TOP 25 ONE %

terms geting fuzzy

1% is a tag zombie to bnk?

see Transnational corp class core
for ppl billionaires
<div>819</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/analysis-of-25-worlds-wealthiest-families-a-reminder-of-inequalitys-economic-drain/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/analysis-of-25-worlds-wealthiest-families-a-reminder-of-inequalitys-economic-drain/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Analysis of 25 world’s wealthiest families a reminder of inequality’s economic drain</div><div> </div><div>Written by Common Dreams August 11, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>If the world needed yet another example of just how unequal the global economy has become, a new analysis of the top 25 wealthiest family dynasties published Saturday revealed that while one out of ten people in the world live on less than $2.00 per day, these super rich families now control a total of $1.4 trillion in assets and are making as much as $4 million every single hour.</div><div>
</div><div>According to Bloomberg, the numbers are “mind-boggling” and include a look at—just to name a few—the fabulous riches of the Walton family, which controls the Walmart fortune, the Mars family, descendants of the candy empire, the Saudi Royal family, and the infamous Koch brothers, the right-wing libertarians who inherited their father’s oil, gas, and other holdings.</div><div>
</div><div>Notable in the new analysis is not just the size of the massive wealth these families now have, but just how exponentially it has grown, especially compared to others in the economy—both in the last several decades and over the last 12 months.</div><div>
</div><div>As Bloomberg points out:</div><div>
</div><div>Even in this era of extreme wealth and brutal inequality, the contrast is jarring. The heirs of Sam Walton, Walmart’s notoriously frugal founder, are amassing wealth on a near-unprecedented scale—and they’re hardly alone.</div><div>
</div><div>The Walton fortune has swelled by $39 billion, to $191 billion, since topping the June 2018 ranking of the world’s richest families.</div><div>
</div><div>Other American dynasties are close behind in terms of the assets they’ve accrued. The Mars family, of candy fame, added $37 billion, bringing its fortune to $127 billion. The Kochs, the industrialists-cum-political-power-players, tacked on $26 billion, to $125 billion.</div><div>
</div><div>So it goes around the globe. America’s richest 0.1% today control more wealth than at any time since 1929, but their counterparts in Asia and Europe are gaining too. Worldwide, the 25 richest families now control almost $1.4 trillion in wealth, up 24% from last year.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2014, the United Nations issued a scathing report which warned that escalating income and wealth disparities across the world was creating economic and political instability. The report, put forth by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), cautioned leaders that if unaddressed the trend of inequality would “undermine the very foundations of development and social and domestic peace.”</div><div>
</div><div>Earlier this year, Oxfam International also warned that global wealth inequality was “out of control” and urged immediate far-reaching action. “Our economy is broken,” the group said at the time. “Hundreds of millions of people living in extreme poverty while huge rewards go to those at the very top. There are more billionaires than ever before, and their fortunes have grown to record levels. Meanwhile, the world’s poorest got even poorer.”</div><div>
</div><div>So while the Trump administration in the United States and other right-wing forces advocating on behalf of the global oligarchy continue to tell workers and struggling families around the world that the threat to them is “immigrants taking their jobs” or “socialists trying to provide better wages and more universal protections”—others pointed to the new Bloomberg analysis as an alternative explanation for why there seems to be less and less for some people in the economy while the ultra-rich continue to amass fortunes at breakneck speed.</div><div>
</div><div>As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, an analysis by Dallas Morning News finance columnist Scott Burns found that if current trends continue, the wealthiest Americans “will truly ‘have it all’ just 33 years from now” as they gobble up a larger and larger share of the overall economic pie.</div><div>
</div><div>“However you slice it, the rich have been getting richer. Lots richer,” Burns wrote.</div><div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/you-cant-tax-the-rich-without-salvaging-the-irs/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/you-cant-tax-the-rich-without-salvaging-the-irs/</a></div><div>
</div><div>The hot policy in Democratic circles these days is raising taxes on the rich. <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/W000817-elizabeth-warren" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Sen. Elizabeth Warren</a> has a plan to tax “ultramillionaires,” as she calls them. <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/S000033-bernard-sanders" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Sen. Bernie Sanders</a> wants to expand the estate tax. <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/O000172-alexandria-ocasio-cortez" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> has floated raising the top income tax rate to 70% for those making over $10 million a year.<div class="p1_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But before this country raises taxes, it should grapple with something much more prosaic but equally important for tackling inequality: saving the Internal Revenue Service.<div class="p2_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Already, wealthy people and corporations easily get around today’s rules. However tough any new laws might seem, they’d soon be undercut.<div class="p3_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Slowly and quietly over the past eight years, the IRS <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">has been eviscerated</a>. It’s lost tens of thousands of employees. It has fewer auditors now than at any time since 1953. In real dollars, the agency’s budget has dropped by almost $3 billion since 2010.<div class="p4_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Businesses and the wealthy benefit the most from this state of affairs. The largest corporations in America used to be audited every year. That started to change when the cuts began, and today, the audit rate has fallen by half. It’s a similar story for individuals making $10 million or more a year: With twice the chance of escaping IRS scrutiny, the ultrarich are much less likely to lose at the game of audit roulette.<div class="p5_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fixing the problem will require more than increasing the IRS’ budget (though that would certainly help). It’s about having the right personnel with the right skills. Today, the wealthy and corporations have the IRS outgunned. The ultra-affluent — with the help of legions of tax professionals — make domestic income disappear overseas or hide it in a pyramid of partnerships. It’s like trying to take on a modern army while armed with spears and clubs.The IRS has difficulty tracing the income of the superwealthy or countering their sophisticated arguments about why what appears to be one type of income is actually something else. The agency has also trouble valuing their assets (a problem that, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">as The New York Times revealed</a>, dates back at least to when Fred Trump was misleading the IRS about how much his buildings were worth). By the public admission of numerous IRS officials, <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-service-global-high-wealth-audits" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">it has long done a poor job</a> of scrutinizing complicated partnerships to understand who owns what portion of what stock.<div class="p7_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The top 0.5% of highest-earning Americans account for about a fifth of the income that’s hidden from the IRS, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5219189-The-Distribution-of-Tax-Noncompliance.html#document/p10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">according to one University of Michigan study</a>, or more than $50 billion a year in today’s dollars.<div class="p8_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It’s much easier to enforce the tax laws for the bottom 90% of earners. Wages are reported straight to the IRS, and computers can easily check that tax returns accurately report that income. This means that inadequate enforcement of the tax laws necessarily has a regressive effect, liberating those at the top from scrutiny while the masses continue to be tracked by machines.<div class="p9_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">With its budget slashed, the IRS has pulled back across the board — except for one area where it’s been easier to keep the numbers from falling so much: <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/earned-income-tax-credit-irs-audit-working-poor" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">audits of the poor</a>. More than one-third of all audit targets are recipients of the earned income tax credit, one of the nation’s largest anti-poverty programs. By the hundreds of thousands, IRS computers spit out letters that require low-income taxpayers to prove their eligibility. The <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/eitc-audit" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">counties with the highest audit rates</a> aren’t found in the hedge fund precincts of Connecticut or the lobbyist enclaves of Northern Virginia. No, they’re rural, mostly African American counties in the Deep South.<div class="p10_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">There’s nothing easy about auditing the rich. Even when the IRS has evidence of flat-out cheating, such as when it discovers a hidden Swiss bank account, it can take years of work to prove its case. Taking such time clashes with one of the core ways the IRS evaluates its managers and agents: how efficiently they open and close audits. As one senior manager <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">put it to us</a>, “If you’re not churning out the exams, you have to explain why you’re not.”<div class="p11_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But more often, the affairs of the superwealthy are infernally complicated and the IRS doesn’t have black-and-white proof of evasion. Instead, the agency runs up against what’s called “aggressive” planning in the tax world. To the rich, a tax return is just an opening offer to the government. If they don’t get audited, that’s great. If they do, well, they’re ready for a fight.<div class="p12_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 2009, the IRS decided to take a bold, new approach <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-service-global-high-wealth-audits" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">to auditing the superwealthy</a>. The agency’s idea was to bring specialists together and form a kind of green-eyeshade-wearing Delta Force. It would finally do something it — surprisingly — hadn’t been doing before: look at the entirety of a taxpayer’s empire. That meant examining how his partnerships, limited liability companies, foundations, gifts and overseas operations interact with one another. The ultrarich weave all these together so they end up with an ultralow effective tax rate. “We hadn’t really been looking at it all together, and shame on us,” Steven Miller, a former acting commissioner of the IRS, told us.<div class="p13_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-service-global-high-wealth-audits" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Because of budget cuts and lobbying</a>, this elite force never came together. The agency hoped to have a staff of about 240 expert auditors by 2012. But by 2014 it had 96, and by last year the number had fallen to 58. Initially spooked by the group’s ambition, tax professionals who counsel the wealthy now speak of the effort with a kind of pity.<div class="p14_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Criminal tax enforcement has also faltered. More than 150 million income tax returns were filed in 2017, but <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/after-budget-cuts-the-irs-work-against-tax-cheats-is-facing-collapse" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">the IRS brought fewer than 800 cases</a> in which someone was charged with making legal income but criminally evading taxes. That’s one reason tax cheats can get away with brazen behavior for so long — until they attract the attention of federal investigators for other reasons. That’s what happened to the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion, and the celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, who was charged with failing to file taxes at all for several years. (Avenatti denies the charges.)<div class="p15_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So, what to do? One 2020 candidate already has a bold proposal to resuscitate the IRS. It’s a plan to pump tens of billions into the agency, enough to fund a second army of agents. That candidate’s name is Donald Trump.<div class="p16_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Of course, it was Trump’s party that gutted the agency, costing the country, <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">we estimate</a>, more than $100 billion in lost revenue. <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/budget-fy2020.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The president’s 2020 budget</a>, however, did propose adding $15 billion over 10 years to the IRS enforcement budget, a move that would more than double the agency’s overall budget. The administration estimated this would produce revenue of at least $47 billion. The question arises: Has the administration genuinely had a change of heart? Or is this merely a neat trick to make deficit projections appear smaller?<div class="p17_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So far, this is all just talk. It is, though, one of the few areas where Trump and Democrats are in substantive agreement. Democrats in the House recently proposed a $400 million IRS budget increase next year.<div class="p18_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Among the Democratic presidential candidates, Warren does mention the IRS in her wealth tax proposal. <a href="https://elizabethwarren.com/ultra-millionaire-tax/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">She calls for an unspecified</a> but “significant increase in the IRS enforcement budget” and a minimum audit rate for taxpayers subject to her “ultramillionaire” tax.<div class="p19_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Raising taxes on the rich is a more compelling cause than increasing the operating budget of a bureaucracy most American voters probably hate thinking about. But the boldest tax plan of all starts with salvaging the IRS.<div class="p20_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.</div><div>
</div><div>--</div></div><div>
<div>
</div><div>Monopoly Restored:<h2 style="border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: -10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">How the Super-Rich Robbed Main Street</h2><div>guar basic income (milton F wnted to pvt all, for neg inc tax +- =</div><div>
</div><div>1% 50% of wealth, 25% of income?; ceo 350x?  up 17% one year</div><div>
<div><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-august-27-2018/">https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-august-27-2018/</a></div><div>
</div><div>audio  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6lcFdADP1g</div><div>
<div><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-august-27-2018/" class="entry-title h4" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 12.5px; margin-bottom: 12.5px;">Robbing Main Street/Stopping Trump</a><div class="content text-gray small" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">History professor, Jack Luzkow, explains the many ways the super-rich are robbing the rest of us. And Ralph asks Constitutional law professor, Corey Brettschneider if the Constitution is capable of stopping Donald Trump.no death tax after 2024?!This book is a work of contemporary economic history focusing primarily on the US and the UK. It shows that, historically, much of the wealth of the ultra-wealthy has been based on inheritance, tax evasion, political influence, or wage theft. Today, much of the wealth of the rentier class—the super-rich—is based on income from ownership or control of scarce assets, or assets artificially made scarce. As a result, the super-rich reap much of their wealth from patents, monopolies, and subsidies. Their banks retain the right to speculate on risky derivatives, and their credit-card companies are not limited by usury laws that reduce interest rates. The super-rich have lowered (or escaped) inheritance taxes, shifted much of their income to lower taxed capital gains, practiced wage theft, fought minimum wage laws, outsourced jobs, and resorted to temps and contract labor to avoid unions and decent wages. They use tax havens where trillions of dollars remain untaxed, transfer profits of their intellectual and financial property to subsidiaries in low-tax regimes, and defend for-profit health insurance that is unaffordable and inequitable for millions. This book states in qualitative and quantitative terms how expensive the super-rich have become, why they are unsustainable for the rest of us, and what the way forward to greater economic equality may be. In sum, the super-rich are unaffordable.<a href="https://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9783319939933">https://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9783319939933</a>
Democracy Corrupted
Luzkow, Jack Lawrence
Pages 13-53The Rise and Rise of Wall Street and the City of London
Luzkow, Jack Lawrence
Pages 55-105The Ascendancy of the Corporate Elite
Luzkow, Jack Lawrence
Pages 107-131The Decline of Main Street and the Middle Class
Luzkow, Jack Lawrence
Pages 133-186The Politics of Taxes
Luzkow, Jack Lawrence
Pages 187-239The Business of Healthcare
Luzkow, Jack Lawrence
Pages 241-294Big and Bigger Agribusiness: Farm to Table
Luzkow, Jack Lawrence
Pages 295-341What Can Be Done?</div><div> =<h1 rel="dc:type" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Network of Global Corporate Control</h1><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025995" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025995</a>

 A University of Zurich study 'proves' that a small group of companies - mainly banks - wields huge power over the global economy.
 The study is the first to look at all 43,060 transnational corporations and the web of ownership between them - and created a 'map' of 1,318 companies at the heart of the global economy.
 The study found that 147 companies formed a 'super entity' within this, controlling 40 per cent of its  wealth. All own part or all of one another. Most are banks - the top 20 includes Barclays and Goldman Sachs. But the close connections mean that the network could be vulnerable to collapse.
economy'In effect, less than one per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,' says James Glattfelder, a complex systems theorist at the Swiss Federal Institute in Zurich, who co-wrote the research, to be published in the journal PLoS One.
 Some of the assumptions underlying the study have come in for criticism - such as the idea that ownership equates to control. But the Swiss researchers have no axe to grind: they simply applied mathematical models usually used to model natural systems to the world economy, using data from Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors.
 Economists such as John Driffil of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, told New Scientist that the value of its study wasn't to see who controlled the global economy, but the tight connections between the world's largest companies.
 The financial collapse of 2008 showed that such tightly-knit networks can be unstable.'If one company suffers distress,' Glattfelder says, 'This propagates.'
 The research requires more analysis, but it could be used to look for the weaknesses in the network of global wealth, and prevent future financial disaster.
 Looking at 'connectedness' also puts paid to conspiracy theories about the world's wealth - companies connect to highly connected companies for business reasons, rather than world domination.The 'core' of 147 companies also represents too many interests to wield real political power - but it could act 'as one' to defend common interests. Sadly for market reformers, resisting change may be one such common interest.
 Click <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">here</a> to read more.
 <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2051008/Does-super-corporation-run-global-economy.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2051008/Does-super-corporation-run-global-economy.html</a>
  =Giants: 2018 PP
These seventeen Giants have 199 directors on their boards. Thisgroup of 199 individuals represents the financial management coreof global capitalism. They collectively manage this concentrationof $41.1 trillion in funds and operate in nearly every country in theworld. They are the central decision makers regarding the financialcapital that powers the global economic system....of the 199 power elite managers
(70 percent) are male. Eighty-four percent are whites of Euro-pean descent. The 199 power elite managers hold 147 graduate
degrees, including 59 MBAs, 22 JDs, 23 PhDs, and 35 MA/MSdegrees. Almost all have attended elite private colleges, with 28attending Harvard or Stanford.People from twenty nations...Giants: top asset management firms withmore than $1 trillion in early 2017Assets in Mgmnt SuperconnectedName Country (in Trillions) Global Rank (2010)1. BlackRock* US $5.4 —2. Vanguard Group US $4.4 83. JP Morgan Chase US $3.8 64. Allianz SE Germany/ $3.3 27(PIMCO) US5. UBS Switzerland $2.8 96. Bank of America US $2.5 10Merrill Lynch7. Barclays plc Great Britain $2.5 18. State Street US $2.4 5Global Advisors9. Fidelity Invest- US $2.1 3ments (FMR)10. Bank of New US $1.7 16York Mellon11. AXA Group France $1.5 412. Capital Group US $1.4 213. Goldman Sachs US $1.4 18Group14. Credit Suisse Switzerland $1.3 1415. Prudential US $1.3 —Financial16. Morgan US $1.3 21Stanley & Co.17. Amundi/Crédit France $1.1 24AgricoleTOTAL 17 Firms (199 Directors) $41.1</div><div>

<div>
</div><div>Project Censored has just finish a year long study on the people on the boards of directors of the top ten asset management firms and the top ten most centralized corporations in the world. With overlaps there is a total of thirteen firms in our study:
Barclays PLC, BlackRock Inc., Capital Group Companies Inc., FMR Corporation: Fidelity Worldwide Investment, AXA Group, State Street Corporation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Legal & General Group PLC (LGIMA), Vanguard Group Inc., UBS AG, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse Group AG, and Allianz SE (Owners of PIMCO) PIMCO-Pacific Investment Management Co
. The boards of directors of these firms, totaling 161 individuals. They are the financial core of the world’s Transnational Capitalist Class.  Collectively, these 161 people manage $23.91 trillion in funds impacting nearly every country in the world.  The institutional arrangements within the money management systems of global capital relentlessly seek ways to achieve maximum return on investment, and the structural conditions for manipulations—legal or not—are always open (Libor scandel). These institutions have become “too big to fail,” their scope and interconnections pressure government regulators to shy away from criminal investigations, much less prosecutions. The result is a semi-protected class of people with increasingly vast amounts of money, seeking unlimited growth and returns, with little concern for consequences of their economic pursuits on other people, societies, cultures, and environments.  One hundred thirty-six of the 161 core members (84 percent) are male. Eighty-eight percent are whites of European descent (just nineteen are people of color). Fifty-two percent hold graduate degrees—including thirty-seven MBAs, fourteen JDs, twenty-one PhDs, and twelve MA/MS degrees. Almost all have attended private colleges, with close to half attending the same ten universities: Harvard University (25), Oxford University (11), Stanford University (8), Cambridge University (8), University of Chicago (8), University of Cologne (6), Columbia University (5), Cornell University (4), the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (3), and University of California–Berkeley (3). Forty-nine are or were CEOs, eight are or were CFOs; six had prior experience at Morgan Stanley, six at Goldman Sachs, four at Lehman Brothers, four at Swiss Re, seven at Barclays, four at Salomon Brothers, and four at Merrill Lynch. 
=all<h1 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 50px; outline: none; letter-spacing: -1px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class</h1><h3 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 22px; outline: none; letter-spacing: -0.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </h3>Estimates are that the total world’s wealth is close to $200 trillion, with the US and European elites holding approximately 63 percent of that total; meanwhile, the poorest half of the global population together possesses less than 2 percent of global wealth. The World Bank reports that, 1.29 billion people were living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.25 a day, and 1.2 billion more were living on less than $2.00 a day. Thirty-five thousand people, mostly young children, die every day from malnutrition.  While millions suffer, a transnational financial elite seeks returns on trillions of dollars that speculate on the rising costs of food, commodities, land, and other life sustaining items for the primary purpose of financial gain.  They do this in cooperation with each other in a global system of transnational corporate power and control and as such constitute the financial core of an international corporate capitalist class.  Project Censored has just finish a year long study on the people on the boards of directors of the top ten asset management firms and the top ten most centralized corporations in the world. With overlaps there is a total of thirteen firms in our study: Barclays PLC, BlackRock Inc., Capital Group Companies Inc., FMR Corporation: Fidelity Worldwide Investment, AXA Group, State Street Corporation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Legal & General Group PLC (LGIMA), Vanguard Group Inc., UBS AG, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse Group AG, and Allianz SE (Owners of PIMCO) PIMCO-Pacific Investment Management Co. The boards of directors of these firms, totaling 161 individuals. They are the financial core of the world’s Transnational Capitalist Class.  Collectively, these 161 people manage $23.91 trillion in funds impacting nearly every country in the world.  The institutional arrangements within the money management systems of global capital relentlessly seek ways to achieve maximum return on investment, and the structural conditions for manipulations—legal or not—are always open (Libor scandel). These institutions have become “too big to fail,” their scope and interconnections pressure government regulators to shy away from criminal investigations, much less prosecutions. The result is a semi-protected class of people with increasingly vast amounts of money, seeking unlimited growth and returns, with little concern for consequences of their economic pursuits on other people, societies, cultures, and environments.  One hundred thirty-six of the 161 core members (84 percent) are male. Eighty-eight percent are whites of European descent (just nineteen are people of color). Fifty-two percent hold graduate degrees—including thirty-seven MBAs, fourteen JDs, twenty-one PhDs, and twelve MA/MS degrees. Almost all have attended private colleges, with close to half attending the same ten universities: Harvard University (25), Oxford University (11), Stanford University (8), Cambridge University (8), University of Chicago (8), University of Cologne (6), Columbia University (5), Cornell University (4), the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (3), and University of California–Berkeley (3). Forty-nine are or were CEOs, eight are or were CFOs; six had prior experience at Morgan Stanley, six at Goldman Sachs, four at Lehman Brothers, four at Swiss Re, seven at Barclays, four at Salomon Brothers, and four at Merrill Lynch.  People from twenty-two nations make up the central financial core of the Transnational Corporate Class. Seventy-three (45 percent) are from the US; twenty-seven (16 percent) Britain; fourteen France; twelve Germany; eleven Switzerland; four Singapore; three each from Austria, Belgium, and India; two each from Australia and South Africa; and one each from Brazil, Vietnam, Hong Kong/China, Qatar, the Netherlands, Zambia, Taiwan, Kuwait, Mexico, and Colombia. They mostly live in or near a number of the world’s great cities: New York, Chicago, London, Paris, and Munich. Members of the financial core take active parts in global policy groups and government. Five of the thirteen corporations have directors as advisors or former employees of the International Monetary Fund. Six of the thirteen firms have directors who have worked at or served as advisors to the World Bank. Five of the thirteen firms hold corporate membership in the Council on Foreign Relations in the US. Seven of the firms sent nineteen directors to attend the World Economic Forum in February 2013. Seven of the directors have served or currently serve on a Federal Reserve board, both regionally and nationally in the US. Six of the financial core serve on the Business Roundtable in the US. Several directors have had direct experience with the financial ministries of European Union countries and the G20. Almost all of the 161 individuals serve in some advisory capacity for various regulatory organizations, finance ministries, universities, and national or international policy-planning bodies.  Western governments and international policy bodies serve the interests of this financial core of the Transnational Corporate Class. Wars are initiated to protect their interests. International treaties, and policy agreements are arranged to promote their success.  Power elites serve to promote the free flow of global capital for investment anywhere that returns are possible.  Identifying the people with such power and influence is an important part of democratic movements seeking to protect our commons so that all humans might share and prosper. The full, detailed list is online at: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://projectcensored.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e8526bc09be7b03c98231efd7&id=661aba084e&e=087818defe" style="line-height: 1.2em; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Project Censored</a></div><div>
</div><div>===</div><div>BlackRock is one of the most concentrated power networks among the global 1 percent. The eightteen members of the board of directors are connected to a significant part of the world’s core financial assests. Their decisions can change empires, destroy currencies, and impoverish millions. Some of the top financial giants of the capitalist world are connected by interlocking boards of directors at BlackRock, including Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, PNC Bank, Barclays, Swiss Reinsurance Company, American International Group (AIG), UBS A.G., Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, J. P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Morgan Stanley.

A 2011 University of Zurich study, research completed by Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, Stefano Battiston at the Swiss Federal Institute, reports that a small group of companies—mainly banks—wields huge power over the global economy.[xxvi] Using data from Orbis 2007, a database listing thirty-seven million companies and investors, the Swiss researchers applied mathematical models—usually used to model natural systems—to the world economy. The study is the first to look at all 43,060 transnational corporations and the web of ownership between them. The research created a “map” of 1,318 companies at the heart of the global economy. The study found that 147 companies formed a “super entity” within this map, controlling some 40 percent of its wealth. The top twenty-five of the 147 super-connected companies includes:

1. Barclays PLC

2. Capital Group Companies Inc.

3. FMR Corporation

4. AXA

5. State Street Corporation

6. J. P. 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

BlackRock Directors

Notably, for our purposes, BlackRock board members have direct connections to at least seven of the top twenty-five corporations that Vitali et al. identify as an international “super entity.” BlackRock’s board has direct links to seven of the twenty-five most interconnected corporations in the world. BlackRock’s eighteen board members control and influence tens of trillions of dollars of wealth in the world and represent a core of the super-connected financial sector corporations.

Below is a sample cross section of key figures and corporate assets among the global economic “super entity” identified by Vitali et al.

Other Key Figures and Corporate Connections within the Highest Levels of the  Global Economic “Super Entity”

Capital Group Companies—Privately held, based in Los Angeles, manages $1 trillion in assets.

FMR—One of the world’s largest mutual fund firms, managing $1.5 trillion in assets and serving more than twenty million individual and institutional clients; Edward C. (Ned) Johnson III, Chairman and CEO.

AXA—Manages $1.5 trillion in assets, serving 101 million clients; Henri de Castries, CEO AXA, and Director, Nestlé (Switzerland).

State Street Corporation—Operates from Boston with assest management at $1.9 trillion; directors include Joseph L. Hooley, CEO of State Street Corporation; Kennett F. Burnes, retired chairman and CEO of Cabot Corporation(2011 revenue: $3.1 billion).

JP Morgan/Chase (2011 assets: $2.3 trillion)—Board of directors: James A. Bell, retired executive VP of The Boeing Company; Stephen B. Burke, CEO of NBC Universal, and executive VP of Comcast Corporation; David M. Cote, CEO of Honeywell International, Inc.; Timothy P. Flynn, retired chairman of KPMG International; and Lee R. Raymond, retired CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation.

Vanguard (2011 assets under management: $1.6 trillion)—Directors: Emerson U. Fullwood, VP of Xerox Corporation; JoAnn Heffernan Heisen, VP of Johnson & Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Mark Loughridge, CFO of IBM, Global Financing; Alfred M. Rankin Jr., CEO of NACCO Industries, Inc., National Association of Manufacturers, Goodrich Corp, and chairman of Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

UBS AG (2012 assets: $620 billion)—Directors include: Michel Demaré, board member of Syngenta and the IMD Foundation (Lausanne); David Sidwell, former CFO of Morgan Stanley.

Merrill Lynch (Bank of America) (2011 assets management: $2.3 trillion)—Directors include: Brian T. Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America; Rosemary T. Berkery, general counsel for Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (formerly Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc), member of New York Stock Exchange’s Legal Advisory Committee, director at Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association; Mark A. Ellman, managing director of Credit Suisse, First Boston; Dick J. Barrett, cofounder of Ellman Stoddard Capital Partners, MetLife, Citi Group, UBS, Carlyle Group, ImpreMedia, Verizon Communications, Commonewealth Scientific and Industrial Research Org, Fluor Corp, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Group.

The directors of these super-connected companies represent a small portion of the global 1 percent. Most people with assets in excess of $588,000 are not major players in international finance. At best, they hire asset management firms to produce a return on their capital. Often their net worth is tied up in nonfinancial assets such a real estate and businesses.

Analysis: TCC and Global Power

So how does the transnational corporate class (TCC) maintain wealth concentration and power in the world? The wealthiest 1 percent of the world’s population represents approximately forty million adults. These forty million people are the richest segment of the first tier populations in the core countries and intermittently in other regions. Most of this 1 percent have professional jobs with security and tenure working for or associated with established institutions. Approximately ten million of these individuals have assets in excess of one million dollars, and approximately 100,000 have financials assets worth over thirty million dollars. Immediately below the 1 percent in the first tier are working people with regular employment in major corporations, government, self-owned businesses, and various institutions of the world. This first tier constitutes about 30–40 percent of the employed in the core developed countries, and some 30 percent in the second tier economies and down to 20 percent in the periphery economies (sometimes referred to as the 3rd world). The second tier of global workers represents growing armies of casual labor: the global factory workers, street workers, and day laborers intermittently employed with increasingly less support from government and social welfare organizations. These workers, mostly concentrated in the megacities, constitute some 30–40 percent of the workers in the core industrialized economies and some 20 percent in the second tier and peripheral economies. This leaves a third tier of destitute people worldwide ranging from 30 percent of adults in the core and secondary economies to fully 50 percent of the people in peripherial countries who have extremely limited income opportunities and struggle to survive on a few dollars a day. These are the 2.5 billion people who live on less than two dollars a day, die by the tens of thousands every day from malnutrition and easily curible illnesses, and who have probably never even heard a dial tone.[xxvii]

As seen in our extractor sector and investment sector samples, corporate elites are interconnected through direct board connections with some seventy major multinational corporations, policy groups, media organizations, and other academic or nonprofit institutions. The investment sector sample shows much more powerful financial links than the extractor sample; nonetheless, both represent vast networks of resources concentrated within each company’s board of directors. The short sample of directors and resources from eight other of the superconnected companies replicates this pattern of multiple board corporate connections, policy groups, media and government, controlling vast global resources. These interlock relationships recur across the top interconnected companies among the transnational corporate class, resulting in a highly concentrated and powerful network of individuals who share a common interest in preserving their elite domination.

Sociological research shows that interlocking directorates have the potential to faciliate political cohesion. A sense of a collective “we” emerges within such power networks, whereby members think and act in unison, not just for themselves and their individual firms, but for a larger sense of purpose—the good of the order, so to speak.[xxviii]

Transnational corporate boards meet on a regular basis to encourage the maximunization of profit and the long-term viability of their firm’s business plans. If they arrange for payments to government officials, conduct activities that undermine labor organizations, seek to manipulate the price of commodies (e.g. gold), or engage in insider trading in some capacity, they are in fact forming conspiratorial alliances inside those boards of directors. Our sample of thirty directors inside two connected companies have influence with some of the most powerful policy groups in the world, including British–American Business Council, US–Japan Business Council, Business Roundtable, Business Council, and the Kissinger Institute. They influence some ten trillion dollars in monetery resouces and control the working lives of many hundreds of thousands of people. All in all, they are a power elite unto themselves, operating in a world of power elite networks as the de facto ruling class of the capitalist world.

Moreover, this 1 percent global elite dominates and controls public relations firms and the corporate media. Global corporate media protect the interests of the 1 percent by serving as a propaganda machine for the superclass. The corporate media provide entertainment for the masses and distorts the realities of inequality. Corporate news is managed by the 1 percent to maintain illusions of hope and to divert blame from the powerful for hard times.[xxix]

Four of the thirty directors in our two-firm sample are directly connected with public relations and media. Thomas H. O’Brien and Ivan G. Seidenberg are both on the board of Verizon Communications, where Seidenberg serves as chairman. Verizon reported over $110 billion in operating revenues in 2011.[xxx] David H. Komansky and Linda Gosden Robinson are on the board of WPP Group, which describes itself as the world leader in marketing communications services, grossing over $65 billion in 2011. WPP is a conglomerate of many of the world’s leading PR and marketing firms, in fields that include advertising, media investment management, consumer insight, branding and identity, health care communications, and direct digital promotion and relationship marketing.[xxxi]

Even deeper inside the 1 percent of wealthy elites is what David Rothkopf calls the superclass. David Rothkopf, former managing director of Kissinger Associates and deputy undersecretary of commerce for international trade policies, published his book Superclass: the Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, in 2008.[xxxii] According to Rothkopf, the superclass constitutes approximately 0.0001 percent of the world’s population, comprised of 6,000 to 7,000 people—some say 6,660. They are the Davos-attending, Gulfstream/private jet–flying, money-incrusted, megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world, people at the absolute peak of the global power pyramid. They are 94 percent male, predominantly white, and mostly from North America and Europe. These are the people setting the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, G-8, G-20, NATO, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. They are from the highest levels of finance capital, transnational corporations, the government, the military, the academy, nongovernmental organizations, spiritual leaders, and other shadow elites. Shadow elites include, for instance,  the deep politics of national security organizations in connection with international drug cartels, who extract 8,000 tons of opium from US war zones annually, then launder $500 billion through transnational banks, half of which are US-based.[xxxiii]

Rothkoft’s understanding of the superclass is one based on influence and power. Although there are over 1,000 billionaires in the world, not all are necessarily part of the superclass in terms of influencing global policies. Yet these 1,000 billionaires have twice as much wealth as the 2.5 billion least wealthy people, and they are fully aware of the vast inequalities in the world. The billionaires and the global 1 percent are similar to colonial plantation owners. They know they are a small minority with vast resources and power, yet they must continually worry about the unruly exploited masses rising in rebellion. As a result of these class insecurities, the superclass works hard to protect this structure of concentrated wealth. Protection of capital is the prime reason that NATO countries now account for 85 percent of the world’s defense spending, with the US spending more on military than the rest of the world combined.[xxxiv] Fears of  inequality rebellions and other forms of unrest motivate NATO’s global agenda in the war on terror.[xxxv] The Chicago 2012 NATO Summit Declaration reads:

As Alliance leaders, we are determined to ensure that NATO retains and develops the capabilities necessary to perform its essential core tasks collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security—and thereby to play an essential role promoting security in the world. We must meet this responsibility while dealing with an acute financial crisis and responding to evolving geo-strategic challenges. NATO allows us to achieve greater security than any one Ally could attain acting alone.

We confirm the continued importance of a strong transatlantic link and Alliance solidarity as well as the significance of sharing responsibilities, roles, and risks to meet the challenges North-American and European Allies face together . . . we have confidently set ourselves the goal of NATO Forces 2020: modern, tightly connected forces equipped, trained, exercised and commanded so that they can operate together and with partners in any (emphaisis added) environment.[xxxvi]

NATO is quickly emerging as the police force for the transnational corporate class. As the TCC more fully emerged in the 1980s, coinciding with the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), NATO began broader operations. NATO first ventured into the Balkans, where it remains, and then moved into Afghanistan. NATO started a training mission in Iraq in 2005, has recently conducted operations in Libya, and, as of July 2012, is considering military action in Syria.

It has become clear that the superclass uses NATO for its global security. This is part of an expanding strategy of US military domination around the world, wherby the US/NATO military-industrial-media empire operates in service to the transnational corporate class for the protection of international capital anywhere in the world.[xxxvii]

Sociologists William Robinson and Jerry Harris anticipated this situation in 2000, when they described “a shift from the social welfare state to the social control (police) state replete with the dramatic expansion of public and private security forces, the mass incarceration of the excluded populations (disproportionately minorities), new forms of social apartheid . . . and anti-immigrant legislation.”[xxxviii] Robinson and Harris’s theory accurately predicts the agenda of today’s global superclass, including

?President Obama’s continuation of the police state agendas of his executive predecessors, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H. W. Bush;

?the long-range global dominance agenda of the superclass, which uses US/NATO military forces to discourage resisting states and maintain internal police repression, in service of the capitalist system’s orderly maintenance;

?and the continued consolidation of capital around the world without interference from governments or egalitarian social movements.[xxxix]

Furthermore, this agenda leads to the further pauperization of the poorest half of the world’s population, and an unrelenting downward spiral of wages for everyone in the second tier, and even some within the first tier.[xl] It is a world facing economic crisis, where the neoliberal solution is to spend less on human needs and more on security.[xli] It is a world of financial institutions run amok, where the answer to bankruptcy is to print more money through quantitative easing with trillions of new inflation-producing dollars. It is a world of permanent war, whereby spending for destruction requires even more spending to rebuild, a cycle that profits the TCC and its global networks of economic power. It is a world of drone killings, extrajudicial assassinations, and death and destruction, at home and abroad.

As Andrew Kollin states in State Power and Democracy, “There is an Orwellian dimension to the Administration’s (Bush and later Obama) perspective, it chose to disregard the law, instead creating decrees to legitimate illegal actions, giving itself permision to act without any semblances of power sharing as required by the Constitution or international law.”[xlii]

And in Globalization and the Demolition of Society, Dennis Loo writes, “The bottom line, the fundamential division of our society, is between, on the one hand, those whose interests rest on the dominance and the drive for monopolizing the society and planet’s resources and, on the other hand, those whose interests lie in the husbanding of thoses resources for the good of the whole rather than the part.”[xliii]

The Occupy movement uses the 1 percent vs. 99 percent mantra as a master concept in its demonstrations, disruptions, and challenges to the practices of the transnational corporate class, within which the global superclass is a key element in the implementation of a superelite agenda for permanent war and total social control. Occupy is exactly what the superclass fears the most—a global democratic movement that exposes the TCC agenda and the continuing theater of government elections, wherein the actors may change but the marquee remains the same. The more that Occupy refuses to cooperate with the TCC agenda and mobilizes activists, the more likely the whole TCC system of dominance will fall to its knees under the people power of democractic movements.

peter phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and president of the Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored.

kimberly soeiro is a sociology student at Sonoma State University, library researcher, and activist.

Special thanks to Mickey Huff, director of Project Censored, and Andy Roth, associate director of Project Censored, for editing and for important suggestons for this article.

Notes

[i] For a more scholarly background on this subject, the following are required reading: C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, New York, Oxford University Press, 1956; G. Willian Domhoff, Who Rules America 6th edition, Boston, McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2009; William Carroll, The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class, Zed Books, 2010.

[ii] Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class, Oxford, UK, Blackwell, 2001.

[iii] Leslie Sklair, “The Transnational Capitalist Class And The Discourse Of Globalization,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2000, http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/012sklair.htm

[iv] Tax Havens: Super-rich hiding at least $21 trillion, BBC News, July 22, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18944097

[v] Tyler Durgen, A Detailed Look At Global Wealth Distribution, 10/11/10, http://www.zerohedge.com/article/detailed-look-global-wealth-distribution.

[vi] “World Bank Sees Progress Against Extreme Poverty, But Flags Vulnerabilities,” World Bank, Press Release No. 2012/297/Dec., February 29, 2012, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23130032_{pagePK:64257043}piPK:437376_{theSitePK:4607,00.html.}[vii] Mark Ellis, The Three Top Sins of the Universe, http://www.starvation.net/.

[viii] “Corporatons are Still Making a Killing from Hunger,” April 2009, Grain, http://www.grain.org/article/entries/716-corporations-are-still-making-a-killing-from-hunger.

[ix] On the extraction of surplus-value from labor, see Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3 (New York and London: Penguin, 1991[1894]).

[x] See, e.g., Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (New York: St. Martins, 1999), Chapter 6; for additional information on the Fair Share of the Common Heritage see, http://www.fairsharecommonheritage.org/.

[xi] Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold, Notice of Annual Meeting of Stockholders, June 15, 2011, document April 28, 2001, www.ecocumentview.com/FCX_MTG.

[xii] “Freeport Indonesia Miners, Tribesmen Defend Road Blockades,” Reuters Africa, November 4, 2011, http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL4E7M410020111104.

[xiii] “Police Admit to Receiving Freeport ‘Lunch Money,’” Frank Arnaz, Jakarta Globe, October 28, 2011,

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/police-admit-to-receiving-freeport-lunch-money/474747.

[xiv] “Indonesia must investigate mine strike protest killing,” Amnesty International News, October 10, 2011, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/indonesia-must-investigate-mine-strike-protest-killing-2011-10-10; West Papua Report, November 2011, http://www.etan.org/issues/wpapua/2011/1111wpap.htm.

[xv] Camelia Pasandaran, “Striking Freeport Employees Lower Wage Increase Demands,”Jakarta Globe, | November 7, 2011, http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/business/striking-freeport-employees-lower-wage-increase-demands/476800.

[xvi] Alex Emery, “Freeport Cerro Verde, Workers Sign Three-Year Labor Accord,” Bloomberg News,

December 22, 2011, http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-22/freeport-cerro-verde-peru-workers-sign-three-year-labor-accord.

[xvii] Eric Bellman and Tess Stynes, “Freeport-McMoRan Says Pact Ends Indonesia Strike,” Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203893404577098222935896112.html.

[xviii] John Pakage, “When there is no guarantee of the security of life for the people of Papau,” West Papua Media Alerts, March 1, 2012, http://westpapuamedia.info/tag/freeport-McMoRan/.

[xix] “Reasons to go the Darwin,” The Nation (Thailand), November 30, 2011, http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Reasons-to-go-to-Darwin-30170893.html

[xxi] Karishma Vaswani, “US Firm Freeport Struggles to Escape Its Past in Papua,” BBC News, Jakarta,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14417718.

[xxii] Phoenix Arizona, October 28, 2011, Youtube report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvJxy2GvOHE.

[xxiii] BlackRock About Us: http://www2.blackrock.com/global/home/AboutUs/index.htm.

[xxiv] Data for this section is drawn for StreetInsider.com.

[xxv] Data for the corporations listed in this section comes fron the annual report at each corporation’s website. Biography information was gained from the FAX annual report to investors and online biographies for individuals wihen available.

[xxvi] Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston, “The Network of Global Corporate Control,” PLoS ONE, October 26, 2011, http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025995.

[xxvii] Willian Robinson and Jerry Harris, “Towards a Global Ruling Class? Globalization and the Transnational Capitalist Class,” Science and Society 64, no. 1 (Spring 2000).

[xxviii] Val Burris, “Interlocking Directorates and Political Cohesion Among Corporate Elites,” American Journal of Sociology 3, no. 1 (July 2005).

[xxix] Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, “Truth Emergency: Inside the Military-Industrial Media Empire,” Censored 2010 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009), 197–220.

[xxx] Verizon Financials 2012, http://www22.verizon.com/investor/ Hoovers describes Verizon as, “the #2 US telecom services provider overall after AT&T, but it holds the top spot in wireless services ahead of rival AT&T Mobility.” Hoovers Inc. http://www.hoovers.com/company/Verizon_Communications_Inc/rfrski-1.html.

[xxxi] WPP: http://www.wpp.com/wpp/about/wppataglance/.

[xxxii] David Rothkopf, SuperClass: the Global Power Elite and the World They are Making (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008).

[xxxiii] Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine, Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010). See also Censored Story #22, “Wachovia Bank Laundered Money for Latin American Drug Cartels,” in Chapter 1.

[xxxiv] David Rothkopf, Superclass, Public Address: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 9, 2008.

[xxxv] NATO: Defence Against Terrorism Programme, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-EBFFE857-6607109D/natolive/topics_50313.htm?selectedLocale=en.

[xxxvi] NATO, Summit Declaration on Defence Capabilities: Toward NATO Forces 2020, May 20, 2012, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-1CE3D0B6-393C986D/natolive/official_texts_87594.htm.

[xxxvii] For an expanded analysis of the history of US “global dominance,” see Peter Phillips, Bridget Thornton and Celeste Vogler, “The Global Dominance Group: 9/11 Pre-Warnings & Election Irregularities in Context,” May 2, 2010, http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/the-global-dominance-group/ and Peter Phillips, Bridget Thornton, and Lew Brown, “The Global Dominance Group and U.S. Corporate Media,” Censored 2007 (New York: Seven Stories, 2006), 307–333.

[xxxviii] Willian Robinson and Jerry Harris, “Towards a Global Ruling Class? Globalization and the Transnational Capitalist Class,” Science and Society 64, no. 1 (Spring 2000).

[xxxix] John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (New York: Verso, 2003).

[xl] Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, eds., The Global Economic Crisis (Montréal: Global Research Publishers, 2010).

[xli] Dennis Loo, Globalization and the Demolition of Society (Glendale, CA: Larkmead Press, 2011).

[xlii] Andrew Kolin, State Power and Democracy (New York: Palgrave MacMillan,c2011), 141.

[xliii] Loo, Globalization, op cit., 357.
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