---

Big Banks Use Astrology To Play Markets
04-28-2008
News Monster

Christeen Skinner blinks at the screen of her computer and takes another slurp of coffee. It’s half past seven in the morning and she’s preparing for a crucial meeting with the chief executive of the High and Mighty fashion chain.

Apart from the black cat dozing on her lap, the only clue to Christeen’s occupation as a 21st century astrologer is a copy of an Ephemeris that lies open at a page marked “Mercury March 25th”.

“The financial crisis has ensured that I’m busier than ever,” says Christeen. “People in the City need to know what is just around the corner. I can help with that.”

Christeen is one of a growing, albeit secretive, network of astrologers who work for seemingly conservative British institutions such as high street banks, City investment funds and retailers. Desperate to avoid financial meltdown in the ongoing ‘credit crunch’ and to spot fashions and consumer trends before they start, these institutions have turned to the stars to divine the future.

“Most academics distrust astrology and regard it as mumbo-jumbo,” she says. “The thing is, it works. Nobody’s sure how it works but it does. Most of my clients are businesspeople who are very canny. If it didn’t work for them, then why would they use it?”

One of Christeen’s clients is Judith Levy, chief executive of the High and Mighty retail chain.

“I’m fairly pragmatic,” says Judith. “I will only spend money on an astrologer if the decision I have to take is very important - the kind of decision which will cost me a lot of money if I get it wrong.

“When we launched our Kayak brand a few years ago we used astrology to decide the launch date. Since then, it has gone from strength to strength. It’s one of our best selling brands.”

Astrology is generally seen as just a bit of harmless fun with no predictive power at all. After all, how can a star have any influence over our lives when it is so distant that its light takes hundreds of millions of years just to reach us? The answer to that is simple: it doesn’t.

For believers in heliocentric astrology, the branch of the discipline currently in vogue with business folk and fashion designers alike, it is the planets that appear to have an influence over us not the stars. They maintain that each planet has a subtly different effect on our behaviour, which varies as it sweeps through the zodiac during its journey around the sun.

Mercury, for instance, can be generally positive apart from when it turns ‘retrograde’. This happens when it appears to reverse direction and travel backwards through the zodiac. When this happens, roughly three times a year, communication begins to break down and travel plans may go awry. It’s seen as a celestial spanner in the works.

It’s Mercury’s potential to wreak havoc that has led many world leaders and military figures to plan their lives and campaigns to avoid its influence. Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin would only travel and hold press conferences when the planets, specifically Mercury, dictated.

Hitler, a keen user of astrology, notably failed to take into account Mercury’s influence. He launched the Battle of Britain and planned operation Sealion – the invasion of the UK – just as Mercury turned retrograde. Both mistakes dealt serious blows to his plans for world domination.

Mars seems to have an uncanny correlation with over-achievement for those lucky enough to be born with the planet at certain critical astrological positions. The French statistician Michel Gauquelin discovered that the upper echelons of numerous sports, as well as the medical profession and the military, are stuffed full of people with Mars in these locations. For example, Nick Faldo, OJ Simpson and Muhammad Ali were all born with Mars in the requisite position.

And so far at least, nobody has managed to rubbish Gauquelin’s research.

If We Had Memories, We'd Remember The 30s

As thousands of poor souls are trying to get their retirement money back after the collapse of asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) notes, I have mixed feeling for them.

On the one hand, these are regular, hard-working, trusting individuals who thought they were investing conservatively in what amounted to a sure thing. These people have been directed by financial advisers, banks, money managers, etc, to invest in these "low-risk" investments after watching ads showing their friendly, non-threateningly pudgy banker as someone who can "join the family," or "earn your trust."

On the other hand, I am tempted to say that they got what they deserved. As callous as that sounds, it is true: the information has been out there for all to find that there is no such thing as a low-risk investment and that this - or any other disappearance of investment capital can happen at any time with warning. More to the point: that it is part of a deliberate scheme that has repeated throughout history.

Now, to be fair, if only truthful history and finance were taught in school, or if these subjects were covered regularly and truthfully in our news media, I'm sure that almost none of these people would have invested in the first place. Who would invest their hard-earned in a system that is set up to steal it?

Historically, in the good times the stock market is a place of complicated and exclusive dealings of the super-elite.

Then, suddenly, one sees a massive increase in the baiting of average Joes to get into the stock market. Take the massive increase in financial services advertising in the last ten years - or, especially, in hugely misleading and baiting day-trader advertising - services such as E-Trade have exploded out of the gates, getting their services up and running almost as soon as the servers for the commercial Internet were built, then dropping ads that male you feel as if using E-trade will make you rich overnight (when, in fact, just like any form of gambling, the vast majority of investors lose money to the house in the lung run).

This type of baiting has only meant one thing in history: CRASH. The common people are used to float the boat as high as it will go, then they are liquidated when it sinks. The attempted bail outs of the 30s, 80s, and 90s (and soon the 2000s) accomplish nothing - the market still ends up bottoming out - except protecting the paycheques and payouts to the boards of the corporate perpetrators of these scams. The Bear-Stearns and S&Ls of the world are bailed out - while Average Joe is screwed. People's entire portfolios (and even cash bank accounts) are liquidated.

Perhaps now people will wake up, learn about how these banksters are scamming them, remove all their money from the fiat banking system, and buy silver and other precious metals. Because, when it hits the fan, you'll still be able to buy clothes and food with silver. Don't believe us? Just try buying anything with your ABCP investment now!

Posted by Enjneer at 9:33 AM

Jim Rogers, Cnina and the Bear Market

I've had this sent to me - I've seen it floating around 3x in one day. Maybe I should post it.

comment: anyone not worried has been drinking too much of the koolaid. What is the matter with Jim Rogers?? It's KlusterfucK time, and someone like him shoulda seen that.

I think he's right on agriculture and power generation - but completely incorrect to suggest that airlines and tourism are going to see a lot of profitability. Depends on which way things go, BUT one could reasonably assume that if the military expenditure keeps up to keep up the oil supply than lots of oil is going to go towards those fighter jets. And tourism investment would mean you'd have to support those with very high-end destinations as their assets.

I wonder if this guy really does get how dire things are going to be - he's not even cottoned on to the stagflation!! Jeesh!! What's he gonna say when the market crashes -- you know the really big one coming....

Resources will go up until it gets too expensive to deliver them - and that includes the costs of doing the mining on commodities the rich seem to "prefer" these days.

Big Cat investors are going to be playing a much different game than most players, so consider the source which is of course, Jim Rogers. IMHO, now is not the time to invest - it's all very very volatile and hard to tell what your money (even if buying in Euros) is really worth. I don't think you can really trust an investment advisor on the real state of China either - too many unpredictable factors in China itself- and the stituation with Taiwan may change very soon, too - now that pressure to support it politically is gone.

This is all very interesting - but for my money, I'd still stick with running shoes, bicycles and solar energy.. My tuppance.

V

Famed investor Jim Rogers sees hard times ahead for the United States - and a big opportunity looming in China.

By Brian O'Keefe, senior editor

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- You might expect Jim Rogers to be gloating a little bit. After all, the famed investor has been predicting a recession in the U.S. economy for months and shorting the shares of now-tanking Wall Street investment banks for even longer. And with fears of a recession sparking both a worldwide market sell-off and emergency action from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Rogers again looks prescient - just as he has over the past few years as the China-driven commodities boom he predicted almost a decade ago began kicked into high gear. But when I reached him by phone in Singapore the other day there was little hint of celebration in his voice. Instead, he took a serious tone.

"I'm extremely worried,"

he says.

I have been for a while, but I just see things getting much worse this time around than I expected."

To Rogers, a longtime Fed critic, Bernanke's decision to ride to the market's rescue with a 75-basis-point cut in the Fed's benchmark rate only a week before its scheduled meeting (at which time they cut it another 50 basis points) is the latest sign that the central bank isn't willing to provide the fiscal discipline that he thinks the economy desperately needs.

"Conceivably we could have just had recession, hard times, sliding dollar, inflation, etc., but I'm afraid it's going to be much worse," he says. "Bernanke is printing huge amounts of money. He's out of control and the Fed is out of control. We are probably going to have one of the worst recessions we've had since the Second World War. It's not a good scene."

Rogers looks at the Fed's willingness to add liquidity to an already inflationary environment and sees the history of the 1970s repeating itself. Does that mean stagflation?

"It is a real danger and, in fact, a probability."

Where the opportunities are

The 1970s, of course, was when Rogers first made his reputation - and a lot of money - as George Soros's original partner in the Quantum Fund. And despite his gloomy outlook for the U.S., he still sees opportunities in today's world. In fact, he sees the recent correction as a potential gift for investors who know where to head in global markets: China.

Rogers has been fascinated with China ever since he rode his motorcycle across the country two decades ago, and he's been a full-fledged China bull for several years. In December he published his latest book, an investor-friendly tome titled "A Bull in China: How to Invest Profitably in the World's Greatest Market." And that same month he sold his beloved Manhattan townhouse for $15.75 million to a daughter of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt and moved his family full-time to Singapore - the better to be closer to the action in Beijing and Shanghai. (He bought the New York mansion 30 years ago for just over $100,000; not a bad return on his investment.)

But in a November interview I conducted with Rogers, he admitted that he was rooting for a serious correction in China to cool off an overheating market and bring back prices to a reasonable level. With the bourses in Shanghai and Hong Kong both some 20% off their recent highs as of late January, Rogers says he's starting to consider new investments.

"I'm delighted to see what's happening in Shanghai and Hong Kong," he says. "As I've said, if things hadn't cooled off, the Chinese market was in danger of turning into a bubble. I find this most encouraging. The government's been doing its best to try and cool things off. Mainly they've been trying to deal with real estate but it's having an effect on stocks, too. I would suspect the correction isn't quite over in China. But I'm gearing up. I didn't put in any orders for tomorrow but I'm starting to prepare my list of things to buy in China. Whether I buy this week or this month or this quarter, who knows. But I'm starting to think about buying new shares in China for the first time in a while. And I'm not thinking about buying in America."

Ultimately, Rogers doesn't think that the troubles in the United States will be much of a drag on the prospects for the People's Republic.

"Anybody who sells to Sears (SHLD, Fortune 500) or Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) is going to be affected, without question," he says. "Some parts of the Chinese economy are going to be untouched, however. They won't even know America's in recession. They won't care if America falls off the face of the earth."

What's on his China buying list? Rogers says it will depend in large part on which stocks come down to the right level, but he's keeping his eye on certain high-growth sectors including tourism, agriculture, power generation and airlines.

The pullback in commodity prices on recession fears hasn't dampened his enthusiasm for resources investments, either. More like a cyclical correction in the middle of a long-term bull market. "Certainly some commodities are going to be affected," says Rogers.

"But it's not as if the markets haven't figured this out. Remember the old expression: 'Dr. Copper is the best economist in the world.' Well, Dr. Nickel and Dr. Zinc figured out a few months ago what I thought I had figured out, that we were going to have a recession. Nickel is already down 50%. Other commodities may fall more. But I don't see the economics of agriculture being much affected at all. Maybe there will be a few less cotton shirts bought. Maybe there will be a few less tires bought. But the supply is under more duress than the demand."

Once again Rogers draws on the 1970s in his analysis.

"Think about the story of gold in the '70s," he says. "Gold went up 600%, and then it started correcting. It went down nearly every month for two years, nearly 50% from the high point. And everybody said, 'Well, that's the end of the gold market. It was just a fluke. It's over.'

It scared everybody out. And then gold turned around and went up 850% from that level. This is what happens in markets. But the fundamentals of the secular bull market in commodities are not over any more now than they were for gold in the '70s."

Where he expects the pain to be most intense is on Wall Street. He says he hasn't covered his short positions on the investment banks or Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and won't for a while.

"Those things are going to go way, way, way down,"

says Rogers. "The investment banks are down now because of the problems in the credit market. Wait until the effects of the bear market come along. If you just go back and look at other bear markets, investment bank stocks have gone down enormously. We haven't gotten to that stage yet. It's going to bring their balance sheets under duress. This is going to get much worse. But that's where there have been excesses for the past decade or so. And whenever you have a bear market come along the great excesses of the previous period are the ones that get cleaned out the most."

He'll be watching - from Singapore.