ISBA Newsletter April 2002

This is the index for this extended April newsletter. We have a lot of news!
1) Quiz - Amanda Williams
2) Member's Corner
3) News from the ISBA Research Committee - Maarit Laurento
4) News on Enron from Harald Seeberger
5) Changes to the ISBA web site
6) Data from members
7) Kepler College
8) Board Election - Europe
9) Visit the ISBA web discussion forum
10) Skeptics
11) Verdict - Henry Weingarten
1) Astrology Quiz
Our member Amanda Williams has submitted a very interesting quiz - with prizes!!! Great initiative, Amanda - thank you very much. We encourage all ISBA members to have a go at this quiz. Answers are to be sent to both of the following e-mail addresses: Amanda Williams: marzany@hotmail.com, ISBA: info@businessastrologers.com
Competition Background
1. Identify the company
a) Clue: Incorporation of dormant legal entity- March 1989
b) Exact moment of the management buyout of the group
17 July 1991 , 11. 32pm, Hong Kong - (Note : HK is 8 hours in front of GMT chart should have 15 degrees Aries rising, moon 12 degrees Libra). The senior management were the shareholders from this moment. The founder/chairman owned about 10%, the other managers the remainder.
c) Sale of group to a French public company based in Paris - a date to identified as part of the quiz.
Note for question 4: the progressed relocated chart as of Feb 2002 Paris has 4 degrees Sagittarius rising.
d) Spring 2002 - Resale of group to investment firm, with management owning only about 10%.
2. Astrological analysis
Answering the questions will require looking at the natal chart,
progressions and transits. Other techniques can be used but are not essential to the solutions.
Conditions for winning
I) Predicative accuracy prize
The person with the closest correct answers to questions 1-5 wins $100.
Brief astrological reasoning must be given for each answer, but assessment of the winner will be based only on the answers themselves. Answers should not need to be more than 1 paragraph each.
II) Creative interpretation prize
A second $100 will be awarded to the person who gives the best
astrologically reasoned answer to questions 6 and 7, even if the answers are not correct. Answers should not be more than a couple of paragraphs each.
III. Competition entries and closing date. Entries should be sent by e-mail to marzany@hotmail.com by 20 May 2002.
IV. Notification of winners and payment of prizes
The answers, together with the winners and runners up will be published in the June Newsletter. Prizes will be paid in US$. Winners may receive prizes by check or bank transfer and will be asked for any necessary details after they are chosen.
Quiz:
Part I
1. a) Based on the 1991 natal chart - what was the biggest concern in the first few years of operation?
b) What is the biggest difference between the conditions of the 1991 buyout and the current sale in 2002 that makes for an easier situation now?
2. In which month and year was the group sold to the French company?
3. In which month and year did the management /shareholders receive their money from the French company (tip - it was not the same month as the sale)?
4. a)What was the theme of the company logo before sale (!)and
b)what did it change to post sale (!)
5. What has been happening within the group over the period 1999-2002?
Part II
6. What is the business of the group?
7. Briefly describe the character of the founder/chairman and the current CEO, including what you think would be their sun/moon/ascendant.

2) Members Corner
We welcomed six new members in March, and one of these is another joint membership! Please welcome: Babar Ali, a professional member from Pakistan; Bhaskar Das, a professional member from India; Benny Jorgensen & Anne Topp, supporting members from Denmark; Rich King, an associate member from the US; Eric Perez, a supporting member from France, and David A. Williams, a media member from Denmark!
As I looked over the membership list, it wondered exactly how many countries we all represent. The total is twenty-six. I'm listing them so you can see how diversified ISBA really is:
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Columbia
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Greenland
India
Latvia
Malaysia
Netherlands
Norway
Pakistan
Russia
South Africa
Switzerland
Thailand
Trinidad
UAE
UK
USA
Uruguay
The explosive transits we're experiencing right now don't seem to have affected astrologers who want to know more about business astrology. We continue to receive if anything, more inquiries than we did a year ago!
In Oneness,
Barbara May
3) News from the ISBA Research Committee - from Chairwoman Maarit Laurento
There is an interesting news from EU that states that 52,7% EU citizens thinks that astrology is a science. The reference is here tp://europa.eu.int/comm/research/press/2001/pr0612en-report.pdf, especially pages 18-19. Have a look. They also state that the belief that astrology is a science diminishes with age, but anyway, we still see a majority regarding astrology as a serious enterprise.
Astrology and science 2000
Astrology has had a tremendous new approach towards science during this century. Here you find some useful links to the subject.
Kepler College, idea first announced 1991, founded 2000. MA and BA in astrology, officially. http://www.keplercollege.org/index.html
The Research Group for the Critical Study of Astrology (RGCSA). New academic project addressed to study astrology.
http://www.astrology-research.net/
Sophia-project. Project addressed to advance the scholarly study of astrology and cultural astronomy in British institutions of higher education. http://www.sophia-project.org.uk/
Astrology and science. PhD Patrice Guinard's page on astrology and science. Guinard's doctoral dissertation on astrology is dated 1993. http://cura.free.fr/cura-en.html
A must-have book for every professional astrologer:
Garry Phillipson
Astrology in the Year Zero (2000)
4) News on Enron from Harald Seeberger
On http://www.stariq.com/Main/Articles/P0003361.HTM, Fred Singh wrote an article about Enron, using an Incorporation Date of June 16, 1947, 9:15 am CST, in Houston, Texas*
For six years running, it was voted Most Innovative among Fortune magazine's Most Admired Companies. Enron operated
under the belief that it could commoditize and monetize anything, from electrons to advertising space. By the end of
the decade, Enron, which had once made its money from hard assets like pipelines, generated more than 80% of its earnings
from a vaguer business known as "wholesale energy operations and services."
From 1998 to 2000, Enron's revenues shot from $31 billion to more than $100 billion, making it the seventh largest company on the Fortune 500. And in early 2000, just as broadband was becoming a buzzword worth billions in market value, Enron announced plans to trade that too. Then, the company went down as the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. corporate history.
Company Fundamentals
Enron was incorporated on the June 16, 1947, 9:15 am CST, in Houston, Texas* with a Saturn and Pluto conjunct its Leo Ascendant. It is apt for a company that metamorphosed its identity from a gas trader to a gigantic network of energy outsourcing and distribution network, to have a Gemini Sun and Taurus Moon. Pluto rising also meant that its identity underwent many fateful mergers and transformations over the years.
The Fixed T-square between a Moon-Mars conjunction, the Saturn-Pluto conjunction and Jupiter gives us the blueprint of Enron's staggering rise and meteoric fall. Fixed T-squares often suggest astute business capability and organizational expertise. In cardinal Tenth and Fourth Houses, the combination suggests a financially clever and ambitious organization. Jupiter in Scorpio can be a very shrewd and materialistic placement for a
company. No wonder there were financial irregularities involved in the saga of Enron's debacle. The T-square gives the three aspects to the story-mergers, expansion and ambition.
Enron's Consolidation and Innovation
Jim Alexander, the former CFO of Enron Global Power & Pipelines, which was spun off in 1994, says about the company, "The common theme is hubris, an overweening pride, which led people to believe they can handle increasingly exotic risk without danger."
A classic case of overestimation of self-worth (Sun-Uranus conjunction in Eleventh House), unfettered arrogance and pride (Jupiter-Pluto square) is vested in the Enron saga. Enron's ambition was driven by its new technology systems and versatile operations, both characterized by the Sun-Uranus combination. Pluto's transit through Scorpio from 1984 to 1998 marked a
period of unrivaled expansion and innovation for the company. This is peculiar, as in Enron's case the Fourth House is important not only from the point of view of Jupiter's magnanimous and rather shrewd presence, but also the opposition to the powerful combination of Moon-Mars in the Tenth and quincunx to the innovative Sun-Uranus combination in the Eleventh Houses. This promises an ambitious but rather irreverential (inconjunct) growth, driven by cutting-edge technology signified by the Eleventh.
Expansive Jupiter transited Enron's Ninth House from summer of 1998 to 2000, kicking off a prosperous and ambitious phase of overseas exploration, energy exports, telecommunications business and major thrust fueled by inflationary energy prices.
Power Crisis and Accounting Misdemeanors
Enron's huge investments in international pipelines and plants reaching from India to Brazil during 1999-00 and over-optimistic financial allocations reduced its profits drastically beginning near the end of 2000. This period is very crucial. Uranus hit 10 degrees of Aquarius to form an opposition
with the Saturn-Pluto conjunction on the Ascendant. Along with earnings uncertainties came a more potent crisis. The partnerships, in which Enron had invested its capital, began to default on debt repayments and dues, a fact amply suggested by transiting Uranus in the Seventh House of partnerships and obligations.
Accounting and auditing were being manipulated bringing into stark revelation the importance of the Saturn-Pluto Leo presence in the Twelfth House of deceptions, deceit and secret machinations. The impact was to be stunning.
The Final Collapse
Enron's now infamous October 16 2001, press release-the one that really marked the beginning of the end-announced a $618
million loss, but failed to mention that it had written down shareholders' equity by a stunning $1.2 billion and Moody's
was considering a downgrade of Enron's debt. On that day, the Moon and Uranus sitting on the Seventh House cusp made
a final aspect to Jupiter and Pluto.
Incidentally, the catastrophe was building up when transiting Pluto and Saturn made a perfect opposition across the 13 degrees Sagittarius-Gemini axis, on the cusp of Enron's Fifth-Eleventh Houses. This aspect suggests revelation, restructuring and reformation. Pluto in the Fifth House with major oppositions can be a destroyer of all that is impure and improper.
By November 28 2001, with Uranus and Neptune present in the natal Seventh, the Dynergy deal ended. On that day Standard & Poor's downgraded Enron's debt below investment grade, triggering the immediate repayment of almost $4 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, which Enron couldn't pay. The collapse
was complete.
The Phoenix Restructures Itself
Despite being overwhelmingly humbled, the Goliath seems to be alive and kicking. As Saturn proceeds on its unshakable
journey towards Sun-Uranus combination of transparency and idealism, and Pluto keeps a silent watch from the Fifth House,
characterized by business restructuring, Jupiter will move on the Saturn-Pluto combination in February 2003. That's the
period when the negative will be behind the corporation and revitalization will start. We can expect a fighting comeback by
Enron by June 2003 as a sunny Jupiter in Leo moves into Enron's First House. We definitely haven't seen the last of the
phenomenon called Enron.
*Enron was formerly known as Lone Star Trading Company until October 1975. Later, it changed its name to Houston Gas
Company, which merged with InterNorth, an Omaha based company in July 1985, finally christening the entity Enron corporation. The date of incorporation of the original entity is of paramount importance as it lay the foundation for its future
exploits.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fred Singh is an astrologer based in Mumbai, India. He is a business graduate who has been an astrology consultant for five years. He works through a system of innovations engineered by him and also through conventional modes of analysis. He has written extensively in magazines and newspapers about the theoretical and practical relevance of Western Astrology over other existing forms. He has a book on his radical theories
and analyses in the pipeline.
5) Changes to the ISBA web site
We sometimes receive e-mails from members and visitors to our web site, who have tried to contact the astrologers listed. In a number of cases, the information regarding our members has not been updated, and attempts at contact have been unsuccessful.
Please check that your data is updated. If you have changes, please send them to our web master Michael Lund Hansen:
mlh@mail.dk Thank you!
6) Data from members
As you, hopefully, have noticed, we have industriously updated our list of company astrological data, which is on the web site in the member's area. We strive to constantly expand this database, which is why we ask all members to mail us any company data in your possession - eg. Company foundaing data, data regarding introduction on stock exchanges - or anything
else you think might be of interest to your fellow ISBA members. Thank you!
7) Kepler College
This year, Kepler College will again hold their auction which takes place over approx. 3 weeks. You can follow the auction on this address: www.kepler.edu/giving/online_auction.html We hope that may astrologers will participate - if for nothing else, then out of an idealistic spirit! ISBA has donated the following for the auction:
1) Complete participation in our November Congress in London.
2) 1 copy of all previous lectures (as listed on the web site) on
videotapes.
3) 3-year membership of ISBA. Professional, associate or supporting membership, depending on the winner.
8) Board Election - Europe
We would like to welcome the two new Europaen ISBA board members to a 2-year seat on the board:
Marit Laurento - Finland
Han van Straaten - The Netherlands
We look forward to cooperating further with you.
9) Visit the ISBA web discussion forum:
There are several interesting comments in our discussion forum, made by among other, Paul Nipperess, Australia and Harald Seeberger, Switzerland. Take a look!
10) Skeptics
In the beginning of March Karen was invited to give a lecture in the International Business Club here in Copenhagen. The lecture was to take place in the business school Niels Brock. The audience was comprised of international business professionals and ambassadors. This so enraged our local skeptics with Mogens Winther in the front line ( he works closely with our new honorary member, James Randi.) that he contacted the Niels Brock teacher association - one teacher was to give a lecture at the same event - and also sent a press release to the Danish media. The result was that journalists attended the lecture and business astrology received remarkably positive coverage - double spreads, beautiful pictures, charts etc. The skeptics were not even mentioned. Instead the media chose to
interview one of Karen's satisfied clients. Thank you very much, Mogens! We'reidering offering the man the post as our personal public elations agent. Our experience is increasingly that no one markets astrology as effectively as the so-called skeptics!
11) Verdict from the SEC - Henry Weingarten

Dateline: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 8:38 PM
Subject: Stockwatch Street Wire: SEC fines, cites Durante´s
astrologer-tout Weingarten stox.com Inc

Street Wire SEC fines, cites Durante´s astrologer-tout Weingarten stox.com Inc. URL Shares issued 14,451,381 Oct 10 close $0.02 Fri 22 Mar 2002 Street Wire
See Securities and Exchange Commission (U:*SEC) Street Wire
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has imposed a $15,000 fine and a public censure on Henry Weingarten, a high-profile Wall Street market astrologer with a strong knack for touting stocks of notorious Mafia-linked career fraudster Edward Durante, and other non-Durante
How a Street penny stock promotions. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.)
In a settlement order this week, the SEC censured Mr. Weingarten, 54, of New York, and ordered him to mail a copy of the regulator´s detailed citation against him to all his existing investment advisory clients and new clients within the next year. The consent settlement entered in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, also orders Mr.
Weingarten to do his best to avoid future securities violations.
The order settles the SEC´s prosecution against Mr. Weingarten in the U.N. Dollars case, one of Mr. Durante´s promotions. The commission filed its U.N. Dollars complaint on Oct. 11, targeting Mr. Durante as its lead defendant, and Exchange Bank as its lead relief defendant. Most of Mr
Durante´s ill-gotten proceeds have been held by authorities since the British Columbia Securities Commission froze the $18-million prime account of EBT, the Nevis and Nauru-originated offshore brass plate bank headed by Itex Corp. fraud mastermind Terry Neal. The EBT account, at the main downtown Vancouver branch of Bank of Montreal, appears to be a prime money laundering account for stock market crooks and securities regulators, serving as a conduit for millions of
dollars from accounts at six Vancouver brokerages, mainly Union Securities. Union broker Trevor Koenig, jailed since Labour Day, pleaded guilty in New York recently in another Durante case, WAMEX Holdings, and awaits sentencing.
(Although Mr. Koenig handled much of Mr. Durante´s manipulative U.N. Dollars trading through offshore accounts, he was not named as a defendant in this prosecution.) The SEC´s prosecution of Mr. Weingarten focuses only on his activities touting U.N. Dollars and not on his promotions of several
other Durante deals, including WAMEX and bsolutefuture.com, or such non-Durante Howe Street promos as Roger Abou-Rached´s International Hi Tech Industries, now insolvent stox.com Inc. and Doug Mason´s Clearly Canadian Beverage. Mr. Weingarten, who owns and operates Astrologers Fund Inc., its
tout site Afund.com and its subscriber newsletter Wall Street Next Week, is not your average stock picker. According to his promotional bumpf, he not only called just about every big market move in recent years, but just about every other big world event as well. "He also called the Tokyo Market
Crash, U.S. Mideast War, the failure of the Russian Coup ... the decline of the Euro after its 1999 birth and its reversal May 2000, his discovery of IHI (International Hi Tech), etc. etc., etc."
Mr. Weingarten, who claims to have been a professional astrologer for more than 33 years, apparently gets much of his inspiration picking stocks, including Mr. Durante´s garbage penny stocks, from casting his eyes to the skies, charting the alignment of the planets and looking quite closely at Uranus. In its civil case, the SEC notes Mr. Weingarten was recruited
by Mr. Durante, whose lengthy criminal and regulatory record dates back to a 1975 conviction for felony grand larceny, in December, 1999, to tout U.N. Dollars. (Mr. Durante, using the alias Ed Simmons, approached the astrologer through Carib Securities, the Mafia-linked fraudster´s promotional company in the secretive offshore enclave of the Turks and Caicos Islands.) The Jan. 12, 2000, contract called for Mr. Weingarten to provide "financial astrological services" and to include a banner ad for U.N. Dollars on his Afund.com Web site. That same day, Mr. Weingarten received 250,000 shares
of U.N. Dollars in his personal brokerage account by electronic transfer from an account controlled by Mr. Durante.
Besides touting the stock and forgetting to tell subscribers about his 250,000-share payola, Mr. Weingarten also stuffed investment advisory accounts of seven clients with modest amounts of U.N. Dollars shares, buying a total of 253,000 shares for $75,000. Although Mr. Weingarten disclosed on his Web site that U.N. Dollars was a client, he gave no details and never revealed to his advisory clients his conflict of interest. On Jan. 17, five days after his payoff, Mr. Weingarten profiled U.N. Dollars in his Astrologers Fund newsletter under
the headline, "Will UNDR become a new age JP Morgan?" (Mr. Weingarten claims that even the legendary J.P. Morgan
used an astrologer for market advice.) Mr. Weingarten wrote that he was doing due diligence on U.N. Dollars, but he already had a $1 price target on the stock, which had closed at four U.S. cents the previous day. A few days after touting U.N. Dollars to his subscribers, Mr. Weingarten posted the content to his free Web site. On Feb. 25, 2000, when the stock had hit $1, Mr. Weingarten raised his target price to $4.
Mr. Durante´s dirty promotion was short-lived, as the SEC moved quickly. On March 13, 2000, the SEC abruptly imposed a 10-day trading suspension pending clarification of numerous details, including "possible artificial manipulation of the market." The day before the halt, U.N. Dollars shares closed at $1.31. The stock plunged when it was kicked off the OTC Bulletin Board to the pink sheets after the suspension was lifted. With the promotion shut down in the early stages, Mr. Durante made a paltry profit of just $93,000 on U.N. Dollars.
A month later, the SEC stumbled on the EBT account at Bank of Montreal in Vancouver when it was chasing wire transfers of an unrelated tout, Stephen Sayre of eConnect. Mr. Durante later emerged as the key client of EBT. "He (Durante) transferred approximately $19.6-million from accounts he controlled at Union Securities to an account maintained in EBT´s name at
Bank of Montreal in Vancouver, British Columbia. These are the proceeds of illegal market manipulation of the securities of UNDR and several other public companies," stated the SEC in its complaint. Mr. Weingarten repeatedly touted Mr. Durante´s promotions, including WAMEX (WAMEX was exposed in June, 2000, when the SEC suspended trading amid the FBI´s biggest raid on Mafia-linked market players. WAMEX´s top two executives were among the more than 100 alleged penny stock
crooks arrested.) The astrologer´s touting included responding to set-up questions from purported readers. "I plan to buy some WAMX. Could you inform me more about their fundamentals and financial position, e.g. what is their cash position, what about their management, do they have people like Stox in charge with lots of experience and when are they about to launch their system and who will be their prospective business.

Will you do astro analysis on WAMEX?" asked one reader in a Feb. 1 Internet edition. Mr. Weingarten gave a bullish response. "We do astrological analysis on ALL our client companies as part of our due diligence. However, in such
insane, fast, manic markets, we often take starter positions on
fundamentals, technicals or gut instinct alone. In the meantime, we will be posting the astrological data for WAMX and UNDR with more to follow so readers with more free time than I have can do their own financial astrological analysis."
In another upbeat banter that day, stox.com was given the tout target. (The now worthless Canadian Venture Exchange stock was then trading at $9 (Canadian), or about $5.50.) "Do you think it is appropriate to buy STOX (V.URL) today at its
current price level? (I see it) as a high risk investment with a potential far more than a double. (I believe) if we value Stox with possible competitors, they should trade not at 12, but between 20-30," stated a purported reader. "You are giving my 2001 price target. If you are asking if STOX is a better value at 12 than their sector competitors, the answer is most definitely . If you are asking CAN they trade to 20-30 this year, the answer is also YES. ... Without question, I would personally much rather buy and hold shares of Stox.com than an equivalent amount of almost all the big name dot.coms -- AOL, Yahoo, Amazon etc.," replied Mr. Weingarten.
In a subsequent posting a month later, in early March, 2000, Mr. Weingarten stated, "I was delighted that our client WAMEX (WAMX) announced a 4-1 split last week and ended the week up 387%+ since January 1."
Two weeks later, on March 16, 2000, Mr. Weingarten was boosting another Durante promotion, Absolutefuture.com (symbol AFTI.) Mr. Weingarten´s kennel of dogs soon collapsed, evidenced by a June 9, 2000, posting, just before the FBI raid on Mr. Durante´s operation and other Mafia-linked penny stock networks. "Looks like AFTI, LDW, UNDR, CELN and Stox have all been creamed. When I asked last time, you said you would have info on your site, but I see none ... I´ve really taken a hit," stated an unhappy reader.
While stox.com was unrelated, collapsing amid its own debacle,
Mr. Durante´s stable of Absolutefuture, U.N. Dollars, WAMEX and others was imploding. The final shoe fell on Oct. 26, 2001, when London-based penny stock promoter Graham Andrews abruptly resigned as president of Consolidated Fortress Resources, a CDNX promotion. A few weeks earlier,
Mr. Andrews was named in one of the SEC´s Durante prosecutions and a sealed criminal complaint. (c) Copyright 2002 Canjex Publishing Ltd. http://www.stockwatch.com
Best regards
Karen & Hannah

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