"Runaway Train: The Perilous and Pernicious Path of Private Capital Worldwide", 07 June 2021

... Empower, a worker-owned social enterprise whose purpose is to eliminate the strategic information gap between civil society and business, has published an e-book to identify the vulnerabilities of a crucial but shadowy and unappreciated aspect of advanced capitalism that affects people and planet from Myanmar to Mexico. The primary objective of this book is to aid rightsholders, advocates, and other corporate stakeholders in converting the vulnerabilities of private capital into opportunities to organize collectively and press for accountability. If we are to prevent the decay and deepening of capitalism from further affecting human rights, the environment, and the common good and reassert public decision-making over our economic systems, we must join forces across the frontiers that separate us...Runaway Train: the Perilous and Pernicious Path of Private Capital Worldwide is based on dozens of stakeholder interviews and nearly a thousand references and works cited, which were consulted over the course of six months during 2020. The result is recommended reading not only for corporate accountability advocates and rightsholders, but also for researchers and scholars, funders, journalists, institutional investors, pensioners, and like-minded regulators and politicians. Empower examines the increase, expansion, and acceleration of private capital worldwide as it spreads across new markets and technologies. The authors identify three macro drivers that have conditioned the economic and regulatory environments for private capital: privatization, financialization, and State capture. But the determining factor contributing to the capital shift from public to private markets is none other than the presence or absence of the State. The research for this book reveals noteworthy findings about the twin phenomena of private capital and the capital shift to private markets, as follows: There is no single definition of private capital...[;]... Private capital is increasing and expanding...[;]... The shift to private markets is accelerating...[;]...Privatization, financialization, and State capture are powering the train...[;]...We all contribute to private capital...[;]...Additionally, it discusses 12 areas of opportunity for corporate accountability advocates and offers tailor-made recommendations for researchers and scholars, investors and pension funds, and philanthropic funders...

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