Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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The Folks Who Call the Shots

 

 

 

COMMENT: From The New Sci­en­tist comes an arti­cle fea­tur­ing a detailed com­put­er analy­sis of the con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nom­ic pow­er wield­ed by trans-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Although this is not exact­ly rev­e­la­to­ry, the detail and sci­en­tif­ic approach do pro­vide depth and grav­i­tas to the aware­ness that grow­ing con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nom­ic pow­er dom­i­nates the world in which we live.

“Revealed–The Cap­i­tal­ist Net­work that Runs the World” by Andy Cogh­lan and Debra MacKen­zie; The New Sci­en­tist; 10/24/2011.

EXCERPT: AS PROTESTS against finan­cial pow­er sweep the world this week, sci­ence may have con­firmed the pro­test­ers’ worst fears. An analy­sis of the rela­tion­ships between 43,000 transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions has iden­ti­fied a rel­a­tive­ly small group of com­pa­nies, main­ly banks, with dis­pro­por­tion­ate pow­er over the glob­al econ­o­my.

The study’s assump­tions have attract­ed some crit­i­cism, but com­plex sys­tems ana­lysts con­tact­ed by New Sci­en­tist say it is a unique effort to untan­gle con­trol in the glob­al econ­o­my. Push­ing the analy­sis fur­ther, they say, could help to iden­ti­fy ways of mak­ing glob­al cap­i­tal­ism more sta­ble.

The idea that a few bankers con­trol a large chunk of the glob­al econ­o­my might not seem like news to New York’s Occu­py Wall Street move­ment and pro­test­ers else­where (see pho­to). But the study, by a trio of com­plex sys­tems the­o­rists at the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ide­ol­o­gy to empir­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fy such a net­work of pow­er. It com­bines the math­e­mat­ics long used to mod­el nat­ur­al sys­tems with com­pre­hen­sive cor­po­rate data to map own­er­ship among the world’s transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions (TNCs).

“Real­i­ty is so com­plex, we must move away from dog­ma, whether it’s con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries or free-mar­ket,” says James Glat­tfelder. “Our analy­sis is real­i­ty-based.”

Pre­vi­ous stud­ies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world’s econ­o­my, but they includ­ed only a lim­it­ed num­ber of com­pa­nies and omit­ted indi­rect own­er­ships, so could not say how this affect­ed the glob­al econ­o­my — whether it made it more or less sta­ble, for instance. . . .

Discussion

2 comments for “The Folks Who Call the Shots”

  1. Ha, I saw that arti­cle ear­li­er and imme­di­ate­ly thought of Dave.

    I agree with its con­clu­sions but like some of the com­men­ta­tors I have prob­lems with the method­ol­o­gy, which main­ly focus­es on direct and indi­rect stock own­er­ship. Bar­clays came out #1, I believe large­ly through its own­er­ship of the BGI divi­sion, which it since sold (it would be inter­est­ing to see how the rank­ings changed after the 2008 cri­sis). BGI, now part of Black­Rock, engages in main­ly pas­sive invest­ments of pen­sion and sov­er­eign funds, and inso­far as they are active investors it only goes as far as buy­ing and sell­ing shares, not direct­ly influ­enc­ing boards. CalPERS at least will put pres­sure on boards to make man­age­ment changes occa­sion­al­ly.

    You have long men­tioned “inter­lock­ing boards”, which I think is a more accu­rate mea­sure of where eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er tru­ly lies (no pun intend­ed).

    Posted by David | October 28, 2011, 9:19 am
  2. Good arti­cle Dave! It looks like peo­ple are final­ly wak­ing up to the truth. Let’s hope the ‘Neo’-Nazis and oth­er fas­cists aren’t able to hijack our move­ments much more than they already have........

    Posted by Steven | October 28, 2011, 1:57 pm

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