Von der Leyen has halted a previously planned multibillion-€ fine against Google at the last minute. In an open letter released today, more than 30 organisations are calling on the Commission President to impose the fine promptly & thus effectively enforce the DMA. rebalance-now.de/en/von-der-l...

How Glencore has dragged out a £1.5 billion tax dispute with the UK involving payments to Switzerland. Showing how the fine details of tax regulation can have massive revenue effects. In this case, the UK's odd willingness to let multinationals take tax cases to secretive foreign arbitration.

This is a really ambitious and significant report. I'm going to write about it on Critical Takes soon - it has important things to say about corporate power, but they're not all said in the same place and I think they need to be.

The new Critical Takes on Corporate Power newsletter is out! Resisting Big Tech, alternatives to the dominance of multinationals and what's next for Critical Takes. Read here: criticaltakes.org/newsletters/

Big Tech & Big Finance have manufactured the AI data centre boom locking governments into structural dependencies while the public pays the price. Our latest report 'Licensed to Loot' is out - Have a read https://balancedeconomy.pulse.ly/rkvvaa4ndl #AI #BigTech

A good conversation in London today on what to do about Big Tech. Cory Doctorow offers a lucid, funny explanation of his term "enshittification" (14:00 onwards) And a powerful response from Sofia Scasserra (49:00 onwards). "We can't afford to lose this battle because it's the battle of our times."

The Fairness Foundation‬ @fairness.bsky.social‬ does really important work. It was a privilege to get to talk to them about asset manager power and rent extraction in housing and infrastructure www.faircomment.co.uk/p/a-brief-hi...

An excellent, very informative discussion of asset managers and rentierism between @fairness.bsky.social and @brettchristophers.bsky.social Recommended reading! It starts with the UK property market and broadens out. www.faircomment.co.uk/p/a-brief-hi...

How to take on the power of Big Pharma and democratise the global supply of medicines. Nick Dearden, author of "Pharmanomics", explains. Listen or read here: criticaltakes.org/society-and-...

Microsoft now writing EU policy on data centres, according to this.

Big Pharma is unable to produce the medicines we need at a price we can afford. I chatted to Critical Takes about how we can build a medicine system that really meets our needs 👇 criticaltakes.org/society-and-...

New on Critical Takes on Corporate Power: Alternatives to Big Pharma. @nickdearden.bsky.social talks about why the concentrated power of Big Pharma is a problem and what a public-led system for supplying medicines would look like. Listen or read here: www.criticaltakes.org/society-and-... 1/2

Big Pharma in a nutshell in this story.

Here are this month's takes on alternatives to the dominance of corporate power: 1. Farming criticaltakes.org/society-and-... 2. Financing criticaltakes.org/society-and-... Coming up soon: alternatives to Big Pharma and Big Tech. What other alternatives would you like to hear or read about?

A useful reminder that when we talk about "Big Oil" we're talking, among other things, about a small number of immensely rich and arrogant men whose actions show that they don't give a damn about anyone else on the planet.

Excellent! A very useful paper which cites numerous authorities to describe "Bigness" - the concentrated power of Big Finance, Big Tech and Big Agriculture, in its various forms. Definitely worth a read. 1/2

New on Critical Takes on Corporate Power: Why agroecology offers a more just and sustainable alternative to industrialised Big Agriculture. @tammois.bsky.social talks to Critical Takes. Listen or read here: criticaltakes.org/society-and-...

The EU's current #deregulation agenda resembles nothing we have seen before, in terms of scope, level of ambition, speed and degree of corporate capture 🚨 New must-read report presents the workings of the deeply undemocratic #deregulationmachine that Commission President von der Leyen has built ⬇️

Wow. "Five countries including Germany, Italy and Spain call for a common solution to the energy crisis - a month ago they spoke of shock, now it’s crisis - starting with the introduction of an EU windfall tax on energy companies" @isabellamweber.bsky.social www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Critical Takes on Corporate Power is two years old today! Forty-six articles and interviews with interesting thinkers from across civil society on human rights, tax justice, monopoly power, food and farming, tech and many other topics. Read them all here: criticaltakes.org/our-takes/

Thank you! Here's the @taxjustice.net podcast website with all seven of our podcast family members, talking tax justice, how to combat corruption and make lives and economies fairer across the world podcasts.taxjustice.net

Big Tech relies heavily on thousands of data workers for their AI products. While these workers are hired through intermediaries, Big Tech firms are responsible for their unstable and unfair working conditions.🚨 Read our analysis: www.somo.nl/big-tech-set...

War, corporate power and food prices. Plus optimistic takes on public banks and the UN tax convention. Critical Takes Newsletter No. 21 is out! criticaltakes.org/newsletters/ If you like what you read, please share it.

A very good report here on what a UN binding treaty on business and human rights would do, and why it's needed. Such a treaty would be a vitally important curb on human rights abuses by big business and everyone who is critical of corporate power ought to support it. But ... 1/3

Climate change is real but it isn't our fault, says Big Oil. (The word forming in your head right now is probably not polite) www.theguardian.com/environment/...

So much for timber certification ... That's the weakness of certification schemes - they have incentives to get bigger, which means lowering the barriers to entry and raising the barriers to getting kicked out. rainforestactionnetwork.substack.com/p/that-fsc-l...

Dismantling concentrated corporate power is a vital part of protecting global food supplies. But as @georgemonbiot.bsky.social points out, that's very hard to do given the grip of corporate power over the global economy and the minds of policymakers. 1/2 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Stiglitz, Piketty, Ghosh, Chang and over 200 other experts call for an "unwinding" of ISDS Writing to Colombian president Petro, ahead of the fossil fuel transition conf he will host next month, they say ISDS is a system for "paying polluters" that stands in the way of that transition #stopISDS

4/ In sellers' inflation, corporations don't absorb input cost shocks — they transmit them across the whole economy through their own price-setting, and then some. We documented this during Covid and the 2022 energy crisis. The same mechanism is now being activated again.

The industrial food system depends on synthetic fertilizers, fossil fuels, and volatile global supply chains, concentrated into the hands of just a few huge companies. Every crisis exposes how vulnerable this model really is. Read our statement: www.etcgroup.org/content/expe...

Interesting report here for readers in the UK on how to move away from our extractive economic model.

At the EU Tax Symposium and the US Treasury rep has said 'constructive dialogue' 10 times with no substance, besides 'no rushing to a solution' that the US will not adopt

New on Critical Takes! How public development banks can offer a more democratic alternative to private investment. Thomas Marois of @publicbanking.bsky.social talks about why these banks matter and how to ensure they're accountable to citizens. Listen here: criticaltakes.org/society-and-...

Good explanation of why higher taxes on wealth are an insufficient response to gross inequality. The institutions which concentrate wealth - corporations above all - need to be structurally reformed.

Just saw this strong report on corporate power and the right to food by UN rapporteur @michaelfakhri.bsky.social documents.un.org/doc/undoc/ge... "It is very difficult to curtail corporate power or hold corporations accountable unless corporations are changed from within." (p. 21) 1/4

Internationalism that works. Why negotiations for a UN tax treaty are going better than expected: criticaltakes.org/tax-and-prof... And how the US cut a loophole in OECD tax reforms. criticaltakes.org/tax-and-prof... For more on corporate power and how to curb it: criticaltakes.org/our-takes/

Undoing concentrated corporate power is vital for protecting and repairing the global supply of food.

Key point about oil prices here. Lots of people have assumed the AI investment bubble will burst at some point and sink the stock market. But the route might be indirect: high and rising energy costs could make data centres less viable, which makes Big Tech's huge investment in AI seem unviable.

The men who run billion-dollar hedge funds are supposed to be savvy risk-takers who know how the world really works. Yet apparently they can't read a map, don't read the papers or understand the vulnerability of water supplies in a desert. We'd do no worse handing the economy to stock-picking AI.

Some Sunday reading that won't make you feel grim: UN talks on new global tax rules are going unexpectedly well. criticaltakes.org/tax-and-prof... There's food for thought here for other international campaigns.

New on Critical Takes: UN independent expert Attiya Waris explains why talks on a UN tax convention are going unexpectedly well. criticaltakes.org/tax-and-prof... A recommended read for anyone in civil society whose work deals with the UN.

💻 The digital ag market is set to hit $84bn by 2034. But who benefits? @theguardian.com covers our #HeadInTheCloud report, warning that #BigTech's AI farming tools are consolidating control over seeds & inputs. Who decides what we grow: farmers or algorithms? www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Big Tech's lobbyists attack EU digital rules, and how corporate power shapes the way we talk about human rights. The new Critical Takes newsletter is out! criticaltakes.org/newsletters/

Huge sums of money, massive hype, opaque back-to-back deals and now accounting gaps, according to this. Sounds like the market crash gang's all here!

This week we look at Yoshua Bengio who cuts through the AI hype isn’t “innovation” - it’s concentrated power, investor pressure, and corner‑cutting on public safety. If we want real progress, we need to confront #monopoly power head‑on. https://substack.pulse.ly/kdwzz7jafd #AI #BigTech

Meta is trying to use Ireland as its trojan horse within the EU, from the sounds of it. (For more on Meta's dubious lobbying tactics in Brussels, see link in the post below)

A really useful update here on negotiations for a UN tax convention. Sounds as if delegates are getting into the fundamentals of how international corporate taxation works, and for whom. Also sounds as if big business lobbyists are resorting to ChatGPT to crank out dodgy spin reports ...

New on Critical Takes: How corporate power tries to shape the way we talk about business and human rights. Reflections from researcher and advocate Katherine McDonnell. Read here: criticaltakes.org/human-rights... WRT @business-humanrights.org @escrnet.bsky.social @asso-sherpa.bsky.social

Interesting take here on moving beyond capitalism. But I think democratising the corporation would mean more than just employee ownership and votes. It's also necessary to redefine the purposes of the company in law and widen its ownership still further. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

More detailed, highly informed analysis of the industry push for deregulation in the European Union. It's clear that this wave of corporate lobbying has nothing to do with being fit for the future. It's just giant incumbents trying to bolster their profit margins by offloading harms onto people.