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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Four Companies That Control the 147 Companies That Own Everything
There may be 147 companies in the world that own everything, as colleague Bruce Upbin points out and they are dominated by investment companies as Eric Savitz rightly points out. But its not you and I who really control those companies, even though much of our money is in them. Given the nature of how money is invested, there are four companies in the shadows that really control those companies that own everything.
Before I reveal them, some light math:
According to the 2011 annual factbook from the Investment Company Institute, there is $24.7 trillion in all the mutual funds in the world (a little less than half from the US). Based on data from the ICI, $1.24 trillion of this is directly invested in index funds, plus another $992 billion in assets beyond that $24.7 trillion in Exchange Traded Funds, which arent mutual funds but are index funds. That means the bulk of that money is in active managed funds or fund of funds.
. . .
That means the real power to control the world lies with four companies: McGraw-Hill, which owns Standard & Poors, Northwestern Mutual, which owns Russell Investments, the index arm of which runs the benchmark Russell 1,000 and Russell 3,000, CME Group which owns 90% of Dow Jones Indexes, and Barclays, which took over Lehman Brothers and its Lehman Aggregate Bond Index, the dominant world bond fund index. Together, these four firms dominate the world of indexing. And in turn, that means they hold real sway over the worlds money.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brendancoffey/2011/10/26/the-four-companies-that-control-the-147-companies-that-own-everything/
freshwest
(53,661 posts)It's a game changer for anyone to know about this. We have to get the information to make the changes.
Joe Shlabotnik
(5,604 posts)it does need to be talked about. It certainly would never be discussed by the MSM. The Computer-model diagram that was done to accompany the study really does illustrate what a small world it is after-all. A creepy, claustrophobic corporate world.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)oh wait, this is Forbes Magazine??? Who's on first again?
FirstLight
(13,355 posts)I seem to remember a bubble diagram that showed all the interconnections and WHO owned them?
ProfessionalLeftist
(4,982 posts)but I hope one exists. I looked for links from the article but didn't see anything other than a very technical explanation and the math behind it - not bubble diagram though.
oemus
(1 post)Here is the link for the bubble:
http://www.newscientist.com/articleimages/mg21228354.500/0-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html
But there isn't all details and names on it
pnorman
(8,155 posts)n/t
marmar
(77,047 posts)nt