November 30, 2015
The Network of Global Corporate Control
Monday, 24 October 2011 08:53
By Christine Lepisto ,
A Few Companies Have Power Over Most of the Real Economy
The idea that the few dominate the many will not come as news to those gathered either to occupy wall street or to occupy everywhere. But up until now it has been just an intuition that a few corporations control the world.
Not anymore. A team of Swiss mathematicians just proved that out of over 43,000 transnational corporations (TNCs), relatively few control almost 80% of the global economy . Find out who has the power below.
Global Domination a Facebook Phenomenon, Not a Conspiracy
The team, led by S. Vitali of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, used a method of analysis often applied to connectivity in the internet. Called the " bow-tie model," the method assigns companies onto the parts of a bow-tie.
Inter-connected companies sit on the knot of the bow tie shape. All of the companies in the knot have control relationships to other companies in the knot and are themselves controlled by other companies in the knot. Companies which control those in the knot, but are not themselves controlled in return, are visualized on one wing of the bow-tie. And companies controlled by those in the knot, but not themselves controlling, are on the other wing of the bowtie.
The fact that a small number of companies are highly connected in the knot does not prove unbalanced control; after all, it is normal in networking that everyone wants a connection to the powerful few, who connect out to those who can offer something in return. But by combining the bow-tie topology with a control ranking, the team came to an amazing conclusion.
Less than 1% of Companies in Control
The team found a core of 1318 companies (mostly financial services companies) with an average of 20 control links each amongst themselves. These 1318 companies represent only 0.7% of the TNCs but 18.7% of the revenue of all TNCs. When one adds in the 59.8% of the revenues from companies on the wing of the bow-tie controlled by those in the knot, these companies control almost 80% of the global economy.
A "super-entity" of 147 companies, or 0.3% of all TNCs, holds control over fully 40% of the economic value of TNCs. In the words of the authors:
4/10 of the control over the economic value of TNCs in the world is held, via a complicated web of ownership relations, by a group of 147 TNCs in the core, which has almost full control over itself.
Click on Link:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/4217:the-network-of-global-corporate-control
