The Plan Is To Privatise EVERYTHING. Here’s How | Aaron Bastani meets Brett Christophers

Asset management companies like Blackrock, Vanguard and Macquarie have avoided real scrutiny for decades, but their secretive activities are starting to attract attention from political researchers and academics. What do these companies do, and what risk do they pose to society?

Author and academic Brett Christophers sets out to answer this question in his new book, Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World.

He sat down with Aaron for a crash course in the world of asset management, discussing the dangers of financialisation, how UK infrastructure has been gutted by privatisation, and what we can learn from the case of the City of Chicago vs. Morgan Stanley.

00:00 Intro
01:45 What are asset managers, hedgefunds and private equity?
06:02 The power/influence of asset managers.
20:28 Who are Blackrock?
23:52 Asset managers and housing?
39:17 Asset managers and care homes.
41:17 Chinese infrastructure
45:23 Asset Managers vs. UK Infrastructure
01:02:38 Asset Managers vs. Chicago
01:06:32 How these companies ruin cities.



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[dinoflame]

Easily the most important conversation of our age, this guy gets it.

[johnkruk]

A rude awakening to the dangers of privatisation of public assets into the hands of asset management funds, this being counter productive to the needs of a society . We need to learn to control all of our resources & assets .
Thank you both, Brett
Christophers & Aaron Bastoni .

[robwilton]

The basic plan is for the rich to own the Earth. The model is that of plantation owner and slaves. Plantation owners with slaves in the past were in the most profitable business possible, so this is where the super rich want to be. Self administering slaves are the way ahead. In the past, slave owners housed and fed the slaves and the slaves bred more workers. Today they want to own your home and make you pay the cost of it. They want to feed you with food you have produced for them and that they charge you for. They want you healthy and they charge you for it too. Basically they want you to work for nothing and breed more slaves. Today though, breeding does not increase the workforce quickly enough so they want governments to import more slaves from countries where they do not have this business model running yet.

[aktarmiah]

It angers me how the British Public has lost its back bone. Unable to see through the corruption and doing something about it. Aaron as always asks the right questions. Top guy.

[XykcTepa]

If you replace every use of the word the word interesting by the guest with the word sickening/disgusting this interview makes much more sense.

[pool_bread]

The scariest thing I've seen working as a capital markets intelligence salesman is a CEO of a retirement community whose previous background is that she worked as a CLO investment manager for a few decades. There's no way she didn't see every old person as a line on a spreadsheet with a maturity date.

[davemedlyn]

Well done Novara…….. keep the truth coming. I depend on you for my news.
Season greetings to you all from the Republic of Ireland .

[uglee]

Thank you Aaron and Brett. This is a massively profound discussion and explains most of UK history over the last 25-30 years (anybody remember Mandelson on the yacht with his billionaire friends?). Our political leadership on all levels has been utterly dire, incompetent, spineless and just plain dumb most of the time. We/they let the wolves into the sheep pen and now this is where we've ended up. it is beyond depressing because now we are all exhausted and don't have the strength to fight back. Best of luck to future generations!

[mattantonelli]

At least 71% of shares in England’s nine privatized water companies are owned by organizations from overseas including the super-rich, banks, hedge funds, foreign governments and businesses based in tax havens.

[gfcg]

This country is unfortunately being run by a xenophobic, fascist, dictatorial government - their model is to get rid of state schools, NHS, and anything that benefits the 'average' person.
People have less and less 'rights' - people will die if they have their way! regarding infrastructure we are going backwards - I can see it ending up a feudal system at this rate!

[daveuk]

Brilliant exposé of "State Capture" by what are effectively legalised Mafia organisations. We all know something has gone wrong, but this starts to unpack what that actually is. Keep up the great work!

[rcjdeanna]

I feel like a daring protester using the public library faithfully. The takeover of public works is hastened by the flight into personal tech instead of participating in our civic life.
It's easier for my grandchildren to push the Amazon app for a used book than to go to the library and learn the responsibility and blessing of their library card.
So if the takeover keeps going it is the fault of our lazy addictions to personal tech...which, by the way, is also ruining our eyes and general health.

[jozette-pierce]

Asset management is predatory, and should be against the law. Put the predators in jail.

[colterino]

I’ve been saying it for years. You’re either corporate or you’re out of luck. Until and unless people unite to boycott and strike, nothing will change. There, I’ve said it. We don’t vote with ballots, we vote with dollars. Money is power in while we still have some we need to learn how to use it. Good luck. Learn every day 😊

[romeomaypole]

Thank you Aaron and Brett. Deep facts; if only, if only, someone ( a principled politician) had the courage to stand up to do the right thing.

[goodnatureart]

I'm volunteering for a social housing initiative 135 (last year) and 137 this year here in Seattle And you can see the impact of this asset management home and land ownership on the ground. Some empty buildings are sitting empty for years. Meanwhile we have 50, 000 people living without shelter from the storm. Meanwhile rents have gone through the roof. This conversation was a real eye opener, and goes with Mariana Mazzucato's critique of public goods being privatized and worse there is no long term intelligence within government to do anything. Housing in particular needs to have a public developer that doesn't have a stake in profit.

[chaoscarl]

What's really crazy to me isn't so much the thought of so much vital infrastructure being privatized as it's the realization that the vast majority of people seemingly think it's a good idea.

[hasanmahmood]

I am with your jouney novara. Love from Bangladesh.

[americanpolemicist]

Yes, public investment CAN be implemented incorrectly and corruption is commonplace. But corruption is literally the business model of asset managers. so private investment CANT be done without corruption.

[silondon]

Royal mail privatisation has destroyed the service with completely unachievable workloads for postal workers and tracked items prioritised over letters, which are some times left for days 😢