Cardinal collapse: regulators close Silicon Valley Bank
Only hours ago, the FDIC – a body responsible for insuring deposits in US banks to undergird public confidence in the banking system – announced closure of Silicon Valley Bank, the venture capitalist bank of choice for tech start-ups.
The long and short of it: the businesses that SVB funded have been hit hard by the tech stock crunch, inflation, and an economic forecast without much upside.
SVB announced earlier in the week that it needed to raise $2.3B in stock. To contextualize the size of that ask, Silicon Valley Bank's market cap was $6.3B. The need to increase market cap by a third within a compressed timeline sent a negative shockwave out to investors, and customers of the bank flocked to withdraw their funds, anticipating the bank's imminent collapse. (This isn't so different from what happened to Bear Stearns' 2008 financial collapse.)
The bank's share price closed Wednesday at $267/share; when the market opened on Thursday, the stock was trading at $165/share – a 40% devaluation overnight.
The chart above shows the astrology of the markets opening on Thursday. I'd like to draw the reader's attention to the sharp opposition of the Moon (12° Libra) and Jupiter (13° Aries) which precipitated the stock drop. The cardinal signs are known for the swiftness with which they dispense their significations.
The Moon opposes Jupiter once a month – why this opposition? Why was SVB so vulnerable to this particular aspect?
The long form answer to this includes analysis on market trends that we'll bypass – SVB isn't the only financial institution vulnerable to collapse. But these degrees are highly sensitive to SVB because of the leader at the helm: CEO Greg Becker, who stepped into his role as CEO of the startup-favored bank on April 21, 2011.
NB: I was unable to find birth details on Greg Becker – not even a birth date – so we will focus only on mundane astrology in what follows.
Left: the Aries ingress for 2011, centered on SVB's headquarters which are located in Santa Clara, CA (USA). Right: the lunation prior to Becker's ascension.
The 2011 Aries ingress features a rather dramatic opposition between the two superior planets, Jupiter at 12° Aries and Saturn at 14° Libra, retrograde. The opposition brings themes of expansion (Jupiter) and consolidation (Saturn) into direct conflict, with Jupiter ruling the 8th house of loss and Saturn governing the hostile 7th cusp. I'm also particularly interested in the Moon's opposition to Mercury, an aspect known to bring problems with agreements, contracts, communication, and rumors.
Becker would accede to the CEO position a few weeks later. The lunation preceding this accession is a full Moon splayed across the ascendant/descendant axis, all but guaranteeing high drama and visibility to new leaders ascending under the auspices of that full Moon. Mars and Mercury had come into conjunction around 12° Aries, in opposition to Saturn at 12° Libra (still retrograde).
Compare these charts with the astrology of the market drop. The Sun at the market drop was at 18° Pisces, on the 2011 Aries ingress's 8th cusp. Transiting Mars, now at 22° Gemini, conjoins the position of the South Node (25° Gemini) at the time of Becker's promotion.
But most important – the Moon/Jupiter opposition of the current crisis calls back the Jupiter/Saturn opposition of the 2011 Aries ingress, and Saturn's opposition to a conjunction of Mars and Mercury (retrograde) in the preceding lunation chart. The influence of the cardinal signs Aries and Libra helps explain why this particular collapse happened with such dramatic speed.
Have a look at the Aries and Capricorn ingresses of 2022:
Left: 2022 Aries ingress, centered on Washington, D.C., the headquarters of the FDIC. Right: 2022 Capricorn ingress, centered on Santa Clara, CA (USA), demonstrating the prominence of the Moon/Mars opposition on financial houses.
The Aries ingress has 25° Gemini on the ascendant (South Node of Becker's ascension; current transit of Mars), and the Moon at 29° Libra (degree of lunation preceding Becker's ascension). The Capricorn ingress has a very tight Moon/Mars opposition in early Sagittarius/Gemini – when this ingress is centered for Santa Clara, these fall almost exactly upon the cusps of the 2nd and 8th houses.
As I was preparing this article, news broke that the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed Silicon Valley Bank and temporarily halted all withdrawals from the now-defunct institution. The FDIC was named as administrator of the regulatory closure.
Note in this chart how Jupiter at 13° Aries rises, at once connecting main themes:
- the Moon/Jupiter opposition of the market tumble;
- the Jupiter/Saturn opposition of the 2011 Aries ingress preceding Becker's rise to CEO; and,
- Saturn's opposition to the Mercury/Mars conjunction preceding Becker's rise to CEO.
The full Moon itself falls at 16° Virgo, or the 2nd/8th cusps of the 2011 Aries ingress. I'll be particularly interested in the full Moon of April 6 and what news comes of this collapse in the two-week period following that lunation. The Sun will be at 16° Aries, the Moon at 16° Libra, and in Santa Clara, the 2nd/8th axis (8° Sagittarius/Gemini) will contain the Moon/Mars opposition featured in the 2022 Capricorn ingress. This story is, regrettably, far from over.
