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Brett Christophers: Our Lives in Their Portfolios (2023, Verso Books) 5 stars

All hail the new masters of Capitalism: How asset managers acquired the world

Banks have …

Another excellent, though enraging, book

5 stars

As with his previous book, "Rentier Capitalism", Christophers reveals a side of capitalism that's largely in the shadows. A stunning fact from the concluding paragraphs is that asset managers own something like 40% of the world economy. While we can see the stock market and, to a lesser extent, the bond market, there's a whole financial world out there that we're much less aware of, but that has a really significant effect on our daily lives. In particular, as governments have outsourced the ownership of infrastructure, and asset managers have bought up housing, democracy is eroded as control is taken over by these leviathans.

If you want a taste of what the book is about, I encourage you to watch the author's interview with Aaron Bastani on Novara Media's YouTube channel -- that's what inspired me to read it.

Oh, and I'd conclude that I'm beyond excited to hear that his next book, on the economics of renewables, is coming out with Verso in February :)