Banks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago. Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone and BlackRock. And they don't just own financial assets.
The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; the farmland that provides our food; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and even the homes in which many of us live-all now swell asset managers' bulging investment portfolios.
As the owners of more and more of the basic building blocks of everyday life, asset managers shape the lives of each and every one of us in profound and disturbing ways. In this eye-opening follow-up to Rentier Capitalism, Brett Christophers peels back the veil on ""asset manager society.""
Asset managers, he shows, are unlike traditional owners of housing and other essential infrastructure. Buying and selling these life-supporting assets at a dizzying pace, the crux of their business model is not long-term investment and careful custodianship but making quick profits for themselves and the investors that back them.
In asset manager society, the natural and built environments that sustain us become one more vehicle for siphoning money from the many to the few.

- 320 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1. Asset-Manager Society: The Basics
- 2. How It Came to Be
- 3. Mapping Asset-Manager Society
- 4. The Costs
- 5. Who Gains?
- 6. The Future
- Notes
- Acknowledgements
- Index
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Yes, you can access Our Lives in Their Portfolios by Brett Christophers in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Economics & Economic Theory. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.