Bank Runs, Bank Holidays, and Other Financial Stall Tactics

Bank Holidays Disguised as Computer Glitches in the UK.

NatWest glitch goes on: Bank to open on Sunday as millions of customers are still unable to get access to money

• NatWest have resolved the 'underlying problem'
• They are opening banks on Sunday and they will stay open until 7pm tonight
• Problems are expected to continue into NEXT WEEK as they deal with the backlog of payments
• House buyers unable to complete purchases because of glitch
• Customers STILL reporting that salaries are not being paid in and payments are not being made
• Up to 12MILLION customers are being affected by the problem
• NatWest say the problem was NOT caused by hacking
• Banks under obligation to put customer in the position they would have been if the problem had not happened

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2162630/NatWest-problems-Online-banking-glitch-goes-affecting-millions-customers.html#ixzz1yXkpGy4Z

IRS Stalls Tax Refunds with System Upgrade Project

Federal tax refunds delayed by IRS system upgrade

Some people who filed their 2011 tax returns electronically between Jan. 17 and 25 will get their federal tax refunds about a week later than initial projections because of an Internal Revenue Service computer-system upgrade.

In a statement, the IRS said the delay “relates to fine-tuning IRS systems to adjust for new safeguards put in place this tax season to provide stronger protection against refund fraud.”

Tax preparers tell me they were originally notified the refund delay would only affect people who filed electronically on Jan. 17 or 18 and chose to have a refund deposited into a bank account.

But news reports quoted IRS officials saying the problem affected returns e-filed before Jan. 26. IRS spokesman Jesse Weller would only say that “Taxpayers who file on or after January 26 should not experience a delay.”

One tax preparer said her clients who filed Jan. 17 (the first day the IRS accepted e-filed returns) were originally told to expect a refund Jan. 25. Now they are being told it should come Feb. 8.
She notes that many people who file their returns on the earliest dates possible have simple returns and are desperate for their refund.

The IRS would not say how many returns filed before Jan. 26 will be affected. It said, “When the IRS announced the opening of the 2012 filing season, it advised taxpayers who electronically file and select direct deposit that they could see their refunds in as few as 10 days and 90 percent of refunds are provided within 21 days. Some taxpayers are getting refunds much faster, but at this time taxpayers should expect refunds to be issued as indicated in the original IRS guidelines.”

It also apologized “for any inconvenience caused by the revised refund dates.”

Taxpayers can track the status of their refund here.

Bank Runs in Greece Resemble 1929 Black Thursday

Police Urging Greeks To Stop Stuffing Mattresses

We have spent a considerable amount of time in the last week or two explaining just why depositor withdrawals (or bank runs) are the death knell for the Euro experiment. We first described the 'run on banks and governments' on the basis of the potential for overnight loss of 'fungibility'back in December but the escalation last week in Greece (and the contagion to Spain's Bankia) signals things are shifting to 11 on the amplifier of Euro-Fail. This evening brings new information from The Guardian that 'Police are urging Greeks to keep their money in bank accounts rather than putting it at risk of theft, amid further uncertainty about whether the austerity-struck country will remain in the eurozone.'

Greece's national police spokesman, Thanassis Kokkalakis, told Reuters:

"Many people have withdrawn their money from the banks fearing a financial crash, and they either carry it on them, find a hideout at home or in storage rooms. We urge people to trust the banking system, leave their money there, or at least in a safe place, not hide it at home."  

Uhm, does anyone remember Cramer and his 'Bear Stearns' call? Or are we just "being silly?"

Speculation of a Euro-wide deposit guarantee scheme was quashed somewhat by yesterday's dismally predictable non-event summit - especially given the only three-week span to the next elections. That leaves Greek citizens juggling the possibility of having their home robbed against the probability that the government, via GEURO-isation, will do it for them in the bank.

More on the Boom Bust Cycle and the 1929 Stock Market Crash

Wall Street Crash of 1929

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Black Tuesday" redirects here. For other uses, see Black Tuesday (disambiguation).

Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the 1929 crash.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began in late October 1929 and was the most devastating stock market crash in thehistory of the United States when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout.^[1] The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries^[2] and did not end in the United States until the onset of American mobilization for World War II at the end of 1941.

Anyone who bought stocks in mid-1929 and held onto them saw most of his or her adult life pass by before getting back to even.

—Richard M. Salsman^[3]

Contents   [hide]  1 Timeline 2 Economic fundamentals 2.1 Subsequent actions 3 Effects and academic debate 4 See also 5 Notes 6 Further reading 7 External links

[edit]Timeline

The Dow Jones Industrial, 1928–1930.

The Roaring Twenties, the decade that led up to the Crash,^[4] was a time of wealth and excess. Despite the dangers of speculation, many believed that the stock market would continue to rise indefinitely. The market had been on a six-year run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase in value fivefold, peaking at 381.17 on September 3, 1929.^[5] Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."^[6] The optimism and financial gains of the great bull market were shaken on "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) abruptly fell.

In the days leading up to the crash, the market was severely unstable. Periods of selling and high volumes of trading were interspersed with brief periods of rising prices and recovery. Economist and author Jude Wanniski later correlated these swings with the prospects for passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, which was then being debated in Congress.^[7]

On October 24 ("Black Thursday"), the market lost 11% of its value at the opening bell on very heavy trading. Several leading Wall Street bankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor.^[8] The meeting included Thomas W. Lamont, acting head of Morgan Bank; Albert Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank; and Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank of New York. They chose Richard Whitney, vice president of the Exchange, to act on their behalf.

Britain stops Russian ship carrying attack helicopters for Syria

A Russian ship believed to be carrying helicopters and missiles for Syria has been effectively stopped in its tracks off the coast of Scotland after its insurance was cancelled at the behest of the British government.

The British marine insurer Standard Club said it had withdrawn cover from all the ships owned by Femco, a Russian cargo line, including the MV Alaed.

"We were made aware of the allegations that the Alaed was carrying munitions destined for Syria," the company said in a statement. "We have already informed the ship owner that their insurance cover ceased automatically in view of the nature of the voyage."

British security officials confirmed they had told Standard Club that providing insurance to the shipment was likely to be a breach of European Union sanctions against the Syrian regime.

Original Story: Britain stops Russian ship carrying attack helicopters for Syria - Telegraph - http://goo.gl/FUbEC

Video Here: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/18/syria-bound-russian-cargo-ship-loses-insurance/

Did they have P&I War Risks Coverage: http://www.standard-club.com/ProductsAndServices/page.aspx?p=79

-          Nope, that is for British ships only.

This is important because incidents like this can get a little hairy.  USA got into WWI because a so-called “merchant ship” carrying ammunitions got sunk by a German U-boat.   The Atlantean Conspiracy: The Lusitania & World War I - http://goo.gl/OglGl

Why Democrats, Independents, Republicans Can All Get Behind Mitt Romney in 2012

(This is still a draft and several revisions will be made over the next few days so come back!)

This is the interview that convinced me to vote for Mitt Romney, even though I am a HUGE Ron Paul fan, and voted for Obama in 2008.

This is my list of reasons for begrudgingly supporting Mitt Romney in 2012.

Rand Paul endorsed Mitt Romney and he and his father the Most Honorable Dr. Ron Paul is behind some VERY IMPORTANT issues.

• Legalizing industrial hemp.  Ron Paul submitted legislation in May 2011 called the Industrial Hemp Farming Act (HR1831) that would legalize non-narcotic industrial hemp.  Hemp is a HUGE part of the solution to the energy crisis, national security crisis, climate change (drought), the trade deficit, the ailing auto industry, the national debt, and more.
• Audit and End the Federal Reserve.  Ron Paul has spoken endlessly on this topic and recently Rand Paul submitted legislation to audit the Federal Reserve.  For EXCELLENT research on the twisted history of the Federal Reserve, watch Money Masters by Bill Stills.  This is actually MORE important than hemp but not as personal to me since I want to build cars our of American hemp - (see Wikispeed).
• Sound Monetary Policy - Ron Paul and Rand Paul are gaining support across the country for sound monetary policy that reduces the Federal Reserves ability to monopolize our currency and perpetuate poverty with their pump and dump falsely created economic cycles.  Economic variances will always exist.  Panics will happen, but we should not allow CENTRAL PLANNERS to manage our entire economy.  This is a form of Communism.  Yes, the Federal Reserve and all its puppet central banks around the world are GREATLY responsible for war, debt, and the destruction of the social progress that has been made by our founding fathers.  Gold and silver should be part of the global monetary supply officially to curtail central bank printing fiat money.
• Ending the IRS and the Federal Income Tax.  Who wouldn't be behind this.  How else can you starve the beast that has build a military empire around the world? Between the CIA, the US Military, and the Federal Reserve, backed by our tax dollars illegally stolen by the IRS, the USA has been in so many wars, I doubt any American could name all the countries and all the invasions, all the tackled leaders, all the death and destruction.  Rape, pillage, and plunder in the name of "liberty" and "democracy".  BS.

Obama and Romney Are the SAME! so I can vote my for Mitt Romney with social conscience still intact.  Let's face it, Romney doesn't look like a bad guy.  It's his party I am not so fond of because the GOP includes in its umbrella Neo Cons who are responsible for stripping social benefits in order to make room for militarism.  That is FASCISM.  

Why NOT Obama?

Yes, I voted for Obama in 2008.  I read both of his books, did extensive research and finally decided that the GOP was the greater of 2 evils.  Little did I know then that The Republican and the Democrat presidential candidates are guided by the same puppetmasters.  They are the ones who REALLY deserve our WRATH!

• Erosion of Civil Liberties - Obama has made continuous efforts to STRIP THE UNITED STATES OF OUR SOVEREIGNTY, grounding his ability to remove democratically elected leaders with NATO forces and suggesting that the UN and NATO give him the right to declare war, without Congress.  He should have been impeached for Libya.  Sound radical and conspiratorial? Do the research.  SOPA, NDAA, indefinite detention, Nation Defense Resource Preparedness (NDRP), and most recently the Transnationl Pacific Partnership Pact (or whatever name it has now) that would allow corporations in 8 other nations to completely circumvent our national laws.  This guy was a constitutional law professor and head of the Harvard Law Review?
• Bank Bailouts - He did nothing to counter the rising power of the Big Banks that manipulate our policy, steal wealth from the middle class, cause financial havoc, all the while taking bailouts.  Privatized gains and socialized losses.  What is that but SOCIALISM.  It is NOT capitalism.  Free markets would have allowed the Big 4 banks to collapse years ago.  Instead they are protected by government, at our expense.

What has Obama done well?

I will give him credit where credit is due.  Obama came into office on the hopes and dreams of those who were completely disillusioned by the damage that George Bush did with his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and massive deficits, scandals, and treason.  It wasn't hard for ANYONE to look better than Bush.  That was probably part of an elaborate plan to deceive us, but I will save that for later.

• Healthcare Reform - I am a social liberal progressive, I think.  I am not sure what the proper label is for my positions.  I think there should be competitive private healthcare for all, insured by the US Federal government or State governments.  This could be in the form of a public option or universal healthcare.  I am not caught up on the label.  Healthcare should be a natural right of every American citizen, regardless of race, state of residence, financial wherewithal, or current health condition.  Obama did manage to get more Americans covered, but did nothing to address the rise of healthcare costs.  This was a big failure, but let's give him points for trying.
• Energy policy - Obama has done quite a bit to support renewable energy.  This is the WISE business choice.  We need to be talking about efficiency, conservation, alternative sources, balanced usage, and ending the wars.  Something closer to the Carter Doctrine but without the part about "protecting our national interests abroad at all costs".  That part was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the creator of the Mujahidin, National Security Advisor to Carter, and father of the 2 sons who were advisors to BOTH McCain and Obama in the 2008 elections.  Again, we have had puppetmasters controlling our government for generations and very few of us recognize that.  Ron Paul gets it.
• The BP oil spill - By forcing BP to put aside $20B, Obama avoided the catastrophic financial damage that could have been inflicted on the region like Exxon did with the Valdez in Alaska nearly 30 years ago.  Very few people have been paid for the damage in that case.  The oil companies get away with murder all the time.  A more balanced energy policy and hard nosed investigative journalism may put the Four Horsemen back in their proper place - to serve the greater good of society.
• Bank Subsidies in the Form of Educational Loan Origination and Servicing - I am pretty sure that Obama led the effort to remove the middleman banks from educational loans that cost borrowers about $6B in fees each year.

Last But Not Least

This is where a little bit of twisted logic comes into play.  It is

Hemp Prohibition is the Epitome of Fascism in America

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book entitled "The Great American Renaissance"

"The issue of hemp legalization in the United States is the epitome of fascism. Remember fascism is the merger of government and corporations to monopolize the markets and control the citizens.  The same international money cartel and self appointed aristocratic families that have controled the American money supply, indebted our nation, brought war to our shores, and assassinated our presidents is responsible for the prohibition of industrial hemp.  They fear that let loose, hemp would create an entire new industry out of their control, one that would reduce their market share for the production of textiles, pharmaceuticals, energy, plastics, and eventually, most importantly, control of the money supply through the Federal Reserve.  

Legalized hemp would allow farmers to cultivate a plant that they could then distill into a fuel which would ease the financial burden of farming and provide financial freedom and indepedence to millions of Americans across the country as anyone that owns an acre of land could produce their own energy.  The very fact that industrial hemp is illegal in the United States, and around the world for that matter, represents the essence of control by the 1% of the remaining 99%.  By legalizing hemp, will we be well on our way to resolving the energy crisis, the health crisis, the personal and governmental debt crisis, as well as the man made portion of the climate issues."

Why Big Oil & Big Banks and the Federal Reserve Are Driving Our Country into the Ditch

If I was running an oil company, I would want to make you desire my product as much as possible.  its a limited resource globally, the price can only go up.  It's like squeezing blood from a turnip.

(Buy oil stocks. Make their price go up so high that it bursts.  So that every American starts to feel the pain so they will wake up and realize that we are under attack, in a war, and our monetary and foreign policy have been hijacked by foreign cartels.  We are so blind to the truth because no one in the mass media will come out and say it.  Why? Because the 5 major media companies in the US are owned in part by the same banker cartels that    caused the crisis, got the bailouts, and are now laughing their ass off while we plunder into oblivion.  If we let it go any further this will look much worse than World War II.  This will generate riots greater and more fierce than after the Vietnam War.  This will drive us further into debt until we are broke.  And the last time a superpower went broke it was 1989.  tianemen square, velvet revolution, fall of the berlin wall, romania, hungary, Panama, all fell to the American Empire that our presidential military industrial complex is running.  Eisenhower warned of the Congressional military industrial complex but the president can assassinate with drones.  He is showing off to the Pentagon with his CIA, covert, secret operations.  Meanwhile our own military is telling us to GET OUT of the middle east but they cant make the decision.  Only the president can.  And we are in the middle east to protect Saudi Arabia and the banking cartels oil investment with Saudi Aramco.  Was it on their behalf that we invaded Iraq? Or wa that just to provoke Iran into war? Wil the Iran war be a distraction from further financial rape here at home? Last time there was a war, Dick Cheney made $1.2 trillion dollars disappear from the Pentagon.

Then Hank Paulson and his Federal Reserve loaned domestic and international banks $26 trillion dollars.  Much of which is now held at the central banks all around the world.  As soon as they release that money to the market, it will be another boom.

And who got the MF Global customer money when they went bankrupt?  JP Morgan.  Who pays the attorneys that run the trustee and bankruptcy proceedings.  And who losses? Minnesota Farmers? Jon Corzine, former governor and former head of Goldman Sachs knows EXACTLY how to steal and get away with it.

JP Morgan knows how to leverage Corzine to steal for them.  And guess who benefited the most from processing government loans to students? JP Morgan.  And guess who got the biggest bailout? JP Morgan. And guess who owns JP Morgan stock?

The same people that own Shell Oil stock. Don't you see? They have rigged our laws, our courts, our congress, our elections, our banking, our monetary and foreign policy.  We have been occupied!

Our government and economy are being controlled by a small group of very savvy psychopaths that know how to make money betting on both sides of every battle.

Every time somebody comes out with the truth, they get ignored by the mass media.  Which then makes it conspiracy theory, until knowledge of the truth crosses the chasm and reaches the tipping point of revolution.

We must convince Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to work together to take control of our country, or we will end up like Greece - a victim of financial rape.  We should hope we can turn out like India and keep control of our money supply and defend our borders and reach enlightenment.  Otherwise, we are likely to suffer much more than we already have.  We may end up like Russia in 1914 or Libya in 2011 or Iraq in 2003, Syria in 2012, .   Can't you see the world is already at war.  this is the beginning of world war 3 and if we are not careful we could all end up dust in the wind.

Fed Secretly Gives $26 Trillion to Global Cartel That Rule the World

Look at this chart on consumer price inflation (USD Devaluation) 

So how did that happen?  Check the Congressman Alan Grayson’s summary of the Fed Audit of just 6 months of activity.   Could this be related?  

The total lending for the Fed’s “broad-based emergency programs” was more than $16 trillion. The four largest recipients, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, received more than a trillion dollars each. 

The 5th largest recipient was Barclays PLC. The 8th was the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, PLC. The 9th was Deutsche Bank AG. The 10th was UBS AG. These four institutions each got between a quarter of a trillion and a trillion dollars. None of them is an American bank.

another $10,057,000,000,000 in “currency swaps.” - the Fed handed dollars to foreign central banks, no strings attached, to fund bailouts in other countries….

...together, totaled more than $26 trillion. ... more than 7 years of federal spending — on the military, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt, and everything else. And around twice America’s total GNP….

Is there any possibility that an additional $26 trillion dollars floating around the world would cause inflation?  ABSOUTELY!

Now Read this - the capitalist network that runs the world http://bit.ly/onkFR2  - See any of the same companies? 

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co 
7. Legal & General Group plc 
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc 
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc 
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA 
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc 
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company 
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance 
41. ING Groep NV 
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP 
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA 
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan 
45. Vereniging Aegon 
46. BNP Paribas 
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc 
48. Resona Holdings Inc 
49. Capital Group International Inc 
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

With leverage everything grows and declines proportionally.  That’s why the global market was going to crash and they had to be bailed out.  Because they OWN PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING!

the capitalist network that runs the world

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

• Updated 13:15 24 October 2011 by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie
• Magazine issue 2835. Subscribe and save
• For similar stories, visit the Finance and Economics Topic Guide

The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue (Image: PLoS One)

1 more image

AS PROTESTS against financial powersweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears.An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one [company] suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propagates."

"It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are," agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system's behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

When this article was first posted, the comment in the final sentence of the paragraph beginning "Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power…" was misattributed.

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co 
7. Legal & General Group plc 
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc 
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc 
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA 
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc 
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company 
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance 
41. ING Groep NV 
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP 
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA 
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan 
45. Vereniging Aegon 
46. BNP Paribas 
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc 
48. Resona Holdings Inc 
49. Capital Group International Inc 
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

Graphic: The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy

(Data: PLoS One)