View previous stories
	Big corporations dominate list of world''s top economic entities by Phillip Inman, Nick Dearden Global Justice Now, agencies   Time for a treaty on TNCs and human rights, feminist advocates say, by Ana Ines Abelenda. (AWID)   The sheer size and scope of corporate power, when compared to nation states, can be difficult to comprehend. Research shows that 63 per cent of the top 175 global economic entities are transnational corporations, not countries.   Up until now, the ability to sue corporations for human rights violations and environmental damage has depended on national governments’ capacities, political will, and resources to pay the exorbitant amounts of money to sustain such international lawsuits, to hold corporations accountable and demand compensation.   With the rise of corporate tycoons to the global political arena, in alliance with, or themselves heads of corporations, the de-regulation of corporate activities in the name of “investment protection” could, if left unchecked, get much worse.   This is a deeply worrying trend for human rights advocates, especially women. Every week we see more news of violent backlash against activists protesting the actions of corporations around the world, with many activists, including women human rights defenders like Berta Cáceres paying with their lives for defending their communities and their territories.   Examples abound, from those protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States to indigenous communities resisting the Agua Zarca dam project in Honduras and the Niger Delta where women continue to challenge oil exploration by international oil companies.   Gendered impacts of corporate abuse are largely overlooked. For example, women human rights defenders confronting corporate abuse in their communities have repeatedly denounced how they are targeted, not only for the work they do, but also because of their gender. This includes rape, sexual assault, and threats to themselves and their families, to restrict their political participation in the public sphere. Their perspectives need to be taken into account in any binding treaty through the voices of WHRDs themselves.   It is no surprise, thus, that a proposal to have an international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights has attracted widespread support from gender and women’s rights advocates. The proposal is currently under study of an open-ended intergovernmental working group (IGWG) working within the UN Human Rights Council.   Participating of the 2nd session of such intergovernmental working group, recently held in Geneva, feminist activists expressed their hopes and demands for this process.   In the words of Fernanda Hopenhaym, of Mexican organization Poder: “It’s essential to think of the impacts that these corporations are having on the lives of women, for example on labor rights, the gender pay gap, the impact on women in local communities when there are human rights violations – especially economic, social and cultural rights-, capture of land, territories, and natural resources that have an impact on rural and indigenous communities.”   “For too long, women in all parts of life; women in rural areas; women from indigenous communities; women from social minorities; women suffering poverty, have had to carry the worst effects of human rights violations and denial of basic livelihood because of corporate power working in coordination with States that have refused or failed to protect women’s human rights. said Debbie Stothard, ‎International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Burma.   “We need to have a binding treaty in order to equalize that situation.” http://bit.ly/2nl2r04   Big corporations dominate list of world''s top economic entities. (Global Justice Now)   The world’s biggest corporations have increased their wealth compared with nation states in the last year, illustrating the growing power of multinational businesses.   A study by the anti-poverty charity Global Justice Now found that the number of businesses in the top 100 economic entities jumped to 69 in 2015 from 63 in the previous year.   While many emerging market economies have struggled to grow in the last couple of years, mainly as a result of China’s slowdown, many of the world’s largest corporations have increased in size.   The London-based campaign group said the 10 biggest corporations – including Walmart, Apple and Shell – make more money than most countries in the world combined.   The charity blamed governments for bowing to pressure from multinational firms to promote business-friendly tax regimes above the needs of their citizens.   An assessment of the top 200 entities found that many smaller countries were squeezed out, leaving 153 corporations above many nations from Africa, Asia and South America.   The US, China, Germany, Japan, France and the UK make up the top six economic entities followed by Italy, Brazil and Canada.   Walmart ranks as the 10th largest, followed by China’s electricity monopoly State Grid at number 14, China National Petroleum at 15 and Chinese oil firm Sinopec Group at 16. Apple ranked 26th behind the 18th-placed Royal Dutch Shell, with Exxon Mobil at 21, Volkswagen at 22 and Toyota at 23.   The value of the top 10 corporations was $285tn, beating the $280tn worth of the bottom 180 countries, which include Ireland, Indonesia, Israel, Colombia, Greece, South Africa, Iraq and Vietnam.   Nick Dearden, the charity’s director, said: “The vast wealth and power of corporations is at the heart of so many of the world’s problems – like inequality and climate change.   “The drive for short-term profits today seems to trump basic human rights for millions of people on the planet. These figures show the problem is getting worse.”   Global Justice Now said it released the figures to increase pressure on the British government ahead of a UN working group, led by Ecuador, that aims to draw up a binding treaty “to ensure transnational corporations abide by the full range of human rights responsibilities”.   Campaigners said they are calling for the treaty to be legally enforceable at a national and global level. The charity has criticised Britain for refusing to support the process.   Dearden said: “The UK government has facilitated this rise in corporate power through tax structures, trade deals and even aid programmes that help big business.   “Their wholehearted support for the US-EU trade deal TTIP, is just the latest example of government help to big business. Disgracefully, it also routinely opposes the call of developing countries to hold corporations to account for their human rights impacts at the UN.”   http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2016/sep/12/10-biggest-corporations-make-more-money-most-countries-world-combined http://bit.ly/2cWIrgk Visit the related web page
	In a financialized economy the standout feature is a systemic disinvestment in public goods by Roosevelt Institute, agencies Children Defence Fund, Georgetown University, agencies USA   From Higher Education to Water Treatment, Financialization is harming the Economy, reports Carrie Sloan for the Roosevelt Institute.   One of the standout features of our increasingly financialized economy is a systemic disinvestment in public goods such as infrastructure and education. As the finance sector hoards the wealth our economy produces, wages stagnate, corporations and the wealthy avoid contributing their rightful share in taxes, and money and power coalesces at the top, revenues at all levels of government have declined.   Correspondingly, we have witnessed a turn to austerity measures including big cuts to the budgets of the entities that provide vital public goods, from water to public education. This is no accident- it’s a feature of a rigged economic system in which austerity is the price most of us pay for the wealthiest to get even wealthier.   Austerity creates vulnerability. As the stewards of public goods strive to meet the needs of the constituents they serve- from water customers to students attending public colleges- without breaking their shrinking budgets, they can become susceptible to financing schemes peddled by the financial industry.   Banks have pushed a variety of financial products, such as interest rate swaps, auction rate securities, and capital appreciation bonds, that are risky to borrowers and invariably deliver massive returns to the financial institutions selling them. Many of these deals have gone horribly wrong for public borrowers, draining even more money out their diminishing budgets.   The combination of austerity politics and a financial industry with an increasingly predatory business model has created a vicious cycle of decreased revenues, budget cuts, increased reliance on borrowing, the use of risky financial products in an attempt to save money, big losses on those risky deals, and more austerity.   Roosevelt and ReFund America Project recently released a report about the impact of toxic financial deals like interest rate swaps on colleges and universities across the country. We looked at 19 schools, from community colleges and public four-year universities to elite private schools, and found swap cost them a combined total of $2.7 billion.   Swaps, which were intended to create a synthetic fixed rate on variable rate bonds, were pitched to borrowers as a way to borrow more cheaply. But these deals turned out to be disastrous for many colleges- just as they have been for the cities, school districts, state governments, transit agencies, and water departments that also got mixed up with them.   The public colleges we looked at in our report – like public colleges around the nation- have all seen huge decreases in state funding in recent decades, and they have all tried to bridge the funding gap by raising fees and tuition on students. This disinvestment in a vital public good parallels decreases in funding for other vital infrastructure- most notably, public water and wastewater systems.   Federal funding for local water infrastructure projects has decreased almost fourfold in the last 3 decades. At the same, water systems have been aging and deteriorating to the point where most of the nation’s water infrastructure is desperately in need of repair or replacement. The problems include sewage leaking into waterways, an estimated 25% of drinking water lost to leaks, and crumbling pipes leaching lead into drinking water.   Many local water systems, facing decreased federal funding and crumbling systems, have issued bonds to invest in infrastructure projects- sometimes as part of complying with EPA consent decrees issued after an investigation of, for example, wastewater pollution of a local body of water.   Like the colleges in our recent report, many of these local water systems got stuck in risky deals that proved to be financially disastrous, leading to huge spikes in water bills for customers, water shut offs for people who couldn’t pay their skyrocketing bills, and even less money for necessary projects.   In Detroit and Baltimore, people have even lost their homes to foreclosure because of late water bills. In some cases, the end result has been a move towards private control of the water systems as a “solution” to the financing crisis. This is classic disaster capitalism.   We are seeing this across our economy. The affordability and accessibility crisis in higher education is paralleled by similar crises in water infrastructure and other forms of public goods we rely on to make our country work. These crises have direct roots in the financialization of our economy and the power the financial industry has over our political system. The consequences affect all of us.   The good news is that we have an opportunity to build an intersectional movement of ordinary people to demand a more just and fair system and to hold Wall Street and the politicians they control accountable to we the people.   http://rooseveltforward.org/higher-education-water-treatment-financialization-harming-our-economy/ http://rooseveltforward.org/blog/ http://rooseveltinstitute.org/ http://rooseveltinstitute.org/rewriting-rules-report/   Corporate tax cuts with greatly reduced funding for education and health care. (BuzzFlash)   Illinois Governor Rauner recently cut "Meals on Wheels" for seniors and at-risk youth services. Chicago residents were hit with a nearly 13% property tax increase. Some Chicago public schools could face 2017 cutbacks of an incredible 20 percent.   But six of Illinois largest corporations together paid almost zero state income taxes this year. Full payment of their taxes would have exceeded the $1.1 billion Chicago Public School deficit.   It''s much the same around the nation, as 25 of the largest U.S. corporations, with over $150 billion in U.S. profits last year, paid less than 20% in federal taxes, and barely 1% in the state taxes that are vitally important for K-12 education.   Because of the missing corporate tax revenue, House Republicans have tried to break even by proposing cuts to programs that are essential to mothers and children, such as Centers for Disease Control health programs, family planning, contraception, and - unbelievably, again - food stamps. It is estimated that almost two-thirds of the proposed cuts would largely impact low and moderate income families.   At the state level, the suffering residents of Louisiana are facing some of the steepest regressive tax increases, along with cuts to vital programs that investigate child abuse and provide pediatric day care. The maternal death rate rose dramatically in Texas after women''s health programs were cut.   In Kansas, where a Republican state senator has called Governor Brownback''s lowering of taxes on the rich a "train wreck", 2017 cuts are targeting universities, Medicaid recipients, and the Children’s Initiatives Fund.   A 2014 government report found that nearly one in five adult Americans experienced mental illness the year before. Yet in the four years before that report, states cut $5 billion in mental health services and eliminated nearly 10 percent of the nation''s psychiatric hospital beds. Over half of U.S. counties don''t have a single psychiatrist or social worker.   So jail becomes the only option. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, there are 10 times more mentally ill Americans in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric hospitals.   In the last 15 years, two-thirds of the states have cut worker''s compensation programs or made it harder to qualify.   With Aetna, UnitedHealth, and Humana backing out of insurance coverage for sick and injured Americans, low-income families are more and more on their own.   Throughout the nation public K-12 education continues to be cut, even six years after the end of the recession.   Our state leaders are instead handing the money over to corporations. The governors of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida have together given away billions in tax breaks while cutting billions in education funding.   In the beleaguered state of Illinois, Governor Rauner has combined corporate tax cuts with greatly reduced funding for education and health care.   Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool called Rauner''s education plan a "reverse Robin Hood system" in which wealthier school districts get increases, poorer districts get cuts.   It may not improve much next year, if House Republicans have their way. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warns us about "the most severe budget cuts in modern history in assistance for Americans of limited means. These programs would be cut a stunning $3.5 trillion over ten years, eliminating, by 2026, roughly 40 percent of federal resources for low-income assistance." Nothing short of war on the poor.   http://www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/cdf-in-the-news/press-releases/2015/PovertyReportRelease.html http://www.cbpp.org/topics/poverty-and-inequality http://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/centers-institutes/poverty-inequality/ http://talkpoverty.org/ http://www.msnbc.com/interactives/geography-of-poverty/index.html
	View more stories