Apartment complexes, water pipes, schools, and toll roads; fossil fuels and clean energy infrastructure. Across the world, these resources are moving into the hands of nearly invisible entities: asset managers, such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. Over the past few decades, these often-forgotten administrators of retirement accounts have branched out from investing in financial assets like stocks and bonds to owning some of the most basic infrastructure of our daily lives.

In Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, political economist and economic geographer Brett Christophers traces the history of asset management from its beginnings to its dominant present and exposes the industry’s current grip not just on financial markets but on the building blocks of life. By spotlighting the invisible owners of our homes and our roads, our water pipes and our schools, Christophers reveals the consequences of asset managers’ profit-seeking control over our fundamental resources.

Cal Turner and Sara Van Horn spoke with Christophers for Jacobin about how asset managers came to occupy such a powerful position in the global market, what their growing hold over essential resources means for our collective futures, and who really profits from high-investment returns.