Note, I am posting this a second time with better search engine optimization. The article below is identical, and it’s where the comments are collecting. –ef

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Note, this article was updated Saturday morning.

Friday night, Standard & Poor’s announced that it had downgraded the United States’ credit rating. This issue was going back and forth all day between the Department of Treasury and S & P. Treasury found a $2 trillion calculation error, which the rating agency admitted to, but still said it would be lowering the rating. Rachel Maddow just read S & P’s press release on the air, and it’s interesting — posted in the first comment below. S & P has a rotten reputation for endorsing things like junk bonds and the mortgage derivatives that were largely responsible for the recession, as well as for endorsing private debt over public debt.

S & P downgrades US credit rating. Time was stated by Rachel Maddow. It was announced at 8:27 pm on a CNN news blog and annunced at 8:30 pm by Keith Olbermann, live. I am using 8:20 pm. Note that as seems common these days, the ascendant and midheaven are both occupied by a centaur planet -- Nessus is rising, and Pholus is on the midheaven.

This is the first time that the United States has ever had its credit rating lowered. The result could be a rise in interest rates on a variety of financial products, a ripple effect through the markets, as well as certain states that are closely tied to the federal government having their credit ratings lowered. For a coherent political analysis, please see the comment by Astrodem, one of our frequent participants.]

The ratings agency, one of three private agencies that rates US the worthiness of US treasury bills, gave a diversity of political reasons for the downgrade, including the inability of Pres. Obama and Congress to work together, which is of course a premeditated situation on the part of certain political strategists. In any event, the statements by the ratings agency (which I have posted in the first comment below) seemed designed to get the attention of the political system. But it’s also an example of a private entity wagging the dog of government. And while they have a point, that point is not that the bond rating was lowered, but what led to it: the conduct of our political leaders.

As for the astrology: centaur planets factor prominently into this chart. Nessus (the third centaur) is rising, right in the region of 20 Aquarius — the midpoint of the Uranus-Pluto square (Gary and I covered this on last week’s special edition podcast). Nessus is a centaur planet, associated with consequences, cycles of karma and psychological and sexual abuse. Melanie Reinhart suggests that a key phrase for Nessus is, “The buck stops here,” appropriate enough in this situation.

Minor planets in the range of mid-mutable signs. This list only shows Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces.

Pholus is in the 10th house of this chart. Pholus is about out of control situations and runaway reactions. In the house of government, we have a picture of our feral wealthy elitists who are basically taking advantage of the end of the world by helping propagate it. Pholus is now conjunct several planets not shown — Narcissus (an asteroid), Ixion (out near Pluto, the lord of amorality), and Hylonome (the cry of the poor). These three points are conjunct the Great Attractor, a very powerful point far from our galaxy. [We are looking for other Planet Waves references to the Great Attractor now.] The upshot is that the Great Attractor is magnifying what certainly looks like a toxic brew of minor planets, mainly contaminated by narcissism.

In a sentence, we are indeed witnessing a bonfire of the vanities.

Meanwhile, in the ascendant, Nessus is suggesting that we are facing a moment of consequences, even if those consequences are driven by abusive intentions. Nessus is also aspecting Eris and the lunar nodes, making a slow-moving aspect structure that came into full expression during the shootings in Norway two weeks ago.

The Moon is in Scorpio, and its next aspect is to Jupiter — representing a kind of exaggeration effect. Note the position of Neptune, right in the last arc minute of Aquarius. We are in a throwback to the era of all smoke and all mirrors all the time — but now at least we’re smart enough to see what is what.

What Republicans who refuse to raise taxes or raise the debt ceiling are saying, in effect, is that they stole the deficit fair and square. These bars represent what was spent by Bush Jr. (left) and Obama (right, projected to the end of his presidency in fiscal year 2017). The money for the wars, the tax cuts and the big pharma donations (Medicare drug program) went somewhere. Someone got that money. And the people who got it were industrialists and bankers. And now they don’t want to pay it back. In the midst of all these discussions, the one thing that irks me the most is hearing John Boner accusing Obama of unchecked spending the past two years. When you hear that line flowing off his forked tongue, just remember old Dick Nixon telling us, “I am not a crook.” The numbers below speak for themselves — and remember the column on the right is projected through the end of Obama’s presidency. And his stimulus spending and tax cuts were extensions of programs started by the prior administration.

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities via New York Times

By the end of the 1990s, the federal budget was in surplus for the first time in decades. Partly that was a product of unusually strong economic growth, during the internet boom, which had swelled tax revenues. But partly that was a product of responsible budgeting, presided over by the most recent two presidents, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. In order to reduce deficits, lawmakers and those two presidents had agreed both to raise taxes and to reduce spending.

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–DRIVING THE DECADE: At 6 p.m., “the President and the Vice President will meet with Congressional Leadership in the Cabinet Room to discuss the ongoing efforts to find a balanced approach to deficit reduction. There will be a pool spray at the top of the meeting. Expected attendees include: Speaker John Boehner; Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader; Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican Leader; Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader; Representative Eric Cantor, Majority Leader; Senator Dick Durbin, Majority Whip; Senator Jon Kyl, Republican Whip; Representative Steny Hoyer, Democratic Whip.”

–Boehner statement, 8:21 p.m.: “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.”

–White House statement from Dan Pfeiffer, 9:14 p.m.: “The President believes that solving our fiscal problems is an economic imperative. But in order to do that, we cannot ask the middle-class and seniors to bear all the burden of higher costs and budget cuts. … Both parties have made real progress thus far, and to back off now will not only fail to solve our fiscal challenge, it will confirm the cynicism people have about politics in Washington. The President believes that now is the moment to rise above that cynicism and show the American people that we can still do big things. And so tomorrow, he will make the case to congressional leaders that we must reject the politics of least resistance and take on this critical challenge.”

–Additional background from the Speaker’s office: “All year long the Speaker has pressed the president to ‘go big’ and do something dramatic to reduce the deficit. Over the last week, the Speaker saw a potential opportunity for a landmark agreement between the president and Congressional Republicans that included reforms to all three major entitlement spending programs, strict caps on future spending, and comprehensive tax reform with a broader base and lower rates … [T]he president indicated that in order to do entitlement reform, he would have to have additional revenues. The Speaker countered by saying that Republicans would only discuss new revenues if they came from economic growth and tax reform instead of tax increases. The Speaker also insisted on a ‘trigger’ that mandated deep spending cuts and other consequences if the tax reforms were not implemented before the end of 2011.”

Read more at Politico.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I was an Edwards fan in early 2008. I applauded his Two Americas message, approved his aggressive stance against insane money and ruthless corporations. I hoped his record on litigation suggested a presidency willing to take on the previous administration, along with the contractors and cronies who had robbed the nation’s coffers. I imagined the Department of Justice fully engaged during an Edwards presidency, putting Halliburton on alert and combing through Pentagon records. By the time the Democratic pool had narrowed itself down to three establishment candidates — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards — the ex-Senator from North Carolina was the darling of progressives looking for a crusader and a brawl. I confess I wanted both then, and on some level I still do. Edwards was an attractive, well-spoken, high-profile populist warrior in a growing class war. He was my guy.

Just one day before Edwards pulled his name from nomination, my friend Fishin’ Jim and I went to see him speak at a local Springfield, Missouri union hall. He seemed frazzled and his stump speech rote, but the audience was enthusiastic. The essential humanity of his message spoke directly to their populist yearnings, and even the press in this culturally-conservative city seemed charmed. On the way home, Jim and I discussed his chances against Hillary, who was odds-on favorite. Pre-TARP, Jim thought Edwards might not survive the corporate backlash to his candidacy. Me, I was worried about what seemed a puzzling lethargy where the fire in Edwards’ belly had once been. My guy seemed out of gas, but I chalked it up to fatigue.

The next day’s announcement that he was pulling out confirmed my instincts. Months later, news of a clandestine tryst sparked more speculation. The death of Elizabeth Edwards renewed our interest in the situation late last year, and yesterday, the whole dismal affair came full circle with a federal indictment over possible campaign finance abuse. Edwards will defend himself against a charge that private contributions funneled to his secret paramour and mother of his love-child were intended to help him achieve the presidency; if he is convicted, real jail time looms.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

В There’s a lot going on to be pretty crazy mad about: economics, foreign policy, the environment. Not only now, but over the last year, the last eight years, hell, the last thirty or forty years. As I was writing “Blowing the Roof Off the House of Cards,” it dawned that I was coming close to self-parody. In writing about manufactured outrage, I was naming the outrage a distraction from the true crimes being committed in the name of saving our economy. Yet, there I was writing to encourage outrage about manufactured outrage. I must have been channeling the editorial board at The Onion.

Just what is the manufactured outrage about? Why are we so drawn to it? Did it begin with Clinton, followed by eight years of Cheney-Bush. Since Neptune entered Aquarius nearly ten years ago, it seems so. Now night after night, we watch and listen to news about the latest bailout scandal at AIG, served up with a pinch of blame, a scoop of moral indignation, a cup of schadenfreude, served on a platter of outrage. We have come to expect outrage to accompany and maybe even replace thinking.В The problem is who is really thinking these thoughts? Are they our true thoughts and feelings? Are they being created for us so we don’t have to do either?В 

Media-manufactured outrage is a way for us to remain passive and unproductive because it gives us a false impression that we’re expending energy doing something. We’re not. We’re just getting angrier. Something is being played here and its not violins.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

What an interesting turn of events. Late last week,В corporate interests using a financial news network to influence the market was exposed through the take down of CNBC’s chief cheerleader Jim CramerВ by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. On that same day, itВ was revealed to the White HouseВ that $165 million in taxpayer money from the Paulson-Bernanke bailout under Bush went to bonusesВ  paid to AIG executives in charge of the financial products division — the same division that brought about the company’s failure through bad lending instruments like interest-only mortgages.

This week the outrage over this revelation is reverberating from the Oval Office to Congress. Edward Liddy, the new CEO of AIG testified WednesdayВ before Congress that heВ found the payment of the bonuses to AIG’s executives “distasteful” but there is no way around it, and that the government (the taxpayers) has no recourse butВ to honor the commitment.

Liddy’s performance defines not just the way these mega-financial firms have taken taxpayer money andВ ran. The way theВ entire cultural phenomenon of unregulated markets and the greed that spawned themВ makes thatВ a given. Its how these firms are putting one (AIG) В in frontВ to cover the tracks ofВ the other firms who had already received bailout money from the Federal Government.В Eliot Spitzer, former governor of New York and “Sheriff of Wall Street”,В explains:

[W]e need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman’s collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG’s inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG’s trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG’s counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG’s contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse.

…The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.

In other words, the shit isn’t running knee deep. Its neck deep. These big firms we’ve been bailing out have been double dipping from the till,В going directly to the Fed and then through their fund “insurer”, AIG. Like Iraq, they privatized the profits and socialized the risks. In both cases,В its We The PeopleВ paying the bill.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

What is illusion? What is reality?В I think anyoneВ who is fully awake knows there is a slim to nothing veil between the two.В  As a nation and a world swirling for the past ten years under Neptune in Aquarius, we’ve watched reality replaced by fantasy, delusion, and deceit spun wildly out of control,В В affecting our foreign policy, our economy, and the news that’s supposed to report on both.

Take for example last week’s build up to the high-stakes media battle over the role of cable news networks in reporting news on the economic crisis, where the Comedy Network’s Jon Stewart and The Daily Show challenged CNBC’s Jim Cramer of Mad Money to a show down. Yes, that’s right. The Comedy Network. In what grew to be a headlining news event Thursday night, weВ watchedВ a modern-day “High Noon” between two unlikely opponents:В  a man whose profession is that of a clown, versus a financial network pundit whose financial advice might as well have come from a clown–complete with bells, whistles, and flatulent sound effects.

At the heart of the debate between Stewart and Cramer was that CNBC was deliberately manipulating the news, using the vehicles of punditry, stock advice and editorializing on its network to not only sway the market, but pimp the agenda of financial institutions and corporations to help them gain market influence. Stewart called Cramer on getting people to buy Bear Stearns (from an earlier show of “Mad Money”) while he knew full well Bear Stearns was going down. He called Cramer on how heВ bragged about manipulating newsВ to favor personal investments. And finally he questioned Cramer’s network CNBC, a financial news network, and its motivation in serving big business interests instead of being an actual news network warning consumers about bad business risks. Continue Reading »

Dear Friend and Reader:

In the classic 1980s science fictionВ black comedyВ film They LiveВ by John Carpenter,В  the hero, a homeless laborer trying to survive in the streets of LAВ stumbles upon aВ crate of sunglasses in an alley. PuttingВ them on heВ sees that the earth has beenВ taken overВ by aliens whose faces resembleВ those of corpses. The aliens walkВ the streets, chair boardrooms ofВ large corporations, are bankers, police officers andВ stars of major news and television shows.В They are unnoticed and perceived as normal people by human passers by.

Looking up with the sunglasses the hero seesВ revealed the subliminal messagesВ of signs, billboards and television commercials bombarding him from every corner. A billboard selling shampooВ really says В ”Consume,” another showing a bikini clad nymph in theВ Caribbean says “Marry and Reproduce,” while a dollar bill is imprinted with the words, “This is your God.” В Signs everywhere say “Conform,” “Watch TV,” “Submit” and “Stay Asleep.”

As the plot further reveals,В  aliens were successful in colonizing the earth.В Through a hugeВ broadcast tower conveniently locatedВ atop a television station inВ downtown LA, the aliens continuallyВ bombarded the planet with signals that fooled the humanВ populationВ intoВ believing the aliensВ were one of us, and disguising the aliens’В true motives – to lull human beings into complacent conformity so thatВ their takeover of the world would be irrevocable and complete.

This film was produced by John Carpenter in 1988 as a way to throw a turd into the punchbowl ofВ  the Reagan Administration’s deregulated American economy.В  Carpenter had enough like most of us, of the ostentatious wealth that few could achieve, the fancy cars and extravagant lifestyles that became a media obsession, and the unapologetic opulence inВ the good old days of Reagan’s “morning in America.” В ”Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” premiered in 1984 at the height of Reagan’s reign and ran successfully for 11 years, promoting champagne wishes and caviar dreams.В We were sold and most Americans bought that myth of materialism and greed as good.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Lather. Rinse. Repeat:В  When you askВ the government for money to bail you outВ of trouble, please don’t use it toВ purchase a corporate jet. Don’t buy your company expensive week-long retreats atВ lavish spas when you get the government check, and PLEASE don’t pay yourselves salaryВ bonuses totalling $18 billion.

That’s the message theВ Obama Administration sent when it announced their plan to cap executive salaries for financial institutions that receive Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) assistance from here on.

This moveВ was madeВ in the wake of abuses of the bailout moneyВ last year under the Bush AdministrationВ to fund corporate perks and boost executive salaries through high-dollar bonuses valued in the billions.

Under the original TARP Program developed by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the banks that received bailout funds wereВ already subjectВ to limits on compensation, but the Bush administration intentionally left them lax. Under the new restrictions proposed by the Obama Administration, the top five executives at banks receivingВ government TARP assistance are restricted from offering lavish perks toВ executives.В Any compensation above $500,000 is not tax deductible to the company.

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