“Industria, El Desafo a la Argentina,” a special report by Julian Delgado in Primera Plan, September 3-9, 1968, pp. 35-80. Foreign distribution: SADYE S.A., Belgrano 355,
Buenos Aires, Argentina (cost unknown).
Examines in great detail the “denationalization” of Argentine industry. Shows how foreign interests have gradually taken over large Argentine companies formerly owned by nationals.
Study is based on the model of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s The American Challenge.
Two of the most interesting and original of the 18 or so charts interspersed among the full-page ads for Chrysler, Esso, Zenith and the First National City Bank, etc., are:
1) a breakdown of the principal Argentine businesses transferred to foreign control between 1962 and 1968, listing the businesses, the sector of the economy they were in and
their purchasers’ names and nationalities; and 2) a chart showing the worth and nationality of ownership of 50 leading Argentine corporations.
“Sources of Export Financing” reprinted from International Commerce, March 11, 1968, 12 pp. Available from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Sales and Distribution Section, Washington, D.C. for .10$.
A good example of the AID and Commerce Department documents published to help inform private corporations about how international aid agencies are structured to meet their overseas capital needs. The introductory article is titled: “Where the Money Is: How Official Agencies Finance World Business.” Includes useful summaries of the operations of the
Agency for International Development, the Export-Import Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank and its two subsidiaries, the International Finance Corporation and the International Development Association.
The Closed Corporation — American Universities in Crisis, by James Ridgeway, Random House, 1968, 273 pp., $5.95.
As one of the finest investigative reporters in a dying profession, James Ridgeway gets to the center of our sick higher educational system in his new book, The Closed Corporation. The title itself provides the basis of his analytical framework – the modern university, shrouded in academic disguises, is primarily a corporation run for private profit and business-government service. The university is a business — and a highly profitable one at that – for those who know how to play the game. The so-called trustees, administrators and professors carve out empires and fiefdoms, play politics, hobnob with the generals, angle the fat contracts and research grants, reward their business friends, and publish highly perishable literature. Ridgeway perfected his ability to cut to the center of a situation as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and familiarized himself with the
everyday operations of our nation’s capital while working for the New Republic. Recently he struck out on his own with Andy Kopkind, Robert Sherrill and Ralph Nader in the founding of a highly provocative, muckraking weekly (Mayday) where hard-hitting factual reporting is valued above liberal rhetoric. Ridgeway does not paint a pleasant picture; his
chapter on Politics vividly documents instance after instance of self-seeking professors and administrators using their “objective” positions to shape government policy. The
appendix contains a useful set of tables and listings of university defense contracting and of university officials who are also directors of leading corporations. Surely the
liberal academics will dismiss his hard-hitting approach as “simplistic” and “overly emotional;” but among the politicized and aware students on the campus, the book will help articulate what is already deeply felt.
Commercial Banks and Their Trust Activities: Emerging Influence on the American Economy, 2 Vols., Staff Report for the Subcommittee on Domestic Finance, Committee on Banking and
Currency, House of Representatives (July, 1968; for sale at $7.50 for Vol. I and $5.50 for Vol. II by the Superintendant of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402).
Texas Congressman Wright Patman (elected to the House in 1928), Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee, is fondly known around the New York financial district as the
“Terror of Wall Street.” His populist, anti-big business orientation combined with his control of powerful House committees has produced a string of reports and hearings
on the concentration and power of East Coast corporate capitalism. His Banking Committee’s 1963 study on Chain Banking, 1964 five volume report on the Twenty Largest Stockholders of Record in Member Banks of the Federal Reserve System, and continuing investigation into Tax-Exempt Foundations and Charitable Trusts: Their Impact on Our Economy
are basic, invaluable sources on the U.S. financial-corporate elite. Because Patman can subpoena secret corporation records, the Committee’s material is a gold mine for power structure research.
The Texas Congressman’s latest 2 volume, 950 page tour de force makes public for the first time the ultra-secret trust holdings of leading U.S. commercial banks. Approximately 3,125 of the over 13,000 commercial insured banks hold and manage assets worth $250 billion in their trust departments (i.e. pension and other employee benefit accounts and private individual trust accounts). Two thirds of these funds are invested in corporate stocks; the rest are invested in bonds. The bank manages investment and stock voting policy for the owners, and by pooling and coordinating each trust’s investments they can exert substantial control over corporations. The Report points up the extreme concentration of trust assets: the 30 largest commercial banks in ten major metropolitan areas hold over half of all trust assets, that is, more than $125 billion; 34.5 percent of all bank trust assets are held in New York State, almost all concentrated in New York City. In fact, one New York bank, the Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., holds more trust assets ($16.8 billion) than all 36 banks reporting trust assets from the entire State of California combined.
This immense concentration of wealth and corporate-political power is further revealed in the stockholdings and interlocking directorship relations of 49 commercial banks in
ten major metropolitan areas.
In examining the interlocking relationships between 49 banks surveyed and major corporations, the study compared the stockholdings of these banks’ trust departments with the Fortune Directory of 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations…There are 176 separate instances involving
147 companies in which these 49 banks hold 5 percent or more of the common stock of an individual company[which comprises a controlling interest].
Interlocking directorship situations between these 49 banks and the corporations listed on the Fortune 500 largest industrials list is even more substantial. These banks hold a total of 768 interlocking directorships with 286 of the 500 largest industrial corporations in the United States. This is an average of almost three directorships for each corporation board on which bank director representation is found.
The interlocking relationships such as stockholding and director interlocks between this small group of banks and the 50 largest merchandising, transportation, utility and life insurance companies, are also substantial….
[In addition to the interlocking relationships with Fortune’s 500 largest industrial corporations, these] 49 banks reported that they had a total of 8,019 director interlocks with 6,591 companies, an average of 164 director interlocks with an average of 135 companies per bank. These 49 banks also reported the names of 5,270 companies in which they hold individually 5 percent or more of the outstanding shares of one or more classes of stock, an average of 108 companies
per bank….
What this all adds up to is that the major banking institutions in this country are emerging as he single most important force in the economy, both through the huge overall financial resources at their command and through the concentration of these resources and other interrelationships with a large part of the non-banking business community in the country.
(from Report Introduction)
The Report is replete with excellent charts and tables (see following pages for examples) that offer the researcher a rich source for tracing the operative lines of power in the
corporate world. A letter to Representative Patman’s office might enable the researcher to acquire this valuable (and expensive) Report at no cost; if this fails, the U.S.
Government Printing Office will provide a set for the prices listed above.
