The Capitalists of the 21st Century E-Book

Werner Rügemer

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 531

Beschreibung

For the first time Ruegemer presents a typology of the new financial players who became dominant since the deregulation and the last financial crisis. Large capital organizers, private equity funds, hedgefonds, venture capital investors and private investment banks became much more influential as the traditional banks. These new financial players organize worldwide selling, buying and restructuring banks, companies and public enterprises. They exercise no responsibility against the national economic situation. Influencing governments and international financial institutions they lower the labour incomes and increase the part of private gains, also by using financial havens. They act in collaboration with law firms, rating and PR agencies, management consultants, chartered accountants and central banks. Ruegemer outlines the relations between the European Union and the USA concerning transatlantic capital, military and secret service interlocking and the open also as the latent conflicts. The book shows also the other way of capitalism under state directory in the People's Republic of China: How the imported capitalism from the USA, Japan, Taiwan and western Europe is in the process of transformation. So the incomes of all classes and also especially the labour incomes are continually rising. China is shown with his alternative way of globalisation which is not accompanied by military expansion. Finally the book asks about the way of the human society if it follows the international law of the UNO and the human rights including social and labour rights.

Leseprobe

Werner Rügemer

The Capitalists of the 21st Century

Werner Rügemer

The Capitalists of the 21st Century

An Easy-to-Understand Outline on the Rise of the New Financial Players

Translated by an English friend.

Slightly abridged and updated translation of the original

“Die Kapitalisten des 21. Jahrhunderts.

Gemeinverständlicher Abriss zum Aufstieg der neue Finanzakteure”

published by PapyRossa Verlag, Cologne, Germany in 2018

© 2019 by Werner Rügemer, Cologne (Germany)

Publishing House: tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg (Germany)

Cover image: pixabay.com

ISBN

Paperback

978-3-7497-1162-8

Hardcover

978-3-7497-1163-5

eBook

978-3-7497-1164-2

The German National Library lists this publication in the German national bibliography; detailed bibliographic Data is available on the Internet via http://dnb.d-nb.de

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar

Table of content

Introduction

History is open

I. The New Capitalist Players of the West

1. The big capital organizers: BlackRock&Co

2. Private equity investors: The exploiters

3. Hedge funds: The pillagers

4. Elite investment banks: The arrangers

5. Private banks: Discreet front for the big players

6. Venture Capitalists: The preparers

7. Traditional banks as service providers

8. The Internet capitalists

9. The civilian private army of transatlantic capital

II. The relationship USA – European Union

1. Reversal of the balance of power since the First World War

2. The Internet under US supervision

3. The capitalist-digital-military complex

4. Free trade: The EU in conflict with the USA

III. China – Communist-led capitalism

1. USA against Chinese self-liberation

2. The dialectic of the import of capitalism

3. State, Communist Party, Socialism

4. USA: Weaken China economically, threaten it militarily

5. China: Economic and peaceful globalization

IV. Present and Future of Earthly Society

List of Abbreviations

Bibliography

Portraits

The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund Norges

The supreme populist: BlackRock boss “Larry” Fink

Stephen Schwarzman/Blackstone

Ray Dalio/Bridgewater

John Kornblum and Felix Rohatyn/Lazard

Wilbur Ross – From Rothschild-Banker to US Secretary of Commerce

Emmanuel Macron – From Rothschild banker to President of France

Peter Thiel / Founders Fund

Jeffrey Bezos/Amazon

Eric Schmidt – The Google-Instagram-LinkedIn-Pentagon-Complex

Jack Ma / Alibaba: “Inclusive globalization”

Tables and Lists

Top Twenty of the largest capital organizers

BlackRock&Co as co-owner of the 30 DAX companies

The 50 largest private equity investors

The largest dozen hedge funds

The centers of elitist digital populism

Electric vehicles, new registrations 2017

China’s company purchases in Germany

China’s company purchases in the EU

Four Chinese banks among the world’s 10 largest banks

Silk Road projects

Introduction

History is open

World peace is maintained through collective measures.

Equal rights and the self-determination of peoples govern international relations Article 1, United Nations Charter, after end of World War II, 1945

Si vis pacem cole justitia!

If you want peace, promote social justice!

Motto of the International Labor Organization (ILO) founded after World War I, since 1945 sub-organization of the UNO

1,0 satellites orbit the earth and collect, it is said, “every piece of data” about our planet: Cities, villages, deserts, gorges, mountains, climate, winds, storms, volcanoes, traffic flows, ocean floors, schools of fish and birds, refugees, oil fields and metals deep in the ground, manned and unmanned aircraft, military bases, drones, terrorists – but who are the producers and operators of the satellites, who are the owners of the car factories, energy companies, apartments, skyscrapers, banks, electricity and transport networks, supermarkets, toll roads, hotel and restaurant chains, television stations? And who owns, for example, Coca Cola, Goldman Sachs, Exxon, Deutsche Bank, Ryan Air, Zalando and the New York Times? And who owns the world-famous digital giants Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Uber and Airbnb?

Capitalism, financial capitalism, globalization, market economy: For decades, there has been a lot of general and, of course, always “critical” fabulation and claims about why they are bad or good after all or indeed should exist at all. The obvious question is: Who are the capitalists, the financial capitalists, the globalizers, the market economists? What are their names? How do they work (if it can be called that)? What do they do, in politics, in society, in nature, among themselves and above all in our working and social conditions? Another question: Are they involved in wars or do they promote peace? Or do they perhaps (seemingly) not care?

Western presidents and heads of government like the German chancellors of all populist parties and genders and the fake producers of the leading media talk about “the markets”, mostly with a threatening undertone: If we do not obey “the markets”, woe betide us! For example, the state must “save” and actually “save” even more. But who are “the markets”? Where do they reside?

Trade unions and leading media routinely fret about corporate boards and managers and their millions in income, but fail to ask about the owners and their hundredfold higher profits. Freedom of opinion does not apply here either. It is invoked as a high “Western value” – but it is devalued by the dismantling of freedom of information. And the dependent employees in the companies have no freedom of opinion, but a muzzle. Knowledge and freedom of expression for a small radical minority – ignorance and muzzle for the dependent majority.

When the big, powerful banks of the Western world between New York, London, Paris, Milan, Madrid and Frankfurt had speculated their way into joint bankruptcy up to 2007, they had to be rescued with state money, i.e. our tax money – to which they themselves had contributed little – at any rate, this was what the loud spokespersons of “the markets” claimed. The banks were rescued in breach of market rules because they were “systemically relevant”. Aha – so there is a “system” enthroned above the sacred free market economy? A higher freedom, a higher system that can, so to speak, out of the blue or gloomy sky, override the iron market laws if necessary? Who is that? Are they human beings, or are they indeed extrahuman or superhuman beings?

After the bank bailout: The new capital powers

Following bankruptcy and bailout, these “systemically important” banks were stripped of their power. Capital organizers like BlackRock, who had also contributed to the financial crisis – they are now “the system”, they are officially called “shadow banks”, and they are now the owners of the big banks and the stock exchanges and, above all, the most important companies. Today, several dozen other top league financial players of the BlackRock ilk operate, largely unregulated and unknown; in addition, there are the new second and third league financial players, who are also barely regulated, i.e. private equity funds, hedge funds, venture capitalists, elite investment banks and the Internet stars they promote and control, such as Apple and Microsoft, and the players in the platform economy, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook/Alphabet, Uber, Airbnb.

They practice a new, even more anti-social form of brutal accumulation of private capital. With the brutalization, however, the complexity of accumulation has also increased. However, the capital organizers mentioned and the company management boards are only the visible managing directors. The private owners, on the other hand, the ultimate beneficiaries of private profit – they are more invisible than ever before in the history of capitalism. The new capital powers domicile their property rights more resolutely than ever before in a global, occult parallel society of four dozen interwoven financial havens.

This transnational class of the anonymous super-rich, supported by a discreet, civilian private army of “renowned” enrichment professionals, assumes no liability, acts without responsibility for society and nature. It does not care about antitrust law, labor law, tax law or financial supervision.

It is by no means the case, as “globalization critics” denounce, that today’s capital is funneled as digital fiction around the globe intangibly and weightlessly and has nothing (any more) to do with the “real economy” – on the contrary! BlackRock&Co have hundreds of thousands of the most important companies of the real economy in their grip, decide on jobs, work, living, nutrition and environmental conditions, on products, profit distribution, poverty, wealth, national debt. And the global corporations of the platform economy penetrate into the finest pores of the everyday life of billions of people, sound it out, turn it upside down – and cooperate with secret services.

These investors and their delegated directors and managers can break millions of laws with impunity, violate human rights, degrade and impoverish dependent workers, contaminate people and the environment, destroy the sense of justice, and plaster over reality – with the full tolerance of governments in Western capitals and in the European Union.

In this way, the invisible powers can accelerate their unproductive selfenrichment at the expense of the majority and democracy as never before. The public managers come along with soft, smarmy, also grassroots-democratic language, bloviate about transparency and responsibility and diversity and manage to death the potential for indignation about the “growing gap between rich and poor”. In line with the venerated Silicon Valley pattern, the digital populists promise the happy life of the digitally standardized egoists and the improvement of all mankind.

This, our capitalism – or death for all

The wealth of the BlackRock milieu is increasing, but the national economies and the infrastructure important for the majority of the population – schools, apartments, hospitals, water pipes, sewage treatment plants – are decaying or being privatized and made more expensive by the capital organizers. Climate warming is being accelerated. Armament profits boom with the invention of new enemies. While the new capital masters have created diverse collective forms for themselves, they are destroying the remnants of previous collective forms of dependent employees and maneuvering them into professionally staged, ultimately joyless, sick loneliness.

With the inward war of the new, even more US-led capitalists against democracy, against the rule of law and the welfare state, they also became more outwardly aggressive. They wage declared and undeclared wars through their governments and military and intelligence services, expand their global military presence, secretly and openly arm their representatives. Even nuclear war on European soil becomes a calculated, incalculable possibility. Motto: This, our capitalism or death for all.

Populism and political corruption

Populism exists when entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, politicians, opinion leaders make promises to the people (Latin: populus) or the majority of the population (jobs, secure pensions, life security, peace, homeland, happiness, affordable housing), consciously or naively, in the interest of an unclear, minority interest and power group, that they are unable or unwilling to keep from the outset. On the heels of the primary populism of the previous “people’s” parties of Christian, conservative, and socialist-social-democratic nature we are now seeing, because of their broken promises and the misery they helped to cause, secondary populism. Among the primary populists in Germany, as far as parties are concerned, are CDU, CSU, SPD, then the business associations, consultancy firms such as McKinsey, leading media such as FAZ, Zeit, Welt, Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, now also the public broadcasters such as ARD, ZDF and DLF as well as the major Christian churches.

Secondary populism is also promoted by the primary populists and the prevailing opinion makers by discrediting, obstructing and criminalizing the democratic, anti-capitalist opposition. Secondary populists like currently the US president Donald Trump, the French president Emmanuel Macron, in Great Britain the Brexit movement and in Germany the AfD represent “movements” that do not differ significantly from the discredited parties. Rather, values and practices stem from the same old “bourgeois” relics, including free private property, unproductive private gain, nationalism and racism.

Populism in US-led Western capitalism is organically linked to political corruption: The representatives of minority, sectional private ownership grant the ruling populists as well as those who are alternatively judged capable of government (reserve and secondary populists) secret as well as public and legalized advantages in the form of monetary donations, additional income in the private sector, and media support. This perverts or breaks the political will of the majority or initially of certain target groups (Latin: corrumpere, breaking the political will).

In US-led Western capitalist democracy, the large private owners have so far bred two main political parties through donations and media support. Occasionally, as in Germany, a third, smaller business party, the FDP, also comes into play, tipping the scales in the formation of governments. Because most populist promises prove to be essentially unfulfillable in the course of two parliamentary terms and one party will no longer win the elections, the main populist parties swap places in government after two terms at the latest. Leftwing alternatives that work for the common good are discredited, right-wing alternatives, lightly censured, are given preference. In the process, the democratic morale of the voters is further and further demoralized. The rhythm of the government changeover can be reduced to one parliamentary term. This pushes things towards an even more direct, authoritarian “solution” if the democratic self-organization is not strong enough. Dictators and oligarchs in states that belong to the Western sphere of domination and influence (exsocialist Eastern Europe, the Gulf region, South America, Africa) are in any case staunch allies and pillars of the system parallel to the facade democracy in the metropolitan states.

Populism today juggles with various ideological clichés. They are combined and interpreted differently by the respective players, even if they contradict each other in terms of content (but not necessarily in practice): Nationalism (also Western or European nationalism) and global openness; open society and building walls against others (USA against Mexico, EU against refugees, Israel against Palestine, gated communities against the poor); conservatism and ultra-modernity à la Silicon Valley; liberalism and authoritarianism; digital improvement of humanity and digital surveillance; freedom and surveillance; democracy and superordinate “markets”; competition and monopoly formation; market economy and anti-market systemic relevance; corruption and anti-corruption; feminism of the upper class and exploitation of dependent women; secularization in connection with Catholicism and Evangelicalism; pro- and anti-Americanism, pro- and anti-Semitism, pro- and anti-Islamism. The incoherence of “values” is a sign of decay.

Human history is open

At the beginning of the 20th century, before and during the 1st World War, John Hobson, Rudolf Hilferding, Vladimir Iljitsch Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Nikolaj Bucharin and many others had established: The cartel and monopolyforming banks from the then five most powerful imperialist states the UK, France, Russia, Germany and the USA assumed dominion in transatlantic capitalism – a thirty-year war with two world wars was the result. But a US-led empire has emerged from the rivalry of several imperialist states. The new financial players have further deepened US domination and the vassalage of the “allies”, with the help of both an educated, smooth-talking US president like Barack Obama just as with the help of an uneducated, loudmouthed US president like Donald Trump.

The title of Lenin’s world-famous analysis “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” was originally different. In 1916 Lenin spoke not of the “highest” but of the “latest” stage. The “highest” – also meaning “the last” – stage was then fantasized into it. One can understand the hope connected with it. But it was illusory when one considers the strength and merciless, treacherous and professionalized crimes and practices that the main players of capitalism at the time already displayed against democracy, international law, the labor movement, socialism and national liberation movements.1

The diagnosis “latest stage” was at the time and still is today closer to reality. But especially the rise of communist-led capitalism in the People’s Republic of China, which was unintentionally promoted by Western capitalism, and its globally developing New Silk Road network, demonstrate the fresh dawn of a new, different history. This turning point is also the most visible part of an international movement of newly unleashed decolonization, democratization and peace.

The post-history once proclaimed in the exuberance of defeated socialism in the 1990s, the end of history and the perpetuation of anti-Islamic, Christiantinted “Western” capitalism are over. After decades of arrogant self-blindness, the neocolonial free trade globalization of the capitalist West is confronted not only with permanent internal opposition, but also with the completely different economic and globalization practices of the People’s Republic of China. This book invites you to take a closer look at and compare the two great variants of recent capitalism, from within and from without, in terms of human rights and international law. History is open.

1 After their Communist Manifesto of 1848, Marx and Engels had already erred in their hope for an early socialist revolution.

I.The New Capitalist Players of the West

The new capitalism that has emerged since the 1980s and has dominated since the banking crisis of 2007 includes various classes and groups of globally active financial players. 1. The most powerful of these are the BlackRock-type capital organizers. 2. The second league so far consists of private equity investors (“locusts”), hedge funds and venture capitalists. 3. elite investment banks, private banks and the traditional big banks play various roles.

4. Promoted and shaped by these financial players, are the five “apocalyptic horsemen of the Internet”: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook Amazon (GAMFA), alongside the most important traditional corporations. 5. Finally, the youngest generation, the even more rapidly rising companies of the digital platform economy of the type Uber, Deliveroo, Netflix, Parship/ElitePartner, Upwork, Flixbus.

Smaller and diffuse financial players who flourish in the upheaval of Western capitalism (and can also perish) such as debt funds, organizers of crypto currencies and the diffuse army of financial advisors are not taken into account here, nor is the group of oligarchs, who indeed are more important for the primitive version of the capitalist transformation, who in part or for a short time also assume government or government-related functions such as Trump, Soros, Khodorkovsky, Timoshenko, Poroshenko, Djukanovic and Babishenko.