Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Monopoly then and now

1932: “Appraising the situation in the bitter dawn of a cold morning after, what do we find? We find two thirds of American industry concentrated in a few hundred corporations and actually managed by not more than five human individuals… We find fewer than three dozen private banking houses, and stock selling adjuncts of commercial banks, directing the flow of American capital. [1]

1950 – 1971: “Between 1950 and 1971 the 200 leading U.S. corporations increased their control of all U.S. manufacturing assets from 46 to 87 percent. [2]

1975: “We live in an age of global enterprise-more precisely global monopoly-in which a small number of U.S. banks and corporations have expanded their sphere of operations from a national to a global plane… the American global enterprise is "multinational" neither in ownership nor at the top echelons of management. A recent survey of 1,029 executives of leading U.S. global corporations, for example, found just 19 foreign citizens.” [3]

2000: “Since the 1970s, the productive resources of the food-producing industry have become concentrated in a relatively small number of large, corporate farms…. Another trend in today's food-production industry is the reduced number and increased size of the corporations in each segment of the industry. As a result, the market power of the corporations that remain is increasing… Today, many suppliers of farm inputs enjoy near monopolies” [4]

2002: “..the US and Europe control almost 80 percent of the corporations who dominate industry, banking and trade around the world.”[5]

2006: “And then there were eight.” A visual representation of 25 years of media mergers [in the US] [6]



[1] The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume 1 (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 679.

[2] Quoted from: American Global Enterprise and Asia
Journal article by Mark Selden; Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 7, 1975

[3] American Global Enterprise and Asia
Journal article by Mark Selden; Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 7, 1975
http://www.questia.com/

[4] American Agriculture in an Uncertain Global Economy
Willard W. Cochrane. U of MN Extension, No. 700 Spring 2000.
http://www.extension.umn.edu/newsletters/ageconomist/components/ag237-700a.html

[5] Facts on the US Economic Empire
by etra Jaimers. Eat the State. Volume 7, #3 October 9, 2002
http://eatthestate.org/07-03/FactsonEconomic.htm

[6] See: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/and_then_there_were_eight.pdf

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