Plutonomy has made it onto Wikipedia

from Norbert Haering

Those who have been following this blog for a while will be aware of the history of the infamous term “plutonomy”.

According to Wikipedia: Plutonomy (from Greekπλοῦτος, ploutos, meaning “wealth”, and νόμος, nomos, meaning “law”, a portmanteau of “plutocracy” and “economy“) is a term that analysts of Citigroup have used for economies “where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few.” ^[1]

This is the link to the Wikipedia-entry, which is not yet listed on search engines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonomy. For eight years, plutonomy was without mention on Wikipedia, despite huge public interest. According to Edward Fullbrook, entries on Plutonomy have consistently been the most read on this blog. In particular, the 2010 blog-entry Citigroup attempts to disappear its plutonomy report has been the most read in the history of this blog with over 37,000 views according to Edward. The suppression efforts of Citigroup seem to have been ongoing according to this blog entry at least until the end of 2011 and might be still ongoing.

On Wikipedia there used to be only an entry which redirected searchers automatically to the entry Plutocracy. However, on Plutocracy, according to the history of the entry, the efforts of those who tried to include a paragraph or two on plutonomy over the years have consistently been thwarted by various editors. They threw it out without comment, claimed it had nothing to do with plutocracy or that it was inserted at the wrong place. The new entry under Plutonomy has been up for several weeks now, without being deleted. So it might survive. So far the entry is pretty basic, but it has the names of the notorious three Plutonomy reports of Citigroup.

The history of plutonomy on Wikipedia and the wiki-rules suggest that those who wish to expand on it, should remain matter-of-factly, avoiding any politically charged language, and should not link to a copyrighted document or to blog-entries.