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The 147 Corporations Controlling Most of the Global Economy
rubycodez writes "Researchers at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute in Zurich have identified a 'Capitalist Network' [PDF] of well-connected companies that control most of the global economy. They further identified the 147 'super-connected' companies that control forty percent or more of the global financial network. If one believes the mega-corporations have most governments of the west in their pockets, does this mean we have a global oligarchy?"
I bet you could easily whittle that down to less than 50 who effectively control just about everything in the first-world--when you factor in subsidiaries, companies they invest in or who invest in or depend on them, companies they partner with extensively, etc. Just look at the web of control that the major banking companies alone exert. When a handful of companies in a single industry are so powerful that if they fail, your ENTIRE ECONOMY (and that of many other countries) collapses, I would say they effectively own you. That's way more powerful than any mere group of individual citizens could ever hope to be.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
We have a global plutocracy, which the government of the richest, for the richest and by the richest.
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
This should:
"In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
So a powerful 1% owns 40% of the global wealth...
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Does this mean we have a global oligarchy
I know it was meant to be rhetorical, but "YES." These statistics merely reinforce the intuition that we have all had for decades. In the modern day, oligarchy == democracy. Companies that are "too big to fail." This is why there are people flooding the streets with with signs saying "We are the 99%." Because it isn't the 99% that count.
Hah. I got to say it first.
It's spelled "OLIGARHY".
You know it's bad when 1% of America's population controls 50% of the wealth. I cannot understand why in a Representative Democracy we allow this to occur. It seems as soon as someone gets elected to Congress, they are immediately bought by the wealthy elite to represent their interests.
Facts are beautiful aren't that? Distortable into implying anything you want.
There will always be a 'The XXX corporations controlling most of the global economy', just like there will always be 'kills the most people in this group'.
And for reference, 'most' to me, is more than half.
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With 147 corporations, you have a chance to watch them all.
With 14,700 corporations you'd have no chance.
The majority of the world's money is controlled by banks, and investment banks.
Yes.
Next Question: How do we topple it?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
And The Onion was sure they'd have all merged to just form one giant corporation by now:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/just-six-corporations-remain,551/
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
"It seems as soon as someone gets elected to Congress, they are immediately bought by the wealthy elite to represent their interests."
They can't get that far without being bought and paid for in the first place.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
Take comfort in the fact that heavily centralized complex systems are extremely intrinsically stable, particularly if poorly understood and subject to multiple chaotic inputs, and aren't vulnerable at all to any sort of cascading failures...
Global olivearchy.
1% of Olive farmers control over 50% of the world's olives.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
...does this mean we have a global oligarchy?
Of course it does! That's why the middle class is shrinking over most of the globe - those who have power and money are doing their damnedest to concentrate both in their own hands, and the most efficient way to do that is to co-operate among themselves and work together to achieve world domination. And the fastest route to domination is via absolute economic control.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
A corporation alone cannot harm or control you. It can only do that with the help of government.
No. It does not mean there's a global oligarchy. For one thing, many of these are publicly traded companies. So individuals do have some input. They may have very little, but it does exist. Moreover, a 147 entities is actually quite a lot. And many of those companies are in direct competition with each other. So while it is true that many of these companies own stock in each other, they aren't close to controlling each other in any reasonable sense. If the various bailouts are any indication, one doesn't need a mysterious oligarchy to control governments. Old-fashioned lobbying works just fine.
* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used
Are you telling me this list is 4 years old?
See!! All Jews!
They list 1318 firms, and then 147 super-connected...and then (arbitrarily) only list the top 50.
Their report is at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf
Why the top 50? Was there some discontinuity in control that made 50 a relatively discrete bunch? Is #51 significantly different than #49?
Where's the rest of the list?
-Styopa
Stuart Mackenzie: Well, it's a well known fact, Sonny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.
Tony Giardino: So who's in this Pentavirate?
Stuart Mackenzie: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, *and* Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with is wee *beady* eyes, and that smug look on his face. "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!"
Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart Mackenzie: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!
What is this crap. Wikileaks, Ron Paul, and global oligarch conspiracy all at once.
Stop it.
Dunbar's Number
Actually, the Governments (States, Towns, Cities, etc) own a majority of the publicly traded corporations. These governments themselves are also corporations.
The government corporations create the rules, laws, and regulations. Then, they own the publicly traded corporations and see to it they do exactly what the government wants (ie Big Brother).
what's interesting to me is that these are the offspring of our global subconscious minds when dealing with scarcity. we might as well be" just another failed mutation" Carlin
Aren't most big corporations largely owned by pension funds these days? If so, the numbers aren't really surprising; when the government says 'either hand over 40% of your savings to us or we'll let you give it to our friends in the pension industry tax-free', you should expect most savings to end up in the hands of pension companies who then have to buy something with it.
Then it gets interesting.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
to see 2 Chinese companies that are controlled by the chinese gov. up there. 10 years ago, they were not even in the top 150, let alone top 50.
147 companies hold 40% of the network that holds 80% (20% + further 60%) of the global revenues for ... ? Those 37 million companies worldwide?
We don't have a global oligarchy, we have a terrible case of crony capitalism where the ones that control the world are Goldman Sachs, and the Primary Dealers (the banks that sell the Treasury's debt) have an unfair leg up. The corporatism auctioning our governments and soldiers lives to the companies that fund the pockets of politicians has to stop. It is the reason the Tea Party started and the reason that #occupy is so large at this point. However, it's important to understand exactly what the problem is and why. That's why Ron Paul is doing so well. He's the only guy that understands economics. Unfortunately, he's not a good looking shiny figure on stage that will appeal to the "Access Hollywood" obsessed populace. These 147 institutions have pushed the risk from the corporate balance sheet to the sovereign balance sheet under the guise of systemic risk. Unfortunately, unless meaningful change is brought, not partisan bullshit, it will likely bring the end of a country or two, and definitely a bunch of currency systems.
Who is to blame? Well about every president, senator and congressman over the last 30 years, with few exceptions.
Steve Wynn Epic Rant Part II - Full Audio And Transcript With Complete #OccupyWallStreet Thoughts
Watch this:Fear the Boom and Bust [econstories.tv]
then this: Fight of the Century [econstories.tv]
It's probably paranoid, but I keep thinking that in 50 years it will be leaked out that the "great downturn of 2007-201x" was actually the result of a global financial war fought by Anglo-American banking interests on one side and a Sino-Arab consortium on the other side.
The US government & Federal Reserve backed the banks not because they were too big to fail but because of the national security implications of losing control over world financial markets.
The housing and stock bubbles were failed attempts by the banking cartels to create wealth to keep up with the growth of the Chinese economy and the spiraling income of oil producers in the face of stagnant wage growth and industry within the US and the UK.
The war in Iraq wasn't about terrorism but about creating chaos in the center of Arabian Asia to disrupt OPEC.
I'm making all this up, but it seems to have a strange believability to it.
#33. Dodge & Cox
Pronounce it out loud if you don't get the humor.
At what point in history was global power ever not controlled by the top 1%? Even in truly socialist systems, the highest power has always been in the hands of a small minority. Even in democracy, less than 1% ever get elected to any higher office.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Jonathon! Jonathon!
Only about 300 governments control almost 100 percent of the worlds livable land mass!
Clearly something must be done...
In all seriousness there probably is to much concentration of wealth in the hands of two few entities, that said its not as few as it first sounds in the context of other global hierarchies. We as a society would be served by taking the pain of letting some of these big firms fail, and they will fail without government loan grantees and bailouts. When they fail that wealth and power will get spread around to at least more hands than the single hand of the failed entity. Yes it might be very painful short term but long term its better, we must end the moral hazard.
Also I would point out many of these corporations are public and buy purchasing a few shares of voting stock you can probably have a lot more influence then you can have in international politics going the government route!
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The Corporation Nation (2010) : Clint Richardson
You've got see it. Google it.
Try to get 50 people to agree on anything. Thinking that there's 150 corps that magically control the world is the tinfoil-hat mindset at its best. Who at those corps is controlling the world? The CEO? The chairman of the board? Some little accountant snickering in a back office? Do you really think you can get 150 people to agree 100% on what the right direction for the world? There is massive competition in the financial industry, driven by the need to have quarterly results go up and up, do you really think that all of these corps would hop in bed with the competition?
If you're like me and saw the Seattle protests against WTO and the Group of 8 on the news in 1999 and wondered "what the heck are they shouting about?" now you know.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Many at the top of the list are mutual fund companies. Some, like "Vanguard Group, Inc", are passive funds. Vanguard (#8) is the largest operator of index funds, so they don't even make active investment decisions. "The Depository Trust Company" and "Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan" are listed, and they're just nominal holders.
Some of this is a consequence of banking deregulation. The US used to have a separation between mutual funds, investment banks, and commercial banks. Only commercial banks were insured by the FDIC and backed by the Federal Reserve. That changed when Glass-Stegall was repeated in 1999, and it took less than ten years for the banking industry to screw up badly and break the economy.
That's why one of the demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement is to return to Glass-Stegall.
They're probably in your 401(k) or pension plan.
Thanks for the warning, better get my shotgun.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The complaints of us peons don't matter. A while back I had some contact with Corporate America and one common theme I heard from their IT departments was they don't really make "democratic" changes to their infrastructure. So, if they get a lot of complaints about a feature or lack thereof, unless it's some media-driven tidal wave it's basically ignored. But, if ONE Big Fish client asks for online banking support it gets done pronto. If you look around you, you'll see this in effect everywhere.
An example of what I'm talking about: There was a piss-ant town bordering KC that really wasn't big enough to be incorporated, but since it sat on a major highway the town would use cops to prey on traffic passing through to the city. People where getting all sorts of BS tickets, a couple miles over the speed limit, driving too slow, crossing lines, etc. Whatever they could to generate revenue for their piss-ant town.
Now, of course people complained and complained a lot. But nothing ever got done. Until, the morons in this little town decided to pull over and ticket a state congressman for crossing the white line (which he said he never did). Said congressman takes it up with his colleagues and passes a bill that says towns may only make a certain percentage of revenue from traffic tickets. Offending incorporated town can no longer fund itself or it's police force, then dissolves; problem solved. Years of public complaints didn't do a damned thing.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Umm... Mike Meyers covered this ground years ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI_0-kz4lR0
But most of those companies have thousands of owners, not just one. They're probably in your 401(k) or pension plan.
The owners are absent.
Deleted
forty percent?
One
Two
Three
For?
Under the Federal Reserve system, money is only created when someone takes out a loan. If Federal Reserve Notes were truthfully labeled, they would all say This Bill Was BORROWED From Wall Street. This is why it was so important to bail out the banking system: no bankers, no money.
Nothing says "oligarchy" like having an entire economy by its balls.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Although zaibatsu existed from the 19th century, the term was not in common use until after World War I. By definition, the "zaibatsu" were large family-controlled vertical monopolies consisting of a holding company on top, with a wholly owned banking subsidiary providing finance, and several industrial subsidiaries dominating specific sectors of a market, either solely, or through a number of sub-subsidiary companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Which means instead of lampooning organizations like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street we need to take from them the best of their ideas and act on it.
It means for Americans doing your best to get candidates who do not have a D or R next to their name some traction.
It means for those in Europe figuring out how to get out from under Brussels - best of luck, I don't know your politics.
Whatever it is, you won't do it through tax laws so please no, they need to pay more, corporations merely hide the heavy taxation the population is under, see indirect taxes.
So, anytime you see a politician wanting to expand your benefits be wary, the money comes from somewhere and if its not paid its owed and those to whom we owe call the shots.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
To the guys running these corps. Government is just another tool which they use to get what they want, and a tool which has M1 tanks, F16 fighters, black ops aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons.
Deleted
Socialism as an economic system is a myth. Ludwig von Mises demonstrated, more than eighty years ago, that under a socialist veil there remains always a market economy in disguise. Socialism exists only as a “movement”, as a permanent thrust for subversion and destruction. As such, it cannot survive without the help it receives from big capitalists, or rather from the ones I call metacapitalists – the macro-investors that were made so stunningly rich by the capitalist game that they somehow transcend it and do not accept the risks of a free market anymore. They then try to consolidate their power as an oligarchy of political controllers. To this end they use socialist subversion as their tool, and at the same time the socialist leadership tries to use them as its tool. The so-called “convergence” between socialism and capitalism is just a new ornamental denomination for an old reality. Please read “The Best Enemy Money Can Buy” by Anthony Sutton. Socialism is opposed to genuine free-market economy (as well as to Christian civilizational values that sustain it), but not to monopolistic and globalist capitalism. The main supporters of the socialist subversion in Latin America are the American billionaire foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Soros ) and the radical chic elite of the American Democratic Party.
Source: http://wydawnictwopodziemne.com/en/2007/10/09/odpowiedz-na-ankiete-4/
Note that most of these are banks, which means ultimately they are controlled by their depositors. I tried to look up how much each of them controls, but it isn't really clear what 'control' means, although it's really important. Remember that if you looked at it another way, the three largest countries in the world 'control' nearly half the worlds wealth (measured by GDP); but if you actually dig into that statistic, it's not as scary as it seems on the surface.
Anyway, here's the list:
1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And not the Keynesian cargo cult economics which is so prevalent.
To start with, go find out what money is.
Deleted
Because the majority of us would rather be allowed to make our own way in the world and don't want to be subsidized by the rich.
Personally, I'm not too keen on subsidizing the rich, either.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The title should have been "contributing most to the global economy." Corporations don't control anything. purchasing their products is a choice their customers make. They keep buying from these corporations because they what these corporations have to offer is more useful (in some way -- not necessarily in the quality of the product) than the competition. If most of the global economy runs on these corporations' products, then they are contributing to the working of the global economy. This whole notion that those who produce useful things are your masters is completely upside down.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"forty percent" is not equal to "most"
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Nassim Taleb on the Moral Hazard and Broken Economic Structure of the Western Crony Capitalists
The key message is that the economic system is broken and that there can be no sustained recovery unless it is repaired: Nassim Taleb on the Moral Hazard and Broken Economic Structure of the Western Crony Capitalists
"The 147 Corporations Controlling Most of the Global Economy"
Then we find out that it's 147 banks that control 40% of the financial sector.
How is this controlling most of the global economy? The financial sector is about 30% of the global economy, and these banks control 40% of that.
It's more like the top 147 banks control 12% of the global economy.
If you don't like the mess, maybe you could just put a lid on your 401(k) and seal it really well. They die happy, suffocating in money, and you can keep their Rolexes.
"Controlled by their depositors"!?!?!?
ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha!
You are a depositor, aren't you? Did you vote for more fees? What, you didn't even get to vote? ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha!
How do you "cease" property? Does that mean you destroy it? Or do you mean "seize"?
Spelling correctly IS important if you want people to understand what you mean. So is using the correct words.
Aaaaaany minute now.
My UID is prime. Hah!
I notice some obvious duplicates, like Merrill Lynch & Co Inc at #10 and Bank of America at #25.
Since BofA owns ML, why not combine them into #6, or wherever they sit in the top 10 as a single entity?
Without government support, the Too Big To Fails actually do Fail, leaving lots of small Not Too Big To Fails.
Didn't you see TARP? LSAP? Good god, I'm sure it was even actually on TV at some point. This was government keeping mega corporations alive to fuck you up all over again...
Don't you see all the subsidies?
The no bid contracts?
The laws which act as barrier to entry?
Fuck... The Wars!
It's only government saving their arses which allows them to get this big. Cut off the money supply and they won't remain Too Big To Fail.
Deleted
You are a depositor, aren't you? Did you vote for more fees?
Oh, you couldn't find a bank that doesn't charge fees? That sounds like your problem, not mine. You vote with your feet.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why go through all the bother of owning a private army when you can simply get the biggest army in the world to do your bidding... It is easier and cheaper to own politicians I think.
Those who control the finance system control who works and who doesn't, and who has a home to go to at night. That is every bit as coercive as any governmental power.
Who keeps these guys alive when they fuck up? The government does.
You just saw them do it in 2009. If they had died then they would be replaced right now with thousands of small relatively powerless financial organizations.
Deleted
Trotting out a list of financial companies and then doing a pseudo-technical analysis to establish that they 'control' the economy seems like nothing but an effort at demagogy. For example, stockbrokers ALWAYS exercise a measure of control because most of their clients choose to have the stockbrokers retain their shares and vote them on their behalf. Similarly, every bank always exercises 'control' of the funds that you have on deposit so what would be suspicious is if there was a large bank that was NOT on the list. Everyone wants to hate financial companies when they have less wealth than they feel like they are entitled to. There will always be a few large financial companies in 'control' of the economy unless we enact legislation that limits the maximum size of financial companies in which case we would have more financial companies exercising control of the economy but nothing else otherwise much different. The alternative to having financial companies in 'control' of the economy is to have everyone keep their money in the form of gold bullion in their mattress (been there, done that) which would result in a shrunken world economy driven by barter or to have a huge government apparatus in 'control' (been there, done that too.)
Big government is *already* owned by corps. Regulation has *already* failed.
You have to starve them of resources. i.e. Money.
Deleted
That is true: the biggest "owners" are the governments and their subsidiaries.
The article does not say (or I missed it) how much of the whole economy is owned by the 147 companies.
Besides, anybody who worked with a team knows how difficult it is to make people do what you want. It is very easy to humiliate them or make them wear blue while at work, but very difficult to make people execute your commands as you would execute them. Anybody imagining that the 147 companies and the corporations they control can mobilize 100% of their resources and work towards a common goal needs to get out more: in all large companies the departments spend more time undermining each other than working to get market share from the competition, and you need to get somebody both smart and charismatic (such as Steve Jobs :) ) to make them work together, and those both smart and charismatic are fortunately either hard to find or work in Engineering and can't be bothered to deal with the paperwork.
Saying that 147 companies control most of the world is the same as saying that 147 ant colonies can march in step.
We all know (before he went tits up) he and the rest of the pentavirate ran everything. Plus, he put an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crrrrave it fortnightly...
Companies not on the list will have to quietly gloss over the reasons during the next quarterly reports to shareholders.
"We didn't get rid of that one looser with empathy for other humans"
.. we have a demoligarchy: we get to elect our preference from a pool of candidates approved (or at least not too disapproved of) by the oligarchs.
--dave (with only a little bit of tongue-in-cheek) c-b
davecb@spamcop.net
What got me thinking, is that perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps it is part of the underlying process, but if you look closely at when communism failed, namely when the former Soviet Union fell, and exactly when the "wealth gap" started to really expand, you will see they coincide very closely.
I am unsure if this means A) that having that counterpart served to keep capitalists "honest", B) that having communism "fail" proved capitalism "win" and was thus a carte blanche to push the limits, or C) nothing or all the above.
Given the underlying difference between say communism and capitalism, and the results, and then ultimately the evidence of the narrowing of dispersal of wealth to a tiny few, I think it might be hard to simply say it is totally unconnected. It might not be totally cause and causality in the traditional sense, but it sure makes one wonder.
Live in America? Then yes, you are the 1% you stupid fuck.
Just compare yourself to the rest of the poverty stricken world.
really?
Of the 50 companies on the list, I've only heard of 21 of them.
I for one welcome our new, improved 147-sided multilateral commission overlords.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
David Icke - Essential Knowledge For A Wall Street Protestor
Particularly starting at 18:00 regarding the centralization of power. Worth watching the whole thing.
Taken out and shot.
Deleted
It's sort of a silly argument. Connected doesn't mean controls, and most of them are public companies, with ownership held by things like pension plans and mutual funds.
A bank that holds my money doesn't actually own my money. If I then turn around and, via the bank, invest in some other company, the bank has touched my money, they may have charged me a service fee for the connection, but they didn't control the money. That makes them connected, as part of the transaction, so sort of by definition banks and major capital lenders will be towards the top of the list, by virtue of touching all of the transactions between everyone else.
The are some far more influential corporations than show up on that list (gazprom and saudi armaco for example) which are essentially government owned, the Emirates soverign wealth fund and the norwegian one again directly control far more wealth than a lot of players on those lists.
The authors of the article are assuming (wrongly) that touching assets equates to controlling them, which is why BNP Paribas and Deutche bank are ranked so high (basically they are the two big banks in France and germany, and have about 3.2 and 2.5 trillion USD in assets that touch their business). It's certainly valid, when comparing bank to bank, to look at the total assets under management, that reflects the overall size of the bank. But compared to Exxon Mobile or Walmart the numbers are mostly meaningless.
Also keep in mind that all of these companies are dwarfed by even small governments, and that all corporations exist at the pleasure of their host governments who can, and regularly do seize them for the 'good of the people'(politicians in power). Only 3 companies in the world have more revenue that the government of the netherlands, Walmart, Exxon Mobile and royal dutch shell (netherlands 360 billions USD, Walmart 420, exxon 370, RDS 368), but the netherlands is actually spending about 400 billion a year. So they, in a year, control more wealth than all but walmart. And that's the netherlands, with 16 million people.
Think of it this way: Walmart probably does its corporate accounts with bank of america and one of the big financials, morgan stanley or Goldman sachs sort of thing. Now, is the money that walmart has walmarts, or BofAs? The way these guys are counting it BofA is ranked higher than walmart, because they collect all of Walmarts revenue, and revenue from a bunch of other people. But Walmart could take all it's money and start doing its banking through Walton Co Bank, founded 2012, and suddenly BofA would drop a few hundred billion dollars on the list and walmart would magically appear. So which has more power, Walmart's revenue or the bank that holds that money on their behalf?
Don't get me wrong, banks collect piles of fees for things, especially because they, in managing assets stored with them make a pile of money, but there are bigger and more powerful entities than banks, and banks like everyone else are subject to government regulation. They have enough money they can generally pay off politicians to get them convenient regulation, but that's a consequence of democracy and government salaries, and is no different than Walmart and their billions or GM and their billions.
..run by jewish... KILL THEM
they threatened to take our economy with them. I suppose the gov't could have let them die, then stepped in to keep the economy going. But you wouldn't have liked that either, would you?
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some of what I pay for groceries goes toward the performance rights for their music.
Oh noes! You are oppressed! I guess you've never heard of earplugs.
Earplugs won't help me ensure that none of my grocery bill goes toward the RIAA labels and their affiliated music publishers.
You may also want to consider shopping on-line on this new-fangled Interwebzor thing.
I thought online grocery shopping was available only in major cities due to greater perishability of goods compared to, say, books or electronics. At least that's the impression I got when I researched Peapod years ago. Have online grocers reached smaller towns yet?
That is true: the biggest "owners" are the governments and their subsidiaries.
My suspicion here is that a 'citation needed' seems appropriate.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
We need a global democracy to combat this.
So, what are we going to do about it?
The OWS movement is encouraging in that it shows that people are waking up to the fact of corporate oligarchy, but it lacks any clear agenda. Even if OWS or some other grassroots movement toppled the government tomorrow, we'd undoubtedly get something even worse to replace it. If OWS does develop a clear agenda, it might incite some serious reform, but we'll still be just cogs in the corporate machine even if we're happier with our working conditions. A slave on a plantation with a full belly and nice clothes and good healthcare is still a slave on a plantation.
We need a solution that doesn't require a huge amount of money, weaponry, or other resources. We need a solution that doesn't require violence or even any law-breaking. We need a solution that a small number of people can implement, anywhere in the nation (and in most parts of the world). We could try to abandon society and build our own, but that would be leaving an awful lot of people behind. . . we need a solution that allows us to stand our ground, band together, and deal with the oligarchy from a position of power.
I say: When life gives you corporate oligarchy. . . incorporate!
My solution is a sort of chewy Communist nougat center with a crunchy delicious Capitalist shell.
Imagine thirty or forty people getting together and pooling their resources to buy or lease some real estate (a high school campus in Detroit would be perfect, but it could be anywhere). They form an umbrella corporation that acts as their collective face to the outside world, and provides business administration services to members of the community. Those members of the community who have their own businesses or who want to start their own businesses are freed to do the work they really want to do, while the umbrella corporation handles the drudgery common to all businesses, like payroll and taxes and human resources and so on. Those who are not ready to start their own businesses provide a labor pool for those who are.
The gross income of everyone's entrepreneurial pursuits goes to the umbrella corporation, which pays all the expenses of the various businesses. The umbrella corporation also pays for things like rent/mortgage of communal living spaces, utilities, medical insurance for members of the collective, etc. What's left over is divvied up as profit sharing, with the umbrella corporation itself taking a share. The umbrella corporation uses its share of the income to expand into new businesses, and to improve living conditions for the collective. Shares for members of the collective are calculated by share-hours; for example, if the collective has 100 members who work a combined total of 500 hours in a particular week generating a net income of $100,000, then everyone gets paid $20 for each hour they worked that week ($100,000/500 work-hours = $20 per share-hour). . . so everyone gets the same, but those who go the extra mile and put the long hours in get rewarded for working harder. Since everyone's income is directly dependent on everyone else's productivity, any tendency toward laziness and shirking and gaming the system is corrected on a peer-to-peer basis.
Some members of the collective are paid to be janitorial staff, so there's never any controversy over whose turn it is to clean up, or over who left the mess in the common area. If someone in the collective wants to run a restaurant, the other members can eat there free, subsidized by the umbrella corporation. If we don't have a restaurant, the umbrella corporation pays someone to shop for groceries and cook. . . so there are never any "who ate my food?" arguments, because it's OUR food and it's someone's job to make sure we have plenty on hand.
If a member of the collective fails at their chosen business, the collective absorbs their labor into some other business until they can regroup and try again or try something different. That person still gets a paycheck, still gets fed, st
You all hate capitalism because they hoard capital?! Do you not see the irony in this? W/O capitalism there is no monetary system. The demand of the anti-capitalist is obtuse at best. "Spread the wealth" is nonsensical as wealth would be a meaningless concept without capitalism. If you preserve a system under which money buys things, then you've preserved capitalism and that money, no matter how spread out it gets, will eventually wind up concentrated. Translation: You're out of touch with reality.
It means for those in Europe figuring out how to get out from under Brussels - best of luck, I don't know your politics.
Frankfurt (home of the European Central Bank) is more of a problem than Brussels (home of the European Commission). EU membership is fine, that's all about opening up the place to free trade without small businessmen having to comply with 27 different sets of regulations if they want to export to all of the member countries. But if you're a member of the Eurozone and you're not France or Germany then you're screwed if you want to escape the debt burden quickly by devaluing your currency to boost competitiveness. If you're locked in a currency union with the Germans you no longer have that option, and you're going to become a debt servicing machine for the next few decades.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
where I live the government owns minority shares in almost all the large companies
where you live EADS or BAE might ring a bell :)
Put them on the fight club hit list!
That is an interesting comment, shame it was posted anonymously. The book McMafia has similar interesting perspectives on the rise of global organised crime after the fall of the USSR, it really is remarkable how quickly the crimelords managed to exert their hold over a society once the government was weakened. Unfortunately history has shown that individuals rarely often don't have the resources to stand up to either warlords or organised crime, even when they have unrestricted ownership of firearms. See, for example, Somalia, Afghanistan, ex-USSR countries, any of the African/S.American/Middle East countries that fell to dictators. Too many people forget that owning, or even carrying, a gun won't stop you being shot in the back by a determined assassin. And if you piss off the Mafia type gangs, then will just have you killed. Of course, the government and its police is just a big gang too, but at least they have rules and regulations, and it's the only gang that you will ever get to exert any influence over as a normal citizen.
WOW.. after reading this; I wish there was a "Capitalist Network ETF" I'd buy it today!
It's interesting to me how certain people think having the world controlled by a few corporations is bad, but don't think having their political party in control of everything is bad as well.
"But when WE take control, things will change for the better. We will run things in a truly benevolent, populist manner! No, really. Honest. Scout's Honor..."
That video is hilarious. I've been watching a few expose-style documentaries recently but I am always wary of where to draw the "crazy" line. The guy who made this has got very confused about what an incorporated city is after receiving a parking ticket and then gone on a crazy rant about how the US government is actually thousands of corporations. He then goes on to explain how the government owns land, runs the police force, sells infrastructure etc as if it is some shocking revelation, complete with pictures of cackling bankers rubbing their hands, people being controlled by the tentacles of television and the whole deal. Most of the things he says are actually true, but surely anyone living in a capitalist country understands what "privatization" is?
I'm not an economist (or conspiracy theorist) so maybe I'm missing the point? Does anyone who actually knows about this stuff (or who appreciates a good crackpot) know any trustworthy videos or are they all nonsense?
Some of the better ones I've seen are Money as Debt and the excellently-titled The Most IMPORTANT video you'll ever see. These both seem quite reasonable to me, but as I say I don't know where the crazy line lies. As a physicist who regularly gets sent people's pet theories I am well aware what's out there.
Well it is possible to go to a credit union, where you DO get to vote. Parent is not entirely correct, but not for the reason you gave.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Let's find a few publicly held ones, buy enough stock to control them, and then WE will have a seat at the table controlling the global economy? How hard is that?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
also to note: ... and of all the 147 corporations, 146 have bank accounts in Switzerland, mainly in Zurich.
Archer Daniels Midland.
This can't be a coincidence. If you convert 147 to hex you get 93. You can then subtract the 50 (the number of strips on the American flag) from 93 (decimal) and you have 43. Then subtract 20 (This number is represented in Hebrew by the letter caph, in form of opened hand, to seize and hold.) and you get 23! See, the Illuminati are real! ;-)
tl;dnr
but
I find it totally credible that a fairly small group, like 147 TNCs, own a huge portion of the global economy. However, I'd have two with using the word "control" in this context.
The major issue is that at this scale no one person or a team as a functional understanding of their own organization, let alone the whole system that the organization is embedded in. They may own it, and are able to extract profits from it and influence it to a modest decree, but they don't control it, in the usual sense of the word. The point here being that the system is a real market, not some form of shady back-room corporate conspiracy. (And I'm not arguing that there aren't any corporate conspiracies around, in fact I'm sure there are, but I'm just as sure that they don't work - not on the scale of tens of percentages of global economy like this article is looking at.)
The second issue, a more minor one for sure, is that a TNC is often a public company, which means that very many people actually own a part of the global economy through that public company.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
anyone who studied a modicum amount of middle age or renaissance history would easily be able to tell you that political power follows the money. from hansa to fuggers, from fuggers to modern times, this has never been different.
and, financial power tends to concentrate, always. like hansa, or, like fuggers. (there were still other bankers apart from fuggers back in early 16th century, but fuggers were ruling over all, and the holy roman empire by holding charles v in debt).
why would it be any different in modern times ? the only difference now is, there are much more complicated schemes for syndication of ownership, and it is very easy to hide who really holds the financial power from the public eye. so that only researches like these can lead you to a picture.
and even with such researches you cant get the final picture - 'trade secrets', 'private property privacy rights' et al, hide who really holds the majority controlling interests across these corporations through holdings, syndicates, overseas proxy corporations and so on.
Read radical news here
yeess. then go find a bank from among those which doesnt charge fees or doesnt practice the same practice other ones do.
Read radical news here
When a company gets the backing of government, it becomes a predatory company, without accountability, because the government who is supposed to be watching it is motivated to make it succeed.
/. a lot because there are a lot of thick skulls here who keep wanting to debate this. The car companies, "Green" companies, the calls to nationalize banking, etc, etc.
This. It needs to be said and repeated on
Number 50, " China Petrochemical" is the only one that is actually producing something. The rest are laundering money.
1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company
.
It is more accurate to say that a large fraction of the middle class in Western countries owns, through mutual funds, a substantial portion of the stock of the largest publicly-traded companies in the world. What's the big deal?
Or maybe it's some vast middle-class conspiracy. If so, you're probably part of it.
It's sensationalist to toss alll corporations into one basket when the crux of the issue is the financial sector that does not produce anything useful in and of themselves, but merely own and profit from the corporations that do produce something useful while providing employment.
Those financial institutions are leeches on the world, a global tax on productivity pouring huge amounts of money into a very few pockets. They buy the law they want, they evade paying their share of taxes, and they contribute nothing to GDP.
But being outraged about it won't change anything. Occupy and the people they represent have got to table some practical solutions and ideas, not just keep screaming that it's unfair. Life has never been fair.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Its just the name has been changed and the system is much more complex.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
EPA is great for big businesses, keeps anyone smaller from even having a remote chance of getting in; allows them to justify costs and gives the average person that "oh, its good" feeling they need to make their lives seems good and know those "big-bad" corps are under control! Similar to things like the FDA, DEA, etc,etc, don't you ever wonder why we hear of these "good" things and then nothing but shit seems to come out of them....
Actually, I don't believe in the large conspiracy shit, I just blame stupidity and causality but if you think about it, the link is there.
Bill Gates was a trust fund baby. His dad was a wealthy business lawyer, and Bill used those contacts to get in with IBM. Didn't you ever wonder how a fresh faced nerd boy made it with the big leagues? I'll give you Sam Walton though. Near as I can tell he was the first guy to realize Americans would prefer to buy cheap crap instead of well built merchandise.
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Seriously. If a Doctor could spare you 15 years of pain with a 10 minute surgery, or some pills, wouldn't you do it? Why not have the gov't bail out home owners and let the mortgage back securities fail? There were lots of plans for how to do this, we just ignored them with the old 'But, But, Socialism!' cries.
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;-)
We're not under Brussels - that's largely a delusion fostered by right wing tabloids
The problem is not corporations and some evil, shadowy conspiracy to take over humanity.
You have to be religious and or delusional (tinfoil hat territory) to believe that.
We have democracy, a free and open media, and more watchdogs than I can count.
More likely, the problem with humanity is... humanity. People have gotten more selfish, less morally rigorous, less aware of the world around them, and more insular during the past two centuries.
Blaming corporations for all our problems is like blaming dishwashers for our problems. Those are the tools. The question is how we, the People, are using these tools, and the answer isn't pretty.
Socialists will use this data as a pretext to reinstate government control. Then, mirabile dictu, we'll return to aristocratic control.
Capitalism has provided more to more people than any other system. Tamper with it at your own peril, and that of your children.
Last time I checked, a single attacker with a knife was quite capable of stabbing a victim until the victim died from the wounds. You may think of that as "limited" damage, but I don't think I would, if I was the one being "prepared" for the pine box!
It has been going on long before the deregulation, since 1971... Actually mid 1960s since it was the Vietnam war spending which started the problem.
The 2008 crash was the end of a credit bubble which had been blowing up since Nixon took the US dollar off of the gold standard. Nothing but debt backing the dollar.
Chris Martenson has a good chart of total US debt. Matches an exponential curve to 98%. Doubling period of about 7 years. Eventually you just run out of people to suck into the Ponzi scheme.
http://media.chrismartenson.com/images/credit-market-doublings.jpg
Totally irrelevant which political side was in power. 9% growth in debt every year for 40 years.
You want to see a 40 year exponentially growing credit bubble in action?
http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/z?s=^DJI&t=my&q=l&l=off&z=l&a=v&p=s&lang=en-US®ion=US
Now there is a truly impressive Ponzi scam.
Deleted
Are simply investment firms, such as T. Rowe Price, Northern Trust, or Depository Trust Company. They're interconnected and large, but the holdings they have generally do not confer any amount of control (you generally need to hold at least 10% of a given firm to get representation on the board of directors). Likewise, their holdings are generally in name only as nominees since they are trusts or mutual funds. In other words, many of these companies appear big, but they're really just investing YOUR money without any say in the day-to-day operations of the companies in which they've invested.
Not really true at all. The banks are controlled by their board of directors, the same as any other corporation. They are the ultimate decision makers for the company. Some of them may listen to the advice of their largest depositors, but they make the decisions. Don't let them slough off responsibility so easily.
Depositors have to put their money somewhere. The cash society is almost dead. The vast majority of buying and selling is done digitally, which means you need a bank account to hold it. Being forced to deposit your money somewhere does not mean you have any input whatsoever to how it's used.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Mine doesn't. I have no clue what practices you are talking about, though.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In the form of taking deposits and lending it out at interest. No wonder there is so many of them in this list.
Without these 147 companies, we actually might get something resembling capitalism. As I keep repeating over and over in my arguments with my Tea Party friends, one of Adam Smith's explicit assumptions was atomistic markets. When 147 companies control the world economy, that's not capitalism in any sense Smith would condone. When any company can influence the market, there's no invisible hand or any of the other strengths he ascribed to capitalism.
You don't get to vote a corporation out, for example. And politicians have spent time in jail far more often than CEOs.
Am I alone in my appreciation for the efficiency of our corporate overlords? Imagine what it would cost to buy a pair of shoes if the people who actually made shoes lived in decent housing and got paid a fair wage by Western Standards. Or what if a banana plantation had to pay people real wages? Things would cost more. Things that merely make my life slightly more convenient would cost more. I really don't see how anyone could NOT want vast corporate conspiracies to dominate the globe in exchange for inexpensive convenience. That just makes sense to me.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
does this mean we have a global oligarchy?"
People quit making up words and call it what is REALLY is Fascism
As others have said, the headline is misleading, and so is the story. However, everyone seems to be missing the point that a 'corporation' doesn't actually do anything. It's the people who are in charge of the corporation that do the things that are liked, disliked or reviled. If we can get governments and the public to remember this, I think a lot of improvements could be made.
I can no longer read Dilbert. It's too depressing, because it is too real. -- Hyperhaplo
Your sig quote... Wasn't that Dario Fo? Couldn't verify it quickly, though...
the concept of 'industry standard practice'.
Read radical news here
'industry standard practice' - sounds horrible
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Some corporations control government, to reduce your choices. Some corporations control government to wage wars for power and profit, and people are maimed and killed. Some corporations control government to permit the poisoning of people. Some corporations make the government give them loans secured by worthless securities, laying the burden of debt on you. Thus your notion that you are somehow master of the huge mega-corporations is upside down.
You should all read a book from Thomas Bata. He said about current malaise this: It is moral depravity, moral poverty, that causes such unstable social polarizations and schisms in society. The solution is very simple: By His words (translated from Czech:)
"The cause of is crisis is primarily a moral poverty. A turn-around of the economic crisis? I do not believe that any turning points come out by themselves. This, what we got used to call "the economic crisis," is just another name for moral poverty. Destitution is the cause, economic decline is the result. In our country, there are many people who believe that economic decline can be bailed out with your taxpayers' money. I feel horrified by prospected outcome of this jeopardy. In a position where we are, we do not need any ingenious turn-arounds and combinations. What we need is moral statements applied to the very people who work and stewardship public property. Discourage any support for bankrupters , not to create any debts, do not waste values for nothing (armaments, military), do not over-exploit working class pope, do things and acts, which raised us from our postwar destitutions, to work and to save and to make work more profitable and lucrative, more desirable and more honest than idleness and utter waste of resources. You're right, it is necessary to overcome this crisis of confidence, but no amount of technical, financial and credit interventions cannot overcome it, is a matter of personal trust and confidence that can be restored only a moral standpoint and being apersonal example. "
Sorry, my comments are not meant to disparrage either your intelligence or education. My prior comment was related to the 'privatization' campaigns that were imposed upon municipalities (or governments) facing debts that were, in large part, due to the influences of 'economic hit-men'.
Municipal water is not something to be privatized IMO. But when it was (Bechtel), it only took a year before water-prices skyrocketed, laws got passed forbidding owning/drilling one's own well, etc... .gov micromanagement.
Like you, I dont believe in
But 'disaster capitalism' and privatizing critical resources we need to survive is NOT a solution.
Here in the US it may not be as apparent as in the
developing world (see africa and land aquisition by big Agra)
I suspect that we agree on more than less; and .gov is part of the 'cronyism' equation. But NO .gov just neuters any power over companies that are often richer than most countries.
Be well superwiz, we're on the same side.
resist propaganda