Warnings of a possible financial meltdown in the world economy are mounting with the IMF being the latest to raise alerts that all the reforms needed to protect the system have not been put in place. Global debt levels are well above those pre-the 2008 crash. They pointed to the growth of global banks such as JP Morgan and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China which are now of a size that is too-big-to-fail and beyond anything around in 2008.
See previous post: Pluto in Capricorn – lessons not learnt. September 22 2018.
Last night’s BBC documentary on RBS: ‘The Bank That Nearly Broke Britain’ was timely. When the RBS management’s overwheening arrogance and cavalier disregard of caution sent the bank (the largest in the world at that point) into near bankruptcy in 2008, the Treasury had to step in with taxpayers’ money to save the country.
RBS, 31 May 1727 JC, at that point, had their autocratic Saturn square Uranus moved by Solar Arc to collide with their natal Mars in stubborn, acquisitive Taurus; with tr Neptune in a panicky-failure square to Mars as well. The economically-unstable tr Saturn opposition tr Uranus was also square the RBS Gemini Sun. So even their formidably resistant Mars in Taurus buckled.
The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, 1 January 1984, has its Mars at 24 degrees Libra under exceptionally heavy pressure from the Saturn Pluto conjunction in square in 2020/2021. With bumps, glitches and disasters this December/January 2019 from tr Uranus opposition Mars/Pluto midpoint and the catastrophic tr Uranus opposition the Mars/Saturn midpoint from late May 2019 onwards for a year.
There are two charts for JP Morgan – 17 April 1837 and 31 December 2000. The earlier chart has a panicky-failure Solar Arc Mars conjunct Neptune in 2019 and major-setback Solar Arc Saturn square Mars in 2020. The later chart has tr Uranus opposition its Mars from late May 2019 on and off till 2020; plus a grind-to-a-halt with ferociously-difficult-conditions Solar Arc Saturn opposition Pluto late 2019; and a major-setback Solar Arc Mars opposition Saturn in 2020, along with a tough-slog tr Pluto trine Saturn in 2020/2021.
2021/2022 has the economically unstable tr Saturn square tr Uranus in place. So the economic scrunch is likely to be a long drawn out affair after the Saturn Pluto conjunction has moved on in 2020 – right up to the final days of Pluto in Capricorn in 2023/24.
Today: Soaring US dollar threatens trouble for emerging markets
Strong economy and hawkish monetary policy pushback greenback ever higher – and other currencies are suffering
“A simple dynamic is playing out in the global economy right now – the US is booming, while most of the rest of the world slows or even stagnates,” said HSBC economist Kevin Logan.
“A Federal Reserve that is raising rates to prevent the US economy from overheating is constraining the policy options of countries where financial conditions are tightening and trade tensions intensifying.”
Ultimately the next crisis will arrive because policymakers didn’t address the root cause of the last crisis, a financial system reliant on opaque pricing models to market debt. I think that corporate debt is going to be ground zero in the next crisis. With interest rates on the rise, the cost of servicing these debts might become unsustainable. At that point, defaults will begin. Any crisis will inevitably spread to the rest of an economy that is dangerously addicted to ever-rising asset values and massive amounts of leverage to sustain itself.
The Jupiter/Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn will inevitably shine a light on these issues, along with very high levels of corporate concentration not seen since the 19th Century. The recent waves of mega-mergers and acquisitions sit on unstable tranches of debt. Unwinding it will be a messy affair that’s going to take years to resolve. It might not be until after the Saturn/Neptune conjunction in Aries during the 2025-26 period that the world will begin a sustained recovery that should last (with fits and starts throughout) until the late 2030’s. By then, the world should look very different, with a very progressive Uranus in Gemini trine Pluto in Aquarius and Saturn and Neptune in pioneering and assertive Aries. The US will still be a world leader, albeit somewhat subdued until after 2035.
It is all about moral hazard and risk. Financial institutions will only behave sensibly if those who run them have serious skin in the gain. The banking bust in 2008 was a heads I win and tails you lose game. It revealed that all the talk about free markets and enterprise from the 1980s onwards was just so much hot hair. When it came to the crunch banks were as happy to socialise losses to the taxpayer in bad times as they were to privatise profits in good times. This hypocrisy has seriously weakened both capitalism and liberal democracy. If it happens again it will kill both stone dead.