A University of Zurich study reported that a small group of companies—mainly banks—wields huge power over the global economy. The study is the first to look at all 43,060 transnational corporations and the web of ownership among them. The researchers’ network analysis identified 147 companies that form a “super entity,” controlling 40 percent of the global economy’s total wealth. The close connections mean that the network could be prone to “systemic risk” and vulnerable to collapse.

Censored News Cluster: From “Bankster Bailout” to “Blessed Unrest”: News We Can Use to Create a US Economy for the 99 Percent

Rob Waugh, “Does One ‘Super Corporation’ Run the Global Economy? Study Claims it Could be Terrifyingly Unstable,” Daily Mail, October 20, 2011, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2051008/Does-super-corporation-run-global-economy.html.

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

http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2012/04/04/small-network-of-corporations-run-the-global-economy/

Student Researchers: Sean Lawrence (Sonoma State University) and Ivan Sidorenko (San Francisco State University)

FacultyEvaluator: Peter Phillips (Sonoma State University) and Kenn Burrows (San Francisco State University)

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