Asset-Manager Firms Are Taking Over the Social Infrastructure on Which We All Depend
Asset-manager firms like Blackstone have become hugely important players in global capitalism since the 2008 crash. They’re steadily taking control of the social infrastructure that’s essential for human life and using it to generate massive profits.
An aerial view of a sewage treatment plant. (Silas Stein / picture alliance via Getty Images)
Asset management is an emerging part of the global financial system that has come to prominence since the great meltdown of 2008. Asset managers invest money on behalf of institutional investors — such as sovereign wealth funds, pension schemes, and insurance companies — to generate enormous profits for themselves and their clients.
In an asset-manager society, firms like Blackstone, Brookfield, and Macquarie act as the shadowy overseers of wealth funds that find a home in the assets that sustain human life, such as housing, energy, and transportation. The questions of how this came about, what the implications are, and who the ultimate winners and losers might be are all explored in brilliant clarity by Brett Christophers in Our Lives in Their Portfolios: How Asset Managers Own the World.
An Invisible String
When my sister-in-law told me that she had been offered a job in human resources for the City of Mississauga, I was extremely happy for her. She would be working for the municipal government of our Canadian hometown, where she would enjoy security of employment, robust benefits, and a healthy pension plan for when she retires. As I recently discovered while reading Our Lives in Their Portfolios, I had already been contributing to her retirement savings for years through a complex and obscure labyrinth of global capital flows.
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