from the newly discovered Americas, occurred under Saturn square Uranus and
Saturn opposite Pluto, with Pluto also square Uranus to form a T square. This inflation,
with Pluto so involved, coincided with massive cultural changes on both sides of the
Atlantic. Whole nations were wiped out by diseases imported from Europe. Modern
estimates put their number in the hundreds of millions. It was a pandemic of diseases Native
Americans had no immunity to that was the rational cause of this massive transformation.
By August 2010, we will be under another T square formed by Saturn in Libra opposite
Uranus and Jupiter in Aries, with both square Pluto in Sagittarius. This T square will, in
turn, afflict the USA’s natal Venus and Jupiter in the second house, nicknamed “the house
of money” by astrologers.
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This does not mean we are doomed to repeat the horrors of the early 1500s in the
Americas. History repeats but does not rhyme, as Mark Twain observed. We look for what
needs to change, or what is ripe to change. In our modern economy, the so‐called “American
Century,” what’s ripe to change is the monetary system—the way bankers conjure money
out of thin air and lend it to politicians who pass the bill on to unwitting taxpayers.
In 1350, inflation coincided with Saturn opposite Pluto and the Black Death pandemic
in Europe. This pandemic was almost as severe as the one that occurred about 150 years later
in the Americas. One third of Europe’s population—20 million—died. The inflation that
occurred simultaneously wasn’t another case of “too much money chasing too few goods.”
The money supply remained constant. Commerce came to a near standstill because of the
bubonic plague. Pluto opposite Saturn transforms established orders. The plague left
European serfs freed from slavery and able to demand wages. (The Saturn‐Pluto opposition
of the early 1500s was not so kind to Native Americans, as it removed them from their lands
and turned them in wage laborers.)
1720 in France, brought on by what history now calls “John Law’s Mississippi Bubble”
simultaneous with the crash of the British South Sea Bubble. John Law’s story is fascinating,
for it reveals both the advantages and dangers of a fiat paper money system.
1784: French Revolution, when Saturn was simultaneously also opposite Pluto. This
revolution not only transformed France but also became the model for future revolutions
against monarchies.
1862: the American Civil War. Inflation was brought on by European bankers
aggressively selling money to the Confederate Government while the Union Government
created most of its own money, the “Greenback.” Another example of how Neptune
opposition Saturn changes the status quo.
1917: Russia’s Communist Revolution simultaneous with hyperinflation in Germany.
Saturn and Neptune opposition Uranus. The Uranus‐Neptune opposition occurs once every
171 years.
1937: China’s Communist Revolution. Saturn opposed Neptune as the Communists
rebelled against the Nationalist Government, which was busy dealing with a Japanese
invasion.
From the summer of 1945 to the summer of 1946, post‐WW II Hungary’s currency
suddenly inflated by a startling 400 octillion. Saturn was square Neptune through 1944 and
1945.
1965 in India, GDP grew 33% in the Sixties reaching a peak of 142% in the Seventies,
decelerating sharply back to 41% in the Eighties and 20% in the Nineties. During the mid‐
sixties, Saturn was in Neptune‐ruled Pisces, opposite a conjuncion of Uranus and Pltuo in
Virgo.
T he inflation that is probably the best known today—1923 in Germany when the mark
devalued to practically zero—is a curious case. In 1923, Saturn, Uranus, Pluto and
Jupiter formed 120‐degrees trines to each other, and trines normally bring good
times. The hyperinflation that climaxed in 1923 actually began during World War I under a
Saturn‐Pluto opposition in 1914, followed by a Saturn‐Neptune opposition in 1915, which in
turn was followed by a series of Saturn‐Uranus oppositions 1918‐1920. From 1917 to 1922,
wholesale commodity prices rose 182 to 45,205 (based on 100 in 1914). By the end of 1923,
under planetary trines, prices had rocketed up to 142,905,055,447,917. (1)
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Simultaneous with the build‐up to runaway inflation in Germany was the Russian
Revolution, when, under Saturn‐Neptune and Saturn Uranus oppositions, Russia suffered a
dramatic devaluation of the ruble. The Bolsheviks dreamed of a world without money and—
under the Saturn‐Neptune opposition—used newly printed rubles to buy foods from
peasants and transport these to industrial workers in cities. Peasants constituted 79% of the
population then, and were largely self‐sustaining and had nowhere to spend these rubles, so
this money was virtually worthless. During the series of conflicts that resulted in the
revolution, retail prices in Russia went from 1.00 in 1913 to 17,100,000,000 by 1924.
According to some sources (1), the Bolsheviks’ idea was to continue printing money
until it became worthless, “thus allowing money to commit suicide.” The result was a
thriving black market in consumer goods. This trend was arrested in 1921 when a market
economy was reintroduced, with the government in control of banking, major industries and
foreign trade.
With the industrial revolution beginning around 1776, inflations steadily increased in
frequency and severity. Before paper currencies became ubiquitous during the 20th Century,
periods of inflation were rare. The dollar is based on “the full faith and credit” of the US
Government, not gold or silver or any other tangible asset. However, during the 20th
Century “black gold,” oil, arose to become the basic measure of all currencies.
Americans are told by the mass media that they’d be paying even more for a gallon of
gas if they lived in Europe. What this propaganda omits is that it now takes about a dollar
and a half to buy one euro worth of gas. A hundred euros now buys about a hundred and
fifty dollars worth. If the present downward trend of the dollar against the euro continues—
and there are plenty of reasons to bet it will—the cost of gas in the USA will continue to
inflate. The ripple effect of the dollar’s devaluation could cause runaway inflation
throughout the US economy. Big agricultural corporations now ship food thousands of miles
to markets, so rising fuel costs jack up food costs, as well as the cost of plastics and a variety
of other products.
If American politicians were not so dependent upon big corporate campaign
contributions, the USA could have begun decades ago to end the “addiction” to oil, as Brazil
did.
Michael Hudson, in his essay referred to above, delivers the following analysis of how
the system now works:
Rising debts and real estate prices go together, because asset prices depend on
how much banks will lend. For creditors, the dream is to obtain an ultimate backup at
public expense: government insurance that they will not lose when debtors are unable to
pay. The political problem is how to get the government to insure and protect bankers
rather than debtors, given that debtors are much more numerous when it comes to the
voting booth. In such cases campaign contributions are the balancing factor.
Governments are “privatized” and “financialized,” that is, turned from democracies into
oligarchies. The banking system aims to make sure that the only losers are the customers
it is supposed to serve: debtors, homeowners and employees of companies being
“financialized” as the economy is de‐industrialized. Indeed, financialization and de‐
industrialization are becoming almost synonymous. The trick is to get voters to think
they are getting rich while actually they are being painted into a debt corner, along with
their employers, local government and the federal government too.
What makes voters think they are getting rich is numerically more money in their
paychecks. But past a certain point, pay raises cannot keep up with debt creation and the
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inflation imposed by the Fed printing more and more dollars to deal with more and more
debt. Not for no reason is inflation called “the hidden tax.”
Once inflation is precipitated and building momentum, a government trying to stop it
is comparable to the apocryphal King ordering ocean tides to stop rising. It also illustrates
the astrological reading of Saturn opposite Neptune: the established order eroded by a subtle,
relentless, eroding assault. Unlike rising tides, inflation is man‐made. Yet past a certain
point, inflation becomes like a force of nature.
Paper Money
T oday, all modern societies operate on paper money. This paper would be worthless
were it not for the backing of governmental authority, so in a sense it’s faith‐based
money.
The first use of faith‐based paper money was in China. The time of its origin is
disputed. Probably it was first used in 177 BC. It was also introduced during the Song
Dynasty from 960 to 1279 when the Chinese governmental aparatus of “mandarinates”
produced notes of credit, and declared them legal tender. This issue of paper money was easy
to counterfeit. The resulting inflation drove the Chinese of that time to prefer bank checks,
which eventually caught on around the world.
Despite much opinion to the contrary, paper money cannot be blamed for inflation.
What makes paper money vulnerable is that it’s cheap to make and easy to carry around.
Some people carry creit cards giving them the ability to borrow over half a million dollars in
an hour or two. The US Government has the aiblity to borrow trillions of dollars from the
Fed, and pass the bill to future generations of taxpayers as the so‐called “national debt.”
In September 2008 when the Fed agreed to subsidize the big financial institutions that
had crashed (due to the housing crisis), it added around a trillion dollars to the debt that
must be repaid by the public in the coming years—unless, of course, the system collapses and
is rebuilt from scratch, as happened in the 1920s in Germany and Russia under a previous
Saturn‐Uranus opposition. When this latest Saturn‐Uranus opposition forms a T square
with Pluto in 2010, we can look for a revolution of the monetry system.
Commodity money—cattle, tobacco, silver, gold, etc.—is valuable in and of itself.
Even in times and places where gold was not used as money, it was valued by artists and
craftsmen. When gold has been minted into coins used as a society’s means of exchange
(money’s most basic use), it has proven vulnerable to inflation caused by clipping,
“sweating” or blending with cheaper metals. The inflation that laid low the Roman
Empire—primarily caused by the government devaluing its coin money by blending—was
also blamed on coin clipping and sweating (a way of using heat to leach the precious metal
out of coins).
Moods
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events characterized by the aspecting planets. It’s a mystery reminding us that we are not
masters of the universe.
Both planetary aspects and inflations tend to build like ocean waves. We can trace a
slow but relentless inflation building in the USA since 1914 when the Federal Reserve
System began operating under a Sun‐Pluto opposition. It has had smaller crests and troughs
over the last century but now appears poised to become a tsunami, leaving a swash of
deflation, depression.
Since the Fed was created, the dollar has devalued (and/or inflated) by an average off,
929%. Something that cost $100 in 1914 cost $2,029 by 2006. Since the end of 2007 and
beginning of 2008, the rate of inflation has risen steeply.
Neptune’s eroding of established Saturnian systems will most impact whatever we are
most focused upon. The previous Saturn‐Neptune opposition formed in 1971‐72 to coincide
with what’s called the OPEC inflation. Americans were focused on the War in Vietnam and
the Nixon Administration. There was an erosion of the established poltiical order, as Nixon
was forced to leave office or face impeachment.
The latest Saturn‐Neptune opposition impacts the financial realm because it has
become our focus of attention. It’s become our focus of attention because it’s become
dysfunctinoal. It needs to be changed.
Meanwhile, Pluto has moved around the Zodiac to a point opposite where it was
when the Fed was created. Pluto’s eliptical orbit makes it appear to move irregularly during
its 248 year cycle. In Sagittarius where it now is, Pluto becomes philosophical, religious and
spiritual. In Capricorn where it will soon be, it becomes practical and goal‐oriented. The
goal of any monetary system is to spread prosperity to all secrors of society. By 2020, we
may find that money has become a public utility rather than a tool of politial power.
Endnotes:
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