Who Owns the World?

STORY AT-A-GLANCE
A handful of mega corporations — private investment companies — dominate every aspect of our lives; everything we eat, drink, wear or use in one way or another. These investment firms are so enormous, they control the money flow worldwide
While there appear to be hundreds of competing brands on the market, like Russian nesting dolls, larger parent companies own multiple smaller brands. In reality, all packaged food brands, for example, are owned by a dozen or so larger parent companies
These parent companies, in turn, are owned by shareholders, and the largest shareholders are the same in all of them: Vanguard and Blackrock
No matter what industry you look at, the top shareholders, and therefore decision makers, are the same: Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street and/or Berkshire Hathaway. In virtually every major company, you find these names among the top 10 institutional investors
These major investment firms are in turn owned by their own set of shareholders. One of the most amazing things about this scheme is that the institutional investors also own each other. They’re all shareholders in each other’s companies. At the very top are Vanguard and Blackrock. Blackrock’s largest shareholder is Vanguard, which does not disclose the identity of its shareholders due to its unique structure.