Of course, I thought her prediction would manifest immediately so I stayed out of New York City in the days that followed that eclipse, including the July 4 weekend. As I drove to work today and watched millions of New Yorkers heading out of the city because of storm-related evacuations, I made a note to self: Eclipses are usually active for up to six months after they occur. Anyway, bravo Shelley!

As followers of astrology know, this lineup is hitting both the birth charts of the US, where stocks are in a free fall following Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the nation’s credit rating for the first time in 71 years, and the UK, where unemployed hooligans are running amok in the wake of the government’s austerity measures.

Kudos to Nancy’s Starlight News blog for pinpointing Aug. 5 as a day of reckoning for the US. That’s the day that S&P took away our vaunted AAA rating.

I’m not surprised to see a downtown on Wall Street corresponding with Neptune’s retrograde back into Aquarius, which began Aug. 4. The New York Stock Exchange chart is a Taurus and Neptune moving forward in Aquarius helped inflate stock valuations, in my opinion. But Neptune is tricky. I think its last pass in Aquarius could deflate equity prices down at the corner of Broad and Wall. We’ll see.

Assuming that 10:56 is the time of birth, Trump has a 0 degree Virgo rising. Given his prominent hair, now dyed brightly red, I would have chosen a Leo rising for Trump. But the new chart has Mars in Leo quite close to the Ascendant, so that works for me. Loaded Second House of Wealth also seems to confirm the new birthtime. Any thoughts, astrologers?

As an astrologer, I expected some earth-shaking event(s) in this last degree of Uranus in Pisces, primarily because it is making a square to the Nodes at 28 degrees of Sagittarius and Gemini. But nothing prepared me for the earthquakes and tsunami today in Japan.

As the clock counts down to 7:52 p.m. Eastern time, when Uranus officially enters Aries, I fear the worst, because officials of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. have lost control of the reactors at the Fukushima plant.

It seems quite likely there is going to be a nuclear meltdown in Japan. I find this ironic because Japan is the only country in the world to have been hit with nuclear bombs, courtesy of the US, I might add.

I have lived through the nightmare of the September 11 World Trade Center bombings. I was about two miles away in an office tower in Midtown Manhattan. Certainly, Japan’s nuclear meltdown won’t affect me personally the way 9/11 did. However, Uranus is conjuncting my South Node in Pisces so I feel connected to the cataclysm in Japan. Maybe it’s a past life thing.

It’s fitting with Uranus in Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac and one that is associated with religion, that a popular hash tag on Twitter (a social media tool ruled by Uranus) is #prayforjapan. I will.

But I think Chiron, a planetoid known as the “Wounded Healer,” was amplifying the suffering aspects of Neptune in Aquarius. No doubt this was also a great opportunity for healing, but I’m happy to see Chiron in a different sign than Neptune. I’d love to hear what anybody else has to think about these aspects.

Roethlisberger was born March 2, 1982 in Lima, Ohio, time unknown, while Rodgers was born Dec. 2, 1983 in Chico, Calif., also time unknown.

Roethlisberger has the transiting North Node in Capricorn sitting on his Juno, but he’s also got transiting Saturn tying down his Mars in Libra.

In my humble opinion, all the transiting planets in Aquarius favor the chart of Rodgers, a Sagittarian, rather than Roethlisberger, a Pisces. I’m betting on Green Bay.

Even if they lose, Rodgers still comes out a winner on the PR front because his squeaky clean image is a marketer’s dream, while Roethlisberger is recovering from the black eye of sexual assault charges that were filed against him and then dropped.

For next year, I’m rooting for my hometown team, the Jets, because Jupiter in Taurus will be favoring the Scorpio Sun of QB Mark Sanchez.

Because I’m an astrologer, and I know that Bloomberg was born on Valentine’s Day. So this is a case of art imitating life and a perfect example of what psychologist Carl Jung called “synchronicity.”

The bull, which is slang for a trader who believes stocks are rising, is also the symbol for Taurus, which is the Sun sign of the New York Stock Exchange. The Big Board was born May 17, 1792 at 10 a.m. in New York City under a buttonwood tree not far from the existing exchange at Broad and Wall streets and around the corner from where the iconic bull statue is on Broadway.

Don’t ask me about the bear, slang for those who believe equities are headed for a downturn. It will probably take another 30 years to figure out the astrological reason for that.