on the internet. It is a public library physically located in Australia, that offers out of print, or copyright expired material. The excerpts below are from the one book, that I consider the Holy Grail for an explanation of American Life, even though it was written in the 60's. I hope someone finds this as useful as I have...
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030304lberg/030304toc.htmlTHE RICH AND THE SUPER-RICH
A Study in the Power of Money Today
BY FERDINAND LUNDBERG
The Banana Republics
Conditions in the United States, mutatis mutandis, are not nearly so different from conditions in other countries as North American natives are customarily led to suppose by imaginative editors. As in the "banana republics" we have assassinations and attempted assassinations of the chief of state at regular intervals--Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy shot dead; Truman and both Roosevelts the targets of would-be assassins; any number of local jefes politicos bullet-drilled. This is not to say that those differences that exist between the United States and the Central American republics may not be important.
The point is that, while the differences in favor of the United States are endlessly stressed for public edification--such as the prevalence north of the Rio Grande of indoor flush toilets, an engineering marvel long antedating television sets--the grim similarities are seldom or never alluded to. To refer to them would be considered unpatriotic. In the matter of domestic gunplay, for example, the United States far outdoes any of the "banana republics." Since 1900 more than 750,000 persons have died in the United States of nonmilitary gunshot wounds inside or outside the home, and the annual death rate from gunplay is now 17,000, or about 50 per day. 2 Other forms of violence are equally prevalent; and violence in general, to the dismay of the genteel, is the staple theme in American films and television, reflecting the external society. More than one and a half million have been killed by the automobile since its vaunted introduction into the United States.
Crime to purloin a phrase, is rampant. From the Wickersham Report of 1931 down to a presidential commission in n 1967, several national commissions have surveyed, recommended and wrung their hands as the tide of crime (much of which is not reported) has risen. In addition to frequently disclosed tie-ins of organized crime with local politicians, the associations of the organized underworld are openly traced up to the congressional level.3
In ancient days the messenger who brought bad news to the king was frequently executed. Those who produce unwanted messages such as these are now generally stigmatized as "muckrakers," themselves unclean, as though an epithet disposed of the phenomenon.
Even in such a presumably distinctive Latin American feature as the intrusiveness of the military, the United States now clearly overshadows anything in this line the Latin American republics are able to show. Compared with the political power and influence of the American military today, Hohenzollern Germany (at one time designated by horrified American publicists as the acme of cold militarism in modern times) was only a one-cylinder, comic-opera affair. The Pentagon of today--its agents busy in Congress and the Executive Branch, with the politicians obviously standing in awe of the bemedaled generals, with the defense-industry corporations loaded with retired officers--could flatten an entity like Hohenzollern or Hitler Germany with a few well-placed blows. The youth, too, are freely conscripted, as though they were German peasants.
Even the presidents are beginning to feel bewildered by it all. Dwight D. Eisenhower in his presidential "farewell address" called attention to "this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" and warned the country to be on "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." He said, "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist," and the influence of the military "is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government." With the military behind it if not over it, the federal government is assuming a dominating role in many directions, he said, "and is gravely to be regarded."
Center of Economic Political Control
We see, then, that 1.4 million households owned 65 per cent of investment assets, which are what give economic control. Automobile and home ownership and bank deposits do not give such control. The economic power of the upper 200,000 is greater than indicated by their ownership of 22 per cent ,of all assets; it amounts to 32 per cent of investment assets.
Experts concede that a 5 per cent ownership stake in a large corporation is sufficient in most cases to give corporate control. It is my contention that general corporate control lies in this group of 200,000 very probably and almost certainly lies in the combined group of 700,000 wealthiest households, slightly more than 1 per cent, owning assets worth $200,000 and more.
There is a danger here, as the erudite will recognize, of perpetrating the logical fallacy of division--that is, arguing that what is true of a whole is true of its individual parts. That argument here would be that because 200,000 households own 32 per cent of investment assets they each hold a stake of exactly 32 per cent in the corporate system. I do not make such a ridiculous argument. First, this upper group concentrates its holdings for the most part in leading corporations, bypassing the million or so papertiger corporations of little or no value. Again, as just noted, far less than 32 per cent of ownership in any individual corporation is required to control it. Control, as we shall see, is the relevant factor where power is concerned. Usually comparatively little ownership is necessary to confer complete corporate control which, in turn, extends to participation in political control.
A man whose entire worth lies in 5 per cent of the capital stock of a corporation capitalized at $2 billion is worth only $100 million. But as this 5 per cent--and many own more than 5 per cent--usually gives him control of the corporation, his actual operative power is of the order of $2 billion. Politically his is a large voice, not only because of campaign contributions he may make but by reason of all the legislative law firms, congressional and state-legislative, under retainer by his corporation; for every national corporation has law firms in every state. There is additionally to be reckoned with all the advertising his corporation has to dispense among the mass media as a tax-free cost item, the lobbyists his corporation puts into the field and the cultural-charitable foundations both he and the corporation maintain.
Such a man, worth only $100 million net, is clearly a shadowy power in the land, his ownership stake vastly multiplied by what he controls--other people's property as well as his own. And there are more than a few such.
On the other hand, many intelligent citizens today complain in the face of the alleged complexity of affairs of feelings of powerlessness. Their feelings are justified. For they are in fact politically powerless.
The actual power of such concentrated ownership, therefore, is much greater than its proportion in the total of investment assets. The corporate power of the top 200,000, and certainly of the top 700,000, is actually 100 per cent. The power of this top layer corporatively would be no greater if it owned 100 per cent of investment assets. Actually, it might be less: It would then receive no support from many tremulous small holders but would probably find them in political opposition.
As to distribution of investment assets among smaller property holders, 1 per cent are owned by the $5,000 to $9,999 group, 7 per cent by the $10,000 to $24,999 group, 11 per cent by the $25,000 to $49,999 group and 15 per cent by the $50,000 to $99,999 group, or 34 per cent in all. In this group of comparatively modest means one finds some of the most voluble supporters of the established corporate way. Within their own terms they are all winners, certainly hold some financial edge. Most of them, as their expressions at stockholder meetings show, greatly admire the larger stockholders. In their eyes, a divinity doth hedge the large stockholders. 
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