The major development here is that through essentially capitalist machinations, Blackrock and other index funds find themselves seeing the world less like a company and seeing more like a government.

They’ve been somewhat slow to wake up to this power, but it’s been a quiet major development in the last few years that Blackrock CEO Larry Fink has started making more demands of portfolio companies. And some of them are kind of resentful.

Interestingly, he’s nowhere near as rich as Jeff Bezos. But as the representative of an overwhelming amount of shareholder money, Larry Fink is, in some sense, every CEO’s boss. He can call them on the phone and make them do things. And probably get them fired.

This Larry Fink letter to shareholders is an interesting read. It’s almost completely divorced from any moral notions of justice and basically tells investors that if companies don’t clean up their act the party is definitely going to be over soon. https://www.blackrock.com/uk/individual/larry-fink-ceo-letter

Now, my opinion here is that government is completely out to lunch on doing anything about this. But as Blackrock sees like a state, and as it can force companies to do things, someone who sets sustainability standards at Blackrock is doing something similar to making new laws.

In other words, it’s a fairly natural places for a climate-minded policy person to end up, that doesn’t — in my opinion — really have the same political conflicts of interest with Obama’s stated political goals as working for Uber — which I do see as unforgivable.

To reiterate, the difference as I see it is Uber’s internet is in actively undermining labor law, whereas Blackrock’s is in the abstract idea of shareholder returns. Which is capitalist, sure, but that commitment hardly makes someone a standout in any presidential admin.

In other words, there will be many nominees, and many will be more corrupt, and he just doesn’t seem all that worth the energy to me. And frankly, among the alternatives for where an Obama guy can go work during a GOP presidency, it’s probably less corrupt than Brookings or CAP.

I haven’t gone into it, but there’s a *lot* of fascinating places you go when you start thinking about what index funds mean for capitalism and government. Matt Bruenig for example has used them to argue for sovereign wealth funds.

But the basic nature of the questions that they lead you to ask as soon as you know about how effective they are and how much money is in them are basically 1. what the fuck are capitalists even *for*? 2. what does it mean that a guy who manages an index fund is every CEOs boss?

I’ll end with some recommended reading:
1. An Engine, Not A Camera, by Don McKenzie
2. Matt Levine’s newsletter, all of it
3. Wall Street: How It Works And For Whom, by Doug Henwood
4. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton Malkiel

Oh, and one last note: there were some accusations that Jill Stein was a phony in 2016 because they looked at her retirement portfolio and it had lots of oil companies. But they were all owned through index funds, like pretty much any well-to-do 70 year old’s portfolio.