a war between financial groups

Following the announcement of Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, it is becoming increasingly clear an ongoing clash within US financial capitalism. Let’s try to summarize it and maybe even simplify it.

After the choice of James Vance as vice president or the positions taken by Elon Musk, the ranks of supporters – and financiers – of Donald Trump are growing. These are individuals who can be traced back to a capitalism that is trying to contain the excessive power of the “Big Three” (large consulting and investment firms, active everywhere in the world: https://altreconomia.it/i-big-three-della-consulenza-mondiale-sconosciuti-e-potenti/, ndr), of the superfunds, now decidedly tied to the Democrats. Both Biden and Kamala Harris have had and have in their staff key figures coming from BlackRock (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackRock). A character like Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, the bank of superfunds, now flattered by Trump, has long been on the verge of being a Democratic candidate. The chairman of the Federal Reserve (Fed), Jerome Powell, with the support of Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury, has accompanied the strategies of the same superfunds, buying up their ETFs (exchange-traded funds, ndr). Against this symbiosis, as mentioned, a group of figures who want to use the political power of the Trump presidency to fight or limit the excessive power of the “Big Three”.

In this sequence appear some large funds hedge (speculative investment funds, ndr)such as John Paulson, worried about the progressive marginalization from a “market” normalized by super funds, some oilmen not directly linked to the energy giants in the hands of the “Big Three”, such as Timothy Dunn and Harold Hamm of Continental Resources, but there are also long-standing billionaires such as the Mellons, annoyed by the excessive power of the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, and characters like Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, a giant with 500 thousand employees, hostile to the model fabless of the “Big Tech” that he sees emerging in his creation, sold to Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street. Among Trump’s capitalists there are also the owners of casinos, such as Steve Wynn and Phil Ruffin, scared by the advance of the big funds even in their sectors, and typical characters of the Trumpian world such as Linda McMahon, founder together with her husband of the World wrestling entertainment (Wwe). In short, Trump’s possibility of success has triggered a harsh clash within American capitalism destined to determine a change in its internal balances and to weaken it..

To understand the phenomenon even better, it is also useful to scroll through the Kamala Harris’s donor list includes numerous financial figures linked, in various capacities, to large funds. The names that stand out are Reid Hoffman, creator of LinkedIn, sold in 2016 to Microsoft for 26 billion dollars and, since then, a member of the board of directors of Microsoft itself, of which, as is known, Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street have over 20%. Hoffman himself, today, has a significant stake in Airbnb, where the “Big Three” are reference shareholders. Alongside Hoffman is Roger Altman, a long-time Democratic financier, collaborator of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton with very delicate roles, who went from Lehman and Blackstone, and is now director of the Evercore bank, of which Vanguard owns 9.46%, BlackRock 8.6% and State Street 2.6%. Then there are Reed Hastings, chairman of Netflix, where Vanguard has 8.5%, BlackRock 5.7% and State Street 3.8%, Brad Karp, long-time trusted lawyer of JPMorgan, Ray McGuire, chairman of Lazard Inc, where Vanguard is the largest shareholder with 9.5%, followed by BlackRock with 8.5%, Marc Lasry, CEO of Avenue Capital Group, thehedge fund close to the “Big Three”, and then Frank Baker, owner of a private equity. Prominent among Kamala Harris’ donors are also several members of the Soros family and various key figures from major American consulting firms such as Jon Henes and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein. In short, the new candidate has assembled a vast group of donors who see Trump’s finances as a threat to the “reassuring” monopoly carefully cultivated by the superfundscentral shareholders of the major companies in the S&P 500 stock index: one could imagine a deployment that intends to defend the main player of global savings management and the share ownership of giants in the name of protecting savers from the shocks generated by a Republican victory.

We are truly facing an internal clash within a capitalism that on the one hand is building its fortune on the financial monopoly intended as a tool for reducing risk for citizens who have now become financial subjects through their policies, and on the other is experiencing the formation of a block destined to weaken this monopoly in the hope of not being excluded from the current bubble and which needs politics, starting with monetary politics, with decidedly more favorable rates, in order to be able to count. Beyond the fundamental popular narratives, these elections contain a tough war between financial groups.

Alessandro Volpi is a professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Political Science at the University of Pisa. Sdeals with issues relating to the processes of cultural and economic transformation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The article is taken from Altreconomy

2024-08-26 09:20:20