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Destiny Of Civilisation: Finance Capitalism or Industrial Capitalism? Prof Michael Hudson https://old.bitchute.com/video/AH8pJ8vLnpQQ/

The BlackRock letters: inside Labour’s ‘close partnership’
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/the-blackrock-letters-inside-labours-close-partnership/

Jonathan Reynolds told the investment bank that he looked forward to working together to “change the face of our UK”

Senior executives from BlackRock, one of the world’s most controversial companies, last week sat down opposite Keir Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves in Downing Street.

The government’s laser-focus on private investment as the key means of driving economic growth has inevitably led to a reliance on the world’s big money machines, such as BlackRock. But this is a relationship that Labour initially developed in opposition – and which has only become cosier since the party entered government.

The meeting on Thursday between Starmer, Reeves, investment minister Poppy Gustafsson and several members of BlackRock’s board was not the first time that senior figures from the world’s largest asset manager have met with ministers in recent months.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink also made a star turn at Labour’s investment summit in October and posed for pictures with the prime minister when he visited New York in September. Senior BlackRock figures also attended a summer reception for business leaders at No 10, as openDemocracy revealed previously.

As Starmer’s cabinet ministers were appointed in July, hundreds of companies contacted them to offer their congratulations, pitch their value to the government, and request meetings. Inevitably, some had more success than others in obtaining access to their targets. BlackRock was one of them.

With around $10tn (yes, trillion) under its management, BlackRock is among the most powerful financial institutions on the planet. To many, it is also among the most “evil”, because it continues to pump billions into fossil fuels and arms companies, and its reach extends into almost every aspect of the economy and society.

At 5pm on Monday 8 July, a managing director at the investment giant emailed Jonathan Reynolds, who’d been appointed the UK’s new secretary of state for business and trade just a few days earlier.

“Dear Secretary of State,” the executive wrote, “on behalf of all of us here at BlackRock, please find attached a formal letter of congratulations from myself and our UK Chair, Sandra Boss.

“And may I add, on a personal note, it is a pleasure after all these years to address you as such!”

The BlackRock executive was Anthony Manchester, a former senior civil servant who held roles across various government departments between 2001 and 2015, including the Treasury and Cabinet Office.

The attached letter highlighted BlackRock’s footprint across the breadth of the UK economy, name-dropping British Airways, Rolls Royce and AstraZeneca as investments.

“As you know, we also share the government’s view that infrastructure investment can play a critical role in improving economic growth and productivity. We believe infrastructure is poised to become one of the fastest-growing segments in private markets globally.

“As our Chairman and CEO Larry Fink has recently written, private capital market financing, combined with policy pragmatism, are necessary to meet countries’ infrastructure needs and thereby enhance economic growth and productivity...

‘Getting BlackRock to rebuild Britain’

In the asset management space, BlackRock has historically been a fairly hands-off investor, the bulk of its holdings being significant but typically not controlling shares in many of the world’s biggest companies – generally between 5-10% – according to Brett Christopher’s survey of the industry, Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Rule the World.

Think of an industry, then think of the top companies within it, and there’s a fairly good chance that BlackRock has shares in it. Christophers notes that, as a proportion of its overall holdings, investments placed in infrastructure – things like the electricity grid, water systems, and toll roads – were relatively small.

Iin January this year, Blackrock announced it would purchase Global Infrastructure Partners, which controls around $170bn worth of assets worldwide, including Gatwick Airport and Hornsea 1, a project to build the world’s largest offshore windfarm in the North Sea. This purchase, which was completed last month, reportedly makes BlackRock the second largest asset manager in the infrastructure space, after ‘the vampire kangaroo’, Macquarie.