Political power versus financial power

Financial power has seized the rudder of the course of humanity. They have accumulated so much wealth and consequent decisional power that only BlackRock, the largest global investment trust, qualifies in terms of size as the third “country” of the world, only behind United States and China. This is outrageous and, in our perspective, inadmissible. If we add the rest of the large financial trusts that operate globally, although with their headquarters in central countries, the decisional power grows furthermore. The worst thing is that they are not accountable to the population base but rather they only respond to their shareholders, who are eager to maximize profit. In this context, it is very difficult that the political power of each country is able to remain independent from financial power. On the contrary, a majority of governments has their electoral success by being financed by large contributors and, thus, their actions have little to do with exercising decisional sovereignty based on popular will. The control of States done by financial power strengthened neoliberal ruling with its tremendous consequences on humanity and the planet.

With this distribution of the capacity of making decisions it will be harder to give way to full democracies oriented towards caring for their population and the environment. How can we overcome this suicidal ambush to the planetary survival?

We will need to strengthen the democratic political power by dismantling at the same time the predator concentration. For that, it will be necessary to deploy diverse strategies in terms of the singularity of circumstances of each country and situation. One of the most difficult measures to implement is to change dramatically the leonine criterion of maximizing profit that leads large financial trusts. In theory, it is easy to imagine options, for example through the States imposing the condition of having one share with veto power over the rest of the shareholders in each trust. Another more complex way would be to induce changes in the shareholders’ structure of trusts to reorient corporate decisions away from maximizing profits. A variety could be to establish trusts to acquire these shares with participation of the State and non-lucrative organizations. However, in contemporary reality it is worth asking who has the capacity to bell the cat, which more than a kitty cat is a ruthless beast. Tremendous challenge, but not impossible to solve by present generations.

Greetings.

The Editors