World Stocks Controlled by a Handful of Investors?

A recent study made by researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute at Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, ETHZ) thinks as much. J.B Glattfelder and S. Battison from the Chair of Systems Design write:

The Flow of Control

The full work can be downloaded here (pdf).

View this document on Scribd

This reminds me of the following I once read:

‘More than 90 percent of the proteins in the network had five or fewer links, and only about one in five of these was essential to the yeast’s continued survival. With these removed, the yeast could still function by adapting its remaining network. In contrast, less than 0.7 percent of the proteins were hubs having more than fifteen links.’
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From: Nexus by Marc Buchanan 2002

It seems that this is a pattern found all throughout nature and it is might thus not be surprising that we’ll find it in economics as well.
On second thought, however, it is surprising, because yeast and other such phenomena are natural occurences based on laws of a nature that cannot be changed, whereas the economy (especially finance) is not a natural phenomenon, but is entirely man-made with laws that can be changed.

Considering all the efforts made to create and maintain a more equitable society, I find this result still a bit surprising.
It seems to me that the old feudal structures we – well, not all but certainly the overwhelming majority of mankind – wanted to ged rid of are still here.

Hat tip Naked Capitalism