With nearly $10 trillion in assets under management (AUM), BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager.
The company exploded in size after the 2008 financial crisis, and that’s no coincidence.
Central banks around the world have printed scores of trillions since then. A significant portion of that freshly created money eventually found its way into the stock market, specifically BlackRock’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
BlackRock was also responsible for helping the Federal Reserve manage its massive debt portfolio after 2008. It’s another indication of BlackRock’s cozy relationship with the government.
BlackRock is a good illustration of the Cantillon Effect—those closest to the money printing benefiting.
What do you make of the rise of BlackRock?
In a way, BlackRock mystifies and amazes me. It came from ground zero in the late ’80s, started by Larry Fink and a few of his friends. How did they manage to garner $10 trillion and become the biggest financial management entity in the world? Are they super competent, or just super well wired with the Fed? They’re certainly competent at garnering funds. But they’re absolutely “connected.” In today’s world, where governments, directly and indirectly, control everything, rest assured that the top guys in BlackRock are charter members of the Deep State.
As money managers, they’ve essentially put themselves in a position to collect a royalty of 10, 20, or 30 basis points—and sometimes 1%—on the assets under management. It has to be one of the best businesses in the world because BlackRock has only something like 1,800 employees to manage $10 trillion
I have no problem with size per se. But in today’s overfinancialized economy, BlackRock does more than collect royalties for providing a service. The problem is that the ETFs, mutual funds, and pensions it controls vote the stock of public companies. That means they can install the directors they like, who then move the companies in the directions they like.
BlackRock is a perfect example of why money printing and central banking always cause the rich to get richer. Not only do they stand closer to the money spigot, but they’re well-connected to do favors for government officials. And the favors are returned. As excess money is created, lots of it flows into the stock and bond markets. But the average guy doesn’t know what stocks to buy, so he relies on these money managers.
BlackRock seems to be less an entity of the free market and more of an expression of the merger between Big Business and Big Government.
The dominant economic and political philosophy in the world is fascism—and this includes the US.
Fascism has nothing to do with jackboots, spiffy-looking uniforms, and midnight knocks on the door.
Fascism is an economic system. The word was coined by Mussolini. Its symbol is the fasces, which is an ax representing the State, surrounded by rods which represent corporations. They reinforce each other.
In socialism, the means of production are owned directly by the State. Fascism retains large corporations, however. They support each other. It’s a more efficient arrangement than socialism. Corporations still make profits, so the economy can still grow. There’s more money to steal than with pure socialism. The rich and powerful keep each other’s nests feathered.
This is true everywhere. China, the US, Europe, and Russia have essentially similar economic systems. Fascism now rules the world. Terms like communism, socialism, democracy, and capitalism are really just meaningless and confusing anachronisms.
We have no real capitalist countries in the world today. Nor are there any socialist countries in the world today, with the exception of a few anomalies like Cuba and North Korea. “Communist” China is ruled by an organization called the Communist Party, but it has nothing to do with the system called communism.
Here in the US, the Biden regime is creating an ideal environment for fascism to pullulate and mutate, an environment where creatures like those in Washington become ever richer and more powerful. Politicians, lobbyists, corporate grifters, NGO hustlers, court intellectuals, and the like hook up with the government and the Deep State to become very rich within the law by using what appear to be market processes.
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