Book Review: The Dragon’s Debt: An Investors Timeline to Profits During China’s Financial Crisis, 2019 – 2020

The world economy could be in for some rough patches in the next couple of years.

Title: The Dragon’s Debt
Author: Marie Schoeppel
Global Trends and Cycles, 2018
198 pages, $22.95

A general consensus seems to be forming among financial astrologers that the world economy is in for some rough patches in the next couple of years. While there are a variety of factors that are cited as important to this assessment, a common thread running through these predictions is the January 2020 meeting of the planets Saturn and Pluto in the sign of Capricorn. These two planets, which have a lot to do with business and finance as well as government and other power brokers, meet about every thirty-six years.

The meetings of Saturn and Pluto are thought to coincide with realignment of financial power (previous meetings occurred in 1914-15, 1947, and 1982 – you can draw your own conclusions). The upcoming meeting in Capricorn is considered especially powerful, as that sign is associated with business and governmental institutions.

While the uneasy political environment worldwide adds to a sense of impending financial crisis, there are diverse opinions about the epicenter of this change. In The Dragon’s Debt, Marie Schoeppel offers a cogent argument that the problems will stem from China’s mounting debt. In the introduction, she offers a summary of the complex situation that has arisen around China’s debt. Essentially, overextended players in the debt market borrow from each other, simultaneously increasing and hiding debt. They are abetted in this elaborate shell game by the Chinese Communist Party, which, the author points out, has created a kind of “surface capitalism” that fosters the illusion of open markets while the true power continues to reside with the Party’s dictatorship.

The Dragon’s Debt is designed for two distinct groups of readers. The first includes financial astrologers and others who speak the complex language of astrology. This group will want to read the entire book, as the introductory chapter is followed by five chapters of historical analysis that includes detailed astrological information. While not the easiest of reading, the author is building up an argument for why 2019-2020 is so significant. Chapters 6 and 8 provide an overview of the current astrological situation and its application to China, with an emphasis on how broader alignments mesh with the astrological chart of the nation.

The second group of readers is comprised of people interested in surviving and perhaps profiting from the coming crisis, and after reading the introduction they can skip directly to chapter 7, which provides detailed information about the timing of the coming crisis. This chapter is user-friendly for financial analysts and investors who are not familiar with the language of astrology.

In The Dragon’s Debt, Marie Schoeppel has made a strong case for China’s debt as the cause of a coming financial meltdown that will affect the global economy. She bases her argument on both financial/political and astrological data, and both lines of thought appear to be sound, if not certain. As with all predictions of complex phenomena, it is a challenge to assess how a large number of factors will combine to produce a given outcome – all the more so when the conscious intention of groups and individuals is at play. Knowledge of how things worked in the past is a reasonable guide to the future, but novel factors emerge, and present and future conditions never exactly replicate the past.

With those caveats in mind, I would highly recommend The Dragon’s Debt to anyone concerned with the global economy, investing, or understanding financial trends. No doubt both economic analysts and financial astrologers will find points of contention as well as agreement with the author – but that’s part of what makes the book such a compelling read.