Barclays

1% tag zombies 12/18

https://www.desmog.com/2022/11/04/wilful-ignorance-indigenous-delegation-incredulous-at-bankers-attitude-to-fossil-fuel-impacts/

Indigenous delegates said they had been amazed at the “wilful ignorance” they encountered when demanding global banks cease financing new fossil fuel projects on their ancestral lands in what is today North America.

The representatives of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and the Nahua nation in Mexico met with executives from HSBC, Barclays, and Credit Suisse in London this week to urge them to stop backing oil and gas pipelines and fracked gas export terminals.  

Christopher Basaldú, a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe, said he had been appalled at the lack of awareness of the pollution caused by fracking — a high-pressure drilling technique that has revolutionised America’s energy industry, but caused huge environmental damage.

“I had to give a fracking 101 lesson to this bank official. It’s appalling their level of ignorance. They really do not know how potentially permanently destructive fracking is to groundwater,” Basaldú told DeSmog. “It’s incomprehensible to me that these wealthy, privileged, European people can be so wilfully ignorant and draw such tremendous salaries.”

Fracking works by using contained explosions and a mix of water, sand, and chemicals to fragment oil and gas-bearing layers of shale rock. The technique can taint groundwater, degrade landscapes and threaten wildlife, according to environmental organisations.

In addition, fracking sites release a toxic stew of air pollution that can cause severe headaches, asthma symptoms, childhood leukemia, cardiac problems, and birth defects, and some of the 1,000-plus chemicals used in the process are known to cause cancer, according to a report by the National Resources Defense Council.

Fossil Fight

Basaldú is fighting plans by Houston-based oil and gas company NextDecade to build a $10 billion facility on the South Texas coast near his hometown of Brownsville. The scheme would supercool fracked gas from the Permian Basin for export as liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Community members say the Central Park-sized project — known asRio Grande LNG— would blanket low-income Latinx and Indigenous communities with harmful air pollution, cause irreversible harm to precious wetlands, threaten endangered wildlife, and accelerate climate breakdown via its associated carbon emissions.

The future of Rio Grande LNG and other planned export terminals had looked looked increasingly in doubt as demand for energy slumped during the COVID-19 pandemic. In November, 2020, French utility Engie dealt the sector a further blow when it pulled out of negotiations over a long-term deal to buy LNG cargoes from Rio Grande LNG amid reports that the French government was concerned over methane emissions from the Permian Basin.

But the picture has since changed dramatically as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a European scramble for alternatives to Russian gas — bringing once moribund projects back to life. In May, NextDecade announced that Engie had returned to the negotiating table and signed a 15-year contract to buy cargoes from Rio Grande LNG starting as early as 2026.

The project took another step forward in September, when Credit Suisse helped NextDecade launch a private share placement in anticipation of a final investment decision, Offshore Energy reported.

Barclays and HSBC are linked to the scheme through their role as big financiers of oil majors ExxonMobil and Shell, which have also signed contracts to purchase shipments from Rio Grande LNG, according to a report by the Sierra Club and allied organisations. The two banks also have smaller exposures to Engie, according to Banking on Climate Chaos, a report by advocacy groups.

Barclays, HSBC and Credit Suisse declined to comment.

Indigenous Resistance

Basaldú made the trip to London with Bekah Hinojosa, an artist and community organiser who has also been campaigning against Rio Grande LNG since the project was proposed eight years ago, and serves as the Sierra Club’s Gulf Coast campaign representative.

The pair were accompanied by Oliveria Montès Lazcano, the coordinator of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples in the central Mexican state of Puebla. Lazcano is fighting TransCanada’s project to build the Tuxpan-Tula pipeline to import gas to central Mexico from Texas. HSBC, Credit Suisse, and Barclays finance TransCanada, campaigners say.

Indigenous networks have been mobilising increasingly effective opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure in recent years, playing key roles in the defeat of flagship projects in North America including the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and the Atlantic Coast gas pipeline.  

A report by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International published last year found that Indigenous communities resisting more than 20 fossil fuel projects analysed had stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least 25 percent of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions.

With the world’s 60 largest private banks extending $4.6 trillion of finance for fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, according to Banking on Climate Chaos, indigenous groups are increasingly seeking to persuade bankers to pull the plug on polluting projects.

In 2017 French Bank BNP Paribas pledged to stop granting dedicated financial supportfor fracked gas pipelines and export terminals in North America several months after a previous delegation of Indigenous leaders from South Texas visited Paris and gained significant attention, speaking on radio shows and at rallies and shareholder meetings.

Indigenous groups from Ecuador and Peru scored further concessions in 2021 by persuading BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, ING, and other European banks to stop financing the export of crude oil from the Ecuadorian Amazon after advocacy groups Stand.earth and Amazon Watch published data revealing their multi-billion dollar exposure to the trade.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/heres-how-trumps-political-appointees-overruled-tougher-settlements-with-big-banks/

no lnx

Here’s how Trump’s political appointees overruled tougher settlements with big banks

PBS Newshour

Written by Jesse Eisinger, Kevin Wack / ProPublica August 2, 2019

This article was produced in partnership with American Banker.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

Since Donald Trump’s election, federal white-collar enforcement has taken a big hit. Fines and settlements against corporations have plummeted. Prosecutions of individuals are falling to record lows.

But just how these fines and settlements came to be slashed is less well understood. Two settlements with giant banks over financial crisis-era misdeeds provide a window into how the Trump administration has eased up on corporate wrongdoers.

In settlements last year with the two big U.K.-based banks, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, political appointees at the Trump administration Justice Department took the unusual step of overruling staff prosecutors to reduce the settlements sought, leaving billions of dollars in potential recoveries on the table, according to four people familiar with the settlements.

In the case of RBS, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided that the charges should not be pursued as a criminal case, as the prosecutorial team advocated, but rather as a less serious civil one.

Both cases were developed by the Obama administration DOJ and involved accusations that the banks misled buyers of residential mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis. Prosecutors seemingly found numerous examples of bankers knowingly selling lemons to their customers. The mortgages they were putting into securities were “total fucking garbage,” one RBS executive said in a phone call that was recorded and cited in a DOJ filing. A Barclays banker said a group of loans “scares the shit out of me.” Mortgages that went into the two banks’ securities lost a total of $73 billion, according to calculations used by the government.

In March 2018, the DOJ settled with Barclays for $2 billion, a sum dictated by Trump appointees that was far below what the staff prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn had sought. The settlement with RBS occurred in August 2018, for $4.9 billion. After Rosenstein downgraded the case from criminal to civil, other Trump appointees concluded that the settlement amount should be about half of what staff prosecutors in the District of Massachusetts had sought.

DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Sutton said that the Barclays and RBS settlements held the banks accountable for serious misconduct, and that the penalties recovered from the banks were fair and proportionate compared with those previously obtained from other banks. She did not respond to detailed questions about how the two settlements were reached and why key decisions were dictated from Washington. “They were largely negotiated by career attorneys in the Department and U.S. Attorneys’ offices with the support and collaboration of Department leadership,” Sutton wrote in an email.

Aspects of how the DOJ came to settle the cases have been recounted. The New York Times reported on Rosenstein’s decision in the RBS case. But this is the first extensive account of how the banks secured the favorable outcomes.

The British banks employed an old playbook, one that proved effective with the Trump administration:Hire prominent former high-level DOJ officials who were now at major law firms. These attorneys won access to the top echelons of the Trump DOJ, where they found an audience receptive to their arguments that the staff prosecutors were unfairly singling out their clients for excess punishment.

The two cases stemmed from the Obama administration’s efforts to bring charges against banks for misdeeds that contributed to the financial crisis. Critics assailed the Obama DOJ for what they perceived as tardy and inadequate policing of financial crisis malfeasance. For example, the Obama DOJ did not prosecute any top bankers for actions related to the crisis. But it did belatedly bring civil charges, and it reached large settlements with numerous banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. Moreover, the Obama-era DOJ consistently required the banks to acknowledge their bad acts, a practice that has ceased during the Trump administration.

As the Obama administration was winding up in the fall of 2016, the DOJ had not completed all that it aspired to. It rushed to reach settlements with foreign banks that had shown less urgency to resolve the allegations than some of their U.S. counterparts.

Less than a week before Trump’s inauguration, the DOJ announced that Deutsche Bank had agreed to pay a $3.1 billion civil penalty, and that Credit Suisse would pay $2.48 billion. But there were holdouts, including Barclays and RBS.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn wanted Barclays to pay somewhere within a range in the high single digits of billions of dollars, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. Barclays balked, drawing a line at $2 billion, according to a Bloomberg News account.

Barclays hired an all-star team of defense lawyers. The roster included Karen Seymour, a partner atSullivan & Cromwell who had previously served as chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and has since become general counsel at Goldman Sachs.

Also on Barclays’ legal team was Kannon Shanmugam, a former high-ranking official in the George W. Bush DOJ who was then a partner at Williams & Connolly.

With the two sides far apart in December 2016, the DOJ sued Barclays. Prosecutors also brought civil charges against two former executives at the bank who played key roles in its pre-crisis subprime mortgage operations.

Suing was an unusual step — cases against large corporations normally settle before a complaint is filed — and it was meant to send an implicit message to Barclays. Because the DOJ had been forced to go to court, the British bank could expect the price tag of an eventual settlement to be higher.

Barclays was making the opposite bet: that it would be able to negotiate a more favorable settlement once Trump appointees were in place at DOJ.

In a 192-page complaint, the DOJ alleged that Barclays engaged in fraud on a massive scale, deceiving investors about the characteristics of mortgages used to create securities that sold for tens of billions of dollars.

A Barclays employee commented during a 2006 phone call that one particular pool of mortgages was “about as bad as it can be,” but he did not abandon the loans or modify the bank’s standard disclosures to investors, according to the government’s complaint. In another example, when that same banker said that a particular pool of loans “scares the shit out of me,” because he believed the company that originated the mortgages was likely to go bankrupt soon, Barclays bought the loans anyway. The bank deliberately did not conduct due diligence on the mortgages and then packaged them into bonds, the complaint asserted, all the while falsely telling a rating agency that due diligence had been done on 100% of the loans.

“More than half of the underlying loans defaulted,” the complaint stated, causing huge losses for investors.

Barclays’ legal team argued that the bank should not pay higher penalties in a settlement than other banks had paid relative to their market share. Barclays had been a relatively small player in the residential mortgage-backed securities, or RMBS, market, and its settlement should be sized accordingly, they reasoned.

This was an argument that the DOJ had long rejected. In a 2014 speech, then-Associate Attorney General Tony West argued that a firm’s market share should not outweigh evidence of the extent of its wrongdoing. “The facts and evidence of a particular case — they are what will ultimately matter the most,” he said.

In the Barclays matter, prosecutors in Brooklyn believed they had a strong case. The judge assigned to the case, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, seemed to agree. “This complaint is probably one of the more fulsome complaints I’ve ever seen,” Matsumoto said at an April 2017 hearing.

But the view that ultimately mattered was the one held by a new crop of officials at Main Justice, the DOJ’s headquarters in Washington. Besides Rosenstein, who was not involved in the Barclays case, key players in the RMBS settlements included Trump administration political appointees in the associate attorney general’s office, according to people familiar with the talks.

Steve Cox, the deputy associate attorney general, oversaw the cases, reporting to Jesse Panuccio, the principal deputy associate attorney general. In February 2018, Panuccio became acting associate attorney general, the No. 3 position at the DOJ, after Rachel Brand resigned from the post.

Neither had much experience with federal prosecutions. Panuccio was a former lawyer to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, as well as the chief labor and land use official in Florida, and Cox was a onetime associate at WilmerHale who had spent six years as a corporate counsel at an oil company, Apache Corporation, before joining the DOJ.

Following communications with the Barclays legal team, DOJ officials in Washington conveyed a message to the staff prosecutors in Brooklyn: settle the case within a narrow range around $2 billion, or we will take the negotiations out of your hands. The instruction came via a spreadsheet that listed the dollar range.

For DOJ officials in Washington to dictate specific terms of a settlement was unusual. U.S. attorney offices generally have wide latitude in choosing what they investigate and in making prosecutorial decisions. “Involvement of DOJ in cases handled in the U.S. attorney’s offices is not common” but happens on big cases from time to time, said Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at Patterson Belknap. During Obama-era negotiations, Main Justice had tried to show a united front with prosecutors who’d investigated the RMBS cases, according to former department officials.

At least one prosecutor acknowledged the internal rift between Brooklyn and Washington to the Barclays’ defense team, according to a source familiar with the matter. Once prosecutors in Brooklyn learned Main Justice’s position, this prosecutor communicated to the Barclays side that the bank had prevailed. Recalling how the deal went down, one government official said: “It seemed like a defeat.”

The staff prosecutors weren’t just disappointed about settling for a fraction of what they had sought back in 2016. They had brought civil charges against two former Barclays employees, Paul Menefee and John Carroll, and in exchange for dismissal, the two men agreed to pay a combined $2 million. But the agreement did not include language that precluded Barclays from footing the bill. That meant that Menefee and Carroll, who did not admit wrongdoing, might not have to pay a dime out of their own pockets.

Lawyers for Menefee and Carroll did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue said, “The substantial penalty Barclays and its executives had to pay was an important step in recognizing the harm that was caused to the national economy and to investors in RMBS.”

At Main Justice, at least one official also regretted the Barclays deal, but from the opposite perspective. Cox told a prosecutor that he wished the Barclays settlement had been even smaller, but he explained that it wasn’t feasible to go lower because it had been reported that the bank offered to pay $2 billion, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

Cox did not respond to requests for comment.

Panuccio, who stepped down from the DOJ in the spring, declined to answer specific questions, citing the confidentiality of the department’s process. In an email response, he said, “The general narrative the questions seem to suggest is belied by the facts — including the fact that DOJ recovered historically significant sums in its 2018 and 2019 FIRREA settlements, and the fact that DOJ filed a major FIRREA suit against UBS in November 2018.” (FIRREA is the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, a law dating from the savings and loan scandals of the late ’80s.)

Barclays declined to comment.

While Barclays had been in active negotiations with the DOJ during the Obama administration, the RBS defense team had not. RBS did not want to enter negotiations until the prosecutors dropped the criminal investigation.

Boston prosecutors declined to do so. Mortgages that went into RBS’ securities suffered about $54 billion in losses, ravaging their customers’ investments. The prosecutors believed they had compiled damning evidence that RBS officials knew what they were doing was wrong. In one example, RBS’ chief credit officer in the United States called the mortgages that were going into the securities “total fucking garbage” with “fraud [that] was so rampant … [and] all random,” according to calls the prosecutors later quoted in the statement of facts against the bank. He stated that “the loans are all disguised to, you know, look okay kind of … in a data file.”

In 2016, the RBS defense team, which included former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, of WilmerHale, appealed to Stuart Delery, then the third-highest official at the DOJ. Delery knew Gorelick from their time at the DOJ. Despite that relationship, according to a person knowledgeable about the matter, Delery said he would not interfere with an ongoing investigation at a U.S. attorney’s office. (Delery did not respond to requests for comment. Gorelick directed questions to RBS.)

Then came November. A few months later, the Trump appointees arrived.

For a while, nothing changed. The Boston prosecutors continued their investigation, more convinced than ever that the RBS conduct merited a criminal charge. They wrote what’s known as a “prosecution memo,” which they had begun during the Obama administration, describing the underlying criminal acts under FIRREA.

Such a move would have been groundbreaking. The Obama DOJ had used FIRREA, but for civil charges. And the Boston prosecutors did not want to stop there. They argued for first charging the bank criminally, and then moving on to seek criminal charges against individual bankers. Those would have been the first of their kind.

They never got that far.

In time, Trump political appointees such as Panuccio and Cox began to figure out their way around the department. The RBS defense team, including Gorelick, requested meetings with top officials. Gorelick again had a connection with a key DOJ official. She had worked with Cox, earlier in his career when he was an associate at WilmerHale, defending BP in investigations of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

The defense group now also included Mark Filip of Kirkland & Ellis, representing the British government’s interest in RBS. Filip, who did not respond to requests for comment, has a special stature. During his tenure as deputy attorney general, he had codified the conditions prosecutors had to assess in bringing cases against corporations, which are today known as the “Filip Factors.” Prosecutors are supposed to weigh a variety of issues, such as how serious offenses are and whether the company has cooperated with investigators. As a private sector big hitter, companies hire him, in the view of prosecutors, to explain why his factors are not met in a given case.

The RBS team was able to meet with the No. 2 at the DOJ, Rosenstein. It’s unusual, though not unprecedented, for a defense team to get access to such a high-level official. The RBS team persuaded Rosenstein.

In the spring of 2018, Rosenstein informed Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, that his office couldn’t pursue criminal charges against RBS. Rosenstein said he didn’t want the DOJ treating RBS differently from other banks, which faced only civil investigations. (The Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on the details of the RBS settlement. Rosenstein, who left the DOJ in May, did not respond to inquiries.)

RBS spokeswoman Linda Harper confirmed that the Boston U.S. attorney’s office had recommended criminal prosecution and that the bank had met first with Delery and then with Rosenstein.

“The argument we made was for fairness and parity,” she said. The bank’s defense team, she added, argued that “Main Justice should ensure that like cases are treated alike.”

The Boston team was disappointed and angry. It argued that prosecutors charge people when they have the necessary evidence, even if they cannot charge all people who committed the same crime. And it maintained that the decision went against department policy. In May 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo directing prosecutors to charge defendants with the most serious provable crimes carrying the highest penalties.

“It calls into question whether the memo meant what it says when it came to white-collar prosecutions,” a person familiar with the decision said.

Once the case was downgraded, the Boston team turned to deciding on the monetary settlement. Internally, prosecutors had discussed seeking a settlement in the $9 billion to $10 billion range, reflecting their belief that the RBS conduct was especially egregious.

At one point in the spring after the Rosenstein meetings, Main Justice sent Boston a similar spreadsheet that it sent to other U.S. attorney offices concerning their open cases, including those against Barclays, Japanese bank Nomura and Swiss bank UBS. For RBS, the range was between around $4.5 billion to about $6.6 billion.

The Boston prosecutors tried to get the settlement as close to the top of the range as they could. But they were thwarted even in that attempt. Cox told the Boston team that the DOJ would “call the bluff” of RBS and tell the bank it would take $4.9 billion.

Prosecutors thought the DOJ had caved. They complained to Cox that Main Justice had authorized the office to seek as much as $6.6 billion. Cox’s reply: But RBS won’t go that high.

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said to be the most interconnected of all?

andrew feinstein osoc inst shadow world kpfa 2/Jan/2012 10am

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-World-Inside-Global-Trade/dp/0374208387

barclays bank did S africa deal (can't afford aids rx) atc was mil sys (BAE)

Campaigners from the World Development Movement will protest at Barclays’ AGM tomorrow, exposing Barclays’ role in fuelling global hunger by betting on food prices.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jeb-bush-cuts-ties-barclays-bank

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/jeb-bush-paid-by-bank-that-violated-cuba-sanctions

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush blasted the Obama administration’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba in a Facebook post Wednesday, but in an example of why Bush’s ties to private equity and Barclays could provide fodder for opponents and critics, Barclays (which reportedly pays Bush more than a million dollars a year) had to settle criminal charges for violating sanctions that included Cuba.

Barclays agreed in 2010 to to forfeit $298 million to the United States and to the New York County District Attorney’s Office “in connection with violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA),” according to a Justice Department press release.

“The violations relate to transactions Barclays illegally conducted on behalf of customers from Cuba, Iran, Sudan and other countries sanctioned in programs administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC),” the Justice Department added.

Bush has been at Barclays since 2008, but the actions that led to the fine took place before the Florida governor was with the bank.

“The Obama administration’s decision to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba is the latest foreign policy misstep by this President, and another dramatic overreach of his executive authority,” wrote Bush Wednesday. “It undermines America’s credibility and undermines the quest for a free and democratic Cuba.”

“The beneficiaries of President Obama’s ill-advised move will be the heinous Castro brothers who have oppressed the Cuban people for decades.”

Bush’s ties to Barclays have caused some to raise the alarm about his potential candidacy....

According to court documents, from as early as the mid-1990s until September 2006, Barclays knowingly and willfully moved or permitted to be moved hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of banks fromCuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma, and persons listed as parties or jurisdictions sanctioned by OFAC in violation of U.S. economic sanctions.

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propublica:

Libor Fixing

The Banks

Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank and more

The Details

In late June, Barclays settled with British and American regulators over charges that it manipulated the Libor, a critical international interest rate set in London each day by a panel of banks. Barclays traders tried to rig the rate (and its Eurozone counterpart, the Euribor) in order to benefit particular trades, schemes clear from emails where traders promised one another bottles of champagne for their help. Also, during the financial crisis, Barclays submitted artificially low rates to make the bank look stable.

This kind of behavior wasn't limited to Barclays, and the investigation is still growing. Regulators first started getting worried about Libor in 2008. And in the wake of Barclays’ settlement, officials at the Bank of England and the New York Fed have come under fire for not pressuring the British Bankers’ Association, the industry trade group that oversees the Libor, to do more to reform the way the rate was set then.

Who’s been hurt

Ordinary consumers and investors.

Libor is used as a benchmark for trillions of dollars in financial contracts, from derivatives on down to student loans and credit cards. If the rate was messed with, consumers could have paid artificially high rates, or investors could have lost out if rates were too low. And submitting artificially low rates during the financial crisis could have misled the public and regulators about the health of the banking system.

Who’s taken a fall

Barclays' CEO, chairman, and chief operating officer have all stepped down. The Libor itself is also being targeted for reforms by the British government.

Penalties

$453 million in a settlement from Barclays to the U.S. Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority.

What does Barclays say?

In their settlement with the Justice Department the bank admitted that traders tried to rig rates and also acknowledged lowballing rates during the financial crisis. CEO Robert Diamond has said no one "above desk supervisor level" knew about traders' scheming, and that he did not know about rate-suppression by the bank until the settlement was reached this summer.

Who’s still under investigation

More than a dozen banks have disclosed that they are under investigation by U.S. or other regulators. They have all said they are cooperating with requests for information.

• UBS reported in early 2011 that some regulators—including the anti-trust division of the Justice Department—had promised them leniency in exchange for cooperating with the investigation, but the bank could still face charges from other regulators. Some individual traders have also reportedly been offered non-prosecution agreements. The bank has reportedly fired or suspended more than 20 staff in the wake of the scandal. UBS was sanctioned by Japanese regulators in December for traders trying to manipulate the Tibor, Tokyo’s Libor equivalent.
• Citigroup disclosed ongoing investigations in a recent filing. Japanese regulators also sanctioned Citigroup in December as part of their investigation into rate-rigging by Tokyo traders.
• Deutsche Bank: In July, the bank said that an internal investigation had identified a "limited number" of staff who were involved in rate manipulations, and cleared all senior management.
• Royal Bank of Scotland: RBS says they have fired four employees and maintains that the wrongdoing is confined to a "handful" of individuals.
• Credit Suisse, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and a few other international banks have also acknowledged they are part of the Libor probe.

Key reads

For a history of the Libor, and how it got so important, see this London Review of Books essay from 2008. Also see the Wall Street Journal’s early reporting about banks lowballing Libor, and the Financial Times’ interactive explainer.

Barclays "has two business Clusters: Global Retail Banking and Corporate & Investment Banking and Wealth Management - both comprising world-class businesses and brands.

"There are two other major areas of the business: Group Centre and Absa. Group Centre is our head office and support functions operation. The Absa Group is one of South Africa's largest financial services businesses. " ^[1]

Board

Accessed July 2010: ^[2]

• Marcus Agius - Chairman
• John Varley
• Robert E. Diamond, Jr.
• Chris Lucas
• David Booth
• Sir Richard Broadbent
• Richard Leigh Clifford
• Fulvio Conti
• Sir Andrew Likierman
• Sir Michael Rake
• Sir John Sunderland
• Simon Fraser
• Reuben Jeffery III
• Dambisa Moyo

Contact

URL: http://group.barclays.com

Coal financing

In November 2011, Barclays was listed as the number 5 top global financier of coal-fired power plants in a report complied by various environmental groups entitled, Bankrolling Climate Change: A Look into the Portfolios of the World's Largest Banks. The report noted that Barclays spent $10,272 million euros on coal plants around the world since 2005.^[3]

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

• Sandra Dawson
• Sir Martin Jacomb - former deputy chair
• Chris Grigg

References

1. ↑ About, Barclays, accessed July 18, 2010.
2. ↑ Directors, Barclays, accessed July 18, 2010.
3. ↑ *Bankrolling Climate Change: A Look into the Portfolios of the World’s Largest Banks* Earthlife Africa Johannesburg and BankTrack, 2011.

Categories: Coal Issues | Energy | United Kingdom | Banking

THIS 1% TAG REFERS initially to Pjt censored study:

12/18 book

https://kpfa.org/episode/project-censored-december-14-2018/

News That Didn’t Make the News. Each week, co-hosts Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/5-obnoxious-tech-apps-made-people-too-much-money

fun

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• Who are the One Percent of the One Percent?
• Industries and employers
• New donors
• Geography
• Where the money goes

Our list of the 10 candidates who received the highest percentage of the money from elite donors includes many candidates from wealthy states, and nationally-known candidates like Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as well as new members who won high-profile races in 2014 like Sens. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

• Congress and the One Percent of the One Percent
• Methodology

The Political One Percent of the One Percent in 2014: Mega Donors Fuel Rising Cost of Elections

In the 2014 elections, 31,976 donors — equal to roughly one percent of one percent of the total population of the United States— accounted for an astounding $1.18 billion in disclosed political contributions at the federal level.Those big givers — what we have termed the Political One Percent of the One Percent — have a massively outsized impact on federal campaigns.

They’re mostly male, tend to be city-dwellers and often work in finance. Slightly more of them skew Republican than Democratic. A small subset — barely five dozen — earned the (even more) rarefied distinction of giving more than $1 million each. And a minute cluster of three individuals contributed more than $10 million apiece.

The last election cycle set records as the most expensive midterms in U.S. history, and the country’s most prolific donors accounted for a larger portion of the total amount raised than in either of the past two elections.

The $1.18 billion they contributed represents 29 percent of all fundraising that political committees disclosed to the Federal Election Commission in 2014. That’s a greater share of the total than in 2012 (25 percent) or in 2010 (21 percent).

[diagram]

That’s one of the main takeaways of the latest edition of the Political One Percent of the One Percent, a joint analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics and theSunlight Foundation of elite donors in America.

When former Sunlight Fellow Lee Drutman first reported on the One Percent of the One Percent, he noted that these deep pocketed donors were increasingly playing the role of “political gatekeepers.” Candidates needed their backing — and cash — as did the parties and super PACs that depended on the support of the politically active elite.

ow, in the first full midterm since the Supreme Court’s Citizens Uniteddecision, our joint analysis finds that the influence of the One Percent of the One Percent has only continued to grow.

Thanks to research and analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, we know that those 31,976 top donors combined accounted for more than one out of every four dollars raised by PACs, super PACs, parties and candidates. Members of the group contributed at least $8,800, a bit less than in prior cycles. The median contribution was $14,750, while the biggest donor gave more than $73 million (for more on how we arrived at those figures, see our methodology section).

Wall Street maintained its perch as the most influential sector among the One Percent of the One Percent, both in the number of donors that made the list and the money given. Individuals that listed a job in securities spent about $175 million in 2014, of which $107.5 million went to committees supporting Republicans.

Though both parties depend on these donors, the GOP received more from them than Democrats, based on the contributions we could conclusively attribute to helping one party or the other. Mirroring the overall trend of the election, in which conservatives edged their liberal opponents in fundraising, Republican committees and conservative groups that support them pulled in about $553 million from the donors on our list, more than the $505 million that Democratic and liberal political groups received. The donors themselves, however, aren’t interested in hedging their bets — most of the contributors’ giving patterns heavily favored one party. [see 1% graphs dowload]

The most jarring difference between the One Percent of the One Percent in 2014 and 2010, the last midterm cycle, is how “top heavy” the donor list has become. A small subgroup of these elite donors is the driving force behind its growing share of political money.

In 2010 only 17 individuals contributed a total of $500,000 or more, while members of the $1 million-plus club numbered only nine. In 2014, the number of $500,000 and up donors ballooned to a whopping 135, and 63 people gave more than $1 million.

Each of the top three financial benefactors in 2014 contributed more than $10 million. Topping the list is Tom Steyer, the liberal-leaning San Francisco hedge fund manager and environmentalist who accounted for $73 million alone—the vast majority of which went to super PACs targeting GOP candidates.

[list]

The rising numbers of donors who gave at least $500,000 reflects, in part, the sharp uptick in liberal giving to outside spending groups, which can take money in unlimited amounts. In a change from both 2012 and 2010, more than half of the One Percenters’ contributions to outside groups went to those that supported Democrats and attacked Republicans. Liberals have learned to love the super PAC.

The donors at the very top of the money pyramid provided the financial fuel for many of the attack ads and other messages from independent organizations that filled the airwaves last year. A previous analysis by CRP found that the country’s top 100 donors accounted for 39 percent of the $696,011,919 raised by super PACs in the 2014 elections.

(See our methodology section below for important notes on data and the tables included in this piece.)

Read on for more about the top political financiers who are increasingly steering U.S. elections. You can download the raw data on the One Percent of the One Percent’s contributions in 2014 here.

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http://www.alternet.org/inside-underground-bunker-condos-where-1-percenters-plan-ride-out-apocalypse

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Who controls the world? Resources for understanding this visualization of the global economy

February 13, 2013

Occupy Wall Street’s slogan “We are the 99%” had been echoing through the United States and the world for just over a month when James B. Glattfelder and his co-authors released the study “The Network of Global Corporate Control” in October 2011. The study was a scientific look at our global economy, revealing how control […]

PLOS1 http://www.ted.com/speakers/james_b_glattfelder

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The Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class

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 Censoredhas 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., FMRCorporation: 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: Project Censored

Financial Core of the Transnational Corporate Class

The Following is a Chapter from the Newest Book Project Censored Project Censored 2014: Fearless Speech in Fateful Times

By Peter Phillips and Brady Osborne

Introduction

In this study, we decided to identify in detail the people on the boards of directors of the top ten asset management firms and the top ten most centralized corporations in the world. Because of overlaps, there is a total of thirteen firms, which collectively have 161 directors on their boards. We think that this group of 161 individuals represents the financial core of the world’s transnational capitalist class. They collectively manage $23.91 trillion in funds and operate in nearly every country in the world. They are the center of the financial capital that powers the global economic system. Western governments and international policy bodies work in the interests of this financial core to protect the free flow of capital investment anywhere in the world.

A Brief History of Research on the

American Power Elite

A long tradition of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the United States, whose members set policy and determine national political priorities. The American ruling class is complex and competitive, and perpetuates itself through interacting families of high social standing with similar lifestyles, corporate affiliations, and memberships in elite social clubs and private schools.1

The American ruling class has long been determined to be mostly self-perpetuating,2 maintaining its influence through policy-making institutions such as the National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council, Business Roundtable, the Conference Board, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Council on Foreign Relations, and other business-centered policy groups.3 These associations have long dominated policy decisions within the US government.

In his 1956 book, The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills documented how World War II solidified a trinity of power in the US that comprised corporate, military, and government elites in a centralized power structure motivated by class interests and working in unison through “higher circles” of contact and agreement. Mills described how the power elite were those “who decide whatever is decided” of major consequence.4 These higher-circle decision makers tended to be more concerned with interorganizational relationships and the functioning of the economy as a whole, rather than with advancing their particular corporate interests.5

The higher-circle policy elites (HCPE) are a segment of the American upper class and are the principal decision makers in society. Although these elites display some sense of “we-ness,” they also tend to have continuing disagreements on specific policies and necessary actions in various sociopolitical circumstances.6 These disagreements can block aggressive reactionary responses to social movements and civil unrest, as in the case of the labor movement in the 1930s and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. During these two periods, the more liberal elements of HCPE tended to dominate the decision-making process and supported passing the National Labor Relations and Social Security Acts in 1935, as well as the Civil Rights and Economic Opportunities Acts in 1964. These pieces of national legislation were seen as concessions to the ongoing social movements and civil unrest, and were implemented instead of instituting more repressive policies.

However, during periods of threats from external enemies, as in World Wars I and II, more conservative/reactionary elements of the HCPE successfully pushed their agendas. During and after World War I, the United States instituted repressive responses to social movements, for example through the Palmer Raids and passage of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. After World War II, the HCPE allowed and encouraged the McCarthy-era attacks on liberals and radicals and, in 1947, passage of the National Security Act and the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act. In the past twenty-five years, and especially since the events of 9/11, the HCPE in the US has been united in support of an American empire of military power that maintains a repressive war against resisting groups—typically dubbed “terrorists”—around the world. This war on terror is much more about protecting transnational globalization, the free flow of financial capital, dollar hegemony, and access to oil, than it is repressing terrorism. Increasingly, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a partner with US global dominance interests.7

The Transnational Capitalist Class

Capitalist power elites exist around the world. The globalization of trade and capital brings the world’s elites into increasingly interconnected relationships—to the point that sociologists have begun to theorize the development of a transnational capitalist class (TCC). In one of the pathbreaking works in this field, The Transnational Capitalist Class (2000), Leslie Sklair argued that globalization elevated transnational corporations (TNC) to more influential international roles, with the result that nation-states became less significant than international agreements developed through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international institutions.8 Emerging from these multinational corporations was a transnational capitalist class, whose loyalties and interests, while still rooted in their corporations, was increasingly international in scope. Sklair wrote:

The transnational capitalist class can be analytically divided into four main fractions: (i) owners and controllers of TNCs and their local affiliates; (ii) globalizing bureaucrats and politicians; (iii) globalizing professionals; (iv) consumerist elites (merchants and media). . . . It is also important to note, of course, that the TCC and each of its fractions are not always entirely united on every issue. Nevertheless, together, leading personnel in these groups constitute a global power elite, dominant class or inner circle in the sense that these terms have been used to characterize the dominant class structures of specific countries.9

William Robinson followed in 2004 with his book, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World.10 Robinson claimed that 500 years of capitalism had led to a global epochal shift in which all human activity is transformed into capital. In this view, the world had become a single market, which privatized social relationships. He saw the TCC as increasingly sharing similar lifestyles, patterns of higher education, and consumption. The global circulation of capital is at the core of an international bourgeoisie, who operate in oligopolist clusters around the world. These clusters of elites form strategic transnational alliances through mergers and acquisitions with the goal of increased concentration of wealth and capital. The process creates a polyarchy of hegemonic elites. The concentration of wealth and power at this level tends to over-accumulate, leading to speculative investments and wars. The TCC makes efforts to correct and protect its interests through global organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the G20, World Social Forum, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Bank for International Settlements, and other transnational associations. Robinson claimed that, within this system, nation-states become little more than population containment zones, and the real power lies with the decision makers who control global capital.11

Deeper inside the transnational capitalist class is what David Rothkopf calls the “superclass.” In his 2008 book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, Rothkopf argued that the superclass constitutes 6,000 to 7,000 people, or 0.0001 percent of the world’s population.12 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. Rothkopf reported that these are the people setting the agendas at the G8, G20, NATO, the World Bank, and the WTO. 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.)13

Rothkopf’s definition of the superclass emphasized their influence and power. Although there are over 1,500 billionaires in the world, not all are necessarily part of the superclass in terms of influencing global policies. Yet these 1,500 billionaires possess two times as much wealth as the 2.5 billion least wealthy people, and they are fully aware of these vast inequalities. The billionaires inside the TCC 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 TCC works to protect its 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.14 Fears of rebellions motivated by inequality and other forms of unrest motivate NATO’s global agenda in the war on terror.15

NATO is quickly emerging as the police force for the transnational capitalist class. As the TCC more fully emerged in the 1980s, coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO began broader operations. NATO first ventured into the Balkans, where it remains, and then into Afghanistan. NATO started a training mission in Iraq in 2005, has recently conducted operations in Libya, and, as of July 2013, is considering military action in Syria. Superclass use of NATO for its global security is part of an expanding strategy for US military domination around the world, whereby the US/NATO military–industrial–media empire operates in service to the TCC for the protection of international capital anywhere in the world.16

The most recent work on the TCC is William K. Carroll’s The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class (2010).17 Carroll’s work focused on the consolidation of the transnational corporate-policy networks between 1996 and 2006. He used a database of the boards of directors of the global 500 largest corporations, showing the concentrated interconnectedness of key corporations and a decreasing number of people involved. According to this analysis, the average size of corporate boards has dropped from 20.2 to 14.0 in the ten years of his study. Furthermore, financial organizations are increasingly the center of these networks. Carroll argued that the TCC at the centers of these networks benefit from extensive ties to each other, thus providing both the structural capacity and class consciousness necessary for effective political solidarity.

A 2011 University of Zurich study completed by Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology reported that a small group of companies—mainly banks—wields huge power over the global economy.18 Applying mathematical models—usually used to model natural systems—to the transnational corporations in the world economy, the study found that 147 companies controlled some 40 percent of the world’s wealth.19

Project Censored Research on the 2013

Transnational Capitalist Class

Although sociological theorists conduct studies of the world’s power elite, these researchers rarely identify specific members of the transnational capitalist class, preferring instead to build theory for other academics to read and discuss, while avoiding the particulars of who is actually involved.

The world’s corporate media pay absolutely no attention to academic concepts like “transnational capitalist class.” Thus, a LexisNexis search of news coverage, completed on June 3, 2013, using the term “transnational capitalist class,” returned only three news stories in the past decade—two from foreign media, and the third a letter to the editor by Leslie Sklair. The concept of a transnational capitalist class is absent from corporate news coverage, which also does not address who constitutes this most elite, powerful group.

We think that the world needs to know who comprises the TCC and thus who makes the financial decisions regarding global capital.

This is actually a fairly straightforward—if labor-intensive—research effort: most of the information is not only public but also online. We started with the top ten most centralized companies from the previously cited 2011 Swiss study.20 This identified the world’s most centralized and interconnected financial organizations. We also wanted to consider those groups managing the largest volumes of financial capital, so we added the top asset management firms from 2012 to our data set.21 The following chart shows the rankings in trillions of dollars of assets managed for the top thirty-five asset management firms in the world.

Table 1: The World’s Top 35 Asset Management Firms, in Trillions of Dollars (2012)

1 BlackRock US $3,560

2 UBS Switzerland $2,280

3 Allianz Germany $2,213

4 Vanguard Group US $2,080

5 State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) US $1,908

6 PIMCO (Pacific Investment

Management Company) US $1,820

7 Fidelity Investments US $1,576

8 AXA Group France $1,393

9 JPMorgan Asset Management US $1,347

10 Credit Suisse Switzerland $1,279

11 BNY Mellon Asset Management US $1,299

12 HSBC UK $1,230

13 Deutsche Bank Germany $1,227

14 BNP Paribas France $1,106

15 Capital Research and Management

Company US $1,071

16 Prudential Financial US $961.0

17 Amundi France $880.0

18 Goldman Sachs Group US $836.0

19 Wellington Management Company US $719.8

20 Natixis Global Asset Management France $710.9

21 Franklin Resources (Franklin

Templeton Investments) US $707.1

22 Northern Trust US $704.3

23 Bank of America US $682.2

24 Invesco US $646.6

25 Legg Mason US $631.8

26 Nippon Life Insurance Company Japan $600.0

27 Legal & General Investment

Management UK $598.5

28 Generali Group Italy $581.5

29 Prudential UK $570.2

30 Ameriprise Financial US $543.6

31 T. Rowe Price US $541.7

32 Wells Fargo US $534.9

33 Manulife Financial Canada $513.8

34 Sun Life Financial Canada $496.3

35 TIAA-CREF US $481.0

Seven of the top ten asset management firms were in the top ten of the most centralized firms from the Swiss study. We decided to identify the people on the boards of directors of the top ten asset management firms and the top ten most centralized corporations. 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, represent the financial core of the world’s transnational capitalist class (for more details see Appendix). Collectively, they manage $23.91 trillion in funds and operate in nearly every country in the world. The $23.91 trillion does not include the equity balances—which number in the billions of dollars—that each of these firms holds in company assets. Nor does it include the $18.8 trillion controlled by the next twenty-five most valuable asset management firms.

The bank Barclays, the most wealth-centralized corporation in the world, sold its global asset management division to BlackRock in 2009. The result is that BlackRock is now the single largest asset management firm, though Barclays remains one of the most wealth-centralized firms with company assets of $2.42 trillion.22

Understanding the Financial Core of the

Transnational Capitalist Class

The 161 directors of the thirteen mostly centralized/largest asset management firms represent the central core of international capital. As such, these 161 people share a common goal of maximum return on investments for their clients and will seek to achieve returns sometimes by any means necessary—legal or not.

Authorities have deemed the largest banks “too big to fail,” and have responded to the banks’ criminal activities with weak reforms and no prosecutions.23 The American government has refused to prosecute any officials from the multitude of banks who have laundered billions of dollars for illegal drug cartels. Powerful banking corporations, such as JPMorgan Chase, have continually refused to comply with American anti-money laundering (AML) laws.24

This refusal to prosecute is often hailed as an honorable move that serves to protect all individuals from devastation. Thus, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer explained the refusal to prosecute the bank HSBC:

Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly lost its banking license in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized.25

Not only are these powerful corporations considered “too big to fail,” they appear to have become too big to tell apart. Traditionally, banks have been understood as separate entities, competing against one another in order to entice consumers to deposit funds and invest. Such competition theoretically forces banks to compete to offer the best rates. However, in reality, these banks found that competing against one another was less profitable than working together. Realizing that their interests lie side by side, the financial core of the TCC have been highly motivated to join forces—legally or not—to manipulate laws, policies, and governments to their advantage.

The ramifications of the lack of competition in the banking industry are devastating. Consider, for example, price-fixing scandals such as Libor or ISDAfix. JPMorgan Chase, UBS, and Barclays (among thirteen others) were implicated in the Libor scandal, falsifying the data that was used to create benchmark rates.26 Based on faked data, those rates affected the prices of everything from auto, home, and student loans to credit cards to mortgage and commercial loans, and even the price of currencies themselves. The Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom fined Barclays $450 million, and several other banks are still under investigation.27

The ISDAfix scandal looks a lot like the Libor case. The same superpower banks are currently under investigation to determine whether or not they manipulated ISDAfix, a benchmark number used to calculate the prices of global interest rate swaps.28 Because cities and sovereign governments use interest rate swaps to help manage their debts, manipulation of those rates has far-reaching impacts, particularly for the poor and working classes, as economic safety nets are subject to “austerity” measures—i.e., budget cuts—that favor protection of financial capital.

Not only were rates illegally fixed and data falsified, but the offending banks also used individual consumers’ investments to engage in criminal activity. The Vanguard Group was accused of investing its clients’ money into illegal offshore gambling sites, prompting a class-action lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Vanguard did not deny such wrongdoing, but a judge determined that when the plaintiffs (Vanguard’s clients) were harmed, they lost their money due to the government’s crackdown on such illegal gambling, rather than due to Vanguard’s investing in such sites.29 However, it is clear that if Vanguard had not invested client money in illegal ventures, there would have been no negative repercussions from such a government crackdown. As journalist Matt Taibbi declared, “Everything is rigged.”30 Indeed it seems that the superpower corporate elite will never be made to pay for their crimes against consumers—we have yet to see such a prosecution.

Vanguard Group and BlackRock are major investors in Sturm, Ruger & Co., a leading firearms manufacturer.31 Though there is nothing illegal about such investments, we can wonder about the consequences of such a pairing. With the expansion of private police and military companies, the power elite seemingly are investing in the violent means with which to maintain and further their power.

With money comes power, influence, and propaganda. BlackRock and numerous other banks and Wall Street institutions are financially backing groups like Parent Revolution and StudentsFirst, whose agendas are to privatize and subsequently corporatize the public school system.32 The transnational capitalist class is laying the foundation for the privatization of the world. If public, democratic institutions—including schools, post offices, universities, the military, and even churches—become privately owned entities, then corporate interests will truly dominate. Then, we become neo-feudal societies where the reign of kings is replaced by private corporate ownership and the people serve as peasants.

We do not claim that any single person identified in this study, as one of the 161 individuals at the financial core of the TCC, has done anything illegal. We only point out that the institutional, structural arrangements within the money management systems of global capital relentlessly seek ways to achieve maximum return on investment, and that the conditions for manipulations—legal or not—always hold. As these institutions 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.

Estimates are that the total world’s wealth is close to $200 trillion, with the US and Europe holding approximately 63 percent of that total; meanwhile, the poorest half of the global population together possesses less than 2 percent of global wealth.33 The World Bank reports that in 2008, 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.34 Thirty-five thousand people, mostly young children, die every day from starvation.35 So while millions suffer, the TCC financial elites seek returns that speculate on the rising cost of food, and they do this in cooperation with each other in a global system of TCC power and control.

Who are the financial core of the transnational corporate class? As indicated above, the financial core of the TCC are directors of banks and asset management firms. The 161 directors who manage the top thirteen firms have very similar backgrounds and training. (See Appendix for names and affiliations. The full, detailed list is online at: http://projectcensored.org/financial-core-of-the-transnational-corporate-class/).

Financial Core of the Transnational

Corporate Class

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), which is a public institution. 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 TCC. 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.36

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 IMF. 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, the G8, 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.

These 161 directors are part of Rothkopf’s superclass. Given their control over $23.91 trillion, Western governments and international policy bodies serve the interests of this financial core of the TCC. Wars are initiated to protect their interests, and 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 any democratic movement seeking to protect our commons so that all humans might share and prosper.37

You can hear an extended interview with Peter Phillips about this article here.

appendix

Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class (2013)

Citizenship, CB-Corporate Boards, PE-Prior Corporate Employment/Boards, PC-Policy Councils & Government, E-Universities N=161

Barclays PLC (Assets $2.4 Trillion)

Antony Peter Jenkins, UK, CB-Group Chief Executive, Barclays PLC, PE-Citibank, Visa Europe Ltd, Absa Group Limited, PC-World Economic Forum-2013, Chartered Institute of Bankers, British-American Business—International Council, E-Oxford University, Cranfield Institute of Technology-MBA

Sir David  Alan Walker, UK, CB-Chairman, Barclays, PE-International Monetary Fund, Bank of England, CEGB, Reuters Venture Capital, Morgan Stanley, Lloyds Bank, PC- World Economic Forum-2013, Group of Thirty (G30), London Investment Bankers’ Association, Assistant Secretary at the Treasury, The Financial Services Authority (FSA) UK, E-Queens College-MA Economics, Cambridge,

Frits van Paasschen, US, CB-CEO Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc., PE-Coors Brewing Company-CEO, Nike Inc., Disney Consumer Products. Jones Apparel Group Inc., Oakley Inc., FPaasschen Consulting, Mercator Investments, McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, PC-World Economic Forum-2013,  E-Amherst College, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School-MBA

Michael Ashley, UK, CB-KPMG Europe LLP (‘ELLP’), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, The Financial Reporting Council Limited, PC-Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, HM Treasury’s Audit Committee, European Financial Reporting Advisory Group,

Hugh E. “Skip” McGee III, US, PE-Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., CIB Americas, E- Princeton, University of Texas School of Law-JD

Tim Breedon, UK, CB- Index Funds PE-Legal & General Group plc, Standard Charter Bank, Mithras Investment Trust plc. PC-Association of British Insurers (ABI) UK Government’s non-bank lending taskforce, Investment Management Association, Ministry of Justice. E-Oxford University, London Business School-MS-Business

Fulvio Conti, Italy, CB-CEO-Enel SpA, RCS MediaGroup, ENDESA SA, AON PLC, Eurelectric, Trasmissione Elettricita Rete Nazionale SPA, PE-Telecom Italia SpA, Montedison-Compart, Montecatini. Mobil Oil,  Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA,  PC-World Economic Forum-2013, Confindustria-Italian Employers’ Federation, E- University of Rome La Sapienza,

Ashok Vaswani Brysam, India,  CB-Brysam Global Partners, PE-Citibank, Consumer Bank, US Cards Business,  PC-S. P. Jain Institute of Management Singapore, E-Bombay University, Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics- Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

Diane de Saint Victor, French, CB-ABB Limited, Baldor Electric Co., PE-EADS, SCA Hygiene Products, Honeywell International, General Electric, Thales, Lyon-Caen, Fabiani & Thiriez, PC-International Bar Association, E- Pantheon-Assas University, Paris Law School-JD,

Shaygan Kheradpir Ph.D., UK, PE-Verizon Communications, GTE PC-National Institute of Standards & Technology E-Cornell University-Ph.D. Electrical Engineering,

David George Booth, US, CB-East Ferry Investors Inc., PE-Morgan Stanley, Discount Corporation of New York E-University of Kansas, University of Chicago-MBA

Simon John Fraser, UK, CB-Fidelity International, Fidelity European Values PLC, Fidelity Japanese Values PLC., Ashmore Group Plc. H. Lundén Kapitalförvaltning AB, The Edinburgh Investment Trust Plc, PE-FIL Investments International, Investment Solutions Group Ltd. E-University of St. Andrews, Columbia University-MBA

Reuben Jeffery III, US, CB-CEO of Rockefeller & Co, PE-US Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, Goldman Sachs & Co, Davis Polk & Wardwell, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, PC-National Security Council, Council on Foreign Relations, World Economic Forum, Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington DC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, International Advisory Council of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), E-Yale University, Stanford University-JD,

Dambisa Moyo, Ph.D., Zambia, CB- SABMiller PLC, Barrick Gold Corporation, Lundin Petroleum AB, PE-World Bank, Goldman Sachs, PC-World Economic Forum, Bilderberg Group, E-St Antony’s College, Oxford-Ph.D., Harvard-Kennedy School of Government-MPA, American University-MBA

Sir Michael Rake, UK, CB-BT Group PLC, easyJet PLC., PE-KPMG International, McGraw-Hill Companies, PC-World Economic Forum-2013, The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation, Chatham House-Royal Institute of International Affairs, British-American Business—International Council,  Confederation of British Industry, UK- Department of Trade and Industry, International Business Leaders Forum, Oxford Advisory Board, E-Wellington College

Sir John Sunderland, UK, CB-Chancellor of Aston University, Merlin Entertainments Limited, AFC Energy plc., PE-Cadbury Schweppes PLC, CVC Capital Partners, PC- Confederation of British Industry, Financial Reporting Council, Chartered Management Institute, Business in the Community, Governor of Reading University, E-University of St. Andrews.

Maria Ramos, South Africa, CB- Absa Group Ltd,  PE-Transnet Limited PC- Director-General of the National Treasury, Business Trust (South Africa), International Business Council, World Economic Forum-2013, World Bank Chief Economist Advisory Panel, Business Leadership South Africa, Banking Association of South Africa, E-University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), University of London-MS, Fortune-World’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business

BlackRock Inc. (Inc. Assets $22.3 billion)

Assets in management: $3.7 trillion

Laurence Fink, US, CB- PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Innovir Laboratories Inc., York Stock Exchange, Inc., PE-The First Boston Corporation, VIMRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., E-University of California Los Angeles, Awards-CEO of the Decade-Financial News 2011

Robert S. Kapito, US, CB-icruise.com, PE-Bain & Co ,PC- Trustee, University of Pennsylvania, International Monetary Conference, The Financial Services Roundtable, E- Harvard Business School-MBA, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

James Rohr, US,  CD-CEO, PNC Bank, EQT Corporation (Equitable Resources Inc.) Mercantile Bankshares Corp.,  PC-Trustee of Carnegie Mellon University, The RAND Corporation, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Bohemian Club, E-Notre Dame, Ohio State-MBA,

Hsueh-Ming Wang, Taiwan, PE-Goldman Sachs, The Paulson Institute

Murry S. Gerber, US, CD-Halliburton, United States Steel Corp, PE-CEO of EQT,  Corporation, Shell Energy North America, PC-Pennsylvania Business Council, Trustee-Augustana College, E-Augustana College, University of Illinois-MA Geology

Thomas H. O’Brien, Jr., US, CB-CEO-PNC, McMahon Capital Advisors, LLC, PNC Financial Services Group Inc., US Airways Group Inc, Confluence Technologies Inc., Verizon New England Inc., Porcelain Industries Inc., HMR Acquisition Company Inc., Cavert Wire Company Inc., Viasystems Inc., PE-Pittsburgh National Bank, Hilb Rogal & Hobbs, Westinghouse Credit Corp. Co, PC-Trustee of University of Pittsburgh. E-Boston College, University of Notre Dame, Harvard-MBA, University of Pittsburgh

Sir Deryck Charles Maughan, UK, CB-Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Nikko Securities Co., Glaxosmithkline PLC, Thomson Reuters Corporation, PE-Salomon Brothers Inc., The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Salomon Smith Barney, Citicorp., PC- Trilateral Commission, British American Business Inc. British-American Business Council, New York Stock Exchange, Advisory Councils at Harvard and Stanford Universities, E- King’s College, University of London, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University-MS

David Komansky, US, CD-Fieldpoint Private Bank & Trust, AEA Investors LP, AEA Investors LLC, Burt’s Bees, Discover Financial Services, Schering-Plough,  PE-BofA Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, EP Technologies, Inc., Automated Security (Holdings) PLC., New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Euronext, Inc., WPP Group PLC,  PC-British American Business Council, Trustee of Tsinghua University in Beijing, E-University of Miami

James Grosfeld, US, CB-Copart, Inc. Interstate Bakeries Corporation, Addington Resources Inc.,  PE-Pulte Homes, Inc., Championship Liquidating Trust, PC- Federal National Mortgage Association, E-Amherst College, Columbia Law School-JD

William S. Demchak, CB-CEO-PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Hilliard Lyons Research Advisors, The RBB Fund, Inc. Senbanc Fund, PE-J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., PC-World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, The Financial Services Roundtable, E- Allegheny College, University of Michigan-MBA

Susan Lynn Wagner, US, CB- RBB Fund, Inc.. Bogle Small Cap Growth Fund, Director of DSP BlackRock Investment Managers, India, PE-Lehman Brothers, Founding Partner BlackRock,  E-Wellesley College, University of Chicago-MBA Finance

Dennis D. Dammerman, US, CB-Capmark Financial Group, Inc., General Electric Capital Corp., Swiss Re Ltd., PE-Kidder Peabody Group Inc., Montgomery Ward Holding Corp., Genworth Financial Inc., PC-Trustee of Skidmore College, E-University of Dubuque.

Mathis Cabiallavetta, Swiss, CB-Union Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Re Ltd, Philip Morris International, Inc., General Atlantic Partners, Altria,  PE-Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., PC-US Federal Reserve, Swiss American Chamber of Commerce, British-American Business Council, E-University of Montreal, Queen’s University, Kingston-MA-Economics, Ontario,

Abdlatif Al-Hamad, Kuwait, PD-Morgan Stanley, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., American International Group, Inc., National Bank of Kuwait, PC-Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Arab Planning Institute, Banking Advisory Board Group (World Bank), Minister of Finance and Minister of Planning of Kuwait, United Nations Committee for Development Planning, Commission on Global Governance, E-Claremont College, Harvard International Affairs Program,

John Silvester Varley, UK, CB-CEO-Barclays PLC, British Grolux Investments Limited, Rio Tinto Ltd. & Rio Tinto Plc, Astrazeneca PLC, PC-International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Trustee-Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation, E- Oriel College, Oxford, London’s College of Law.

Ivan Seidenberg, US, CB-Perella Weinberg Partners LP, PE-CEO-Verizon Communications, Cellco Partnership, Inc., American Home Products Corporation, Wyeth, LLC Honeywell Technology Solutions, Viacom,  PC-Chairman of Business Roundtable, New York Academy of Sciences, President’s Export Council for U.S., E-City University of New York, Pace University-MBA,

Thomas Montag, US, CB-Bank of America Corporation/Merrill-Lynch, GS Financial Products, PE- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., First National Bank of Chicago, PC-World Economic Forum-2013, The Partnership for New York City, Director of Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, E-Stanford University, Northwestern University-MBA,

Marco Antonio Slim Domit,* Mexico, CB-CEO-Grupo Financiero Inbursa, S.A.B. de C.V, Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleoen America Latina, S.A.B. de C.V, Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleoen America Latina, S.A.B. de C.V, Afore Inbursa, S.A. de C.V., Arrendadora Financiera Inbursa, S.A. de C.V., Operadora Inbursa de Sociedades de Inversion, S.A. de C.V., Seguros Inbursa, S.A., Sears Roebuck, America Telecom, America Movil, S.A. the C.V., Carso Global Telecom S.A. de CV., U.S. Commercial Corp., S.A. the C.V., CompUSA and Grupo Carso S.A. de C.V. PE-Director of Telefonos de Mexico, S.A.B. de C.V, E-Universidad Anahuac, *Son of Carlos Slim Helú rated as richest person in the world by Forbes Magazine—estimated wealth $70 billion.

Fabrizio Freda, Italy, CB-CEO-The Estée Lauder Companies Inc., PE-Procter & Gamble Company, P&G/The Coca-Cola Company LLC, E-University of Naples,

Jessica P. Einhorn, Ph.D., US, CB-Dean at Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, Time Warner Inc.,  PE-Clark & Weinstock, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United States Treasury, United States State Department, International Development Cooperation Agency of the United States, Pitney Bowes Inc.,  PC-Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, Trustee for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund., Peterson Institute for International Economics, Center for Global Development, National Bureau of Economic Research, E-Barnard College at Columbia University, SAIS-John Hopkins-MA, Princeton University-Ph.D. Political Science

Capital Group Companies Inc.

Assets Management: $1.07 Trillion

David Isador Fisher, US, CB-Colonial First State (FirstChoice), Capital International Global Share, Capital Guardian and Trust Company, AEGON/Transamerica Series Trust-Capital Guardian Global Portfolio, JNL Series Trust-JNL/UBS Large Cap Select Growth Fund, Vantagepoint Growth & Income Fund, Pacific Select Fund-Equity Portfolio; John Hancock Trust-Overseas Equity Trust, PE-Smith Barney & Co, General Electric Company,  PC-International Monetary Fund Retirement Plan, Monetary Authority of Singapore, Trustee-Lowe Institute, Harvard-Westlake School, Claremont McKenna College, UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, E-University of California at Berkeley, University of Missouri-MBA,

Martin E. Diaz Plata, Columbia, CB-Managing Partner Capital Group, PE-Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (now Credit Suisse), DLJ Merchant Banking Partners, Corporacion Financiera del Valle in Bogota E-Universidad Externado de Colombia, Columbia University Graduate School of Business-MBA

Ashley Dunster, Australia, CB-Managing Partner Capital Group, PE-European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, L|E|K Partnership, E-University of Melbourne, Oxford University

Koenraad Foulon, Belgium, CB-Managing Partner Capital Group, PE-Shearson Lehman Global Asset Management, Posthorn Global Asset, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company Banque DeGroof in Brussels, E-University of Louvain, Belgium.

Shaw B. Wagener, US, CB-Capital Group International, Capital Guardian Trust Company, PC-Los Angeles Society of Financial Analyst, E-Claremont McKenna College

Leonard L. Kim, Singapore, CB-Managing Partner Partner Capital Group, PE-Peregrine Capital Limited, Kimbaco Limited-Korea, The First Boston Corporation, E-Stanford University

Guilherme Lins, Brazil, Managing Partner Capital Group, PE-JPMorgan, Matuschka Group, E-Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, École des Hautes Études Commerciales-HEC

Lam Nguyen-Phuong, Vietnam (US), CB-Managing Partner Capital Group, PE-Ermgassen & Co. Ltd,  JP Morgan & Co., RepublicBank Dallas. École Centrale (Paris, France), Stanford University-MBA

FMR Corporation: Fidelity Worldwide Investment (Family Controlled)

Assets Management: $1.7 Trillion

Edward Crosby Johnson III, US, CB-CEO-Fidelity, Trustee of Fidelity Commonwealth Trust, FMR Corp, ARI Holdings Inc., Greenery Rehabilitation Group Inc., Premier BanCorp Inc, Crocker Realty Investors Inc, Dr. Solomon’s Group PLC, and ForSoft Ltd., Regal Communications Corp., E-Harvard,

Abigail Pierrepont Johnson, US, CB-President-Fidelity Financial Services, L.L.C. PE-Booz Allen & Hamilton, PC-Trustee of Fidelity Commonwealth Trust, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, E-Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Harvard Business-MBA

Ned C. Lautenbach, US, CB-Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Inc., PE-IBM, Covansys Corp., Acterna Corp., Providian Corp., Eaton Corp., Italtel Holding S.p.A, Axcelis Technologies Inc., Sony Corp., PC-Council on Foreign Relations, Trustee of Fairfield University, University of Cincinnati Foundation, Board of Governors State University Florida, E- University of Cincinnati, Harvard Business-MBA,

AXA

Assets Management: $1.4 Trillion

Claude Bébéar, France, CB-Honorary Chairman of AXA, Vivendi, BNP Paribas, Schneider Electric, PC-Institut Montaigne, E-Institute of Actuaries of France

Henri de Castries, France, CB-CEO-AXA, Nestlé,  PE-French Treasury Department, Rhône-Poulenc Group,  E-Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales,

Norbert Dentressangle, France, CB-Financière Norbert Dentressangle, Dentressangle Initiatives (SAS) (formerly Financière de Cuzieu (SAS)), ND Investissements (SAS), SEB SA, Vivendi, SOFADE.  PE-FINAIXAM.

Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, France, CB-Solvay, Rhodia. Faurecia, SNCF,  PE-Ministry of Labour, PC-World Economic Forum 2013, Franco-Brazilian Business Council, Int’l MEDEF. European Chemical Industry Council. Member, Int’l Chemical Industry Council;  E-Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines of Paris, Ingénieur du Corps des Mines, Awards: National Order of Merit, 2009,

Denis Duverne, France, CB-MONY Life Insurance Company, PE-Corporate Taxes Department for the French Ministry of Finance, Compagnie Financière IBI., Banque Colbert, E-École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC), École Nationale d’Administration (ENA),

Jean-Martin Folz, France: CB-Eutelsat Communications,. Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, ONF-Participations (SAS), Société Générale, Solvay (Belgium), PE-Peugeot SA

E-École Polytechnique and ingénieur des Mines

Anthony Hamilton, UK, CB-MONY Life Insurance Company (United States), Tawa plc (United Kingdom), Binley Limited (United Kingdom), Swiss Re Capital Markets Limited (United Kingdom) PE- Schroders, Morgan Grenfell, and Wainwright, Fox-Pitt & Kelton, PC- The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (United Kingdom), E-Oxford University

Isabelle Kocher, France, CB-Arkema, Suez Environnement,  International Power Plc (IPR) (United Kingdom), PE-GDF SUEZ., PC-Advisor on Industrial Affairs of the French Prime Minister Office, E-Ecole Normale Supérieure, Rue d’Ulm, Paris, France; Engineer of the Corps des Mines; DEA (postgraduate degree) in quantum optics and aggregation in Physics

Suet Fern Lee, Singapore, CB-Stamford Law Corporation (Singapore), Sanofi, Macquarie International Infrastructure Fund Ltd (Bermuda), Rickmers Trust Management Pte Ltd (Singapore), Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore Business School, PE-IPBA (Singapore), China Aviation Oil, Corporation Limited, ECS Holdings Limited, Richina Pacific Limited (Bermuda), SembCorp Industries Limited (Singapore), Sincere Watch (Hong Kong) Limited (Hong Kong), Transcu Group Limited, E-Cambridge University-Law

Stefan Lippe, German, CB-German Insurance Association for Vocational Training (BWV) (Germany), Acqupart Holding AG, Acqufin AG., Extremus Insurance Ltd. PE- Bavarian Re., Swiss Re., PC-World Economic Forum, E-University of Mannheim,

François Martineau, France, CB-SCP Lussan & Associés, Associations Mutuelles Le Conservateur, Bred Banque Populaire, Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature (ENM), PE- Law and Political Sciences School of Lima , Peru, PC-Council of Europe, Law Consultant Eastern Europe,, E-University Paris IV (Philosophy Degree), University Paris I (Law Master), l’Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris,

Deanna Oppenheimer, US-UK, CB-CameoWorks, NCR Corporation, Tesco PLC (UK) PE-Washington Mutual, Barclays, Catellus, Plum Creek, E-University of Puget Sound, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Ramon de Oliveira, France, CB-Investment Audit Practice, LLC, JACCAR Holdings SA (Luxembourg), MONY Life Insurance Company, Quilvest (Luxembourg), Taittinger-Kobrand, PE-Logan Pass Partners LLC, Kauffman Foundation, American Century Company, Inc., JP Morgan, SunGard Data Systems, The Hartford Insurance Company, The Red Cross, E-University of Paris, Institut d’Études Politiques (Paris)

Michel Pébereau, France, CB-BNP Paribas, Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, Total, Banque Marocaine pour le Commerce et l’Industrie (BMCI) (Morocco), BNP Paribas SA (Switzerland), EADS N.V. (Netherlands), Pargesa Holding S.A. PE-Crédit Commercial de France, BNP Paribas, PC-Conseil d’Orientation de l’Institut de l’Entreprise, Aspen Institute, Fédération Bancaire Européenne, Institut de l’Entreprise, Lafarge, E-École Polytechnique, École Nationale d’Administration (ENA).

Dominique Reiniche, France, CB-ECR Europe (Belgium), PE-The Coca-Cola Company Europe, Procter & Gamble, PC-MEDEF (French Employer Federation), UNESDA (Union of European Beverages Associations) (Belgium), Vice-Chairman, FDE (Food & Drink Europe) E-ESSEC Business School in Paris

Marcus Schenck Ph,D,. Germany, CB- E.ON AG (Germany), Commerzbank AG (Germany), SMS Group GmbH (Germany), HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG (Germany), PE-Goldman, Sachs & Co., oHG, McKinsey & Co, PC-Berlin Center of Corporate Governance (Germany)Capital Markets Advisory Council to the German Finance Minister (Germany) E-University Bonn, UC Berkeley, University of Cologne,

State Street Corporation

Assets management: $1.9 trillion

Joseph (Jay) L. Hooley, US, CB-President-State Street Corp., Boston Financial Data Services, National Financial Data Services, PC-Boston College Center for Asset Management, Corporate Advisory Board, The Boston Club, E-Boston College

Kennett F. Burnes, US, CB-CEO-Cabot Corporation, Watts Water Technologies, PE- Choate, Hall & Stewart, E-Harvard University BA-JD

Peter Coym Ph.D., Germany, PE-Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Salomon Brothers AG, Magix AG, (Börsenrat), Eurex, PC-Association of Foreign Banks, German Deposit Protection Fund, German Central Capital Market Committee, Advisor-German Bundesbank & German Minister of Finance, E-University of Hambur

Patrick de Saint-Aignan, US-France, CB-European Kyoto Fund, Allied World Assurance Company Holdings AG, PE-Morgan Stanley, IXIS Corporate and Investment, Bank of China Limited, Natixis Corporate & Investment Bank, E-Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, Harvard University-MBA,

Dame Amelia C. Fawcett, US-UK, CB- Guardian Media Group plc, Investment AB Kinnevik, PE-Morgan Stanley, Sullivan & Cromwell, Pensions First LLP, PC-Hedge Fund Standards Board, Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation, Governor, London Business School, Commissioner, US-UK Fulbright Commission, E-Wellesley College, University of Virginia-JD,  Awards-Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire-2010

David P. Gruber, US, CB-Stone Panels, Inc., Nanocomp Technologies Inc., PE-CEO-, Wyman-Gordon Company, Cambridge Semantics Inc., PC-Trustee, Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, E-Ohio State University

Linda A. Hill Ph.D., US, CB-Harvard Business School: Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, Cooper Industries, Harvard Business Publishing, PC-Trustee, Bryn Mawr College, The Bridgespan Group, Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund USA, E-Bryn Mawr College, University of Chicago-Ph.D.

Robert S. Kaplan, US, CB-Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School, Berkshire Partners LLC, Indaba Capital Management, LLC, PE-Goldman Sachs Group, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Inc, PC-Harvard Management Company, Draper, Richards, Kaplan Foundation, Trustee, Ford Foundation, E-MIT-MS-Electrical Engineering, Cornell University-Ph.D.

Richard P. Sergel. US, CB-Emera, Inc., PE-CEO-North American Electric Reliability Corporation, New England Electric System (National Grid USA), PC-Director of The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Consortium for Energy Efficiency, E-Florida State University, North Carolina State University, University of Miami-MBA,

Ronald L. Skates, US, CB-Raytheon Company, Courier Corporation, Gilbane, Inc., PE-CEO-Data General Corp., PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cabot Microelectronics Corp. E-Harvard, BA-MBA

Gregory L. Summe, US, CB-Global Buyout, Carlyle Group, Automatic Data Processing, Inc., PE-Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, PerkinElmer, Inc., General Aviation Avionics, AlliedSignal (Honeywell International), General Electric, McKinsey & Co. PC-Conference Board, E-University of Kentucky, University of Cincinnati, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania-MBA

Robert E. Weissman, US, CB-Pitney Bowes Inc., Information Services Group, Inc., Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Shelburne Investments, Nielsen Media Research Inc., Director of Gartner Group, Inc., EntreCap Financial LLC, PE-IMS Health Inc., of Dun & Bradstreet Corp., E-Babson College,

J. P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Assets management: $1.34 Trillion

James A. Bell, US, CB-The Boeing Company, PE-Rockwell, Dow Chemical,  PC- Trustee at Center for Strategic and International Studies Inc, World Business Chicago, Chicago Economic Club,  E-California State University at Los Angeles.

Crandall C. Bowles, US, Springs Industries, Inc., Deere & Company of Sara Lee Corporation, PE-Wachovia Corporation, PC-The Business Council, Trustee-Brookings Institution, Global Research institute of UNC-Chapel Hill, The Committee of 200, Economic Club of New York, The University of North Carolina Press, E-Wellesley College, Columbia University-MBA,

Stephen B. Burke, US, CB-NBCUniversal, LLC, Comcast Corporation, Berkshire Hathaway, PE-Walt Disney Company-ABC Broadcasting-President, E-Colgate University, Harvard Business School-MBA,

David M. Cote, US, CB-Honeywell International Inc., Advisor-Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., PE-CEO-TRW Inc., General Electric, PC-Business Roundtable, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, U.S.-India CEO Forum, E-University of New Hampshire

James S. Crown, US, CB-Henry Crown and Company, General Dynamics Corporation,

Sara Lee Corporation, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A, Bank One Corp., First Chicago NBD Corp., PE-Salomon Brothers Inc., Capital Markets Service Group, Hillshire Brands Company, PC-World Business Chicago, PEC Israel Economic Corp., The Aspen Institute-trustee, University of Chicago-trustee, E-Hampshire College, Stanford University Law School,

James Dimon, US, CB-CEO-JP Morgan Chase, PE-Citigroup Inc., Travelers Group, Commercial Credit Company, American Express Company, PC-The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, World Economic Forum-2013, Trustee-New York University School of Medicine, E-Tufts University, Harvard Business School-MBA,

Timothy P. Flynn, US, CB-Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., PE- KPMG LLP, PC-World Economic Forum’s International Business Counsel, Business Roundtable, Financial Accounting Standards Board, The Prince of Wales’ International Integrated Reporting Committee, E- University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota,

Ellen V. Futter, US, CB-Consolidated Edison, Inc., PE- President of Barnard College, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, American International Group Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Viacom, AIG Aviation Inc., CBS Inc., PC-Council on Foreign Relations, The American Ditchley Foundation and NYC & Company, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, President of the American Museum of Natural History, E-Barnard College, Columbia Law School

Laban P. Jackson, Jr., US, CB- Clear Creek Properties, Inc., Gulf Stream Home, Garden, Inc., TBN Holdings, PE-Home Depot, SIRVA, IPIX Corporation, Bank One, PC-Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, E-United States Military Academy

Lee R. Raymond Ph.D., US, CB-Advisor-Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Decision Sciences Corporation,  PE-CEO- ExxonMobil, PC- Business Council for International Understanding, National Petroleum Council, American Enterprise Institute, Roundtable’s Policy Committee, The Business Council, The Business Roundtable, Council on Foreign Relations. President’s Export Council, National Petroleum Council,  E-University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota-Ph.D. Chemical Enginnering,

William C. Weldon, US, CB-Chairman-Johnson & Johnson, PE-Korea McNeil, Ltd, Ortho-Cilag Pharmaceutical, Ltd., Janssen Pharmaceutica, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, PC- US-China Business Council, The Business Council, Business Roundtable, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, E-Quinnipiac University

Legal & General Group PLC (LGIMA)

Assets management: $598 Billion

John Morrison Stewart, Australian, CB-Chairman-Legal & General Group PLC, Telstra Corporation, Court of the Bank of England, PE-CEO-Woolwich, Deputy CEO-Barclays, National Australia Bank, PC-Australian Federal Attorney General’s Business Advisory Group, Scottish Enterprise’s International Advisory Board, Australian Prime Minister’s Task Group on Emissions Trading, Business Council of Australia, E-BA, ACII and FCIB Degrees

Nigel Wilson Ph.D., UK, CB-The Capita Group plc, PE-United Business Media PLC,  Halfords Group Plc, Dixons Group Plc, Guinness Peat Aviation (G.P.A.), Stanhope Properties Plc, McKinsey & Co, Deloitte Haskins & Sells,, E-Warwick University, MIT-Ph.D. Kennedy Scholar,

Mark Zinkula, US, CB-CEO-LIGMA, PE-Principal Financial Group, Cornell College,  PC-Investment Management Association, E-University of Iowa, BA-MBA, London School of Economics.

Mark Gregory, UK, PE-Kingfisher Plc and ASDA. E Chartered Accountant with PwC.

John Pollock, UK, E-Strathclyde University.

Henry Staunton, UK, CB-Standard Bank Plc, The Merchants Trust Plc, New Look Retailers Limited and Capital & Counties Properties Plc., WH Smith PLC,  PE-Price Waterhouse, Media Ventures at ITV plc., Box clever Technology,  ITV Plc, Granada Group Plc, Ashtead Group Plc, EMAP PAP Plc, Independent Television News Limited, Vector Hospitality Plc, Ladbrokes Plc., New Look Group Limited, PC-Xfi Centre for Finance and Investment, E-Exeter University

Mike Fairey, UK, CB-Horizon Acquisition Company Plc, Vertex Data Science, Northern Rock Plc, Danske Bank AS, Vertex Group Limited,The Energy Saving Trust Limited,  Lloyds TSB Group Pension Trust Ltd.-Chairman, PE-Deputy Group Chief Executive, Lloyds TSB Group Plc, Barclays Bank, Northern Rock plc, PC-British Quality Foundation, Trustee-Consumer Credit Counselling Service, E-AIB -Associate, Chartered Institute of Bankers

Rudy Markham, UK, CB-Standard Chartered Plc United Parcel Service Inc, UCL Partners Ltd, AstraZeneca Plc, Legal & General Group Plc, A Brain Co., Ltd., JohnsonDiversey Holdings, Inc.,  CSM nv,  PE-CEO-Unilever Plc-Japan-Australia, PC- Financial Reporting Council, NHS Foundation Trust, E- Christ’s College, Cambridge University MS-Natural Sciences

Stuart Popham, UK, CB-EMEA Banking for Citigroup Inc, Legal & General Insurance, The Barbican Centre Trust, PE-Senior Partner of Clifford Chance LLP, PC- Confederation of British Industry’s (CBI), Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chairman of City UK, Advisor-Saïd Business School-University of Oxford, Council of the RNLI, Birkbeck University of London, Member of Chatham House, London Council of the CBI-Chair, E Southampton University-Law

Nick Prettejohn, UK, CB- Brit Insurance Limited, Legal & General Group Plc, Egg Plc., Brit Insurance Holdings N.V. PE-Chief Executive of Lloyd’s of London, CEO-Prudential UK & Europe, Prudential Plc., Bain and Company, Director of Anglo & Overseas PLC, PC-Oxford Union Society, Financial Services Practitioner Panel, E- Taunton School, Somerset, Balliol College, Oxford

Julia S. Wilson, UK, CB-3i Group plc, PE-3i Group plc, Finance at Cable & Wireless Communications Plc., Arthur Anderson, Hanson PLC , Tomkins PLC., PC-ICAEW The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ACA), Chartered Institute of Taxation. E-University of Surrey

Lindsay Tomlinson, UK, CB- BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited. PE-Barclays Global Investors, BZW Asset Management, Provident Mutual, Woolwich Unit Trust Managers Ltd, PC-Chairman of the Code Committee of the Takeover Panel, Limited Chairman of the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds, Investment Management Association-Chair, Financial Reporting Council, National Association of Pension funds-NAPF, Investment Council, E-Cambridge University

Vanguard Group Inc.

Assets management: $2.1 Trillion

F. William McNabb III, US, PC-Investment Company Institute’s Board of Governors. Zoological Society of Philadelphia,  United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, E- Dartmouth College, M.B.A.-Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Emerson U. Fullwood, US, CB-Minett Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, North Carolina A&T University, SPX Corporation, Amerigroup Corporation, PE-Xerox Corporation, General Signal Corporation, PC-United Way of Rochester, University of Rochester Medical Center, Monroe Community College Foundation, Urban League, Colgate Rochester Crozier Divinity School, E-North Carolina State University, Columbia University-MBA

Rajiv L. Gupta, India-US, CB-New Mountain Capital, Delphi Automotive LLP, Tyco International, Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Company, PE-President-Rohm and Haas Co., Scott Paper Company, Ducolite International,  PC-The Conference Board-Trustee, American Chemistry Council, Society of Chemical Industry, Drexel University-Trustee, E- Indian Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Drexel University-MBA

Amy Gutmann Ph.D., US, CB- President of the University of Pennsylvania, PC- Carnegie Corporation of New York, National Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. National Constitution Center-Trustee, Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, Global Colloquium of the University Presidents-advisors to the Secretary General of the U.N., E-Harvard-Radcliffe College, London School of Economics, Harvard University-Ph.D. Political Science

JoAnn Heffernan-Heisen, US, CB-Skytop Lodge Corporation, PE-Johnson & Johnson, Primerica Corporation. Kenmill Textile Corporation, Chase Manhattan Bank, PC-Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, University Medical Center at Princeton, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, Center for Talent Innovation, E- Syracuse University

F. Joseph Loughrey, US, CB-Hillenbrand, Inc., SKF AB, PE- Cummins Inc., PC- National Association of Manufacturers, Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Lumina Foundation for Education, Oxfam America, E-University of Notre Dame,

Mark Loughridge, US, CB-CFO-IBM,  IBM’s Retirement Plan Committee, IBM Credit LLC., E-Stanford University, University of Chicago-MBA, Ecole Nationale Superieure de Mecanique in Nantes, France,

Scott C. Malpass, US, CB-Manager-Notre Dame’s $3.5 billion endowment, PE-St. Joseph Capital Corp. The Bank of New York Mellon, Irving Trust Company, PC- Round Table Healthcare Management, LLC., The Investment Fund for Foundations, E-University of Notre Dame-BA-MBA

André F. Perold, US-South Africa, CB-HighVista Strategies, Rand Merchant Bank, PE- Professor of Finance and Banking at the Harvard Business School, Author-The Global Financial System: A Functional Perspective, 1995, E-University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Stanford University Ph.D.,

Alfred M. Rankin, Jr., US, CB-CEO- NACCO Industries, Goodrich Corp., Hamilton Beach Brands, Inc., The Kitchen Collection, LLC, The North American Coal Corporation, PE-Eaton, McKinsey and Company, Standard Products Co., Reliance Electric Company, PC- National Association of Manufacturers, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland-Chairman, E-Yale-BA-JD,

Peter F. Volanakis, US, CB- SPX Corporation, CCS Holding, Inc.,  PE-CEO-Corning Incorporated, PC-Overseer School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College, E- Dartmouth College-BA-MA,

UBS AG

Assets management: $2.3 Trillion

Axel A. Weber Ph.D., German, PE-German Bundesbank-President, Professor for international economics University of Cologne, Professor for monetary economics Goethe University, PC-European Central Bank, Bank for International Settlements, International Monetary Fund, G7, G20, World Economic Forum-2013, European Systemic Risk Board, Financial Stability Board, German Council of Economic Experts, E-University of Constance, University of Siegen-Ph.D.

Michel Demaré, Belgian, CB-ABB-CFO, Syngenta AG, Global Markets, PE-Baxter International Inc., Dow Chemical Company, Continental Illinois National Bank of Chicago, PC-IMD Foundation, E-Université Catholique de Louvain, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven- Belgium-MBA

David Sidwell, US-UK, CB-Apollo Global Management-AGM LLC, MSCI Inc. Oliver Wyman, PE-Morgan Stanley-CFO, Investment Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co. Inc., PricewaterhouseCoopers, PC-Director of Fannie Mae, National Council on Aging, Federal National Mortgage Association, International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation, E-Cambridge University, Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales

Rainer-Marc Frey, Swiss, CB- Horizon21 AG, DKSH Group, PE-RMF Investment Group-CEO, Man Group plc, Invision Private Equity AG., Salomon Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Capital Dynamics AG, PC-World Economic Forum-2013,  Frey Charitable Foundation, Freienbach, E-University of St. Gallen

Ann F. Godbehere, UK-Canada, CB-AllSource Global Management AGM-LLC., Prudential plc, Rio Tinto, Rio Tinto Limited, Atrium Underwriters Ltd., Atrium Underwriting Group Ltd., Arden Holdings Ltd., Bermuda. British American Tobacco plc., PE-Northern Rock-CFO, Swiss Re Group-CFO, Sun Life Financial, Canada) E- Certified General Accountants Association of Canada

Axel P. Lehmann Ph.D., Swiss, Zurich Financial Services, Farmers Group, Inc., PE- Zurich American Insurance Company-CEO, Swiss Life in Zurich, PC-World Economic Forum-2013,  International Financial Risk Institute Foundation, Economiesuisse, E- University of St. Gallen, Wharton Advanced Management Program-MBA-Ph.D. Post-grad-Harvard Business School, Arizona State University

Wolfgang Mayrhuber, Austrian, CB-Infineon Technologies AG, Munich Re Group, BMW Group, Lufthansa Technik AG, Austrian Airlines AG., HEICO Corporation, PE- Deutsche Lufthansa AG-CEO, PC-Acatech (Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften), American Academy of Berlin-Trustee, Technical College in Steyr, Austria, E-Bloor Collegiate Institute in Canada-Mechanical Engineer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Management Training

Helmut Panke Ph.D., German, CB-Microsoft Corporation, Singapore Airlines Ltd., Bayer AG., PE-BMW Group-CEO, McKinsey & Company, E- University of Munich, Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research_Ph.D.

William G. Parrett, US, CB-Eastman Kodak Company, the Blackstone Group LP, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., PE-Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu-CEO, PC-United States Council for International Business, United Way Worldwide, E-St. Francis College, NY-CPA,

Isabelle Romy Ph.D., Swiss, CB-Law Professor-University of Fribourg, Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), SIX Swiss Exchange,  PE-Swiss Federal Supreme Court, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California,  E- University of Fribourg-Ph.D., University of Lausanne-Law JD,

Beatrice Weder de Mauro Ph.D., Swiss-Italian, CB-Professor of Economics-Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Roche Holding Ltd., Basel, ThyssenKrupp AG, Essen, Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft, Köln, PE-International Monetary Fund (IMF), National Bureau of Economic Research, Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, World Bank, PC-Federal Reserve Board-NY, World Economic Forum 2013, German Council of Economic Experts,  E-Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, University of Basel-Ph.D.

Joseph Yam Chi-kwong,, Hong Kong, CB-China Society for Finance and Banking-VP, Advisor- People’s Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Macroprudential Consultancy Limited, Johnson Electric Holdings Limited., PE-Hong Kong Monetary Authority-CEO, PC-Global Economics and Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Institute of Bankers, China Society for Finance and Banking, E-St. Paul’s College, University of Hong Kong

Luzius Cameron Ph.D., Swiss and Australian, PE-Investment Bank Warburg Dillon Read, Global Rates Business in Zurich, Swiss Bank Corporation, Institute of Astronomy at the University of Basel and European Southern Observatory, E-University of Basel-Ph.D. Astrophysics,

Sergio P. Ermotti, Swiss, CB-CEO-UBS AG, Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank AG, Bank Austria Wohnbau Gewinnscheine. PE-UniCredit, Milan, Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spolka Akcyjna , Merrill Lynch, Darwin Airline SA, Corner Bank SA, Citibank, BofA Merrill Lynch, PC-London Stock Exchange Group, World Economic Forum 2013,  E-Oxford University, Swiss Certified Banking Expert

Bank of America/Merrill Lynch

Assets management: $2.3 trillion

Charles O. Holliday, Jr., US, CB-DuPont Qualicon Inc.-CEO, Royal Dutch Shell plc, CH2M HILL Companies, Ltd, John Deere Credit Company, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., HCA Inc., Lafarge SA., PE-EI DuPont de Nemours & Co.-CEO, Catalyst Inc., PC-The Business Roundtable, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Business Council, Society of Chemical Industry, International Business Council, National Infrastructure Advisory Council, National Infrastructure Advisory Council, E-University of Tennessee-Engineering,

Susan S. Bies Ph.D., US, CB- Horizon National Corp.-VP, Zurich Financial Services AG, PE- Professor of Economics, Rhodes College Professor of Economics at Wayne State University,  PC- Securities and Exchange Commission, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,  Financial Accounting Standards Board, Financial Executives Institute, End Users of Derivatives Association, American Bankers Association, Bank Administration Institute, American Economic Association, Institute of Management Accountants, International Women’s Forum, American Economic Association, E-State University College at Buffalo, Northwestern University-Ph.D.

Frank P. Bramble, Sr, US, CB-MBNA Corp., Constellation Energy Group Inc., Lecturer-Towson University,  PE-Maryland National Bank, MNC Financial Inc., Allfirst Financial Inc., Allfirst Bank-CEO, Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c, Wilmington Trust Retirement and Institutional Services Company, E-Towson University

Arnold W. Donald, US, CB-Atlas Holdings LLC., Wind Point Partners., Russell Brands, LLC, Carnival plc, Crown Holdings, Bridgewell Resources LLC., BJC Health System, Inc., BMO Financial Corp.,  PE- Monsanto Company-VP, TransCanada Corp.-CEO, Merisant Company-CEO, Tabletop Holdings-CEO, Bank of Montreal, Harris Financial Corporation, Efficas, Inc. Scotts Miracle-gro Co., Belden Inc., The Laclede Group Inc., DHR International, Inc., Oil-Dri Corp., Global Velocity Inc., PC- Boards of Carleton College & Washington University, Grocery Manufacturers of America, United States Russia Business Council, Eurasia Foundation, President’s Export Council, Kennedy School of Government-Dean’s Council,  E-Washington University, Carleton College, University of Chicago Graduate-MBA,

Charles K. Gifford, US, CB-FleetBoston Financial Corp.-CEO, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., Stone Canyon Venture Partners, LP.,  CBS Corporation, PE- BankBoston, N.A., PC-Presiding Trustee at NSTAR, Trustee of Northeast Utilities, Trustee of Northeastern University, WGBH Public Broadcasting,  E-Princeton University

Monica C. Lozano, US, CB-ImpreMedia, LLC. S, CEO-Publisher-La Opinión L.P., Lozano Communications, Inc., The Walt Disney Co., UnionBanCal Corporation, SunAmerica Asset Management Corporation,  PE-Tenet Healthcare Corp., PC-Council on Foreign Relations, Trustee of the University of Southern California, Regent-University of California, California HealthCare Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, National Council of La Raza, President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, E-University of Oregon

Thomas J. May, US, CB-CEO-President Northeast Utilities, NSTAR Electric & Gas Corporation, NSTAR Communications, Inc., BEC Funding II, L.L.C., Connecticut Light and Power Company, Public Service Company of New Hampshire, Liberty Mutual Holding Company, Inc., Liberty Financial Companies Inc., New England Business Service Inc., DELUXEPINPOINT,  PE-Cambridge Electric Light Company-CEO, Boston Edison Company-CEO, Bankboston Corp., RCN Corporation, PC-Financial Executives International, E-Stonehill College, Bentley College-MS Finance, Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program

Brian T. Moynihan, US, CB-CEO-President-BofA, Chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co Inc., General Partner of BofA Merrill Lynch Preferred Capital Trust III, BofA Merrill Lynch Preferred Capital Trust IV, BofA Merrill Lynch Preferred Funding V LP and BofA Merrill Lynch Preferred Funding IV LP, BlackRock Inc., PC-Brown University-Trustee, E-Brown University, University of Notre Dame Law School-JD, Miami University-MA,

Lionel L. Nowell, US, CB-Pepsico, Inc.-VP, Reynolds American Inc., American Electric Power Service Corporation, AEP Texas Central Company, PE-RJR Nabisco, Inc., Diageo PLC, Pillsbury North America-CFO, Pizza Hut, Church & Dwight Co. Inc., Bottling Group, LLC, PC-Executive Leadership Council, Financial Executive Institute, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, E-Ohio State University

Sharon Allen, US, PE-Deloitte LLP, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, Catalyst, Inc., PC-National Board of the YMCA-Chair, President’s Export Council, Women’s Leadership Board at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, E- University of Idaho

Jack Bovender, US, CB-HCA Holdings, Inc., HCA Realty, Inc., EP Health, LLC, Montgomery Regional Hospital, Inc., Brookwood Medical Center of Gulfport, VH Holdings Inc. and Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Inc., PE-HCA Inc.-CEO, Tennessee Valley Ventures, L.P. PC-Business Council, Committee for the Preservation of Capitalism, American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Healthcare SystemsDuke University-Trustee, E- Duke University-BA-MA,

Linda Parker Hudson, US, CB-BAE Systems Inc.,-CEO, Tanzania at BAE,  PE- General Dynamics Corp., Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin, Ford Aerospace, Harris Corporation, PC-Aerospace Industries Association-Board, International Women’s Forum and C200 E-University of Florida-Engineering

David Yost, US, CB-AmerisourceBergen Corp.-CEO, Exelis, Inc., Tyco International Ltd., Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., HP Enterprise Services, LLC, Aetna Inc., PC- International Federation of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers, University of Pennsylvania-Trustee, E-United States Air Force Academy, University of California at Los Angeles-MBA,

Credit Suisse Group AG

Assets management: $1.8 Trillion

Urs Rohner, Swiss, PE-ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, Unterfoehring, Lenz & Staehelin, Attorneys at Law, Zurich, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, New York, PC-Institute for International Finance, World Economic Forum 2013, Institute International d’Etudes Bancaires, E-University of Zurich,

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Austrian, CB-Chairman-Nestlé SA L’Oréal SA, Paris, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Delta Topco (Formula 1), PC-World Economic Forum 2013, European Round Table of Industrialists, E-University of World Trade, Vienna.

Jassim Bin Hamad J.J. Al Thani, Qatar, CB-Chairman-Qatar Islamic Bank, QInvest, Damaan Islamic Insurance Co. (BEEMA); Q-RE LLC, CEO-Al Mirqab Capital LLC, Qatar, Qatar Navigation Company, Qatar Insurance Company, Arcapita Bank, Bahrain, E-Royal Military Academy in England.

Iris Bohnet, Swiss, PC-World Economic Forum, Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, Massachusetts, Academic Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, Advisory Board of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, E-University of Zurich

Noreen Doyle, US, CB-Newmont Mining Corporation, QinetiQ Group Plc., Rexam Plc, Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund, Macquarie Renaissance Infrastructure Fund,  PE-European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Bankers Trust Company, PC-Women in Banking and Finance in London E-College of Mount Saint Vincent, New York, Dartmouth College-MBA, Marymount International School, London

Jean-Daniel Gerber, Swiss, CP-Lonza Group, Swiss Investment Fund, PC-World Bank Group, World Trade Organization, Economic and Financial Affairs at the Swiss Embassy in Washington D.C. Swiss Swiss Federal Council to State Secretary, State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Swiss Federal Office of Migration (1994 to 2004), E-University of Berne, Switzerland,

Walter B. Kielholz, Swiss, CB- Corsair Capital Ltd. Avenir Suisse, PE-General Reinsurance Corporation, Zurich, PC-World Economic Forum 2013  International Business Council, European Financial Services Roundtable, Monetary Authority of Singapore, Advisory Council of the Mayor of Shanghai, Credit Suisse Research Institute, E-University of St. Gallen, Switzerland,

Andreas N. Koopmann, Swiss, CB-Georg Fischer AG, CSD Group, Nestlé SA, Alstom (Suisse) SA,  PE-Bobst Group S.A., Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, International Institute for Management Development (IMD), PC-Swissmem—Association of Swiss Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Industries

Jean Lanier, French,  PE-Euler Hermes, Pargesa Group Lambert Brussells Paribas Group, PC-La Fondation Internationale de l’Arche, Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, Paris, E-Cornell University, Awards-Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in France

Kai S. Nargolwala, Singapore, CB-Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, Prudential Plc., Clifford Capital Pte. Ltd, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School of Singapore, PE-Bank of America, Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co., E-University of Delhi,

Anton van Rossum, Dutch, CB-Fortis, Royal Vopak NV, Solvay SA PE- McKinsey and Company, PC-Netherlands Economics Institute, American European Community Association, European Roundtable of Financial Services, E-Erasmus University-BA-MBA

Richard E. Thornburgh, US, CB-Corsair Capital, Credit Suisse First Boston, Reynolds American Inc., Winston-Salem, McGraw-Hill, New Star Financial Inc., PE-First Boston Corporation, E-University of Cincinnati, Harvard Business School-MBA Finance

John Tiner,  UK, CB-Lucida plc, Friends Life, Corsair Capital, PE-FSA, PC-Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Regulators, European Securities Regulators E-Kingston University, Awards-2008-Commander of the British Empire

Allianz SE (Owners of PIMCO)

Assets Management; $ 2.3 Trillion

and

PIMCO-Pacific Investment Management Company

Assets Management; $1.8 Trillion

Michael Diekmann, German, CB-Allianz SE (CEO) Siemens AG, BASF Wall Systems Inc., Lufthansa AG PE- Dresdner Bank AG, Linde AG, BASF SE., Riunione Adriatica Di Sicurta Spa, PC-World Economic Forum 2013, Geneva Association; European Financial Services Round Table (EFR), EVIAN (Franco-German Roundtable), International Business Leaders Advisory Council for the Mayor of Shanghai (IBLAC), Pan-European Insurance Forum (PEIF), Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), E-Göttingen University

Oliver Bäte, German, CB-Allianz SE-CFO, PE-Westdeutsche Landesbank, McKinsey & Company, New York, Professor at University of Cologne, German Air Force, PC- Chairman of CFO Forum, E-University of Cologne, New York University-MBA.

Manuel Bauer, German, PE-Zagrebacka Banka D.D., Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company Ltd., ROSNO Group, E-Technical Engineering College-Vienna.

Gary C. Bhojwani, India, PE-Intercargo Corporation & Intercargo Insurance; Trade Insurance Services, Avalon Risk Management-CEO, Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, Lincoln General Insurance Company-CEO, E-University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Chicago-MBA.

Clement B. Booth, South Africa, CB-ACORD Corporation, PE- Chairman and CEO, Aon Re International, London, PC-Director of Association of British Insurer, E- University of Witwatersrand Business School-Executive Development Program

Dr. Helga Jung, German, CB-UniCredit S.p.A. PE-Professor at the University of Augsburg, E-University of Augsburg, Administration Doctorate.

Christof Mascher JD, Austrian, E-University of Vienna, University of Innsbruck-Doctorate Law.

Jay Ralph, US, PE-Arthur Andersen & Company, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Centre Re Bermuda Ltd., Zurich Re, Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company. E- University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago-MBA Finance.

Dieter Wemmer Ph.D., Hope you are doing well.

Werner Zedelius Ph.D., German, CB-Europe General Insurance-CFO, PE-Zurich Financial Services AG-CFO, Zurich Re, Agrippina, Zurich Versicherung Aktiengesellschaft, Oxford, PC-Economiesuisse E-University of Cologne-Ph.D. Mathematics.

Maximilian Zimmerer Ph.D., German, CB-Allianz Dresdner Bauspar AG, Allianz Immobilien GmbH and Hauck & Aufhäuser Banquiers Luxembourg S.A., PE-Dresdner RCM Global Investor, Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg,  PC-Federal Finance Ministry, World Economic Forum 2013, German Equity Institute, Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (Federal Security Authority) E-University of Cologne-Law.

Peter Phillips is professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and president of Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored.

Brady Osborne is a senior level research associate at Sonoma State University.

Sonoma State University’s Kimberly Soeiro, Katelyn Clatty, and Garrett Lyons provided research assistance with this study. Portions of the literature review in this chapter were previously published in earlier Censored yearbooks.

Notes

1. See G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2006), and Peter Phillips, “A Relative Advantage: Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club,” 1994, http://library.sonoma.edu/regional/faculty/phillips/bohemianindex.php.

2. Early studies by Charles Beard, published as An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913), established that economic elites formulated the US Constitution to serve their own special interests. Henry Klein, in a 1921 book entitled Dynastic America and Those Who Own It, argued that wealth in America had power never before known in the world and was centered in the top 2 percent of the population, which owned some 60 percent of the country. In 1937, Ferdinand Lundberg published America’s Sixty Families, which documented intermarrying, self-perpetuating families, for whom wealth was the “indispensable handmaiden of government.” In 1945, C. Wright Mills determined that nine out of ten business elites from 1750 to 1879 came from well-to-do families (“American Business Elites,” Journal of Economic History, December 1945).

3. See Robert A. Brady, Business as a System of Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943); and Val Burris, “Elite Policy Planning Networks in the United States,” Research in Politics and Society, 4th ed. Gwen Moore and J. Allen Whitt (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1992), 111–134, http://pages.uoregon.edu/vburris/policy.pdf.

4. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956).

5. See Michael Soref, “Social Class and Division of Labor within the Corporate Elite,” Sociological Quarterly 17 (1976); and two works by Michael Useem: “The Social Organization of the American Business Elite and Participation of Corporation Directors in the Governance of American Institutions,” American Sociological Review 44 (1979), and The Inner Circle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

6. Thomas Koenig and Robert Gogel, “Interlocking Corporate Directorships as a Social Network,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 40, no. 1 (1981); and Peter Phillips, “The 1934–35 Red Threat and the Passage of the National Labor Relations Act,” Critical Sociology 20, no. 2 (1994).

7. For a discussion of principals inside the HCPE who pursue US military domination of the world as their key agenda, see Peter Phillips, Bridget Thornton, and Celeste Vogler, “The Global Dominance Group: 9/11 Pre-Warnings & Election Irregularities in Context,” http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/the-global-dominance-group.

8. Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2001).

9. Leslie Sklair, “The Transnational Capitalist Class and the Discourse of Globalization,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 14, no. 1, (2000), 67–85, http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/globalDimensions/globalisation/theTransnationalCapitalistClassAndTheDiscourseOfGlobalization.

10. William I. Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004).

11. Ibid., 155–156.

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

13. 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,” Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution, Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth with Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 66–68.

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

15. “Defense Against Terrorism Programme of Work (DATPOW),” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, September 24, 2012, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-EBFFE857-66071109D/natilive/topics_50313.htm?selectedLocale-en.

16. Nazemroaya, Mahdi Darius, The Globalization of NATO (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2012).

17. William K. Carroll, The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class: Corporate Power in the 21st Century (London and New York: Zed Books, 2010).

18. 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%2F10.113711%2Fjournal.phone.0025995. See also Censored story #6, “Small Network of Corporations Run the Global Economy,” Censored 2012, 69–70.

19. More details on this University of Zurich study, and the list of the top twenty-five of the 147 super-connected companies, is printed in full in Mickey Huff and Andy Roth with Project Censored, Censored 2013, 247–248.

20. Vitali, et al., “Network of Global Corporate Control.”

21. “The Top Asset Management Firms 2012, Banks around the World,” June 30, 2012, http://www.relbanks.com/rankings/largest-asset-managers.

22. “Barclays Total Assets: 2.426T for Dec. 31, 2012,” http://ycharts.com/companies/BCS/assets.

23. See the Censored News Cluster, “Iceland, the Power of Peaceful Revolution, and the Commons,” in this volume, for coverage of Iceland as a notable exception to the international trend of banks not being held accountable for systemic misconduct.

24. Dylan Murphy, “Money Laundering and The Drug Trade: The Role of the Banks,” Global Research, May 7, 2013, http://www.globalresearch.ca/money-laundering-and-the-drug-trade-the-role-of-the-banks/5334205. See also Scott, American War Machine.

25. Ibid.

26. Kylie MacLellan and Matthew Tostevin, “Factbox: Banks drawn into Libor rate-fixing scandal,” Reuters, July 11, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/111/us-banking-libor-panel-idUSBRE86A0P020120711.

27. “Barclays Fined for Attempts to Manipulate Libor Rates,” BBC News, June 27, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/buisness-18612779.

28. Matthew Leising, Lindsay Fortado and Jim Brunsden, “Meet ISDAfix, the Libor Scandal’s Sequel,” April 18, 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek, http://businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-118/meet-isdafix-the-libor-scandes-sequel.

29. Dan Margolies and Ross Kerber, “Vanguard Sued again for ‘Illegal Gambling’ Investments,” Reuters, April 8, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/08/vanguard-lawsuit-idUSN0818833420100048.

30. Matt Taibbi, “Everything is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever,” Rolling Stone, April 25, 2013, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425.

31. John Rudolf and Chris Kirkham, “Gunmaker Investments Under Review By California Teachers’ Fund After Newton Massacre,” Huffington Post Business, December 18, 2012, http://huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/118/gunmaker-investments-newton_n_2325323.html.

32. Yasha Levine, “Exposed: The Billionaire-Backed Group Strong-Arming Parents into Destroying Their Kids’ Public Schools,” AlterNet, April 26, 2013, http://www.alternet.org/education/exposed-billionare-backed-group-strong-arming-parents-destorying-their-kids-public. On efforts to privative public education, see also, Adam Bessie, “GERM Warfare: How to Reclaim the Education Debate from Corporate Occupation,” Censored 2013, 271–296.

33. Tyler Durgen, “A Detailed Look at Global Wealth Distribution,” Zero Hedge, October 11, 2010, http://www.zerohedge.com/article/detailed-look-global-wealth-distribution.

34. “World Bank Sees Progress Against Extreme Poverty, but Flags Vulnerabilities,” The World Bank, February 29, 2012, http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2012/02/29/world-bank-sees-progress-against-extreme-poverty-but-flags-vulnerabilities.

35. Mark Ellis, “The Three Top Sins of the Universe,” http://www.starvation.net.

36. Please see http://projectcensored.org/financial-core-of-the-transnational-corporate-class/for a searchable chart of the members of the superclass.

37. On the heritage of the commons, see http://www.fairsharecommonheritage.org.

http://www.projectcensored.org/financial-core-of-the-transnational-corporate-class/

Professor N. Gregory Mankiw is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. [1] From May 29, 2003 to February 18, 2005, he was the Chairman of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers.

In 2004 he caused controversy by suggesting that outsourcing of jobs by U.S. companies is "probably a plus for the economy in the long run". [2]

He is also famous for suggesting that flipping hamburgers is a manufacturing job, and should be reclassified as such. [3]

  The Ivy League apologists are out ‘splainin’ in full force.

Harvard’s Greg Mankiw is America’s most shameless defender of the 1 percent (just in case you didn’t know that about him, he wrote a paper titled, “ Defending the One Percent”). You can rely upon the chairman and professor of economics at Harvard and former Mitt Romney advisor to pontificate about why the megarich are smarter and more creative than you and not deserving of your ire. Mankiw just published an op-ed in the New York Times describing the risks our brave gazillionaire “superheroes” take to promote the public good.

Noting that actor Robert Downey Jr. recently got a movie paycheck of $50 million, Mankiw enjoys a little taunting: “Does that fact make you mad?...Does it make you want to take to the streets in protest?” He then condescends to observe that of course we don’t get mad at Robert Downey Jr. because our pea brains can comprehend how he made his money. It’s when our limited mental faculties can’t digest the wondrous activities of CEOs and financiers that we become sour.

Largely oblivious to the fact that a significant portion of America’s wealthy have arranged things so they can get away with cheating, bullying and creating nasty financial products that drain the pockets of their fellow citizens, Mankiw assures us that CEOs deserve their sky-high paychecks because the “value of making the right decisions is tremendous” (like Jamie Dimon overseeing a bank that has enjoyed an historic "crime spree?”) and because of all the taxes they pay (like Apple’s famous “ Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich” tax evasion scheme?).

He goes on to ‘splain that financiers are among America’s “most talented and thus highly compensated individuals.” (Talented, perhaps, at redistributing money upward?)

...3. A new field of psychology is emerging to treat the uberwealthy.

Being loaded is a load to bear, evidently. A recent article in *Mother Jones* outlines new trends in psychotherapy emerging to deal with this overwhelming burden.

Jamie Traeger-Muney, a “wealth psychologist,” became the first shrink employed by a bank to work directly with customers when Wells Fargo hired her to offer touchy-feely counsel to people worth over $50 million in 2006. Now business is booming and she works with several other big banks and financial institutions. She notes that the rich are upset by all the bad press they’re getting and that they need to explore their feelings. (May we suggest the editorial pages of theWall Street Journal, which are always open for this purpose?) For his part, psychology consultant John Warnick, who works with bank advisors, is careful not to use the awkward term "wealthy," but rather “legacy families” when dealing with American fatcats. Has a nicer ring to it.

As the rich pile up more and more money, there’s a whole new industry of coaches who deal with everything from how to divvy up the loot to the kids to coping with the guilt and alienation of “Sudden Wealth Syndrome.” They teach the rich to meditate and cope with the biases against wealth that can “gnaw at an inheritor’s self-worth.”

4. They’re barricading themselves in.

It is a perennial problem for the super-rich that once you’ve got the loot, you’ve got to guard it. In aFebruary 15 *New York Times* blog, economists Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jayadev report that America now has as many private security guards as high school teachers.

Bowles and Jayadev note that the share of our labor force dedicated to guard labor (broadly defined) has risen fivefold since 1890 and today stands four times higher than that of Sweden, which has similar high living standards. “In America,” the authors write, “growing inequality has been accompanied by a boom in gated communities and armies of doormen controlling access to upscale apartment buildings.” Economic disparities, they note, tend to “push nations to devote more of their productive capacity to guarding people and property.”

Wealthy American citizens have gone into survivalist mode, constructing luxury bunkers and panic rooms in their fancy apartments. The 1 percent doomsday preppers are requesting everything from secret passageways to pepper-spray sprinklers, in preparation for every conceivable disaster and attacker. Chris Pollack, president of Pollack+Partners, a New York-based design and construction outfit, told *Forbes* magazine that spending onhome security has seen a noticeable uptick in the past five years. Some of the stuff is in the realm of science fiction, like infrared cameras, biometric technologies and ballistics-proof suites.

5. Buying sprees are getting weirder.

There are only so many Prada bags you can buy before it starts to get boring. So the overly affluent have to resort to ever stranger and more refined items and services on which to spend their cash.

All across the world, luxury goods are booming. But wealthy American shoppers are particularly hedonistic in their spending. Serendipity 3 in New York City sells a $300 hamburger held together with a solid gold, diamond-encrusted toothpick. In South Beach, Miami, you can take a bath in Evian mineral water for $5,000. For the morbidly minded, luxury taxidermy is all the rage just now.

Going out in high style is becoming increasingly popular; America’s  wealthy may not have gotten as creative as some of their Asian counterparts, who have been known to hire strippers for funerals, but they’re working on it. Choose a burial-at-sea on a luxury yacht, or pick up a family mausoleum at California’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park for $825,000. American richies excel in upscale pet funerals, spending thousands to send Fido on a diamond-studded journey to the afterlife. You can even have your deceased pet mummified for $30,000.

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