American politics is starting to get interesting. Barack Obama has been in office for over a year, and the wave of euphoria that won him the election has dissipated. People are now thinking ahead to the 2012 Presidential election. Will Obama win a second term? Will he want a second term? If he neither stands nor wins in 2012, who is going to replace him?

To answer some of these questions, we can turn to star sign astrology. We can look at the star signs of the forty-three US Presidents, and see whether some are more frequent than others. We can also explore the controversial issue of whether one can tell a good President from their star sign.

As far as frequency is concerned, the average amount of Presidents per sign is just over three and a half. We therefore have three levels of frequency: low, average and high. Having looked at the counts for each sign, the range is between two and five Presidents. So there have been four Leo Presidents, namely Benjamin Harrison, Herbert Hoover, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Low frequency signs are where only two US Presidents had the sign. Average frequency is three or four; high frequency is five.

The low frequency signs are Aries, Gemini and Virgo. It’s perhaps not surprising that so few Aries people have made it to the White House – the last Aries President was John Tyler, who was in office from 1841 to 1845. To succeed in politics you need to compromise, and Aries politicians can be too assertive for their own good.

However to get to the top of their profession politicians need to have a high degree of self-belief and too much doubting can be very destructive. This is perhaps why there have been so few Gemini or Virgo Presidents. These two signs are ruled by Mercury, and this planet is very much associated with thinking and analysing. And sometimes Mercury analyses things too much, to the extent where it has second thoughts about everything.

The average frequency signs are Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius, Capricorn and Pisces. The high frequency signs are Scorpio and Aquarius.

Scorpios can be effective politicians because they have a powerful intuition, and they tend to have a natural understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their enemies. At the same time they have strong desires, and they don’t allow anything to get in their way. Having said that, there hasn’t been a Scorpio President for some time – the last Scorpio in the White House was Warren Harding, who was President from 1921 to 1923.

Yet in recent years two Scorpios have got reasonably close to the White House. Scorpio Michael Dukakis was beaten by Gemini George Bush Senior in the 1988 Presidential election. Twenty years later Scorpio Hillary Clinton was thwarted by Leo Barack Obama in a heated race for the Democrat nomination.

I would guess that Aquarians are successful in politics because they’re independent-minded. This can very often be a disadvantage, but there are times in history when the voters are looking for something different and perhaps revolutionary. I now come to the question of which sign makes the best Presidents, and arguably the answer is Aquarius. Abraham Lincoln, who ended slavery, and who led the Union to victory during the Civil War, was an Aquarian.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who brought America out of the Great Depression, and who led the country during the Second World War, was also an Aquarian. Then there’s Aquarian Ronald Reagan. Personally I don’t regard him as being a great President, but there’s no denying that he stood up for America’s interests and played a big role in defeating Communism. I should make it clear, though, that I’m judging success in terms of the wider collective. On an individual level the success of Aquarian Presidents is usually incomplete, because they seldom get to enjoy a happy retirement.

Of the five Aquarian Presidents, four died in office. Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a stroke in 1945, William McKinley was assassinated, and so was Abraham Lincoln. America’s first Aquarian president, William Harrison, caught a cold and died, shortly after his inauguration. This means that Ronald Reagan was the only Aquarian President to retire. Even then, he came within a whisker of being assassinated, when in 1981, during an assassination attempt, he was shot in the lung.

Let’s establish our time frame. I’m writing about which direction the stock market is going over the next two to five years. Is the value of the S&P 500 going to be greater than its current value of 1030.71? Is the value of the S&P Global 1200 going to be greater than its current value of 1168.01? Or in the next two to five years will their respective values be less?

We’ve just finished the second quarter of 2010. It has been the worst quarter since the fourth quarter of 2008. The S&P Global 1200 has dropped 13.22%. The S&P 500 has dropped by 11.86%.

Well that’s not as bad as the fourth quarter of 2008′s drop of 22.56%. The question is will the market continue to drop as it did into the first quarter of 2009 or will the market follow the route of the second, third, and fourth quarters 2009 with increases respectively of 15.22%, 14.98%, and 5.49%.

Those that are selling and staying on the sidelines in low returning investments like short term bonds, bank CDs, and money markets would argue the markets are going to go down further because of slowing economies, Europe, North America, and China.

Rising taxes, increased regulations, and lower government expenditures will cause the world economy to enter a third depression. This was the jest of an article by Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist and writes for the New York Times. I have great respect for Dr. Krugman.

His alarmist views presented in his op-ed piece in the New York Times page A14 on June 28, 2010 of the New York edition are not without basis. However the likelihood of his forecast of a third depression is small. The G20 does not operate in a vacuum. Even Republicans spend money to keep the economy going. I believe government expenditures rose during the last Republican administration of President George W. Bush.

Politicians are busy positioning themselves for the upcoming midterm elections. The Republicans are going to be the party of fiscal responsibility. They are going to paint the Democrats as the tax and spend party.

The Democrats are going to present themselves as the politicians of rational, responsibility. They are going to be the champions of the working citizen. They will paint the Republicans as the party that cuts taxes for the wealthy and reduces benefits for the working class.

Both parties will portray each other as evil and the Tea Partiers will rage against the wall.

After the elections congress will take a middle of the road approach to resolving the challenges facing our nation.

Hopefully our President will lead our Nation towards the better world he saw when he ran for election. Take the initiative Mr. President. Review those tapes of President Reagan and President Kennedy. We put you in the White House to lead us. Just do it.

The increased regulations after the crash of 1929 improved the transparency and reliability of information in our capital markets. The government projects during the depression improved our nation’s infrastructure. We receive paybacks to this day from those projects and other projects our tax dollars have been spent on. Our economy has benefited and our capital markets have grown.

Don’t fear what is coming. Participate in its creation. The power is with the people.

Government will do its best to protect our citizens and create open, fair commerce. That’s its function. If it fails it will be replaced.

As responsible citizens we should be vigilant and let our desires be known to our elected representatives. The vote counts if you use it. Only non-voters have non- impact.

Total government receipts as a portion of US GDP (Gross Domestic Product) have almost tripled over the last 80 years and the US GDP has grown. In fact during the last nine years (2000-2009) as government receipts shrank as a portion of GDP, US GDP has shrunk.

This would suggest that the government could increase its receipts and the economy would grow. Again if we look at the years 1929 through 1953, the growth in government receipts was the greatest and the economy grew. We fought the Great Depression, World War II, re-built Europe and Japan, and fought the Korean War. We paid for it.

I am not suggesting that increasing government receipts causes the economy to grow.

I would suggest that balanced government expenditures are good for the economy. It may be at certain levels of taxation the incentive to create more wealth would be destroyed. I would guess this level occurs when the government receipts exceed the income a person could earn. The level of disincentive is probably when taxes are approaching or greater than 50% of earnings.

What is the primary driver of increasing stock prices? Increasing stock prices cause a rise in stock market values. The primary driver is increasing earnings and the probability of future growth of those earnings. Earnings are the mother’s milk of stock prices.

Which way are earnings for the S&P 500 forecasted to go in 2010 and 2011? The answer is up. In fact in 2011, the earnings for the S&P 500 are forecasted to surpass their previous high achieved in 2007. The S&P 500 was 1530.44 at its high in 2007. If the S&P reaches the same high in the next 18 months, it will be a gain of 48.5%.

How much are you going to make in the next 18 months? Will it be greater than 48.5%? Will it have the potential of 48.5%? Will you have the same potential to make money in the next 18 months?

You are not going to make the same return in bonds, CDs, or money markets. You are not going to have the same opportunity 18 months from now. If you have funds that you are not going to use in the next three to five years, you need to seriously consider making the most of the opportunity you have now. If you did not invest last March, 2009, you need to look find places to invest in the equity markets now.