Market Rate Rigging - Uranus Pluto on cue

Right on cue of the first exact Uranus square Pluto came the LIBOR rigging scandal at Barclays Bank in the UK which is likely to have longer term consequences. They were fined £290 million ($450 million USD) for lying about the market rate they were paying. This was according to the report "systematic dishonesty" going on for years and has shaken even the City of London to its core. Seemingly only the tip of the iceberg there will be more cases involving other financial institutions to follow. Too big to fail also seems to go hand in hand with too big to stick to the rules.

The 2008 crash as Pluto moved into Capricorn didn’t actually fix anything. It just nationalised banks’ bad debts and handed them over to taxpayers in sovereign debt. And life in the high-finance casinos went on as before.

It remains to be seen if the explosive Uranus square Pluto rolling for the next three years is going to make much of a dent in this particular status quo. Pluto, symbol of entrenched power, has a bad habit of rolling with the punches, re-establishing itself on its axis and ploughing on regardless.

Barclays Bank 20 July 1896 chart has a Fixed Saturn Uranus in Scorpio opposition Mars square Jupiter opposition North Node. Exceedingly stubborn, enduring, not compassionate, bit of a hustler. With Pluto 135 degrees from the Sun and inconjunct Saturn – so controlling, not good at adapting. There is a disruptive Solar Arc Uranus square Pluto this year and a scarily, stuck tr Pluto trine Mars come 2014. So the astrology is certainly on cue as the CEO American financier Bob Diamond was forced to fall on his sword and resign.

He was born 27 July 1951 and is a flamboyant Sun Leo with a power-packed and aggressive Mars Uranus in Cancer on the point of a T Square to a high-finance Jupiter in Aries opposition Neptune.

The UK Serious Fraud Office are now looking at pursuing a criminal investigation as accusations fly hither and thither dragging top level politicians and the Bank of England into the scandal.

Uranus square Pluto knows how to pack a punch or two. With Pluto in Capricorn this was always going to be a time when the shadow side of governments would be hauled mercilessly out in the open. There will be more to come with the USA perhaps lagging a year or so behind the UK with a marginally later degree Sun.