The author cites a recent Stanford study which shows an increase of people from the financial sector appearing on the boards of non-profit organizations (same as NGOs when applied to such organizations in foreign countries).
[T]he percentage of people from finance on the boards virtually doubled at all three types of nonprofits between 1989 and 2014.What this trend of direct control indicates, I believe, is the increasing concentration of the core capitalist ruling class over every institution of society. In the past they were satisfied with indirect control; but as their power (derived from concentrated wealth) has become so pronounced, they are taking direct control over every institution as a kind of insurance policy to see that the entire society is functioning according to their interests. This is another way of expressing the trend toward fascism in the US--the direct control by primarily financial and secondarily industrial corporations over US society.
There is no well-defined boundary line between indirect capitalist control and direct capitalist or fascist control of a nation. The major events signaling this trend were the defeat of the Populist movement in late 1800s; the establishment of private banking control over our money with the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913; after WWII the purging of leftists during the McCarthy period and curtailment of the rights of labor unions, and the growing cancer of secret services like the CIA to shield US imperial policies from public scrutiny.
The challenge for the current capitalist directors of our nation is to maintain the facade of democratic ideology while practicing fascist control over every institution. This gulf between ideology and practice is reflected in the increasing separation from reality that corporate media provides in their coverage of world and domestic events in spite of a few heroic journalists. It is no accident that journalists are becoming a most inviting target for murder by US forces and other countries throughout the world.
