(Posted 4 August 2012)  Friday’s US jobs report may have been an early birthday present for President Obama.  The report exceeded analysts expectations and showed that 163,000 new jobs had been created.  Unfortunately for Obama, however, the unemployment rate actually ticked a notch higher to 8.3% as more people entered the labor force.  As birthday presents go, it perhaps wasn’t exactly ideal since the economy is not creating jobs fast enough to move the rate below the politically important 8% threshold.   And yet it reversed the alarming trend from previous months of anemic growth that was below 100,000.  If there had been another sub-100K report, it could have been much more damaging to Obama’s re-election chances.

While his opponent Mitt Romney has seized on the fact of the rising unemployment rate, Obama’s horoscope suggests that the news was probably a relief and was on balance positive for him.  Mercury is currently retrograde and moving into a very close aspect with Jupiter this week and is also conjunct its natal position at 9 degrees of sidereal Cancer.  At the time of the report’s release it was just one degree from an exact opposition aspect with Jupiter.  Mercury-Jupiter aspects are perhaps the classic astrological signature for "good news", since Mercury = news and Jupiter = good.   The presence of Obama’s natal Mercury in the mix only boosted the import of this planetary alignment. 

We can see that Obama’s 2012 solar return chart  is looking quite favorable for the next 12 months.  This is a snapshot of the position of the planets at the time when the Sun returns to its position at the time of his birth.  Benevolent Jupiter is just past a conjunction with the ascendant in Taurus suggesting confidence and prominence this year while it aspects the 10th house cusp (or "Midheaven") boosting status and career success.  The aforementioned Mercury is in a nice aspect with Jupiter indicating the effective and successful application of intelligence and communication.  Best of all perhaps, is that Venus, the planet of happiness, is in a close conjunction with its natal position in Gemini.  As an added bonus, Gemini is rising in the solar return chart itself (i.e. the ascendant is in Gemini) and thus it is also conjunct both the solar return Venus and the natal Venus.  This solar return chart is another reason why Obama is likely to win in November. 

Stock markets cheered the news of the jobs report as the Dow managed to erase the losses from earlier in the week.  The Dow finished just slightly higher on the week at 13,096 while the S&P 500 ended the week at 1390.  Indian markets were more positive as the Sensex rose more than 2% closing at 17,197 while the Nifty finished at 5215. In keeping with Saturn’s bias towards caution and restraint, central banks did not announce any new stimulus measures as the RBI, the ECB and the Fed all stood pat preferring instead to continue to jawbone.  This talk therapy proved less effective this time around as stocks largely fell into Thursday.  This more or less fit my expectations that the Saturn entry into Libra would not produce any new easing and would be mostly negative for stocks.  We did see some upward movement early in the week, albeit mostly in India, just as bullish Venus entered Gemini.

The short term aspects this week look more bullish than anything else, especially in the midweek period.  The key alignment here is the Mercury-Venus-Neptune pattern that is closest on Wednesday and Thursday.  This could manifest at any point in the week but it seems more focused in the mid to late week period.   The Moon lines up in opposition to Mars and Saturn on Tuesday so that is perhaps a candidate for a down day. While the short term aspects look pretty favourable, Saturn is still in the first degree of Libra here so it is possible that this potent background influence could kick in at different points along the way.