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.
