This is Part 3 of the series Watch Out! Biden wants to save the planet. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2.
BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest investment management company with about 8 trillion dollars of managed assets, plays a singular role in US President Joe Biden’s climate policy. Indeed, it looks like BlackRock and the Biden administration are married to each other.
The marriage was consumated, one might say, with the appointments and nominations of prominent BlackRock executives to high posts in the administration. All of them are typical of the “revolving door” phenomenon of leading personnel shifting back and forth between government and big finance.
Brian Deese, appointed by Biden to be director of the National Economic Council, served as a senior advisor to President Barack Obama for climate and energy policy. He played a key role in negotiating the Paris Climate Agreement. Afterward, his BlackRock biography says, he became “global head of sustainable investing” at BlackRock “identifying drivers of long-term return associated with environmental, social and governance issues.”
Wally Adeyemo, nominated as deputy secretary at the Treasury Department, was an advisor to and interim chief of staff for BlackRock chairman Larry Fink. Before joining BlackRock, Adeyemo served in various capacities in the Obama administration, including deputy national security advisor for international economics and deputy director of the National Economic Council.
Thomas Donilon, appointed as senior advisor to Biden, was chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute. He served as national security advisor to then-president Barack Obama and was reportedly considered by Biden as a potential nominee to head the CIA.
Mike Pyle, appointed as chief economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, was the chief investment strategist at the BlackRock Investment Institute.
Looking beyond these up-front appointments, a number of commentators have remarked that BlackRock seems to be taking the place of Goldman Sachs in Wall Street’s symbiotic relationship with the US government.
In fact, BlackRock has had a close relationship to the US government since the 2007-2009 financial crash, when the New York Federal Reserve Bank hired it to manage and liquidate the assets of the bankrupt Bear Stearns Co.
Last year, BlackRock was contracted again by the Federal Reserve to serve as executor of the Fed’s $750 billion corporate bond purchasing program. The New York Times refers to BlackRock as the “Mr Fix-it” of Wall Street.
BlackRock is disliked by many climate activists, among other things because of its heavy investment in fossil fuels and other “dirty” things. They accuse Fink of trying to “greenwash” the company.
Political correctness has indeed become a very big business, which by its very nature has more to do with image than substance. But Fink’s 2020 conversion to climate activism signifies much more.
BlackRock is evidently positioning itself, as the world’s largest asset manager, to profit from the tectonic shifts in global financial flows that Biden’s climate policies are set to unleash. Other major players in Wall Street, London and elsewhere are following suit.
Will BlackRock, moreover, be called upon by the government to manage and liquidate stricken fossil fuel-based assets, as it did with Bear Stearns’s assets in the 2007-2009 financial crisis?
