Today on The Janssen Report (#21): A model of world domination?

Scientific research showing global corporate control, the connection between global corporations and banks. Study by Vitali, Glattfelder and Battiston:

• On Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbi…
• On NewScientist.com: http://www.newscientist.com/article/m…
• Link to the research paper: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1…

In a nutshell this is what the study entails (from NewScientist.com):

“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 (see image). 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.”

In light of the recent highly secretive developments concerning TTP and TTIP, this raises a number of important questions:

• To what extent does global corporate control equal world power or world domination?
• How does this model tie into the developments concerning the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the ever growing global wealth gap?
• Why are the TPP and TTIP so secretive if they are only trade agreements?
• If the TPP and TTIP are supposed to lead to more effective and efficient international trade, why do these agreements give even more power to global corporations?

Food for thought!

Cheers,

Marco Janssen