Who Owns the Future? Sovereign Wealth Funds, Power, and the Ethics of Collective Capital
PART I - Power, Capital, and the State Why Sovereign Wealth Funds Are Never Just About Money There is a comforting lie embedded deep in the modern economic imagination: that capital can be neutral, that money can be separated from power, that finance - properly designed - can float above politics like a benevolent cloud, distributing efficiency and prosperity wherever it passes. Sovereign Wealth Funds ( SWFs ) are often presented as the purest embodiment of this fantasy. They are described in glossy reports and conference panels as prudent savings vehicles, long-term stabilizers, technocratic guardians of national wealth. They are framed as spreadsheets with flags, balance sheets with passports. This framing is not merely incomplete. It is actively misleading. Sovereign Wealth Funds are not financial instruments in the narrow sense. They are expressions of state power , shaped by ideology, regime type, historical trauma, and geopolitical ambition. They do not simply invest; t...
