In 1970 ninety percent of financial flows were used to finance trade or investment in the real economy; only ten percent was speculative. Today more than ninety-nine percent is purely speculative and has nothing to do with the real economy. As Simon Johnson (Brits/Amerikaanse hoogleraar economie aan het MIT svh) says, 'Wall Street has become a very specific type of casino. Unfortunately it's not the type they have in Las Vegas that is a legitimate form of entertainment. It's a casino that has massive negative effects on the rest of society.'
Het is dit casino-kapitalisme dat de veroordeelde Russische gangster/olie-magnaat Michail Borisovitsj Chodorkovski in slechts één decennium de op vijftien na rijkste man ter wereld maakte. Deze 'ex-oligarch' — de betiteling is van Hubert Smeets die in zijn krant en tegenover iedereen die maar wil luisteren Chodorkovski presenteert als een democratisch alternatief voor president Poetin — is exemplarisch voor de Russische 'oligarch, snel rijk geworden over de ruggen van vele anderen, een man die absoluut over lijken ging,' aldus de Volkskrant-correspondent in Rusland, Olaf Koens. Het neoliberalisme is zo mogelijk nog desastreuzer geweest voor de samenleving van de voormalige Sovjet Unie. De vraag is dan ook: hoe heeft de neoliberale ideologie zich wereldwijd zo snel kunnen verspreiden in zowel een ineengestort voormalig communistisch rijk als in zogeheten 'democratieën'? Four Horsemen:
It was not only allowed, it was actively encouraged by democratically elected governments which were persuaded that deregulating financial markets would rain down great economic benefits on everyone. Whether Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher really believed this, or whether they were motivated by a desire to reinstate the class divisions that had begun to erode in the post-war years, remains a mystery. Whether the neo-classical economists who encouraged them believed in the likelihood of a positive outcome is also impossible to fathom, as is the motivation of left-of-centre administrations which embraced neo-liberalism and continued the deregulation of finance.
In Nederland verklaarde een oud-vakbondsleider als de minister van Financiën, de sociaal democraat Wim Kok, zes jaar vóór zijn in 1995 uitgesproken rede ‘afscheid van het socialisme’:
Er is geen alternatief voor de maatschappelijke constellatie die we nu hebben en dus heeft het geen enkele zin daar naar te streven.
De latere minister president Kok liet er geen misverstand over bestaan dat hoewel er een formele scheiding bestaat tussen de economische en politieke macht, de neoliberale ‘democratie’ precies doet wat de economische macht noodzakelijk acht, te weten dereguleren en privatiseren, het afschaffen van overheidscontrole. Het gevolg is dat de volksvertegenwoordigers in alle 'democratieën'
have bequeathed us a financial system that works in the interests of an elite minority and routinely holds the real economy and the ordinary taxpayer to ransom. Even today, in the depth of crisis, when the evidence for the culpability of banks and the configuration of the financial system is plain for all to see, gutless politicians are still unwilling to take measures to tackle the problem. A few brave economists, people like Simon Johnson, Herman Daly, Steve Keen, Dean Baker, Michael Hudson, Joseph Stiglitz and Ha-Joon Chang, are prepared to put their heads above the parapet. They speak economic truth in the face of corrupt power in finance and politics, but the majority of the profession remains silent, refusing to acknowledge the abject failure of their models and assumptions. The cowardly attributes of many neo-classical economists are showcased in Charles Ferguson’s excellent film, Inside Job.
The organizations and individuals that populate the financial markets have been given such free rein that many of the complex investment vehicles they have invented are beyond the power of any authority to regulate. If the banks themselves are unable to trace the provenance of their assets, what chance do the regulators have? If the complexity and opaqueness of such ‘investments’ is a major contributory factor to the current crisis, and part of the means by which finance is able to hijack the real economy, and if they cannot be effectively regulated, then there should be no place for them. A democratic society has a choice between allowing a wealthy minority to further enrich itself, and ensuring that everyone has a shot at working to feed, clothe and house themselves and their loved ones.
Deze ontwikkeling werd in 1995 door de toenmalige minister-president Wim Kok gepresenteerd als het 'afschudden van ideologische veren' dat volgens hem 'voor een politieke partij ook een bevrijdende ervaring' was. De sociaal-democratie had afgedaan en het neoliberale kapitalisme werd als het ware een 'bevrijdende ervaring.' En dat was het zeker voor de economische elite en voor Wim Kok zelf, die na zijn politieke loopbaan beloond werd met wat hij eerder ‘exhibitionistische zelfverrijking’ had genoemd. Four Horsemen:
The only true beneficiaries of current arrangements are the super-rich and those who have access to corporate funds with which to play the financial markets. Opponents of financial market reform give dire warnings about the impact on the middle classes in rich countries, whose pensions are dependent on the ability of fund managers to access the full range of investment ‘products.’ But most pension funds’ investments are spread across a broad range of assets. If serious reforms to the financial system were to be undertaken in a carefully planned and coordinated way, those assets would be protected. Pensions are under far greater threat from unscrupulous bankers and the economic instability caused by hysterical financial markets. That instability will continue for decades if the excesses of the financial markets are permitted to continue unchecked…
According to the World Development Movement, 'since widespread deregulation of financial markets in the 1990s, speculators’ share of basic foods like wheat has increased from twelve per cent to sixty-one per cent. These traders have no connection to the actual food and are only interested in the profit it will make. Banks, hedge funds and index funds are betting on food prices in financial markets, causing massive price rises in staple foods such as wheat, maize and soya. In the last year, average food prices increased by fifteen per cent, driving more than forty-four million people into extreme poverty.'
Speculation in commodities has become a principal source of investment bank profits. Goldman Sachs, Barclays, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley all go to absurd lengths to extract wealth in this manner. Goldman Sachs alone achieves net revenue of up to five billion dollars a year from trading commodity derivatives. This is equivalent to around ten per cent of its total revenue. They do it with thousands of transactions enacted every minute as traders try to exploit the time lags that persist in markets despite the efforts of software engineers to create ‘real-time’ trading systems. Traders will buy a few million dollars’ worth of wheat and sell it on just seconds later in order to benefit from the tiny arbitrage difference that arises between trades until the technology catches up with the market. The trade may only make a few dollars, but repeated often enough by enough traders, a tidy profit can be accumulated very quickly. This isn’t economics. It isn’t work. And it isn’t ethical. It doesn’t create wealth, but it’s the kind of activity that is rife in the financial markets, and is why those markets require a massive overhaul so they support the real economy instead of persistently undermining it.
Elite power and unearned wealth
By now you may have noticed a common theme in these descriptions of how the banking sector and the financial markets make money: they do so not by creating real wealth but by manipulating a virtual-money economy. They can only do this because the banks are able to create money at will. This would be fine if they were dealing in matchsticks or Monopoly money, but they are dealing in the same money that is essential to the process of creating real wealth. The real wealth they purchase with money so acquired is entirely unearned…
Unearned wealth is the principal basis for the exercise of elite power. Democracy didn’t deliver the current economic and financial system. In a properly functioning democracy the economy would be configured to serve the interests of the majority, not a tiny minority. It is the power and influence of a global elite and the coterie of professionals that serves them which sets the global economic agenda today. Why democratically elected governments are unable to challenge this power is a matter for debate. Perhaps they realize that the only way to curb it is through reforms so radical that the mere thought stops them sleeping at night. Whatever the reason, the path to a just and inclusive economy will not be clear until ways are found to curb the privilege of unearned wealth. The only way to do this is to acknowledge and then tackle elite power and entrenched privilege.
Ninety percent of US families are no wealthier than they were in 1986…
a working paper released this month by Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez (economists at the London School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively) shows that growing income inequality is fueling a commensurate disparity in total wealth. The two economists used tax data to build the most complete picture to date of US wealth. Their findings are worrisome.
Today, the top 0.1% of Americans—about 160,000 families, with net assets greater than $20 million—own 22% of household wealth, while the share of wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans is no different than during their grandparents’ time…
People in the bottom 90% were hit especially hard by the financial crisis because of this particular downturn’s major feature: a housing bust. For those outside the ranks of the richest Americans, a greater proportion of wealth tends to come in the form of home equity. The wealthy, meanwhile, have a significant portion of their assets in securities, which has allowed them to benefit disproportionately from the recent bull market.
The findings underscore the disconnect between US economic data pointing to a recovery and the disappointment felt by many Americans in the country’s economic policy.
Het is deze 'rule of law' die door Hubert Smeets als levensvatbaar alternatief wordt geprezen voor Rusland, waar 'Poetin' alle macht in handen zou hebben, zo suggereert de opiniemaker van de NRC. Op zijn beurt beweert Michel Krielaars, chef boekenbijlage van de krant die zijn publiek oproept: 'durf te denken' dat '[bij] een meerderheid van de Russische bevolking ieder vermogen tot onafhankelijk denken [lijkt] verdampt,' terwijl in De Groene Amsterdammer de opiniefabrikant Henk Hofland spreekt van een ‘nieuwe mondiale krachtmeting’ maar dat parallel daarmee onder de westerse bevolking helaas 'Eerzucht en strijdlust zijn verloren gegaan.’ De hoogbejaarde nestor van de polder-pers is, vrees ik, te oud om een nucleaire oorlog mee te maken, maar wie weet, met een beetje mazzel maakt deze door zijn collega's tot beste journalist van de twintigste eeuw uitgeroepen Koude Oorlog-profeet het allemaal nog van nabij mee. De krankzinnigheid onder de mainstream is tot adembenemende hoogte gestegen, zoals uit de beschrijving van de werkelijkheid blijkt. Maart 2014 karakteriseerde Hector Reban het helder op de website http://www.ravage-webzine.nl:
Ook Paul Brill doet in De Volkskrant zijn best westerse leiders tot actie aan te manen. Die leiders, Obama voorop, zouden de Russen niet zo luidruchtig moeten kapittelen zonder daadwerkelijk wat te doen, maar juist het oude mantra van imperator Teddy Roosevelt moeten volgen: ‘Speak softly, but carry a big stick‘. Zachte diplomatie, maar wel met een serie kernonderzeeërs voor de Russische kust achter de hand, zullen we maar zeggen.
Kort geleden kon men nog in de illusie geloven dat dergelijke oprispingen alleen opstegen uit het kamp van de apocalyptisch ingestelde loonatic fringe die de Republikeinse Partij in de VS heeft overgenomen. Maar tegenwoordig roept ook een Nederlandse journalist met een lezersbereik in het centrum-linkse spectrum, dat Obama eigenlijk soft-on-communism is (of een contemporaine variant daarvan). Jammer voor Brill is de situatie in Oekraïne kennelijk juist Ruslands red line.
Bas Heijne ziet in de NRC vooral slapheid in het Nederlandse Rusland-beleid, omdat ons land economische buitenkansjes de voorrang zou geven boven moralistische politiek. Eigenlijk verdienen de Russen van ons een stevige tik op de vingers, maar gezien het krachtsverschil zou Heijne ook al genoegen nemen met een ‘gebaar’. Het ‘weke westen’, rillend en weifelend optredend tegen nietsontziende machtsbeluste Russen, zou zich moeten herpakken, lezen we tussen de regels door. Het wordt aan onze fantasie overgelaten waarop dat zou moeten uitdraaien als de kleine gebaren op zijn. Brinkmanship wellicht?
De algemene lijn van denken is vrij duidelijk en klassiek gelijkvormig: Het westen is groots, het westen moet daarom zijn moreel superieure positie inzetten om de rollende Russische tanks tot staan te brengen. Dat zij dit nu niet zouden doen, is een teken van zwakte. De opiniemakers roepen de leiders dan ook met één gelijkluidende stem op harder op te treden en blijkbaar risico op totale vernietiging daarbij niet uit de weg te gaan.
Do as we say, not as we do
Kennelijk is de verborgen aanname dat het westen één of andere legitimiteit zou bezitten overal te wereld in te grijpen. Die heeft zij niet. Dat is eigenlijk nog het meest verrassende aan de Krim-crisis: dat de morele corruptie en hypocrisie maar herhaald kan blijven worden alsof er niet gelogen is over Irak, alsof het VS Empire niet meer dan honderd interventies in andere landen heeft gepleegd sinds 1898, alsof de NAVO niet tegen de belofte aan Gorbatsjov in werd opgeschoven tot aan de Russische grens. Wie Kerry hoort beweren dat men ‘zulke zaken al sinds de negentiende eeuw niet meer op basis van valse voorwendselen doet’, moet bijna van droefenis in hysterisch lachen uitbarsten.
Eigenlijk is het een mysterie dat er mensen met hoog journalistiek aanzien zijn, die nog een soort hogere ethische macht denken te kunnen ontlenen aan dit soort hypocriete lippendiensten aan internationaal recht. Het lijkt namelijk op voorhand vrij logisch dat je opzichtig corrupte aanklagers (vaak tegelijkertijd ook rechtsprekers en beulen, als het marginale vijanden betreft) geen moralistische uitspraken laat doen over eventuele corruptie van andere partijen. Dat is een redelijk eenvoudig rechtsprincipe, maar iets dat kennelijk niet gemakkelijk doordringt tot de gestaalde doctrinaire kaders van de Hollandse opiniemakers.
Wie internationaal recht serieus neemt, zal toch echt een onderscheid moeten kunnen maken tussen opportunisme (might makes right) en universalisme (gelijke gevallen gelijk behandelen). Het eerste zal resoluut moeten worden afgewezen. Het is de vraag of dat binnen de mogelijkheden van ons gelijkgeschakelde journaille ligt.
De hooligan-moraal
De westerse manier van handelen bevindt zich stelselmatig aan de opportunistische kant van het spectrum van internationaal recht. Het proclameren van het moreel verheven universalistische zelfbeeld (als voorvechters van universele mensenrechten bijvoorbeeld) doet weliswaar anders vermoeden. Het is zelfs heel goed mogelijk dat men, zeker in een rol als bewaker van onze opinie, zelf ook blijkt te geloven in de eigen morele superioriteit. Maar in werkelijkheid volgt men netjes de simpele denktrant dat onze morele standaard is afgeleid van de groep waartoe men zelf behoort.
Je zou dat de hooligan-moraal kunnen noemen: Er is maar één norm, en dat is onze eigen club. Wat goed is voor onze club, is rechtvaardig. Als anderen hetzelfde doen voor een concurrerend team, is dat schandelijk. Wat wij doen is dus per definitie goed, omdat wij het doen. Wat onze vijanden doen is fout. Zij behoren immers tot de verkeerde club. Wij branden hun supportershome plat: goed. Zij vernielen de onze: slecht.
De implicaties voor het grote theater van de internationale betrekkingen zijn gemakkelijk te overzien: Kosovo afscheiden is goed, de Krim afscheiden is fout. Onder valse voorwendselen Irak binnen vallen is rechtvaardig, onder discutabele voorwendselen de Krim binnentrekken is kwaadaardig en machtsbelust.
Van Churchill is de uitspraak: The truth is so precious, that it should be protected by a bodyguard of lies. In die trant was het dus volstrekt goedaardig dat Bush en Kohl aan Gorbatsjov beloofden de NAVO niet tot aan de Russische grens te laten expanderen, maar het tegenovergestelde deden. Ook al leverde dat Rusland een groot veiligheidsprobleem op, volkomen begrijpelijk vanuit hun standpunt. Toch zijn onze leugens een uiting van politiek met een schone kern en is de waarheid van de Russen smerig en banaal. Simpel en voor iedereen te begrijpen. Een hooligan kan de was doen, dus Hofland, Brill, Heijne en al die anderen zeker.
Naarmate het neoliberale kapitalisme dieper wegzakt in een moreel en intellectueel faillissement wordt de leugenachtige voorstelling van zaken door Nederlandse mainstream-opiniemakers almaar zichtbaarder voor een toenemend aantal burgers. Vandaar ook de scherpe daling van de kranten-oplagen. Het probleem is evenwel dat het journaille in zijn eigen propaganda is gaan geloven. Het opmerkelijke psychologische feit doet zich voor dat hoe langer een individu leugens verspreidt des onmogelijker het voor hem/haar wordt om de werkelijkheid te herkennen. Ondertussen blijft bijvoorbeeld Smeets de volgende lachwekkende bangmakerij verspreiden:
Hubert Smeets heeft geretweet
#Russian Defense Budget to Hit
Record $81Bln in 2015 http://tmt-go.ru/509536 #business
Smeets verzwijgt dat het 'record' nog altijd in het niet valt, vergeleken bij de militaire uitgaven van de NAVO, terwijl ook nog
Miljarden NAVO-euro's verdwijnen in een boekhoudkundig zwart gat. De volksvertegenwoordigers van Nederland en de 27 andere NAVO-lidstaten weten niet hoeveel belastinggeld hun land exact uitgeeft aan het militaire bondgenootschap en wat daar vervolgens mee gebeurt. De oorzaak is een rammelende boekhouding en het bijna standaard drukken van het stempel 'geheim' op uitgaven.
http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detail/3669357/2014/06/10/Miljarden-NAVO-euro-s-verdwijnen-in-zwart-gat.dhtml
Afgaande op de 'List of countries by military expenditures,' van de gezaghebbende 'Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Yearbook 2014' spendeerde in 2013 alleen al Frankrijk, het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Duitsland en Italië tezamen meer dan 200 miljard dollar aan militaire uitgaven, dat is ruim twee keer zoveel als Rusland, met 87.8 miljard dollar, aan bewapening uitgeeft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget
En dit terwijl Rusland zich uitstrekt van Europa tot de 'Pacific,' van de Finse Golf tot de Stille Oceaan, dus een landoppervlakte moet verdedigen dat vier maal zo groot is als dat van alle EU-landen tezamen. De neoliberale propagandist Smeets doet het al langere tijd voorkomen dat het Rusland van 'Poetin' een ernstige bedreiging vormt van 'Europa.' Maar in werkelijkheid weet hij, net als ik en iedereen die enigszins geïnformeerd is, dat 'The combined defense expenditures of all NATO nations in 2013 amounted to $1.02 trillion,' terwijl daarentegen Rusland in dat jaar 'slechts' 87.8 miljard dollar aan het militair-industrieel complex uitgaf. Kortom de NAVO-landen besteden meer dan elf keer zoveel belastinggeld aan wat officieel 'defensie' heet als Rusland. Daarnaast is het Warschau-Pact opgeheven, terwijl het aantal NAVO-leden sinds de ineenstorting van de Sovjet Unie bijna is verdubbeld en de militaire NAVO-bases steeds verder oostwaarts, richting Rusland, zijn opgerukt. Desondanks zijn doortrapte journalisten bij de westerse mainstream-media erin geslaagd Rusland af te schilderen als een bedreiging van het Westen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget
En dit terwijl Rusland zich uitstrekt van Europa tot de 'Pacific,' van de Finse Golf tot de Stille Oceaan, dus een landoppervlakte moet verdedigen dat vier maal zo groot is als dat van alle EU-landen tezamen. De neoliberale propagandist Smeets doet het al langere tijd voorkomen dat het Rusland van 'Poetin' een ernstige bedreiging vormt van 'Europa.' Maar in werkelijkheid weet hij, net als ik en iedereen die enigszins geïnformeerd is, dat 'The combined defense expenditures of all NATO nations in 2013 amounted to $1.02 trillion,' terwijl daarentegen Rusland in dat jaar 'slechts' 87.8 miljard dollar aan het militair-industrieel complex uitgaf. Kortom de NAVO-landen besteden meer dan elf keer zoveel belastinggeld aan wat officieel 'defensie' heet als Rusland. Daarnaast is het Warschau-Pact opgeheven, terwijl het aantal NAVO-leden sinds de ineenstorting van de Sovjet Unie bijna is verdubbeld en de militaire NAVO-bases steeds verder oostwaarts, richting Rusland, zijn opgerukt. Desondanks zijn doortrapte journalisten bij de westerse mainstream-media erin geslaagd Rusland af te schilderen als een bedreiging van het Westen.
Over dit alles zwijgt Smeets als het graf, want voor deze informatie wordt hij niet voor betaald. Later meer over de media-corruptie in de polder.
The Occupy Movement has developed a mantra that addresses the great inequality of wealth and power between the world’s wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of us, the other 99 percent. While the 99 percent mantra undoubtedly serves as a motivational tool for open involvement, there is little understanding as to who comprises the 1 percent and how they maintain power in the world. Though a good deal of academic research has dealt with the power elite in the United States, only in the past decade and half has research on the transnational corporate class begun to emerge.
Foremost among the early works on the idea of an interconnected 1 percent within global capitalism was Leslie Sklair’s 2001 book, The Transnational Capitalist Class. Sklair believed that globalization was moving transnational corporations (TNC) into broader international roles, whereby corporations’ states of origin became less important than international agreements developed through the World Trade Organization and other international institutions. 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 writes:
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 [transnational corporate class] 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.
Estimates are that the total world’s wealth is close to $200 trillion, with the U.S. and Europe holding approximately 63 percent. To be among the wealthiest half of the world, an adult needs only $4,000 in assets once debts have been subtracted. An adult requires more than $72,000 to belong to the top 10 percent of global wealth holders, and more than $588,000 to be a member of the top 1 percent.
As of 2010, the top 1 percent of the wealthiest people in the world had hidden away between $21 trillion to $32 trillion in secret tax exempt bank accounts spread all over the world. Meanwhile, the poorest half of the global population together possesses less than 2 percent of global wealth. 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. Starvation.net reports that 35,000 people, mostly young children, die every day from starvation in the world.
Overall, the numbers of unnecessary deaths have exceeded 300 million people over the past forty years. Farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up 4 percent from the year before—yet, billions of people go hungry every day. Grain describes the core reasons for ongoing hunger in a recent article, “Corporations Are Still Making a Killing from Hunger”: while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control global food prices and distribution.
Addressing the power of the global 1 percent—identifying who they are and what their goals are—are clearly life and death questions.
So who are the the world’s 1 percent power elite? And to what extent do they operate in unison for their own private gains over benefits for the 99 percent? We will examine a sample of the 1 percent: first, from the extractor sector, whose companies are on the ground extracting material from the global commons, and using low-cost labor to amass wealth. Next, from the investment sector, whose primary activity is the amassing and reinvesting of capital and includes global central banks, major investment money management firms, insurance companies and others dedicated to the expansion of private wealth. Finally, we analyze how global networks of centralized power—the elite 1 percent, their companies, and various governments in their service—plan, manipulate and enforce policies that benefit their continued concentration of wealth and power.
Extractor Sector: The Case of Freeport-McMoRan
Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) is the world’s largest extractor of copper and gold. The company controls huge deposits in Papua, Indonesia, and also operates in North and South America and Africa. In 2010, the company sold 3.9 billion pounds of copper, 1.9 million ounces of gold, and 67 million pounds of molybdenum. In 2010, Freeport-McMoRan reported revenues of $18.9 billion and a net income of $4.2 billion.
The Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, employs 23,000 workers at wages below three dollars an hour. In September 2011, workers went on strike for higher wages and better working conditions. Freeport had offered a 22 percent increase in wages, and strikers said it was not enough, demanding an increase to an international standard of seventeen to forty-three dollars an hour. The dispute over pay attracted local tribesmen, who had their own grievances over land rights and pollution; armed with spears and arrows, they joined Freeport workers blocking the mine’s supply roads. During the strikers’ attempt to block busloads of replacement workers, security forces financed by Freeport killed or wounded several strikers.
Freeport has come under fire internationally for payments to authorities for security. Since 1991, Freeport has paid nearly thirteen billion dollars to the Indonesian government—one of Indonesia’s largest sources of income—at a 1.5 percent royalty rate on extracted gold and copper, and, as a result, the Indonesian military and regional police are in their pockets. In October 2011, the Jakarta Globe reported that Indonesian security forces in West Papua, notably the police, receive extensive direct cash payments from Freeport-McMoRan. Indonesian National Police Chief Timur Pradopo admitted that officers received close to ten million dollars annually from Freeport, payments Pradopo described as “lunch money.” Prominent Indonesian nongovernmental organization Imparsial puts the annual figure at fourteen million dollars. These payments recall even larger ones made by Freeport to Indonesian military forces over the years which, once revealed, prompted a U.S. Security and Exchange Commission investigation of Freeport’s liability under the United States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Meanwhile, the state’s police and army have been criticized many times for human rights violations in the remote mountainous region, where a separatist movement has simmered for decades. Amnesty International has documented numerous cases in which Indonesian police have used unnecessary force against strikers and their supporters. For example, Indonesian security forces attacked a mass gathering in the Papua capital, Jayapura, and striking workers at the Freeport mine in the southern highlands. At least five people were killed and many more injured in the assaults, which shows a continuing pattern of overt violence against peaceful dissent. Another brutal and unjustified attack on October 19, 2011, on thousands of Papuans exercising their rights to assembly and freedom of speech, resulted in the death of at least three Papuan civilians, the beating of many, the detention of hundreds, and the arrest of six, reportedly on treason charges.
On November 7, 2011, the Jakarta Globe reported that “striking workers employed by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold’s subsidiary in Papua have dropped their minimum wage increase demands from $7.50 to $4.00 an hour, the All-Indonesia Workers Union (SPSI) said.” Virgo Solosa, an official from the union, told the Jakarta Globe that they considered the demands, up from the (then) minimum wage of $1.50 an hour, to be “the best solution for all.”
Workers at Freeport’s Cerro Verde copper mine in Peru also went on strike around the same time, highlighting the global dimension of the Freeport confrontation. The Cerro Verde workers demanded pay raises of 11 percent, while the company offered just 3 percent.
The Peruvian strike ended on November 28, 2011. And on December 14, 2011, Freeport-McMoRan announced a settlement at the Indonesian mine, extending the union’s contract by two years. Workers at the Indonesia operation are to see base wages, which currently start at as little as $2.00 an hour, rise 24 percent in the first year of the pact and 13 percent in the second year. The accord also includes improvements in benefits and a one-time signing bonus equivalent to three months of wages.
In both Freeport strikes, the governments pressured strikers to settle. Not only was domestic military and police force evident, but also higher levels of international involvement. Throughout the Freeport-McMoRan strike, the Obama administration ignored the egregious violation of human rights and instead advanced U.S.–Indonesian military ties. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who arrived in Indonesia in the immediate wake of the Jayapura attack, offered no criticism of the assault and reaffirmed U.S. support for Indonesia’s territorial integrity. Panetta also reportedly commended Indonesia’s handling of a weeks-long strike at Freeport-McMoRan.
Freeport strikers won support from the Occupy Movement. Occupy Phoenix and East Timor Action Network activists marched to Freeport headquarters in Phoenix on October 28, 2011, to demonstrate against the Indonesian police killings at Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg mine.
Freeport-McMoRan chairman of the board James R. Moffett owns over four million shares with a value of close to $42.00 each. According to the FCX annual meeting report released in June 2011, Moffett’s annual compensation from FCX in 2010 was $30.57 million. Richard C. Adkerson, president of the board of FCX, owns more than 5.3 million shares. His total compensation in was also $30.57 million in 2010. Moffett’s and Adkerson’s incomes put them in the upper levels of the world’s top 1 percent. Their interconnectness with the highest levels of power in the White House and the Pentagon, as indicated by the specific attention given to them by the US secretary of defense, and as suggested by the US president’s awareness of their circumstances, leaves no doubt that Freeport-MacMoRan executives and board are firmly positioned at the highest levels of the transnational corporate class.
Investment Sector: The Case of BlackRock, Inc.
Internationally, many firms operate primarily as investment organizations, managing capital and investing in other companies. These firms often do not actually make anything except money, and are keen to prevent interference with return on capital by taxation, regulations, and governmental interventions anywhere in the world.
BlackRock, based in Manhattan, is the largest assets management firm in the world, with over 10,000 employees and investment teams in twenty-seven countries. Their client base includes corporate, public, union, and industry pension plans; governments; insurance companies; third-party mutual funds; endowments; foundations; charities; corporations; official institutions; sovereign wealth funds; banks; financial professionals; and individuals worldwide. BlackRock acquired Barclay Global Investors in December of 2009. As of March 2012, BlackRock manages assets worth $3.68 trillion in equity, fixed income, cash management, alternative investment, real estate, and advisory strategies.
In addition to Freeport-McMoRan, BlackRock has major holdings in Chevron (49 million shares, 2.5 percent), Goldman Sachs Group (13 million shares, 2.7 percent), Exxon Mobil (121 million shares, 2.5 percent), Bank of America (251 million shares, 2.4 percent), Monsanto Company (12 million shares, 2.4 percent), Microsoft Corp. (185 million shares, 2.2 percent), and many more.
BlackRock manages investments of both public and private funds, including California Public Employee’s Retirement System, California State Teacher’s Retirement System, Freddie Mac, Boy Scouts of America, Boeing, Sears, Verizon, Raytheon, PG&E, NY City Retirement Systems, LA County Employees Retirement Association, GE, Cisco and numerous others.
According to BlackRock’s April 2011 annual report to stockholders, the board of directors consists of eighteen members. The board is classified into three equal groups—Class I, Class II, and Class III—with terms of office of the members of one class expiring each year in rotation. Members of one class are generally elected at each annual meeting and serve for full three-year terms, or until successors are elected and qualified. Each class consists of approximately one-third of the total number of directors constituting the entire board of directors.
BlackRock has stockholder agreements with Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation; and Barclays Bank PLC and its subsidiaries. Two to four members of the board are from BlackRock management; one director is designated by Merrill Lynch; two directors, each in a different class, are designated by PNC Bank; two directors, each in a different class, are designated by Barclays; and the remaining directors are independent.
Analysis: TCC and Global Power
So how does the transnational corporate class (TCC) maintain wealth concentration and power in the world? The wealthiest 1 percent of the world’s population represents approximately forty million adults. These forty million people are the richest segment of the first tier populations in the core countries and intermittently in other regions. Most of this 1 percent have professional jobs with security and tenure working for or associated with established institutions. Approximately ten million of these individuals have assets in excess of one million dollars, and approximately 100,000 have financials assets worth over thirty million dollars.
Immediately below the 1 percent in the first tier are working people with regular employment in major corporations, government, self-owned businesses, and various institutions of the world. This first tier constitutes about 30–40 percent of the employed in the core developed countries, and some 30 percent in the second tier economies and down to 20 percent in the periphery economies (sometimes referred to as the 3rd world). The second tier of global workers represents growing armies of casual labor: the global factory workers, street workers, and day laborers intermittently employed with increasingly less support from government and social welfare organizations. These workers, mostly concentrated in the megacities, constitute some 30–40 percent of the workers in the core industrialized economies and some 20 percent in the second tier and peripheral economies.
This leaves a third tier of destitute people worldwide ranging from 30 percent of adults in the core and secondary economies to fully 50 percent of the people in peripheral countries who have extremely limited income opportunities and struggle to survive on a few dollars a day. These are the 2.5 billion people who live on less than two dollars a day, die by the tens of thousands every day from malnutrition and easily curible illnesses, and who have probably never even heard a dial tone.
As seen in our extractor sector and investment sector samples, corporate elites are interconnected through direct board connections with some seventy major multinational corporations, policy groups, media organizations, and other academic or nonprofit institutions. The investment sector sample shows much more powerful financial links than the extractor sample; nonetheless, both represent vast networks of resources concentrated within each company’s board of directors. The short sample of directors and resources from eight other of the superconnected companies replicates this pattern of multiple board corporate connections, policy groups, media and government, controlling vast global resources. These interlock relationships recur across the top interconnected companies among the transnational corporate class, resulting in a highly concentrated and powerful network of individuals who share a common interest in preserving their elite domination.
Sociological research shows that interlocking directorates have the potential to facilitate political cohesion. A sense of a collective “we” emerges within such power networks, whereby members think and act in unison, not just for themselves and their individual firms, but for a larger sense of purpose—the good of the order, so to speak.
Transnational corporate boards meet on a regular basis to encourage the maximization of profit and the long-term viability of their firm’s business plans. If they arrange for payments to government officials, conduct activities that undermine labor organizations, seek to manipulate the price of commodities (e.g. gold), or engage in insider trading in some capacity, they are in fact forming conspiratorial alliances inside those boards of directors. Our sample of thirty directors inside two connected companies have influence with some of the most powerful policy groups in the world, including British–American Business Council, U.S.–Japan Business Council, Business Roundtable, Business Council, and the Kissinger Institute. They influence some ten trillion dollars in monetary resources and control the working lives of many hundreds of thousands of people. All in all, they are a power elite unto themselves, operating in a world of power elite networks as the de facto ruling class of the capitalist world.
Moreover, this 1 percent global elite dominates and controls public relations firms and the corporate media. Global corporate media protect the interests of the 1 percent by serving as a propaganda machine for the superclass. The corporate media provide entertainment for the masses and distorts the realities of inequality. Corporate news is managed by the 1 percent to maintain illusions of hope and to divert blame from the powerful for hard times.
Four of the thirty directors in our two-firm sample are directly connected with public relations and media. Thomas H. O’Brien and Ivan G. Seidenberg are both on the board of Verizon Communications, where Seidenberg serves as chairman. Verizon reported over $110 billion in operating revenues in 2011. David H. Komansky and Linda Gosden Robinson are on the board of WPP Group, which describes itself as the world leader in marketing communications services, grossing over $65 billion in 2011. WPP is a conglomerate of many of the world’s leading PR and marketing firms, in fields that include advertising, media investment management, consumer insight, branding and identity, health care communications, and direct digital promotion and relationship marketing.
Even deeper inside the 1 percent of wealthy elites is what David Rothkopf calls the superclass. David Rothkopf, former managing director of Kissinger Associates and deputy undersecretary of commerce for international trade policies, published his book Superclass: the Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, in 2008. According to Rothkopf, the superclass constitutes approximately 0.0001 percent of the world’s population, comprised of 6,000 to 7,000 people—some say 6,660. They are the Davos-attending, Gulfstream/private jet–flying, money-encrusted, 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.
These are the people setting the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, G-8, G-20, NATO, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. 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 U.S. war zones annually, then launder $500 billion through transnational banks, half of which are U.S.-based.
Rothkoft’s understanding of the superclass is one based on influence and power. Although there are over 1,000 billionaires in the world, not all are necessarily part of the superclass in terms of influencing global policies. Yet these 1,000 billionaires have twice as much wealth as the 2.5 billion least wealthy people, and they are fully aware of the vast inequalities in the world. The billionaires and the global 1 percent 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 superclass works hard to protect this 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 U.S. spending more on military than the rest of the world combined. Fears of inequality rebellions and other forms of unrest motivate NATO’s global agenda in the war on terror. The Chicago 2012 NATO Summit Declaration reads:
As Alliance leaders, we are determined to ensure that NATO retains and develops the capabilities necessary to perform its essential core tasks collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security—and thereby to play an essential role promoting security in the world. We must meet this responsibility while dealing with an acute financial crisis and responding to evolving geo-strategic challenges. NATO allows us to achieve greater security than any one Ally could attain acting alone. We confirm the continued importance of a strong transatlantic link and Alliance solidarity as well as the significance of sharing responsibilities, roles, and risks to meet the challenges North-American and European Allies face together . . . we have confidently set ourselves the goal of NATO Forces 2020: modern, tightly connected forces equipped, trained, exercised and commanded so that they can operate together and with partners in any environment.
NATO is quickly emerging as the police force for the transnational corporate class. As the TCC more fully emerged in the 1980s, coinciding with the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), NATO began broader operations. NATO first ventured into the Balkans, where it remains, and then moved into Afghanistan. NATO started a training mission in Iraq in 2005, has recently conducted operations in Libya, and, as of July 2012, is considering military action in Syria.
It has become clear that the superclass uses NATO for its global security. This is part of an expanding strategy of US military domination around the world, wherby the US/NATO military-industrial-media empire operates in service to the transnational corporate class for the protection of international capital anywhere in the world.
Sociologists William Robinson and Jerry Harris anticipated this situation in 2000, when they described “a shift from the social welfare state to the social control (police) state replete with the dramatic expansion of public and private security forces, the mass incarceration of the excluded populations (disproportionately minorities), new forms of social apartheid . . . and anti-immigrant legislation.” Robinson and Harris’s theory accurately predicts the agenda of today’s global superclass, including:
President Obama’s continuation of the police state agendas of his executive predecessors, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H. W. Bush; The long-range global dominance agenda of the superclass, which uses US/NATO military forces to discourage resisting states and maintain internal police repression, in service of the capitalist system’s orderly maintenance; The continued consolidation of capital around the world without interference from governments or egalitarian social movements.
Furthermore, this agenda leads to the further pauperization of the poorest half of the world’s population, and an unrelenting downward spiral of wages for everyone in the second tier, and even some within the first tier. It is a world facing economic crisis, where the neoliberal solution is to spend less on human needs and more on security. It is a world of financial institutions run amok, where the answer to bankruptcy is to print more money through quantitative easing with trillions of new inflation-producing dollars. It is a world of permanent war, whereby spending for destruction requires even more spending to rebuild, a cycle that profits the TCC and its global networks of economic power. It is a world of drone killings, extrajudicial assassinations, and death and destruction, at home and abroad.
As Andrew Kollin states in State Power and Democracy, “There is an Orwellian dimension to the Administration’s (Bush and later Obama) perspective, it chose to disregard the law, instead creating decrees to legitimate illegal actions, giving itself permission to act without any semblances of power sharing as required by the Constitution or international law.”
And in Globalization and the Demolition of Society, Dennis Loo writes, “The bottom line, the fundamental division of our society, is between, on the one hand, those whose interests rest on the dominance and the drive for monopolizing the society and planet’s resources and, on the other hand, those whose interests lie in the husbanding of those resources for the good of the whole rather than the part.”
The Occupy movement uses the 1 percent vs. 99 percent mantra as a master concept in its demonstrations, disruptions, and challenges to the practices of the transnational corporate class, within which the global superclass is a key element in the implementation of a superelite agenda for permanent war and total social control.
Occupy is exactly what the superclass fears the most—a global democratic movement that exposes the TCC agenda and the continuing theater of government elections, wherein the actors may change but the marquee remains the same. The more that Occupy refuses to cooperate with the TCC agenda and mobilizes activists, the more likely the whole TCC system of dominance will fall to its knees under the people power of democratic movements.
This excerpt appears in Censored 2013 by Mickey Huff and Andy Roth to be released in October 2013.
- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/global-1-exposing-transnational-ruling-class#sthash.eKH4L2C8.dpuf
http://www.occupy.com/article/global-1-exposing-transnational-ruling-class
Hubert Smeets. De Russen komen van die kant, maar de Amerikanen staan pal achter ons.
Hubert Smeets. De Russen komen van die kant, maar de Amerikanen staan pal achter ons.
3 opmerkingen:
Benieuwd wat je hiervan vindt. Raf Janssen die jij ooit voor de VPRO-radio interviewde n.a.v. zijn boek "De ziekte van het gangbare" ziet het neoliberalisme als een soort modeveschijnsel waarmee geflirt kan worden.
https://soundcloud.com/raf-janssen/interview-raf-janssen-bij?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=twitter
'modeverschijnsel' bedoelde ik natuurlijk
Oei, dat ziet er weer niet goed uit ! rt.com/news/197648-moscow-vnukovo-jet-crash/
Dat zal weer de schuld van Poetin zijn volgens de media, vermoed ik.
En een waarschuwing aan Poetin.
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