Some people are convinced they have found the ‘Holy Grail’ of the conspiracy world in a small financial organisation that owns the vast majority of all stocks in the US
Ask most people who ‘owns’ the US and it is unlikely that they will cite one tiny New York-based company.
Yet there are those who are convinced that a financial institution called Cede and Company holds all the real power in the country and is the one really running it. The organisation reportedly has assets worth an astonishing $54trillion and it has been able to acquire such figures due to owning 83% of all issued stocks in the US.
This happens because private investors don’t actually own the stock they believe they do. Instead, they have contractual rights that are part of a convoluted chain of rights, which all end up at Cede and Company.
It breaks down like this: a number of interconnected services such as The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the National Securities Clearing Corporation and the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation oversee all stock trading in the US. And these all come under the umbrella company of Cede, which was founded in 1996.