The 144 Paths: Aries South Node – Libra North Node Through the Houses

Aries – 1st House South Node : Libra – 7th House North Node

Came into life knowing you could take care of yourself ardently, competitively, as a leader. Are learning to give over some of your power to others – for example, a significant other, very close friends, an open enemy – diplomatically, with fairness, in a cultured manner.

Aries – 2nd house South Node : Libra – 8th house North Node

Came into this life knowing how to use initiating energy to make money for yourself, how to pioneer your value systems, how to go out and support yourself. Are learning how to use refinement to get support from others, how to use mathematical methods to make money for others, how to maintain balance in the face of desperation or death.

Aries – 3rd house South Node : Libra – 9th house North Node

Came into this life knowing how to be competitive, pioneering, and a leader in your local environment, with your siblings, in factual matters, with your cars, as a teacher. Are learning a balanced approach to seeking broader horizons, e.g. approaching a religious belief system peacefully, bringing the energy of harmony to bear on the joint ideas of humanity, being cultured while traveling to foreign locales or dealing with foreigners, seeing relationships inherent in your life philosophy.

Aries – 4th house South Node : Libra – 10th house North Node

Came into this world knowing how to use martial energy to protect the home and homeland, knowing how to be innovative at things like gardening, mothering, and cooking. Are learning to be concerned about you outside reputation and to build a reputation as a person who is fair, peace oriented, and beautiful.

Aries – 5th house South Node : Libra – 11th house North Node

Came into this world knowing how to grab the spotlight competitively, aggressively, how to pour energy into creations, how to actively play. Are learning to set balanced and fair goals for yourself, to make friends with charm and refinement, to be a detached member of the audience.

Aries – 6th house South Node : Libra – 12th house North Node

Came into this world knowing how to be energetically useful, to be actively busy, to put your energy into living in and by the world. Are learning to withdraw from the world with peace, to bring beauty to bear on the inner world, to relax culturally and socially.

Aries – 7th house South Node : Libra – 1st house North Node

Came into this world knowing how to initiate relationships, how to bring initiative to bear on giving power over to others, how to be aggressive with open enemies. Are learning to be gracious in your personality, to make your body beautiful, to be fair in your actions.

Aries – 8th house South Node : Libra – 2nd house North Node

Came into this world knowing competitive, angry desperation, leadership when it comes to the occult, being first when it comes to being supported by others. Are learning to build your own value system based on fairness and harmony, to apply charm and balance to earn your own money, to buy and sell beautiful possessions.

Aries – 9th house South Node : Libra – 3rd house North Node

Came into this world knowing pioneering religious beliefs, an assertive life philosophy, energetic world travel. Are learning to approach your local environment beautifully, to approach your siblings and cousins lovingly, to get out and about in your local environment charmingly and fairly.

Aries – 10th house South Node : Libra – 4th house North Node

Came into this world knowing how to be energetic in the public eye, how to be pioneering in your profession, how to lead in management. Are learning how to make a beautiful home, to protect your family charmingly, to recognize your roots in a balanced way.

Aries – 11th house South Node : Libra – 5th house North Node

Came into this world knowing how to be assertive making friends and in groups, energetic in setting goals, pioneering in your aspirations. Are learning to play beautifully, to perform harmoniously, to create in a balanced way, to be on stage rather than in the audience – peacefully, to be sweet to children.

Aries – 12th house South Node : Libra – 6th house North Node

Came into this world knowing the competitive power of behind the scenes actions, withdrawing from the world into self awareness, being angrily self destructive, being pioneering in your sorrow. Are learning staying busy and involved in a balanced way, bringing harmony and beauty to bear on your daily routines, finding relationships in and at your work.

The 144 paths: Introduction

In the next series of blog posts, I will describe the 144 possible combinations of South Node / North Node sign and house placements, starting with the South Node in Aries and the North Node in Libra through the houses.  In astrology, signs, for example Aries and Libra, represent adjectives or approaches, while houses, for example the first house and the seventh house, represent persons, places and things or nouns.   The 144 paths that I describe are mainly based on keywords for the 12 signs and the 12 houses.

Blog for Choice

NARAL has asked those of us who support abortion rights to blog today, the 40th anniversary of the Roe versus Wade decision, on our experiences with abortion and why we support Roe.  I remember in the early 80′s talking with a fellow student about abortion rights and saying that I thought abortion was okay for older women but not for younger women having casual sex.  At that point in my life, I was 34 and I had had quite a bit of casual sex.  The conversation made me think.   Since I am a statistician, my approach was to look at the numbers.   I began looking for data on who has abortions.  I found information in the Statistical Abstract of the United States, from  Guttmacher.   I found most abortions are done on younger women.

My attitude toward abortion became total support for abortion rights when I read Sarah Weddington’s, A Question of Choice.  I have never been pregnant, so I have never needed an abortion, but Ms. Weddington’s book made clear the violence that many of the women who wanted to end a pregnancy had to deal with before abortion became legal.  I believe it was that violence that swayed the justices on the Supreme Court.  I continue to believe that society can trust we women to make the correct decision for ourselves when it comes to the decision to bring a child into this world, that no woman should be forced to bring a child into this world if she does not want to.

Money: 7

I will write a little about money and commerce with foreign countries.  How does exchange occur when there are different currencies involved?  From my introductory economics text, the process is confusing.  If exactly the same dollar amount bought by the United States from one country is sold to that country things are simple.  Then, the exchange can be handled by changing the balances in the accounts of the buyers in the United States  and changing the balances in the accounts of the sellers in the other country.  Nothing but the goods or services get exchanged between the two countries.  Obviously the inflow and outflows never match exactly over a time period.  However, foreign accounting is set up so that the accounts always balance.

Balance of payment accounts are set up into current accounts and capital and financial accounts (using the International Monetary Fund practice – which the United States accounts follow).  Current accounts measure what is bought and sold and capital and financial accounts measure the exchange of capital.  Adding the current account balance to the capital and financial account balances should give zero.  In other words, when money is spent on foreign goods, the foreign money which is paid to the seller must come from somewhere.  Likewise, when money comes from sales to foreigners, the dollars which are received must come from somewhere.  In practice, usually the accounts do not balance.  The negative of the sum of the current account and the capital and financial accounts is called the statistical discrepancy.

In the United States, the current account is the net of the dollar amounts of all of the goods and services exported and imported, plus net transfers of dollars for which nothing is received in return – such as foreign aid, plus net investment income.  Exported goods and service increase the current account – we import dollars, and imported goods and services decrease the current account – we export dollars.  Transfers into the country increase the current account – we import dollars, and transfers out of the country decrease the current account – we export dollars.  Income from foreign investments increases the current account – the foreign company buys dollars to give to the investor and sells their foreign currency, and income from the United States to foreigners for investment in the United States decreases the current account – the domestic company buys foreign currency and sells dollars to pay the foreign investor.

The capital and financial accounts measure flows of ownership of capital.  According to what I have read, most of the world works with a capital account, but the International Monetary Fund splits the capital account into a capital account and a financial account.  The capital account is then mainly forgiveness of foreign debt.  The financial account – which contains most of the exchanges – is measuring net investments of various kinds and the buying and selling of currencies by national governments.  Some of the types of investments measured are the buying of a manufacturing plant in a foreign country, a foreigner buying stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, or a loan by a foreign bank to a domestic borrower.   Returns such as interest and dividends on investments are put in the current account.  If a foreign manufacturing plant is bought by a domestic buyer, the capital account decreases – dollars are sold and the foreign currency is bought.   If a foreigner buys stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, the capital account increases – dollars are bought and the foreign currency is sold.  If a loan is made by a foreign bank to a domestic borrower, the capital account increases – dollars are bought and the foreign currency is sold.

The government is one of the buyers and sellers of foreign currency. The usually reported balance of payments deficit (surplus) is the difference between the current and the capital and financial accounts without the net foreign assets and foreign liabilities of the federal government.

The buying and selling of currency also fall in the financial account.  Let’s say that businesses in the United States have bought a lot of goods from China.  The businesses need to have Chinese money to pay the Chinese company for the goods. Foreign currency is bought and sold in the foreign exchange market at the exchange rate between two countries. There is quite a history of how foreign exchange works. However, over the last forty years, exchange rates have pretty much been free to float, and a foreign exchange market has developed which is currently the biggest of the financial markets. While, in some cases, actual currency is transferred – for example, a tourist to Canada exchanges US dollars for Canadian dollars, I think that most foreign currency transactions occur “on the books” – that is an account in one currency is credited and an account in another currency is debited.

With exchange rates free to float, sometimes a government will want to raise or lower the rate at which the country’s currency trades. The government’s central bank would then buy the country’s currency on the foreign exchange market to raise the exchange rate or sell the country’s currency to lower the exchange rate. Sometimes a country will peg the country’s currency to another country’s currency. For example, I have read that China pegs the Chinese currency to the US dollar. Then, I think, the Chinese government will buy and sell the Chinese currency at the pegged exchange rate without regard to the foreign exchange market. While the foreign exchange market facilitates foreign transactions, the market has developed into a market where most of the trading is for speculation.

At the national level, the International Monetary Fund was created out of the Bretten Woods conference after World War II to help manage the fixed exchange rates that came out of Bretten Woods. By 1969, the fixed exchange rates were breaking down and the International Monetary Fund created something called special drawing rights, which were not denominated in any currency and through which governments could exchange currency. All of the members of the International Monetary Fund received some. Special drawing rights are still part of financial accounts, but the International Monetary Fund exists now mainly to facilitate loans to countries in financial trouble.

The United States has been running a trade deficit for at least forty years now. The claims on dollars by foreigners that have not been balanced by foreigners buying our goods and services (the current account balance) are mostly balanced by foreign investment in the United States of those dollars (the capital account balance). For example, the Chinese government has been “returning” United States dollars to the United States by investing in government securities.

Here is a link to the international accounts of the United States for 2011 and part of 2012, http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=6&step=3&isuri=1&600=1. For the second quarter of 2012, the current account showed $735,670 million in exported good and services, -$821,039 million in imported goods and services, and a net of -$32,743 million unilateral current transfers, giving a current account balance of -$118,162 million. The capital account has a balance of -$291 million. For the financial account, the change in US-owned assets abroad, excluding financial derivatives, was $248,186 million (a positive number indicates a decrease), foreign owned assets in the United States, excluding financial derivatives, was -$143,607 million (a negative number indicates an decrease) and net financial derivatives, were $464 million, giving a capital and financial account balance of $104,752 million. The statistical discrepancy is then $13,360 million. So, in the second quarter of 2012, the United States was decreasing investments abroad, foreigners were decreasing investments in the United States, though the investors in the United States were decreasing investments faster. From the current account, the United States was buying more goods and services from abroad than were being bought by foreigners from the United States.

While foreign exchange rates used to be fixed by governments and all currency was ultimately redeemable for gold, now money is “fiat” money, not backed by anything, and markets determine the cross values of national currencies. Currency markets work like the usual market. If the demand for a currency goes up, so does the price if the supply is held constant. If the supply of a currency goes up, the price of the currency falls if the demand stays constant. The main buyers and sellers of currency these days are large banks. I suspect that the markets now balance imbalances in supply and demand for currencies, whereas before governments did.

LTE on American Exceptionalism

Below is a letter to the editor that I sent to our local paper.  The paper has not published the letter, so I thought I would put it up here.  The letter was written shortly after the Republican convention.

I am quite concerned about the new Republican buzzword, “American Exceptionalism”.  I have what is considered a serious mental illness and have been greatly helped by practicing the method of Recovery International.  One of the insights of Dr. Low, the creator of the method, is that just about all of us are in the average spectrum of humans, but we all believe we are the smartest, most sensitive person out there.  Much of human conflict can be ascribed to one person’s sense of self-importance bumping up against another person’s sense of self-importance.

I think that the insight applies to countries as well.  Many of the citizens of every country feel like their country is the best country out there, that their lifestyle is the best.  I suspect that much conflict occurs because one country’s sense of self-importance bumps against another country’s sense of self-importance.  Granted, wars over resources occur also.

I see the Republicans trying to push the buzzword of the second half of the 20th century, anti-communism, communism being the far end of leftism.  The 20th century showed us what happens when a country goes too far to the left (3  million dead in Russia, killed by Stalin’s communist government) or too far to the right (over 6 million killed by Hitler’s German fascist government). Our country needs both the left and the right for balance.   

“American Exceptionalism” is on the fascist side of the spectrum from left to right. Hitler came to power in Germany telling the German people he would restore Germany to Germany’s rightful, superior, place.  Other tactics of the Republicans this election hark back to the rise of fascism.  The Republicans’ willingness to put outright lies and distortions at the center of their political advertising indicates to me that the Republican’s are following one of the techniques of Nazi Germany – tell a lie big enough and often enough and people will believe the lie.

We are not in the desperate state that Germany was in after World War I, but I am disturbed by the message of the Republicans.  The Republicans are not politically naive, I suspect they are deliberately, consciously following fascist techniques. Personally, I see us as a good average country in the community of countries, with a special talent for leadership. 

Link to article on US Wealth, Income, and Taxes

In this blog post, I am just providing a link to an article, Wealth, Income, and Power, by G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz.  The article provides an historical perspective on wealth and income distributions in the United States as well as giving information on the proportion of income paid in taxes by income classes.  While those with the lowest incomes in the United States do not pay much in federal taxes, the group pays quite a bit in state and local taxes.  From a graphic in the article linked below, the lowest 20% in income pay about 16% of their income in taxes – mostly state and local – about 1/4 of the class’s taxes are federal taxes, the next 20% income class (20% to 40%) pays about 20%, of its income in taxes, the next 20% income class (40% to 60%) pays about 25% of its income in taxes, the next 20% income class (60% to 80%) pays about 28% of its income in taxes, and the highest 20% income class (80% to 100%) pays about 31% of its income in taxes – about 2/3 of which is federal taxes.  The proportion of  income paid in federal taxes increases with each of the income classes as income increases.  Here is the link.  Enjoy!!!

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Money: 6

First, I will write about the three things that money does, which are: (1) acts as a medium for exchange, (2) stores value, (3) provides a metric for exchanges.  The first function of money combined with the third function of money provides people with a way to buy and sell and to have a sense of the value of the exchange in the process.  The second function of money gives a way of saving the value of a sale, to be used in future exchanges.

With regard to money as a medium of exchange, I would think that the ease with which a person can use money to buy things which the person values and can afford and the ease with which a person can receive compensation for labor or goods, greases the wheels of an economy.  With regard to money as a store of value, money is not a good store of value over time unless sufficient interest is paid on the money over time.  Because our economy has had persistent inflation over many years, the value in terms of buying power of a given quantity of money stored in earlier years has been less in the present than when first stored.  With regard to money as a metric for exchanges (a unit of account),  money measures value.  Because of inflation, the measure is not constant over time, but, at any given time, money measures the value of an exchange.

Next, I will write a little on to the neutrality of money.  According to my introductory economics book, early theorists in economics thought that money was neutral.  That is, if the money supply expanded, the expansion would not affect the quantity of goods produced, but would increase the prices of all goods by the same proportion, until all of the excess money was absorbed.  I believe that we now know that changing the money supply affects the economy.  I think that we have found that increasing the supply of money of money increases economic activity, which produces growth.  Certainly, the population is growing, so the money supply would need to grow just to stay even.  Also, the goods and services available for sale are always changing, so neutrality of money does not make sense with respect to a constant set of goods available.

Last, I will write a little on the velocity of money.  The velocity of money is a measure of economic activity (for example, the Gross Domestic Product) divided by a measure of the money supply (for example, M1).  The velocity of money is the number of time the money turns over within the economy within a time period.  In a day, say I buy some juice, the grocery store pays my friend, partly with the money that I spent at the store.  My friend buys some socks.  The money I spent on the juice has been spent three times during the day.  So the economic activity depends on both the money supply and the velocity of money.  If the velocity of money is higher, not as much of a money supply is needed for the same amount of economic activity.  See the Wikipedia entry, Velocity of Money, for a more complete explanation.