Is history about to repeat itself with another Great Depression is the question posed by an illuminating book about the 1873 crash. A Times review comments: “The most striking thing about 1873 is that it feels uncannily like 2026. The railway mania has returned as artificial intelligence. Elsewhere, too, the scenery looks familiar: populist revolts against financial elites; mounting suspicion that globalisation has been kinder to some than to others; debtor nations discovering the limits of sovereignty; and old ethnic hatreds acquiring new economic justifications.”
May 9 1873 saw a major stock market crash, starting in Vienna and spreading to the Americas and initiating decades of global deflation.
‘The railway was to the 19th century what artificial intelligence is to ours: a transformative technology wrapped in a speculative fever. Like all manias, it attracted visionaries and charlatans in roughly equal measure. The rails connected continents; they also connected every suburban fantasist to a stockbroker.’ The stock market accordingly rose 300 per cent in three years. When the reckoning came in May 1873, bank shares fell 45 per cent in a single day.
It set the stage for twenty years of deflation, and a legacy of aggrieved populism. The US abandoned Reconstruction, European powers staged an economic takeover of the heavily indebted Ottoman Empire. There was a revival of antisemitic movements in Europe that blamed ‘Jewish finance’ for the disaster.
The author Liaquat Ahamed, a Pulitzer-prize winner is praised for his ability “to make financial history read like a Trollopean saga rejigged by Michael Lewis. He understands that economics is never really about economics. It is rather about the prestige and power coveted by plutocrats and parvenus; it is a theatre of cupidity, self-importance and self-delusion.”
9 May 1873 saw Uranus just into Leo opposition Saturn in Aquarius square Neptune in late Aries. Saturn Uranus in hard aspect is often a red flag for a financial reversal; and a focal point Neptune would help to inflate the dreams and delusions. The Taurus Sun was conjunct Pluto and conjunct an exact Taurus North Node Algol conjunction squaring into a flamboyant, given-to-excess Jupiter in Leo. Present influences are not nearly as stark.
The Wall Street Crash of 24 October 1929 came as Neptune was in early Virgo, having left Leo, hallmark of the” Roaring Twenties” in the July of that year. Tr Saturn was approaching a square to the Uranus but not till the following year. By 1931 there was an exceptionally tough Saturn in Capricorn opposition Pluto and square Uranus for a time of great turmoil and hardship. Mars in Scorpio was exactly conjunct the South Node and exactly opposition Chiron on the day of the crash itself. The previous Solar Eclipse from May 1929 was a New Moon in Taurus conjunct North Node and Jupiter (Algol) all square Neptune in inflated Leo setting the scene for the financial balloon to burst five months later.
The Lehman Brothers collapse of 15 September 2008 which set off the recent crash came as Pluto was poised on the cusp of Capricorn, having dipped a toe in earlier in 2008, was retrograding into Sagittarius on the day and then back into the long haul through Capricorn from late November that year. Saturn was moving to oppose Uranus; and Neptune was conjunct the Aquarius North Node and Chiron.
The Dotcom bubble bust of 13 March 2000 occurred with an exact Jupiter in Taurus square Neptune which is another indicator of high hopes getting dashed; and Saturn in Taurus was aiming to square the Uranus soon after.
Pluto and Neptune at the moment have made the transition into a new sign and there is no Saturn opposition Uranus or Jupiter square Neptune in the near future. So cross fingers.
The post Great Depressions – history rhyming first appeared on Astroinform with Marjorie Orr – Star4cast.
