While political pundits billed the Harris/Trump race as the most important election of a generation, is it really going to change anything in a nation where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the billionaires run the politicians? Marcus Reubenstein.
With Donald Trump back in the White House, aside from perhaps some social policy, how much will change in America?
Two weeks ago, CEO of private equity behemoth BlackRock, Larry Fink, told a conference, “It really doesn’t matter” who wins the U.S. presidential election. Fink reiterated his point, saying, “We work with both administrations and are having conversations with both candidates”.
That’s now how things work, the all-powerful cartel of billionaires, private equity and investment banks in the U.S. don’t talk to the government and ask for things to get done; the government goes to them to be told what to do.
The world is in a new cold war with the U.S. on one side and China on the other, yes there’s an arms race but the key battleground is economic might and geopolitical influence. America remains the world’s overwhelming military power, but China is in the ascendancy in economic might; thanks to the growing success of BRICS, its position is becoming unassailable in geopolitical influence.
Those desperate for the U.S. to preserve its global hegemony sell this Cold War as being “communism versus capitalism”. Thanks to Western rhetoric extending back to the end of World War Two, it is very easy to sell the idea of communism bad and capitalism good.
But is capitalism all it’s cracked up to be? Is it good for Australia, so inextricably tied to the U.S., to be navigating major geopolitical challenges when corporate America reckons it doesn’t matter who’s running the world’s biggest capitalist nation?
The authoritative U.S. dictionary, Webster’s defines capitalism as “An economic system characterised by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”
Fink – “it doesn’t matter”
In simple terms, those with the capital—billionaires and corporations—run the U.S. government. Fink advanced this proposition succinctly by saying, “I’m tired of hearing this is the biggest election in your lifetime. The reality is over time, it doesn’t matter”.
One reason it doesn’t matter is the fact that those with capital can easily funnel it into the coffers of U.S. politicians in return for access and influence. Figures reported by Open Secrets show this year BlackRock made $US1.8 million in campaign contributions. Another $US2 million was spent on lobbying, a well-oiled revolving door with 32 of its 44 lobbyists having previously held positions in the U.S. government.
Then there’s the direct plug into the US government; Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Eric Van Nostrand was plucked from a senior role at BlackRock by Joe Biden’s Administration.
Another key figure, Mike Pyle, worked as a senior economic to the failed Kamala Harris 2020 primary campaign before his appointment as Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economics in the Biden Administration. Two months ago, he moved back to New York as deputy of a BlackRock group that has nearly $5 trillion in assets under management.
Pyle is a poster child for revolving doors. He worked for the Obama Administration before moving to BlackRock in 2014, then back to Washington DC in 2019, now sitting pretty at BlackRock to manage trillions of dollars in investments in the world’s largest economy run by a president his boss says doesn’t really matter.
Should Trump win the election, there are rumours swirling around that Fink might leave his post as BlackRock CEO to become Treasury Secretary. In July, Trump poured cold water on that suggestion, but for someone who changes position as often as Trump, that doesn’t necessarily mean Fink is not headed for Washington DC.
Last month, BlackRock announced its total assets under management reached $A17.6 trillion, up from $A13.9 trillion the previous year. Comparing this to global GDP, only the U.S. and China have economies larger than BlackRock’s assets; its assets are 6.4 times the value of Australia’s economy.
The fact that capital is running the U.S. has real impact on Australia, 25.1 percent of foreign investment in Australia comes from the U.S., by contrast China, our largest trading partner, accounts for a paltry 1.9 percent of foreign investment in Australia.
Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than twenty-five years of media experience. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. As a print journalist he has contributed business stories to most of Australia’s major news outlets. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business new website, APAC Business Review..