David Rothkopf - Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making

None among the worlds superclassthe most powerful of the worlds most powerful peoplehave flown higher than the financial elites. No group globalized more rapidly or played a bigger role in fostering globalization. No group more effectively shrugged off the bounds of national regulatory regimes and flourished in the uncharted, unchartable territory above and beyond borders. They helped create great fortunes among themselves and the businesses they served. Their trading desks ran a real-time referendum on national policies that impacted the fate of political leaders as once only electorates or armies could do. The elite of this elite, heads of great financial institutions and funds, billionaire traders and commodity market kingpins, truly strode like titans through the first years of the global era. They have been symbols, examples, empowerers, and beneficiaries of a new system that appeared to concentrate more economic power in the hands of relatively fewer people and that, in the eyes of many, exacerbated the great chasm that separates the haves of this world from the have-nots.

And in the year following the hardcover publication of Superclass in the United States, no group was more in the headlines as the financial elites were buffeted by what former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan called a once-in-a-century financial meltdown. As once powerful financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch,Bear Stearns, AIG, and U.S. mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were wiped away, rendered unrecognizable or brought under the wing of the U.S. government, much was revealed not only about the deep flaws in the global financial system but about this important segment of the superclassand by extension about the nature, power, and importance of the superclass as a whole.

When Bear Stearns went into its tailspin in March 2008, it was made clear not only that todays global markets operated far beyond the reach and understanding of national regulators but also that those same regulators were no longer in the position that they once were to manage crises on their own. New York Federal Reserve Bank president Timothy Geithner and his colleagues grappled with the crisis by convening a select group of the financial superclass in the conference rooms at the Fed, or in conference calls that included Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson or Greenspans successor, Ben Bernanke, because only with the voluntary cooperation of the private sectors most important leaders could the financial bloodletting be stopped. When, at the time of that crisis, J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon stepped in to lead the acquisition of the remaining assets of Bear Stearns and facilitate a soft landing for the dying firm, it echoed an intervention more than a century earlier when J. P. Morgan himself procured over $65 million in gold for the U.S. federal government to help stem a run on financial markets. Thus, not only was the ascendant and central role of the financial superclass in todays global markets revealed but so, too, was it underscored that there have always been superelites with a special role to play, the evolution to todays group primarily reflected in its global nature. If a century ago there were only a few hundred people in the world who met this books definition for inclusion in the superclassthe ability to influence millions across borders on a regular basistoday there are thousands, and a greater percentage than ever before owe their power to their work in the private sector. More, too, had earned their positions, compared to the elites of the past, who often inherited them. Further, the role of military leaders among international elites receded as the cost of modern warfare became too high.