"Backbone of complex networks of corporations: The flow of control"

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A very cool read, in some ways, a bit painful in others. I have always been fascinated by the secret, or not so secret elite that run the world. This research paper is a cool investigation into the structure of economic power and really speaks to my belief that we are in fact ruled by an elite super-minority. A reality that, if you like, supports theories such as the Illuminati and the like. Enjoy the thread.

We report on the first cross-country investigation of ownership networks, focusing on the stock markets of 48 countries around the world. On the one hand, our analysis confirms results expected on the basis of the literature on corporate control, namely, that in Anglo-Saxon countries control tends to be dispersed among numerous shareholders. On the other hand, it also reveals that in the same countries, control is found to be highly concentrated at the global level, namely, lying in the hands of very few important shareholders. Interestingly, the exact opposite is observed for European countries. These results have previously not been reported as they are not observable without the kind of network analysis developed here.

Perhaps it is just me, but this seems to be the first scientific study that reveals the existence of a ruling class that seems to dominate the world financially. So often we hear of the 'illuminati' or the 'bilderbergers', the 'trilateral commission' and all the other nefarious groups and families that we have for so long considered spiders at the center of the web, well this study seems to confirm this belief.



From the Summary and Conclusion:

We have developed a methodology to identify and extract the backbone of complex networks that are comprised of weighted and directed links and nodes to which a scalar quantity is associated. We interpret such networks as systems in which mass is created at some nodes and transferred to the nodes upstream. The amount of mass flowing along a link from node i to node j is given by the scalar quantity associated with the node j times the weight of the link, Wij vj . The backbone corresponds to the subnetwork in which a preassigned fraction of the total flow of the system is transferred.

So this is simply a very quick and simple explanation of the methodology and its aims.

Applied to ownership networks, the procedure identifies the backbone as the subnetwork where
most of the control and the economic value resides.

The seat of power?

Indeed, it
has been known for over 75 years that the Anglo-Saxon countries have the highest occurrence of widely held firms [42]. The statement that the control of corporations is dispersed among many shareholders invokes the intuition that there exists a multitude of owners that only hold a small amount of shares in a few companies. However, in contrast to such intuition, our main finding is that a local dispersion of control is associated with a global concentration of control and value. This means that only a small elite of shareholders controls a large fraction of the stock market, without ever having been previously systematically reported on.

A small portion of shareholders control MOST of the WORLDS wealth. Something about this really shouts 'slavery' in my mind, hey but who am I?

Finally, we also observe that the US financial sector holds
the seat of power at an international level. It will remain to be seen, if the continued unfolding
of the current financial crisis will tip this balance of power as the US financial landscape faces
a fundamental transformation in its wake.

So in many way nothing about this study is all that surprising, however it is fairly solid evidence for what many have known for so long - that there is an elite portion of our worlds society that controls the majority of the worlds wealth and therefore one could easily rationalize they also control that majority of the worlds power.

This is old news here at ATS but from now on we don't have to address the issue as mere hearsay, there is evidence that can be used t support the claim.

Enjoy.



[edit on 7-9-2009 by Animal]

[edit on 7-9-2009 by Animal]

That is a heavy duty paper. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I guess it shows that the controllers do a good job of making things appear to be one way when they are actually another way.
I think America stays in power with manufactured financial crises.