Recently, I presented a lecture on the 'Future of Currency', focusing on the past history of currency and its cycles of change. This article attempts to capture some of the highlights of that lecture and seems to be timely in light of the fact that the U.S. dollar has reached new lows along with the American economy. One might think that the dollar is doomed as it struggles to maintain a foothold as a major economic force in the world. This is a struggle in a world that has become extremely small in a very short period of time and the last sixty years of major changes is a blip on the radar of a century old concept of wealth and currency. The thesis of this article is to present the idea that the 'dollar' is not necessarily doomed, but, in fact, is in a major transition point in history along with all currency concepts in the world today. This is supported by only a portion of historical data covered in the presentations recently given in Denver, Colorado.

Before discussing the future of currency, it is imperative that we define 'currency' in that it is only in modern history that currency equates to money. In a recent article in U.S News it states, "Only in the past few centuries has a million units of local currency become the threshold of exceptional wealth, and before the late 20^th century, millionaires were as rare as barons."[i] To continue with this idea, there were various types of currencies throughout history, from cattle, which preceded grain as money for the simple reason that the taming of animals preceded agriculture through various civilizations. One needs only read the book by Jared Diamond entitled, Guns, Germs and Steel[ii], to see why or how wealth grew in certain areas of the world and failed in others.

One of the major reasons was that the concept of Western wealth began as the result of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. The existing livestock on the European continent -- oxen and horses -- assisted in the cultivation of wheat and corn. In contrast to this idea, there was a lack of animals that could be used to harvest crops in South America, where few domesticated livestock were available for the advancement of crops and, ultimately, wealth in the Western sense. This is not to discount the wealth of South America, or for Africa for that matter, as we know that the Europeans traveled there to subjugate the Natives and bring back such resources as gold while unknowingly infecting them with Smallpox and threatening then with steel guns. Therefore, the concept of wealth based on a concrete Western view of currency is the subject of this article and the reason for the above explanation.

Lest we digress, it is very probable that some 7,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent we saw the first use of money, while over 3000 years ago, the first bankers of the world lived in Babylon. It is quite possible that 'writing' was invented for bookkeeping purposes alone. The earliest forms of money were deeply related to the mysteries of the sacred and its role as a symbol. One very old piece of currency used to purchase a bushel of wheat was what the Sumerians called, the Shekel. One side of the Sumerian bronze was a representation of the goddess of fertility, Ishtar, who is very plutonian in scope. The other side of the coin was a shaft of wheat. "Kel" was the measurement similar to a bushel. "She" means wheat. This is interesting in that this modern reference to the pronoun 'she' has lost this ancient meaning.

The original shekel had as its purpose payment at the temple of Ishtar, the goddess representing Life and Death. This is a plutonian theme. Pluto was the god of the Underworld and held all the wealth. A Plutocracy is a government influenced by the wealthy. Following this line of reasoning and during the course of this article, Pluto's movement into early degrees of cardinal signs seems to indicate a major change in wealth, and, therefore, currency, changing what we deem as currency as well as its value and its form.

When Pluto entered Capricorn around 690 BCE (only one of the rare times it does this), the development of Roman and Greek money began. Currency's form changed. The first Greek coins were tokens proving that a citizen had paid his dues and could thus participate in the annual "hecatomb" or sacred meal to be shared with the Deities. The English word "money" comes from the name of goddess Juno Moneta and the first Roman mint was in the basement of her temple (as it was in Ishtar's). The basement of the temple is similar to the grand old banks of yesteryear, which have deviated to the local ATM at strip malls.

Grain was the main form of deposit, but over time crops, fruit, cattle and agriculture supplemented, leading eventually and most importantly to deposits of the precious metals like Gold and Silver. This reflects a modern concept of commodities such as wheat, soy beans, orange juice, and pork bellies along with the precious metals. Though occurring almost 3,000 years ago, the concept is still the same. As the centuries continued, gold and silver remained symbolically as two of the primary metals as it is today. They were then associated with the Sun and Moon and their values settled into a stable ratio of 1/13.5 astrologically determined to reflect the heavenly cycles of 1 revolution per year of the Earth around the Sun and 13.5 revolutions of the Moon around the Earth. Though these two metals lost their symbolism through the ages, their respective values did not.

During the establishment of the early colonists in America, there were many difficulties regarding currency. There was a lack of metal creating a shortage of coin and so the need for a 'new' way of distributing currency began again, quite similar to earlier periods in history, where the early colonists diversified currency (making it legal tender) in at least seventeen or more commodities, which, again, included maize and wheat. When Pluto again entered Capricorn in 1762, prior to the American Revolution, this pushed the need for an entirely new structure of currency and values, which was one of the foundations for the revolution. The American Revolution was not only a revolution of Human Rights, but also a revolution in values.

Moving forward to more recent history in July 1944 (1-25), there was a meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. December 27, 1945 was the signing of Bretton Woods forming the IMF (International Money Fund) and basing values on gold standards throughout the world. October 24, 1962 was the formation of the Group of 10 (G-10) when the governments of eight international money fund members, which included Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA plus the central banks of two others, German and Sweden banned together to assure and support the IMF.

In the mid-1960s when chaos hit the planet and the rare 126-year old alignment of Pluto Uranus, which represents anarchy, was in full sway, shifts began occurring. There had been created a 'fixed rate of exchange" based against the US dollar, which was strong at that time. The G-10 also agreed to make resources available to the IMF for drawings by the participants as well as to non-participants under special circumstances. In 1964 Switzerland also became part of the G-10 and strengthened it by association. Since that time the G-10 has been renewed at least nine times and extended approximately every five years.

After the Pluto Uranus conjunction, and, on into 1969 the organization called SDR (Special Drawing Rights) was formed as an international reserve account. The cold war was now upon us, things were changing rapidly and it was necessary to further stabilize and so the special reserve account defined the measurement of 0.888671 grams of fine gold equivalent to 1 US dollar. It was a shared concept. However, since the Bretton Woods agreement left large amounts of monies in the hands of large foreign banks, Richard Nixon reneged on the promise of converting dollars into gold, thus devaluing the US dollar and taking us off the gold standard.

This was done on August 15, 1971. However, the US dollar was still strong at that time and the US then entered re-negotiations with its industrialized allies to appreciate their currencies -- thus settling them down. This was a crucial turning point in 1971 because on December 18, 1971 the Smithsonian Agreement was formed replacing Bretton Woods and its idea of a fixed rate of exchange with a floating currency exchange rate! Resulting from this was that in 1973 Bretton Woods officially collapsed and we shifted to a floating exchange rate. Again, a new basket of currencies similar to what happened in far earlier periods in history emerged.

In the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's further world economic changes occurred, which resulted from several outer planetary alignments one after the other. For example, the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989; 1994 brought the Mexican Financial Crisis, in which 50 billion dollars were the bailout; December, 1994 the first browser started the dot.com revolution along with the fact that on August 9, 1995 Netscape went public. 1997 saw the Asian Crisis; 1998 the Russian Crisis and in 1999 the Brazilian Crisis, where throughout Latin America there was a high amount of debt.

At that time the IMF was taxed for most of its resources, bringing the world, not only Latin America, to the brink of disaster. Since then Brazil has brought itself back with self-sustaining fuels derived from such renewable resources as Sugar Cane. However, some of the other Latin American countries did not and still do not fare well. Argentina had a major crash and several of the Latin American currencies still are not tied or anchored to any of the Northern Block currencies such as the dollar or Euro, etc. The question of course is to 'which' if any currencies do they attach themselves to?

This is one of many unanswered questions as the US dollar continues to plunge with over 9 trillion dollars in debt due to the war in Iraq alone. This figure, of course, does not include the many more trillions of dollars of debt that the US along with other countries holds where everyone owes everyone else mass amounts of money. There is 50/50 possibility that the next five years could see a financial crisis that would amount to a global money meltdown if we keep thinking in the very same way and so, with that said we really do need to think outside of the box. The consolidation of the European currencies into the Euro was one major change occurring in just the last ten years and it is not unlikely that more consolidations will take place over the next five. There is talk of a North American Union currency called, The Amero. This may sound highly unlikely, but the currency value of Canada has increased markedly over the course of the last ten years as has the Mexican peso. The 'Amero' concept combines the Canadian, Mexican, and US dollar, all close to parity at this writing.

At pivotal points in history, when many of the outer planets ingress into early degrees of cardinal signs, currency or its value concepts shift. It doesn't always happen at the 00º cardinal position, but, rather closer to the 3º to 5º positions. For example, in more recent days, some of these changes include the new concept presented by Bernard Lietaer in The Future of Money[iii] of complimentary currencies such as script such as L.E.T.S. in the UK and other assorted time coupons as the next bridge between the current form and value of currency and future currencies, which this writer believes will ultimately lead to a global currency. In even more recent history, we see the emerging Digital Gold Currency, or, DGC, which is one form of electronic money currently in existence. Many believe that DGC offers a truly global or borderless world currency. However, as of January of 2006 DGC providers held in excess of 8.6 tons of gold as reserves, which was then worth approximately $154 million, far below the debt levels existing on the earth today.

Other ideas presented forth are the idea of a Global Reference Currency (GRC) and a sample unit that might be called the 'Terra', which would consist of a specially defined basket of commodities and services particularly important for international trade and not connected to any particular country. Some of the combinations that might be found in the Terra are a little copper, oil, some wheat or grain, always accompanied by some small percentage of gold and precious metals. This is, again, very similar to our ancestors' baskets of currencies and would vary based on what is of value at any particular point in time.

Moving even more forward, some of the providers of Digital Gold Currency are called 'e-gold' (1996); 'e-bullion' (2000); 'e-dinar'(2000); 'GoldMoney' (2001); 'Pecunix' (2002); 'Crowne Gold' (2002); and 'e-grams' (2006). At this writing, some of these may continue to exist and some may not as well as more may have been added. The point is that, again, we witness a change in the form and concept of currency.

Though these are a few of the examples, the interesting point is that it seems when major planets like Pluto shift into cardinal signs, currency changes form. Hard money developed along with complimentary currencies as far back as 690 B.C.E. with Pluto's entrance into Capricorn. An undervaluation of gold, setting the $1 unit and a default of major currencies occurred when Pluto entered early degrees of Aries from 1822 to 1830.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 has Pluto at 00º Cancer and the Sun at 1º Capricorn, which was the precursor of many of the mortgage and loan changes during the era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when the Federal Home Loan Act of the early 1930s afforded more people the opportunity to borrow for longer periods of time with some sort of insurance. When the Smithsonian Institute changed the exchange rate from a fixed rate to a floating rate, Pluto entered 00º Libra. And the greater and greater use of such digital currencies as ATM cards, gift cards, complimentary currencies, script, and digital currencies is seeing an increase as well as the mutation of individual country currencies into larger more mutated currencies (like the Euro and the possible future Amero) has happened in the last few years as Pluto has moved towards 00º Capricorn. Could it be that the coming eclipses of 2009 to 2010 in Capricorn and Cancer, particularly July 2010 through July 2011 bring us a new world currency like the Amero? Only time will tell.