A Financial Paul Revere

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Orange Country financial debacle is that so few people saw it coming.

Now, one newsletter is taking credit for spotting it--albeit indirectly--along with several other recent news events, including future House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s lobbing of verbal “hand grenades” in the direction of the Clinton Administration.

Santa Monica-based Future News Index, which compiles predictions of business and economic trends by monitoring several dozen forecasters who themselves pay close attention to astrological developments, claims in its current report that it predicted those events by forecasting such things as “geological and geopolitical turmoil” and “big moves in the markets.”

Those forecasts, it contends, foreshadowed the recent earthquake aftershocks, the guilty plea entered by former Associate Atty. Gen. Webster L. Hubbell, Gingrich’s fights with the Clinton Administration, and even Orange County’s bankruptcy filing.

Paul D. Farrell, president of the forecasting service, said the prediction came about with “Jupiter and Pluto both being squared by Mars,” which he said led to predictions of ripples in the markets.

According to the Future News Index analysis for this week, the Orange County bankruptcy filing “was the latest trigger. Ah, the dark side of this bear market! Derivatives. Deficits. Debts. All beginning to surface. Biting the hands that fed them.”

Lowering His Expectations

Jerry Brown has discovered the “era of limits” that has long been familiar to Californians trying to sell their homes.

The former governor’s Pacific Heights spread in San Francisco is on the market. And his real estate agent, Florian McGuire Moore, reports that he’s just lowered the asking price to $1.2 million from $1.4 million.

Got a Lovely Bunch of Hotels

Beverly Hills Hilton owner Merv Griffin is now spinning the wheel of fortune in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Griffin is paying about $15 million to add the Scottsdale Hilton Resort and Spa near Phoenix to his hotel group. The property was put up for sale by banking giant Citicorp, along with real estate giant Trammell Crow. Originally the lender, Citicorp had become an equity partner as well through a series of restructurings.

Like most real estate assets, the hotel fetched much less than it did the last time it changed hands: in the mid-1980s, it went for about $23 million.

Pet Sounds

The offbeat seminar business continues to thrive in Southern California.

One recent offering by the “Berkeley Psychic Institute of Anaheim” was a “Pet Healing and Communication Workshop.”

A workshop brochure asks: “Ever wondered what your pet is thinking? Have you known each other before? In this workshop, you will explore these questions and more.” It further promises attendees will learn “spiritual healing techniques that you can use with your pets.”