GUEST POST : Ben Bernanke's Cosy World of High Finance, by Gian Paul.

Today, 13 December, is the birthday of American economist, and Chairman of the Federal Reserve, central bank of the United States: Ben Shalom Bernanke. He was born in 1953 in Augusta, Georgia.

Being a complete and absolute ignoramus where high finance is concerned I asked my friend Gian Paul, in Brazil (though Swiss by birth) who is knowledgeable in that sphere, to write a guest post for the occasion. He graciously agreed to do so. Here it is:

GUEST POST BY GIAN PAUL

BEN BERNANKE'S COSY WORLD OF HIGH FINANCE

Astrology offers the possibility to see why some people are in certain positions. When George W. Bush appointed Bernanke to succeed Greenspan at the helm of the Fed he may have had an intuition (not his genre...) or received some yet undisclosed (astrological) advice.


(12 noon chart is shown as birth time remains unknown)


Ben Bernanke's horoscope is extremely interconnected with the map of when Wall Street started operating, on May 17, 1792 - at 08:52 a.m. Bernanke's Mars/Neptune at 25 degrees Libra sits exactly on Wall Street's all important Jupiter/Neptune - and opposite Wall Street's Saturn/Moon in Aries.




"Nihil nisi bonum" (say nothing but positive): Following this moto and given that all coins have two sides, hereafter the meritorious events/effects of Mr. Bernanke's actuation in his world - important job. One may even think that Benjamin is not quite the right first name for the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve. He also happens to be one of the foremost experts (academically speaking) of the Great
Depression of the 1930's and therefore "Goliath" would appear more fitting.

Michael Bloomberg, after fighting for over 2 years in the courts, obtained the right (for the public) to know how many dollars Mr. Goliath lavished on the moribund banking industry in 2009/10: It's not billions, it's 7.5 TRILLIONS
(7.5 000.000.000.000). And at interest rates close to 0%. Some big bank shots (or their respective wives became instant multi-millionaires, simply by knowing the "mechanisms". No effective controls being in place, much of those generously
distributed moneys have not yet been re-imbursed. But it's all "legal", except for the taxpayers money that could have been used otherwise...

A recent finacial survey (including executives in China, the Arabian lands etc.) gave Bernanke a 70% approval rate for his efforts to save the world. Obama in the same survey only received 40%. No wonder. All the manna with which Washington inundated the world, for one, helped the price of oil to go above 100$/barrel. (Exxon's CEO recently estimated that 70$ would be a normal price). But the banks, awash with easy money, now play big in commodity speculation. That game has entirely changed in nature. One of the reasons Mr. Bernanke is being praised.

The cosy world functions thusly: while the official rules say otherwise, to give an example, the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve of N.Y. has been elected by the same CEO's of the big banks to whom financial help will be disbursed "in case of need". By the way, it's not OWS who denunciates such an aberation, it's the financial
press (Bloomberg, again).

The Fed has a record of secrecy which Bernanke meritoriously tries to change. But it's still too much confined in "Senate hearings" and similar non-public occasions, where decisions are being taken or justified. What is alarming (Huffington Post came out with a piece the other day, but it was really old news) is that the former Secretary of the US Treasury tipped off his cronies at Goldman Sachs etc. of
impending Fed actions. He is said to be unindictable. But he clearly was lavishing insider information onto some priviledged "1% -ers".

Back to Mr. Goliath: His other surname being "Helicopter Bernanke" for his ability to help the US bonds and stock-markets to stay in pretty good shape thoughout the ordeal the rest of the economy had to face. One of his (well appreciated) tricks was to "talk the US dollar down". Assisted in that by Tim Geithner. With Euro and Yen up most of the time, Obama's drive to help US exports showed some results recently.
If only the Greek and Berlusconi had not pushed the Euro to brink of falling apart, the Bernanke/Geithner game plan would have been close to perfect. But it had not to be.

What presently is a truly frightening conjecture is that for all the easy money with which the USA has inundated its banking system and the world at large, a second recession appears looming. And Ben Bernanke, The (academic) expert of the Great
Depression, at the helm of an unsteerable ship. Does he know more? He would not say so for sure. How could he sap what's left of confidence, especially in the stock market right now. And then there are next year's elections, too.

Most intriguing, astrologically speaking, is that Saturn in the sky currently (around 26 Libra) transits Bernanke's Neptune/Mars and Wall Street's Neptune and is exactly opposing the later's Saturn at 26 degrees Aries. And this when Benjamin Shalom Bernanke celebrates his 58th birthday, today, December 13, 2011. Wishing him and for all those who may somehow be affected by his actions the best of good luck! And no one can truly say that "destiny is not at work", just look at the horoscopes and transits in place right now.