BlackRock: When One Company Becomes the Financial Plumbing for Everything

8 min read

February 2026. I’m reading that BlackRock now manages $12.5 trillion in assets.

For context, that’s roughly half the size of the entire U.S. economy.

One company.

And that same company has been hired by the Federal Reserve—twice—to help execute emergency economic policy during financial crises.

If that does not make you uneasy, you are not paying attention.

TL;DR:

The Scale Is Genuinely Insane 💰

Let’s start with the basics, because the numbers alone are disqualifying.

BlackRock manages $12.5 trillion. That is:

  • roughly 40% of U.S. GDP
  • more than the GDP of every country on Earth except the U.S. and China
  • enough to buy every company in the S&P 500 outright, with trillions left over

BlackRock is the largest or second-largest shareholder in essentially every major publicly traded company in America.

Apple? BlackRock owns about 7.7%.
Microsoft? About 7.8%.
ExxonMobil? Around 6.6%.
JPMorgan Chase? About 7.6%.

The pattern repeats across:

  • Tech: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, NVIDIA
  • Finance: JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs
  • Energy: ExxonMobil, Chevron (BlackRock has $225 billion invested in U.S. energy companies alone)
  • Healthcare: Johnson & Johnson, UnitedHealth, Pfizer, Merck
  • Defense: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon
  • Media: Disney, Comcast, AT&T

BlackRock doesn’t just “have stakes” in these companies. It is structurally embedded as a permanent owner of the entire economy.

How It Got This Powerful 📈

BlackRock was founded in 1988 by Larry Fink as a bond trading shop with a focus on risk management.

It went public in 1999. Grew through acquisitions. Then made the deal that changed everything.

The iShares Acquisition (2009)

In 2009, BlackRock bought Barclays Global Investors, which included iShares, the world’s largest ETF provider.

That single acquisition added $1.7 trillion in assets under management and made BlackRock the largest asset manager on the planet overnight.

Here’s why that matters:

Passive index funds and ETFs became the default investment vehicle for retirement accounts. Millions of people putting money into their 401(k)s were, without realizing it, funneling capital into BlackRock-managed index funds.

BlackRock didn’t need to convince people to pick them. They became the infrastructure.

Regulatory Capture

BlackRock also successfully lobbied against being designated a “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) after the 2008 crisis.

Banks that size got labeled SIFIs and faced strict oversight. BlackRock argued it was just an “asset manager” and escaped those rules.

So BlackRock gets to be bigger than most banks, with more systemic influence than most banks, but without the regulatory scrutiny that banks face.

The Voting Power Problem 🗳️

Here’s the part most people miss.

When BlackRock’s index funds own shares, BlackRock votes those shares.

So BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street—the “Big Three”—collectively control the voting rights for a huge chunk of the U.S. stock market.

One study found that the Big Three are among the top five shareholders of 90% of S&P 500 companies.

BlackRock’s voting decisions shape:

  • executive compensation
  • board elections
  • mergers and acquisitions
  • shareholder resolutions on climate, labor, diversity

Even if you think BlackRock votes “responsibly,” the structural problem remains: a tiny number of firms control the governance of the entire economy.

And when those firms also have deep ties to government, you get something that looks less like capitalism and more like techno-feudalism with better marketing.

When The Fed Calls BlackRock 📞

This is the part that should make your blood run cold.

2008 Financial Crisis

During the 2008 meltdown, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve hired BlackRock to analyze and manage toxic assets from Bear Stearns, AIG, and other failing institutions.

The Fed trusted BlackRock to oversee $130 billion in bailout-related debt.

2020 COVID Crisis

In March 2020, when markets collapsed, the Federal Reserve hired BlackRock again—this time to help run massive bond-buying programs, including purchasing corporate bonds and ETFs.

The scale of these programs? Up to $750 billion.

Bloomberg called BlackRock the “fourth branch of government” for its role in executing public policy.

Why This Is a Problem

A private company that is also a dominant market participant should not be the contractor implementing emergency economic policy.

Even if BlackRock followed every rule, the structure is broken. You cannot be:

  • one of the largest owners of corporate bonds, and
  • the entity the Fed hires to buy corporate bonds during a crisis

That is not a market. That is a cartel with government backing.

Aladdin: The Risk Operating System 🖥️

BlackRock built a platform called Aladdin (Asset, Liability, Debt and Derivative Investment Network).

It started as internal risk management software. Then BlackRock started licensing it to other financial institutions.

By the mid-2020s, Aladdin is used by institutions managing over $21 trillion in assets.

Think about what that means:

  • Shared risk models across a huge portion of the financial system
  • Shared assumptions about what is “safe” and what is “risky”
  • Shared failure modes when those assumptions are wrong

If Aladdin has a blind spot, the entire system has that blind spot.

This is not a conspiracy. It’s just what happens when infrastructure centralizes.

But it also means BlackRock is not just an asset manager. It is the operating system that other asset managers run on.

The Revolving Door Is Not Subtle 🚪

Multiple senior officials in the Biden administration came directly from BlackRock:

  • Brian Deese - BlackRock’s Global Head of Sustainable Investing → Director of the National Economic Council (Biden’s top economic advisor)
  • Wally Adeyemo - Chief of Staff to Larry Fink → Deputy Secretary of the Treasury
  • Michael Pyle - BlackRock’s Global Chief Investment Strategist → Chief Economic Advisor to VP Kamala Harris

This is not unique to Biden. BlackRock has had influence across administrations.

But the pattern is clear: the people writing economic policy often come from the same firm that benefits from that policy.

And when crises hit, the government calls BlackRock because BlackRock alumni are already inside the government.

ESG Is Marketing, Not Policy 🌱

Larry Fink’s annual letters talk a big game about climate risk and sustainability.

Meanwhile:

  • BlackRock is the largest investor in coal plant developers globally (as of 2018, $11 billion in 56 coal companies)
  • BlackRock has $225 billion invested in U.S. public energy companies (overwhelmingly fossil fuels)
  • BlackRock funds own massive stakes in ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other oil majors

When activists protested, BlackRock said it “can’t divest from fossil fuels” because it runs index funds.

When conservative state officials accused BlackRock of being “anti-fossil fuel,” BlackRock ran ads emphasizing how much it invests in energy.

BlackRock tells both sides what they want to hear, and does whatever maximizes assets under management.

That’s not leadership. That’s brand management.

Why This Should Scare You ⚠️

The problem with BlackRock is not that Larry Fink is evil.

The problem is structural.

When one firm:

  • manages half the U.S. economy’s worth of assets
  • votes shares in nearly every major company
  • runs the risk software that other institutions rely on
  • gets hired by the government to execute crisis policy
  • successfully lobbies to avoid regulatory oversight
  • and supplies senior personnel to Treasury and the White House

You no longer have a market economy. You have a system where public and private power have merged into something unaccountable to voters.

This is not capitalism. This is oligarchy with ETFs.

What You Can Actually Do 🔥

Tier 1: Understand the Structure

Stop thinking of BlackRock as “just another investment firm.”

BlackRock is infrastructure. Treat it like you would treat a utility or a telecom monopoly.

Tier 2: Demand Accountability

  • Ban asset managers from government contracting if they hold significant positions in the markets they are being hired to manage
  • Require proxy voting transparency - make BlackRock disclose every vote, in plain language, publicly
  • Break up the Big Three or regulate them like utilities - if you are the permanent shareholder class, you should face oversight

Tier 3: Political Pressure

This will not fix itself. It requires:

  • Congressional action to designate BlackRock as systemically important
  • Antitrust enforcement to break up concentrated financial power
  • Ending the revolving door between BlackRock and Treasury

None of this is happening right now. But it won’t happen at all unless people understand what BlackRock actually is.

Bottom Line

BlackRock is not a conspiracy.

It is the logical endpoint of financial deregulation, passive investing, and regulatory capture.

When you let one company manage $12.5 trillion, vote shares across the entire economy, run the risk models that everyone else uses, and get hired to execute government policy during crises, you have built a system where democracy is optional.

The question is not whether BlackRock is too powerful.

The question is what we are going to do about it.