Posted on 09/01/2025 1:21:40 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
BlackRock has finally come for our utilities.
Here’s this, from a new article by Katya Schwenk at Jacobin:
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has its tentacles in all facets of American life. The behemoth is buying up grocery brands, dental practices, apartment buildings, and nursing homes. But the opaque industry of private equity has mostly stayed away from electric utilities, the regulated companies that supply power to homes and businesses, because they often don’t yield quick returns.
That’s changing. Last year, the BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners and a Canadian pension fund announced a $6.2 billion deal to buy Minnesota Power….
That deal faced tremendous pushback, and is not yet official, but here’s where things get really conspiratorial: after a judge issued a heavyhanded ruling against the acquisition, unions and “clean energy” advocacy organizations have come out of the woodwork to support the BlackRock takeover—Schwenk writes that when the proposed deal was announced, BlackRock executives “put the climate transition at the center of their pitch.” The “clean energy” groups with their “climate crisis” boogeyman strike again.
Schwenk also uncovers some rather incestuous connections too:
In at least one instance, union comments bear the fingerprints of an attorney working for BlackRock, document metadata shows.
And:
One of these [clean energy] groups is currently advertising a benefit event sponsored by Minnesota Power and the law firm representing BlackRock in the deal.
And, it’s not just BlackRock. Another big player on Wall Street, Blackstone, is also in on the game, which recently announced its plans to acquire “a major electric utility in Texas and New Mexico” if permitted to do so.
So why are these global investment firms turning their attention to our energy suppliers? Well, because the AI demand is set to drastically drive up...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I’ve always been a free market guy. But I have to say, the way the 21t century is going, I have serious doubts. I want individual Americans to own a home. That’s the American Dream. It’s hard to do that now, in part because BlackRock seems to own most of the real estate in the US. You will own nothing. And now BlackRock will own power companies, apartment buildings, and who knows what else. If individuals lack the means to own basic things like their own home or their own business, then we have nothing like capitalism. We own nothing, and they will force us to declare how happy we are about the whole thing.
Where has the American Thinker been? Blackrock has been positioning themselves to do this over the last few months. These Blackrock bastards are evil.
Black Rock needs to be broken up and dismantled.
What we have today sure is not a free market.
BlackRock isn’t a private equity firm—it’s a massive asset manager and fiduciary. It invests on behalf of clients through mutual funds, ETFs, and institutional accounts.
I don’t like BlackRock either, but let’s keep the critique accurate. Mislabeling it only weakens the argument.
They have the voting rights of the stocks they own on behalf of other entitities and thereby control their boards of directors.
That’s why all the corporations went woke.
It worked for Enron in California, didn’t it?
“In at least one instance, union comments bear the fingerprints of an attorney working for BlackRock, document metadata shows.”
There’s a clown here who claims that labor unions are HARMLESS. We’re in bad enough shape now, and unless unions are sent to the ash heap of history, we’re TOAST.
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/about-us/leadership/larry-fink
Black Rock, Larry Fink and the World Economy Forum.
“I’ve always been a free market guy.”
Huge but subtle difference between the “Free Market” and “Capitalism”.
Under Capitalism/Federal Reserve System, the politically connected have access to unlimited amount of cheap or free money. In short the underlying money system is not honest and puts honest people at a huge disadvantage.
Free Markets Yes, but we seriously need to reform this corrupt system or one day we’ll end up like the Roman empire where the richest man in the empire bought the government. The army then got rid of him.
I don’t understand an asset management company that drives down the value of their assets. I.E. Cracker Barrel.
I live in an area of Kentucky that has been labelled the 2nd most impoverished voting district in the nation. The main power supplier just announced a 15% increase in power costs to the public. If Blackrock or others buy them up (if they haven’t already) I can’t even imagine what they would try to do to powercosts here. I can handle it since I’m a well-compensated engineer. But MANY here won’t be able to handle it.
This is terrible.
I thought there were laws against monopolies.
The entire Woke problem with corporations isn't just due to fiduciaries like Blackrock. In fact, it didn't start with the boards.
Legal and HR departments were first infected. Then the disease moved up to the C-suites as legal and HR pushed it hard. The boards naturally followed, with the likes of Blackrock pushing it hard from the "shareholder" angle.
ya and got gov grayout davis the rubber boot too
so GIP a blackrock company and a canadian union pension fund are trying to buy Minn power, that will put all the iron ore mines and the residents in triple rates for power. NO to all of it.
we will have corpertism and no freedom
The 2008 housing crisis, created by Clinton was a boost to Blackrock, because they got to buy billions of dollars of mortgages on the discount,
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