is it true that the US gov. owns controling intrest in most american corp.?

Question

are we being controlled unknowingly by big gov.?

Answer 1

False

Yes we have a lot of controls on our lives thanks to big gov, but it is not via the mechanism of ownership interests in capitalism.

The reality is that many enterprises, and government functions are funded by the sale of bonds, which is a promise to pay back some loan with interest. Bond holders have the right to turn in the bonds before they mature, which is like repossessing your car before it is paid off, because the lender no longer likes the interest rates. This gives the bond holders a lot of power over the people who issued the bonds. Currently China is the power broker in this market.

There are a very few enterprises that have government ownership involvement, and this is done in an open and above board manner, by naming the orgianizations as being a combination of private and public partnership, such as some infrastructure companies.

Most corporations in the USA are privately owned ... they do not have to reveal to people outside of some auditors, who owns them, but if you know how to navigate public records of state government where they incorporated, you can figure this out.

Corporations that are traded on stock market are regulated by the SEC. If you can get at their annual reports (many make them available for free from their web sites) you can see who owns significant volumes of stock, since SEC rules mandate that it be a public record who owns more than some percent of the stock.

Answer 2

No. In fact, the government is barred from ownership in private companies with the explicit exception of a couple of quasi-governmnetal agencies such as the Federal Reserve Bank and the United States Postal Service. In these cases it was set up this way to limit the direct political influence over the Fed and to force the Post Office to operate as a business and generate a profit instead of being subsidized by the taxpayers as was previously the case. Congress maintains oversight of the operations of these corporations but direct political influence is limited since the Boards of Governers are comprised of both political appointees and independent citizens.

It's not the government that controls big business, but big business that controls (or at least attempts to control) govermnent. Large corporations spend tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying efforts in an attempt to influence the passage of laws more favorable to business. The ordinary citizen doesn't have the resources to combat this type of abuse and often has to depend upon grass-roots efforts to have their voices heard over the financial war chests of large corporations.

For example, some companies like Wal-Mart fight tooth and nail to prevent the passage of laws on mandatory universal health care sponsored by employers. At least for the lower-scale hourly employees, their healthcare plan is Medicaid, paid for by taxpayers of course. Or companies like Exxon-Mobil who fight for supression of environmental laws in order to cut costs and increase shareholder profits.

Answer 3

No. if they did then they would be operating under different company names so we wouldnt know.