BlackRock, World’s Largest Asset Manager, Moves into the White House

The drive to get investors to support the Green deal and socalled “climate change” goals got a major boost, when the world’s biggest money manager, BlackRock, published its new strategy document for 2021 last December. In sum, the as set firm intends to favor those companies that contribute to a low-carbon economy. That is in line with the opinions long expressed by the firm’s CEO Larry Fink, who was reportedly among the candidates considered for U.S. Treasury Secretary in the incoming Biden Administration.

As a reminder, BlackRock is among the top most influential companies in the world. It manages some $8 trillion in assets, but being neither an investment bank nor a hedge fund, escapes the regulations imposed on the latter. Thanks to its high performance digital tools, it is able to monitor financial flows and detect new trends faster than any others. That explains why its clients include Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, Apple, Microsoft and many other Wall Street giants.

But not only. It was also hired by the European Central Bank last summer to write new directives on integrating environmentalist factors into banking supervision for the EU. And back in 2008, BlackRock carried out the stress tests on European banks for the ECB, despite blatant conflicts of interest. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve chose the firm to manage its recent bond purchase program, including exchange-traded funds.

As it turns out, Larry Fink will not be directly part of the Biden Administration, apparently to avoid the massive opposition expected. But three top executives of BlackRock have been named so far. The third, and most senior of the three, is Mike Pyle who, according to a Jan. 10 report in Sludge, is to become the chief economist of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Pyle is the “global chief investment strategist at BlackRock and one of the original members of Fink’s ‘shadow government’”. The term “shadow government” term refers to the period in the spring of 2016 when Larry Fink was assuming he would be Hillary Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, and was picking the team to go into government with him. During the Obama Administration, Pyle had worked as an aide to the White House budget director Peter Orszag, a notorious austerity hawk, and helped craft the controversial Affordable Care Act. He eventually left government for BlackRock.

The other two appointees are Adewale Adeyemo, the former chief of staff to Larry Fink, who was named number two in the Treasury Department after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Brian Deese, the current head of BlackRock’s Global Sustainable Investing, who has been named director of the National Economic Council of Biden’s White House. Deese played an important role in negotiating the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.