Buying Up the Planet: Out-of-control Central Banks on a Corporate Buying Spree

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Buying-Up-the-Planet--Out-by-Ellen-Brown-Banksters_Central-Banks_Public-Banks_Public-Banks-140621-615.html



Finance is the new form of warfare -- without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means? -- Dr. Michael Hudson, Counterpunch, October 2010

Buying Up the Planet: Out-of-control Central Banks on a Corporate Buying Spree
By Ellen Brown
OpEdNews Op Eds 6/21/2014 at 17:59:34

When the US Federal Reserve bought an 80% stake in American International Group (AIG) in September 2008, the unprecedented $85 billion outlay was justified as necessary to bail out the world's largest insurance company. Today, however, central banks are on a global corporate buying spree not to bail out bankrupt corporations but simply as an investment, to compensate for the loss of bond income due to record-low interest rates. Indeed, central banks have become some of the world's largest stock investors.

Central banks have the power to create national currencies with accounting entries, and they are traditionally very secretive. We are not allowed to peer into their books. It took a major lawsuit by Reuters and a congressional investigation to get the Fed to reveal the $16-plus trillion in loans it made to bail out giant banks and corporations after 2008.

~snip~

Which central banks, then, are investing in stocks? The biggest player turns out to be the People's Bank of China (PBoC), the Chinese central bank.

According to a June 15th article in USA Today:

Evidence of equity-buying by central banks and other public sector investors has emerged from a large-scale survey compiled by Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), a global research and advisory group. The OMFIF research publication Global Public Investor (GPI) 2014, launched on June 17 is the first comprehensive survey of $29.1 trillion worth of investments held by 400 public sector institutions in 162 countries. The report focuses on investments by 157 central banks, 156 public pension funds and 87 sovereign funds, underlines growing similarities among different categories of public entities owning assets equivalent to 40% of world output.