With voting for the next US president underway today, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink shocked many by saying at a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference held on 21 October in New York that the outcome of the elections makes little difference to the market in the long run. He made a similar statement at the Berlin Global Dialogue 2024 conference on 1 October, mentioning that years of elections have proven him right. He added that BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company with $11.5 trillion in assets—and, by extension, all large financial institutions—engages Republicans and Democrats.
Open Secrets, a research group that that tracks the flow of money in the U.S political landscape, reports that ‘interest groups spent a staggering $2.2 billion lobbying the federal government during the first half of 2024’. According to a Jacobin analysis, 40 per cent of all political donations come from the ‘top 1 per cent of the top 1 per cent.’
Despite a façade that upholds corporate social responsibility, corporate giants’ and ordinary people’s interests often conflict. Therefore, if election outcomes are inconsequential to the former, what might the latter be investing in when queuing up at polls to vote for their preferred candidate?
Sources:
https://events.sifma.org/annual
https://thefsforum.co.uk/knowledge-hub/tactic/blackrock-tops-2024-asset-management-brand-ranking
https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/-The-Rise-of-BlackRock-The-Worlds-Largest-Asset-Manager-1806
https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/11/05/signs-of-trump-trade-unwinding-ahead-of-the-us-election
https://www.ft.com/content/48fe5ade-55f1-4482-b565-e74479f3db2b
https://jacobin.com/2024/10/republicans-democrats-sponsors-2024-election