Are you paranoid if the world is in fact out to get you? The New Scientist has a story about a new scientific study that analyzed the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations and found out that really there’s about 147 corporations that turn out to run the whole world. If you thought it was the Jews or the Tides Foundation, you’re wrong. This is science bitches.
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. 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) …
The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships. Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.
When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “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.
The paper makes no claim of conspiracy or collusion; this is just the analysis. I’m going to go out on a limb here with the Occupy Wall Street protestors and say that a small number of multinational banks owning everything is a shitty way to organize society.
Here’s the top 20 owners of everything in the whole goddamned world:
- Barclays plc
- Capital Group Companies Inc
- FMR Corporation
- AXA
- State Street Corporation
- JP Morgan Chase & Co
- Legal & General Group plc
- Vanguard Group Inc
- UBS AG
- Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
- Wellington Management Co LLP
- Deutsche Bank AG
- Franklin Resources Inc
- Credit Suisse Group
- Walton Enterprises LLC
- Bank of New York Mellon Corp
- Natixis
- Goldman Sachs Group Inc
- T Rowe Price Group Inc
- Legg Mason Inc
If you want to see the full list, or for those of you who are into graph theory, here’s a link to the study.
