It seems that the punchline gag that Violet Towne came up with for my recent comment on the stock market catastrophe is more on the money (heh) than we’d anticipated.
Apparently, the current financial problems besetting the global economy are not the fault of contemptible grasping money-traders at all, but were in fact inevitable, because they were written in the stars! At least that’s what Raj Kumar Sharma, an ‘astro-finance specialist’ in Mumbai is telling everybody, according to this morning’s Melbourne Age. Spouting incomprehensible drivel about Saturn and the Sun ‘not getting along’ and invoking the influence of the ‘shadow’ planet ‘Ketu’ which doesn’t even exist, Sharma attributes the Lehman brothers collapse and the beginning of the fiscal disaster to Saturn and Ketu ‘fighting like dragons’.
Using impenetrable logic, he rationalizes the effects of distant astronomical bodies on our fortunes thus:
“You cannot avoid the coolness of the moon or the heat of the sun. And if you cannot avoid heat and cold, you cannot avoid the influence of Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury or Venus.”
No wonder there’s an economic fiasco taking place if people are using this kind of hooey to guide their investment strategies.
Elsewhere in India, astrologer Christopher Kevill, who writes a financial astrology column for India’s Daily News and Analysis, agrees with Sharma that movements of remote astronomical bodies predicted the fiscal turbulence. Invoking the influence of ‘Rahu’ (another entirely fictional planet) and its ‘150 degree relationship to Saturn’ as the cause of the market calamity, he condescendingly prevaricates with the qualification that:“It’s a lot more complicated than that but that’s one layer of explanation.”
The really amusing thing is that anybody at all in India lost money on the markets with these incisive augurs on the scene.
So, what do they see for the resolution of all this kerfuffle, then? What should we do with our money? According to Sharma, Venus is entering Libra, and that means stability and recovery, so all is dandy. Kevill, on the other hand, says the rallies will fizzle quickly with the markets slumping at 50 percent lower than current levels by 2010. Both of them agree that the turmoil will continue for some years.
Let me simplify – that’s a safe guess for the short term with a bet each way for the outcome.
My advice for the your pecuniary future? Invest in the exploitation of gullible chumps. That’s an industry that’s never going to tank.
