Here is a list of the twenty five biggest companies in the US. Depending on how you measure their worth they can be in a different order. In some measurements GE would be first, Exxon second and Wal-Mart third. The figures represent Billions of dollars

1. Wal-Mart Stores, Bentonville, Ark. $246

2. General Motors, Detroit, $186

3. Exxon Mobil, Irving, Texas, $182

4. Ford Motor, Dearborn, Mich., $163

5. General Electric, Fairfield, Conn., $131

6. Citigroup, New York, $100

7. ChevronTexaco, San Ramon, Calif., $92

8. International Business Machines, Armonk, N.Y. $83

9. American International Group, New York, $67

10. Verizon Communications, New York, $67

11. Altria Group, New York, $62

12. ConocoPhillips, Houston, $58

13. Home Depot, Atlanta, $58

14. Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, Calif. $56

15. Boeing, Chicago, $54

16. Fannie Mae, Washington, D.C., $52

17. Merck, Whitehouse Station, N.J., $51

18. Kroger, Cincinnati, $51

19. Cardinal Health, Dublin, Ohio, $51

20. McKesson, San Francisco, $50

21. State Farm Insurance, Bloomington, Ill., $49

22. AT&T, Bedminster, N.J., $46

23. Bank of America, Charlotte, N.C., $45

24. AmerisourceBergen, Chesterbrook, Pa., $45

25. Target, Minneapolis, $43

Don't think for one second that the U.S. has all the biggest companies. You will find large companies in a lot of places that you wouldn't suspect. A good example of this is the largest power company in the world. The name of the company is RAO "UES Russia" and as the name states it is in Russia. It is responsible for the operation of the 35 biggest power stations in Russia and 74 regional electricity suppliers. This accounts for about 83% of all the electricity consumed in the entire country.

Now lets look at a list of the ten biggest companies in the world according to Forbes, please note more than just the assets were considered that is why some companies lower on the list have higher assets. As you can see Forbes measured the companies different than they were measured in the first list.

If one were to list the top ten companies in the world hat were not U.S. companies and list them by revenue here is the list we would get.

When one looks at these multinational corporations one can see that most of the wealth in the world is tied up with them. There assets are staggering. One of these huge companies is richer than many countries in the world. Would it be so far fetched for one or more of these companies to try and control governments? In the U.S. the lobbying system is geared to the rich person or company. What chance would an ordinary citizen have to get congress to do something when a powerful company is lobbying the government against it? Worst of all even a foreign company has much more power than the ordinary citizen.