Appears in this episode

The Corbett Report

What is BlackRock? Where did this financial behemoth come from? How did it gain such incredible power over the world’s wealth? And how is it seeking to leverage that power in shaping the course of human civilization? Find out in this in-depth Corbett Report documentary on How BlackRock Conquered the World.

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Transcript

Hey! Let’s play a little game.

Let’s imagine you’re Joe Q. Normie and you need to run out for some groceries. You hop in the car and head to the store. What store do you go to? Why, Walmart, of course!

And, being an unwitting victim of the sugar conspiracy, what do you buy when you’re there? Coke, naturally!

And you can get jabbed at Walmart these days, right? Well then, you might as well make sure you get your sixth Moderna booster while you’re there!

And don’t forget to fill up with gas on your way home!

Is this creeping you out? Then why don’t you shut yourself in your house and never go out shopping again? That’ll show ’em! After all, you can always order whatever you need from Amazon, can’t you?

Are you noticing a pattern here? Yes, in case you haven’t heard, BlackRock, Inc. is now officially everywhere. It owns everything.

Sadly for us, however, the creepy corporate claws of the BlackRock beast aren’t content simply to clutch onto a near plurality of the shares of every major corporation in the world. No, BlackRock is now digging its talons in even further and flexing its muscles, putting that inconceivable wealth and influence to use by completely reordering the economy, creating scamdemics and shaping the course of civilization in the process.

Let’s face it: if you’re not concerned about the power BlackRock wields over the world by this point, then you’re not paying attention.

But don’t worry if all of this is news to you. Most people have no idea where this investment giant came from, how it clawed its way to the top of the Wall Street dogpile, or what it has planned for your future.

Let’s fill in that gap in public understanding.

I’m James Corbett of The Corbett Report and today you’re going to learn the story of How BlackRock Conquered The World.

CHAPTER 1: A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLACKROCK

“Hold on a second,” I hear you interject. “I’ve got this! BlackRock was founded as a mergers and acquisitions firm in 1985 by a couple of ex-Lehmanites and has since gone on to become the world’s largest alternative investment firm, right?”

Wrong. That’s Blackstone Inc., currently headed by Stephen Schwarzman. But don’t feel bad if you confuse the two. The Blackstone/BlackRock confusion was done on purpose.

In fact, BlackRock began in 1988 as a business proposal by investment banker Larry Fink and a gaggle of business partners. The appropriately named Fink had managed to lose $100 million in a single quarter in 1986 as a manager at First Boston investment bank by betting the wrong way on interest rates. Humbled by this humiliating setback (or so the story goes), Fink turned lemons into lemonade by crafting a vision for an investment firm with an emphasis on risk management. Never again would Larry Fink be caught off guard by a market downturn!

Fink assembled some partners and brought his proposal to Blackstone co-founders Pete Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, who liked the idea so much that they agreed to extend Fink a $5 million line of credit in exchange for a 50% share in the business. Originally named Blackstone Financial Management, Fink’s operation was turning a nice profit within months, had quadrupled the value of its assets in one year, and had grown the value of its portfolio under management to $17 billion by 1992.

Now firmly established as a viable business in its own right, Schwarzman and Fink began musing about spinning the firm off from Blackstone and taking it public. Schwarzman suggested giving the newly independent company a name with “black” in it as a nod to its Blackstone origins and Fink—taking roguish delight in the inevitable confusion and annoyance such a move would cause—proposed the name BlackRock.

STEPHEN SCHWARZMAN: So Larry and I were sitting down and he said, “what do you think about sort of having a family name? You know, with “black” in it. And I said that I think that’s a good idea. And I think he put on the table either BlackPebble or BlackRock. And so he said, “you know, if we do something like this, all of our people will kill us.”

SOURCE: Squawk Box CNBC June 22, 2017 6:00am-9:01am EDT

The two evidently share the same sense of humour. “There is a little confusion [between the companies],” Schwarzman now concedes. “And every time that happens I get a real chuckle.”

But a shared taste for causing unnecessary confusion was not enough to keep the partners together. By 1994, the two had fallen out over compensation for new hires (or perhaps due to distress over Schwarzman’s ongoing divorce, depending who’s telling the story), and Schwarzman sold Blackstone’s holdings in BlackRock for a mere $240 million. (“That was certainly a heroic mistake,” Schwarzman admits.)

Having made the split with Blackstone and established BlackRock as its own entity, Fink was firmly on the path that would lead to his company becoming the globe-bestriding financial colossus that it is today.

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