July 2012

Obamacare upheld by Supreme Court in surprise ruling

(Posted 2 July 2012)  President Barack Obama scored an important and somewhat surprising victory last Thursday as the US Supreme Court upheld his controversial health care bill.  Although most pundits were expecting Obamacare to be struck down, the court ruled the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was constitutional on the grounds that it was a tax.  At least that was the ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts who cast the deciding vote in the 5-4 decision.  It was a huge win by Obama and has boosted his re-election chances ahead of November’s election.  However, there are several ironies and complexities in this decision.  It was a conservative judge, John Roberts, who cast the deciding vote in favor of Obamacare. And he did so by arguing it was a tax and therefore within the rights of the government, despite the fact that Obama had claimed that his health care plan was not a tax during his campaign for it. Many observers believe that Roberts, who has strong Republican affiliations, voted in favor of the Democratic bill in order to preserve the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as a non-partisan institution. 

It is fascinating to see how this unexpected and somewhat ironic achievement is reflected in Obama’s horoscope. Both Jupiter and Ketu (the south lunar node) were closely conjunct Obama’s Moon within one degree.  It is useful to think about the relative influence of each planet here in the unfolding of this event.  Jupiter likely played a key role in the win itself and delivered a measure of relief to Obama, who had been concerned about what it would mean for his legacy and re-election chances if the ACA was struck down.  The Moon represents the emotional self and this Jupiter conjunction nicely reflects Obama’s sense of relief.  The Moon is also a very political planet for him since it is placed in the 5th house of the intellect, politics and wise counsel.  Therefore such a positive transit influence to his 5th house Moon will generally produce favorable political results.   Read more…

(Posted 30 June 2012)   Europe backed away from the abyss yet again as Friday’s EU summit produced another bailout to solve its ongoing debt crisis.  Germany’s Angela Merkel is widely seen as the loser in this struggle between southern debtors and northern creditors as Germany accepted the demands of Italy, Spain and France to share their debt burden.  Now the European Central Bank will be able to buy Spanish and Italian bonds as a mean to keep a lid of interest rates.  The ECB will also oversee an EU-wide banking regulatory agency in order to stem the banking crisis.  Spain’s teetering banks will receive an injection of €120 Billion directly from the European Stabilization Mechanism (ESM), which is the latest incarnation of the EU’s bailout fund.

Global markets cheered the news as the US stocks rose sharply and posted a 2% gain on the week.  After a mostly negative week, the Dow closed at 12,880 while the S&P 500 finished at 1362.  Indian stocks also shook off the doldrums as the Sensex climbed more than 2% closing at 17,429.  The Nifty broke above resistance and ended the week at 5278.  From an astrological perspective, the summit deal was a very appropriate reflection of the Uranus-Pluto aspect.  While I thought we might have seen a little more disruption and uncertainty in the run up to the deal, I did expect some kind of resolution to the crisis last week.  The twin stations of Venus and Saturn are often associated with market reversals so we did see an interim bottom in US and European markets.  And as I noted in last week’s post, the Uranus-Pluto square aspect was indicative of some kind of fundamental disruption with the status quo and pointed to some major changes ahead.  As it happened, we did see the beginnings of a new EU emerge as a result of this summit, as the member states have forged an agreement towards closer integration.   Read more…

(Posted 4 June 2012)   With Mitt Romney sealing the Republican nomination in Texas last week, the race for the White House has entered a more intense phase.  US President Barack Obama is facing an uphill battle as he seeks re-election in November against a backdrop of a flagging economy.  Recent polls are showing Obama in a virtual statistical tie with Romney as the economy weighs on Obama’s popularity.  In a classic demonstration of political schadenfreude that animates all challengers, Romney’s fortunes got a major boost from Friday’s disappointing jobs report as more commentators are openly considering the possibility that Obama may be a one-term president.

For the past couple of years, I have thought that Obama’s chances for re-election were fairly good. In an article I posted in the run-up to the mid-term elections in 2010, I briefly noted how the favourable placement of Jupiter and Rahu in November 2012 suggested that he stood a good chance for winning.  Other factors also suggested that Obama had a good chance for a second term but a lot would depend on the horoscope of his opponent.  I wanted to revisit this question now that we know that Romney will be the challenger on November 6. 

Analyzing charts for elections can be complicated.  As all astrologers know, there are any number of potentially useful techniques one can use to predict election outcomes.  But how do we know which ones work and which ones don’t?  Since astrology lacks the organizational discipline of a proper science, this laborious sifting process is pretty much just trial and error.  There are no proven reliable methods that will work 100% of the time and many techniques probably only work slightly more than a coin toss (50-50) would predict.  In fact, I think that some techniques don’t work at all and often yield results that are no better than flipping a coin.  One example of an incorrect or flawed method occurred at the time of the 2004 US election between Bush and Kerry.   Read more…