If there was ever any doubt that the Neoliberal system built on allowing Banksters to run the global economy was a pyramid scheme - let those doubts fade away.
From the New Scientist:
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.
Total validation of Occupy Wall Street and the 99%/1% paradigm? Let's see.
(please continue)
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).
Looks like those much maligned protesters know are right on the money (pardon the pun). Validated by a thorough methodology and process by a respected institution, from the same story:
From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.
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 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue (Image: PLoS One)]
Forbes Magazine, owned and managed by perennial presidential candidate Steve Forbes, also picked up the study and immediately understood it's implications, from Forbes:
The #occupy movement will eat this up as evidence for massive redistribution of wealth. The New Scientist talked to one systems theorist who is “disconcerted” at the level of interconnectedness, but not surprised. Such structures occur commonly in biology, things like fungus, lichen and weeds. Economists say the danger comes when you combine hyperconnection with the concentration of power. The Swiss scientists warn that this can lead to an unstable environment.
Of course, this is rigorous empirical data supporting what people already feel in their gut - the global economic system is rigged and unstable.
So what are the consequences of such concentration of wealth, which ultimately translates into political power? Wealth Inequality and continual economic crises. Which is to say, social and economic instability - that's the price of plutocracy.
Nowhere is this more pronounced than America:
[h/t Professor Juan Cole]
Where the Top 1% control most the economy particularly the financial wealth, even Politifact conceded that "The richest 1 percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined." A stunning statistic and indictment of the land of opportunity.
And who do you think drives the politics that make those bailouts - of financial institutions and wealth - happen?
Quite frankly, none of this is a secret, it's more or less pathetic that these facts have to be laid out continually because the plutocracy's puppets in the media try again and again to somehow pretend 1+1 equals something other than 2.
So what have we learned? Occupy Wall Street is Right! there is a basic clash between the Top 1% or owners of the country and the other 99% who just live there. It is structural, persistent and dangerous.
Whether this divide exists is beyond rational debate. The question is, now that we know Occupy Wall Street is accurate and correct, what are we going to do?
