By Thomas Neuburger
We've written a lot in these pages about those with great wealth, people the writer Masaccio calls “the filthy rich.” This dirty group comes in two flavors: those who own money and those who invest it for them.
How is wealth distributed?
Here's a quick picture of those who own the money in the U.S.:
To break this down, let’s look at American wealth in tiers:
The 17 richest people own $2.2 trillion (Forbes). Just 17 people.
The 400 richest own about $5.4 trillion (Forbes)
The 800 richest (includes all billionaires) own $6.2 trillion (source).
The top 0.1% of Americans, about 150,000 households, own $21 trillion (Fed).
The top 1% of Americans, about 1.5 million households, own 30% of the wealth, or $46 trillion (Fed).
Everyone else splits the rest: about $100 trillion (Fed) divided among 130 million households, about 330 million souls. Those in the bottom 20% have about $14,000 each.
But let’s focus on individuals. Just 800 people control a neat $6 trillion. Those 800 people together could run the country — and probably do.
Those 800 are Americans. They have names and addresses. You could list them on a handful of pages in a small notebook.
How is wealth controlled?
What do those people do with their wealth? They give it to BlackRock, Vanguard, UBS, Fidelity, JPMorgan, and say “Go make some more.”
According to a new book, Titans of Capital by Peter Phillips, here’s what the global rich do with most of their wealth (emphasis mine):
The global richest .05 percent represents some 40 million people, including more than 36 million millionaires and 2,600 billionaires, who turn over their excess capital to investment management firms like BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase. The top ten of these firms together controlled close to $50 trillion in 2023. These firms are managed by the 117 people identified below. The top ten capital investment companies extensively cross-invest in each other. Cross-investments between the top ten firms amounted to $320.52 billion in 2022. Cross-investment practices imply a close monitoring of each other’s policies and a commonality of mutual interests in market maintenance and growth.The 117 Titans decide how and where global capital will be invested.
The top ten wealth investment firms are these:
So, 800 Americans, all of them with names, own the most concentrated $6 trillion dollars in our political economy. And an even smaller number, 117 folks, also with names, control where more than $50 trillion is invested.
Phillips lists those 117 names. Here’s the first two of the BlackRock directors:
The key for the abbreviations above:
Fascinating. From this we learn that a human named Larry Fink is a trustee of Davos (the World Economics Forum), a director at the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), and a trustee of New York University, where I’m sure his views are honored. Larry Fink is a person, not a machine and not an organization.
All 117 of Phillip’s Titans have bios like these, wonderfully specific. If you have the searchable ebook version, you can make all sorts of discoveries.
I learned, for example, that Scott Malpass, a director at Vanguard, also sat on the board of the $15 billion endowment fund at Notre Dame (my alma mater) and received $4.8 million in 2020 compensation from the university. I wonder what his views are on the slaughter in Gaza are, and whether they count.
The Perp List is concentrated; not a bad thing
Why do I mention that all these people have names? Because we lose track of the fact that most of what’s wrong in our world is caused by very few people, folks just like ourselves, with names, addresses, bodies and souls, fears and desires, heart problems and secret sins — and way too much money and power collected in one place.
It’s not a machine in charge, it’s a small group of people. Humans that can be approached. For example, here’s Ted Cruz confronted at a restaurant in 2018:
Video here. Brett Kavanaugh got similar treatment in 2022.
But those two are puppets. More to the point, so did the Saudi Aramco CFO just recently:
(Climate Defiance is a very good Twitter follow, if you’re inclined.)
Do this a dozen times and it’s a nuisance. (Make sure you get publicity.) Do this a hundred times, and to the same man … you might make it hard for a mass murderer to show his face. Why should someone like that dine on glory and praise at the same time they’re killing the world? The man above is a monster, not someone to be fêted.
Slowing our Stone Age and poverty-ridden future
Do this a dozen times and it’s a nuisance. (Make sure you get publicity.) Do this a hundred times, and to the same man … you might make it hard for a mass murdering thief to show up.
Why should someone like that dine on glory and praise if they’re killing the world? The Aramco man above is a monster, not someone to be fêted.
Just wanted to point this out. Following the “name the perp” principle, these are the perps. Eight hundred people or less.
The fact that all this evil — I swear to you, after the climate hits home, just decades away, all of our grandkids will be hunter-gatherers again — the fact that this evil is contained in just a few souls … may be an advantage.
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