When I began writing What Next? A Survival Guide to the 21st Century, my publisher warned me about forecasting too many negative prognostications. In 1987, I predicted the stock market crash followed by recession, in 1995 the terrorist attack in Oklahoma, the boom in financial markets in the late 1990s, the dot.com financial sell-off in 2000, an attack on America between August 2001 and June 2002 followed by a recession and a war. I warned clients living in the low-lying areas of Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi to move to higher ground before Katrina leveled that region. As editor and publisher of the newsletter "The SootheSayer" since 1990, my passion has been predicting global issues, themes, crises and opportunities that now fight for our attention on a daily basis.
Having been a practicing astrologer for thirty-five years, I have learned to interpret both the obvious, as well as the subtle. In addition to a large and diverse private clientele, I have a readership encompassing financial service managers, derivatives traders, and private investors who find astrology a very helpful tool. So many people asked me when I would consider writing a book about what lies ahead in these turbulent times that I finally decided to tackle the job.
The first section of What Next outlines historically what has happened politically and economically in the U.S., the current world superpower; in other words, what's happening and who are the players. The second part of the book deals with possible solutions to the global warming challenge, the energy crisis, and the economic minefields that lie ahead for all of us. I have discovered that many people are creating new social and economic frameworks, developing new technologies, and are leading us forward in such a way to enable us to "invent" our way out of the crises. By changing the way we live at the grass roots, we may actually profoundly improve our lives at a very fundamental level.
What Now?
The month of September 2007 is a time frame brimming over with turbulence, conflict and confusion. There is likely an acceleration of terrorist activity on American soil or on American sites abroad. Washington will be moving toward increasing rather than diminishing wars abroad, possibly leading to an attack on Iran. There is a solar eclipse on, of all days, September 11th that is in conflict with both Mars and Uranus. Mars is symbolic of violence or war and is returning to the position of Mars in the horoscope of the United States.
The sub-prime mortgage debacle has tentacles that reach into a global derivatives trade estimated at somewhere around $500 trillion! When I wrote my book, I quoted the figure released from the Bank of International Settlements in December of 06 which was around $370 trillion. Hedge funds that have been the driving force behind a global financial roulette style economy has left anything that resembles a "real" economy far behind. Notional derivatives values exceed the gross domestic products of all the nations on the planet by at least five times. All these figures are changing daily with lightening speed. This kind of instability is unprecedented in our history. This month will likely bring a sell-off in financial exchanges and many of the hidden or unquantifiable derivatives trades will no longer be hidden and some of the quantities will add up to zero!
The Federal Reserve is caught between a rock the size of a boulder and a hard place comprised of cement. They will be unlikely to raise interest rates even in the face of inflation. There will be banks that become insolvent. How many can the Feds bail out? Will the struggling tax payer from the steadily declining middle class have to bail out entities who have made hundreds of millions of dollars and who have benefited from Pres. Bush's tax breaks?
The biggest challenge for all of us is to stay centered. I believe that with a good strong reality check, we can be prepared for abrupt climate changes, financial downturns such as the recent crash in the sub-prime real estate market, the crises in health care and infrastructure. The constellations suggest we can and will rise to the occasion.