#Titans of Industry

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Truthout:

he top 10 asset management firms now control $50 trillion of global wealth. They answer to no one but the ultrarich — the 0.05 percent — whose fortunes they continue to expand. The rest of us pay the price. Investing in everything from fossil fuel companies to private prisons to weapons manufacturers, they provide the economic lifeblood for some of the most destructive forces in the world. This not only undermines democracy, but imperils our very survival.

In his new book out this September, Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity (The Censored Press & Seven Stories Press), Peter Phillips takes us deep into the world of these transnational asset management firms and the people who run them: the “Titans.” He shows how they constitute a new global elite who wield nearly unchecked power.

Peter Handel: Your new book, Titans of Capital, is a follow-up to your book, Giants: The Global Elite, which was published in 2018. Why did you feel the need to build on this earlier work?

Peter Phillips: Titans of Capital updates and expands Giants. Giants identified the 199 directors of the world’s 17 top asset-management companies, which between them managed more than $41.1 trillion in wealth. Now, five years later, in Titans of Capital, I examine the ongoing rapid concentration of global capital and how fewer and larger companies now manage the excess financial wealth for the 0.05 percent, the richest people in the world.

The number of trillion and multitrillion-dollar capital investment management companies has nearly doubled from 17 in 2017 to 31 in 2022, now collectively managing over $83 trillion. These firms hold the core of global capital wealth, with the top 10 managing $50 trillion in combined assets.

In tracing the path from Giants to Titans, I show how wealth inequality and power imbalances continue to grow and threaten everything from democracy to the environment to our personal health.

In Titans you don’t talk about the financial elite as an abstract entity. You give us specifics about who they are, what they do and how they operate politically. Who are the Titans and what should we understand about their impact on the world?

The Titans are the individuals who serve on the boards of directors of the 10 largest capital management companies in the world as of 2022: BlackRock, Vanguard Group, UBS Group, Fidelity Investments, State Street, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Amundi, Allianz/PIMCO and Capital Group.

The Titans hold the center of global capital in their hands. Governments, military, intelligence agencies, policy groups, corporate media, and other capitalists consider the Titans’ concentrated wealth to be a special interest that requires constant sociopolitical protection and support.

[violent138]

I think Alfred and Bruce greatly enjoy the many offers they get for the life rights to Bruce's story. They brainstorm what a day in the life of Bruce Wayne without any mention of Batman looks like:

Alfred: "Bruce Wayne is religious about getting sixteen hours of sleep."

Bruce: "Bruce Wayne's secret to success number eighty-seven: revolutionize my workers' productivity, by never showing up to the office and sailing the company yacht."

Alfred: "Bruce Wayne insists on eating healthy meals, with models, every lunch. He spends his time bonding with the children over a shared love of--"

Bruce, straight-faced: "Inspiring people to visit dentists."

[sonicreferencephotos]

Titan of industry Blaze; The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

[frogaroundandfindout]

Titans #31

[emberlynn-sapphire-anarchy-angel]

✊STAND WITH ANIMATION!!!!!

PLEASE KEEP ALIVE ARTISTIC HOPE AND PREVENT THEM FROM RUINING PEOPLE'S ART AND DREAMS!!!!

I’m only a fan who wants justice and stop them from canceling and/or rejecting good shows! Look here and here for more details.

[sundropcass]

i love how so many fandoms have a specific niche fanfic plotline that everyone is collectively obsessed with at some point and so there are literally 30 million iterations of it. my favorite genre.

[clonerightsagenda]

Appreciate that while Lucy Carlyle is a female character with empathy as a superpower she is not the team mom propping everyone up with emotional support. Her normal social development got diverted at age 8 and she has the emotional intelligence of a rock. She thought a glamorous 18 year old lesbian was moving in on her burning the candle at both ends 15 year old sadboy crush. Also she attributes all the physical symptoms of that crush to indigestion. She doesn't ever give The Big Speech but she does end 3 out of 5 books by killing a CEO.

[dickheadcanons]

sorry for the vent, but nothing annoys me more than people who don't read the comics because they claim they don't want to read inconsistent characterization. Just say you're too attached to the fandom versions of the characters! You don't want to find out what they are actually like!! Being inconsistent with what you like is not the same as being inconsistent!

Because, at the end of the day, these people don't know if the stories are inconsistent because they don't actually know the characters, they haven't read the context, and they don't know how the events in the story came to be. These characters have been around for decades. They've "done" almost everything under the sun. If someone's only heard a laundry list of things they've done (usually told by a pretty biased 3rd party, myself included) then of course the actions are going to sound inconsistent. The connecting tissue of how they got from point A to point B is the entire point of a story.

I think this urks me so much because it’s always couched in this haughty, "it's impossible to read all of the comics and they’re not good enough to try" language, which for one thing, is just such a dismissive attitude of something they claim to love. But the other thing is that, so often, these people love to talk or write about specific comic events. If all they're writing about is the batfam going for a day at Disneyland, then yeah, they don't need to read anything. But if they're specifically writing a fic to address, like...Tim and Jason's fight at Titans Tower, or Bruce's return from the timestream, especially in a “fix-it” framing, and they can't be bothered to read the *40 pages of pictures where that happens*....what is this manufactured outrage? Are they just trying to be angry about something that never happened? Are they so obsessed with the canon being wrong that they can't give the thing they're mad at a chance to be right?

[allthegothihopgirls]

dick grayson has started appearing in my dreams like some kind of prophet i think i need help

[panoramicireland]

Belfast's famous yellow cranes with their H&W lettering dominate the city's skyline.

Named Samson and Goliath, the two cranes were built by German industrial powerhouse Krupp and installed in 1974 and 1969 respectively. Goliath is the older and smaller of the two, standing at 96 metres, with Samson measuring 10% higher at 106 metres

[izzydaninja]

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

A Titan of Industry. She's been awfully distant; wonder what's got her interest?

< Pre - Business Tycoon Rouge | Next - Poet Espio >

[Well, I've drawn Blaze more than Rouge, so figure out her proportions wasn't as hard, but figuring out her pose? Yes. That took quite a few tries. Next One shouldn't be too hard... hopefully... Though, I'm very concerned on how the last one will go! <~>]

*No Stealing!* Thank you!

[yuzusfinest]

Life if Mappa had better work practices

[sonicreferencephotos]

Titan of industry Blaze portraits; The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

[boanerges20]

BMW "Titan" Concept Motorcycle

[nando161mando]

[galliaestomnis]

Krasnoye Sormovo Shipyard No. 112 (Судостроительное предприятие "Кра́сное Со́рмово"), is one of the oldest shipbuilding factories in Russia, located nearby Nizhny Novgorod.

Photo by me, edited with photoshop.