Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World

In this UCL IIPP In Conversation panel discussion, Brett Christophers, Professor of Human Geography at Uppsala University presents his new book 'Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World'.
In his new book Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, Brett Christophers peels back the veil on what he calls ‘asset manager society’ - a society in which the natural and built environment becomes one more vehicle of siphoning money from the many to the few. 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. 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 his talk, Brett Christophers will dive into how and why this came about, and what the consequences are. Chaired by Professor Mariana Mazzucato, UCL IIPP and Stefan Horn, UCL IIPP as discussant.

[@JoaoSantos-lv4rc]

amazing thank you

[@brianwheeldon4643]

The public sector is taking the risk in all the cases described. All we have is financial intermediaries clipping the ticket on the investfunds they "manage". A working definition of "Asset management" is clearly Asset stripping by one means or another in terms of pulling cash, the liquid stuff, out of infrastructure that's a long term asset. Ron Brierley used to do it at a corporate level in New Zealand in the 1980s and made a million and more out of it. It goes hand in hand with lack of regulation, private profit and public loss, mismanagement of the assets, mis-timing of funding and maturity on asset funding, lack of urban planning for climate mitigation and adaptation, maintaining regimes in power who are in the pockets of international private equity whether banking or other intermediaries. It never works out well for a population when its representatives in parliament are working hand in hand with local and international organisations whose sole raison d'ètre is to make profits and pay as little tax, or no tax while taking advantage of the public purse. Brett, my advice is you personally don't have to come up with the answer. That's the job of the Great British public in an organised deliberative democratic system. The Capitalism system is defunct. It's machinery can still be used, but the system of Governance for the country is properly organised deliberative democracy. It's a no-brainer. And we know what that means, don't we?!! Please don't think of labels to describe the last sentence. Think about the 40 and more years of absolute failure to address key issues and let things get out of hand. Think about the percentage of billionaires and the percentage of those in poverty. Think about the inability of corporate government to plan for anything other than short term profit for the benefit of the few. We live at a turning point in history. Let's take the bull by the horns, or our kids will pay the price for the profligacy of the relative few and the inaction of the educated liberal many, the universities and their offspring in society. Short Term thinking in the present system will never substantively address the planet level, cross border, crisis we are in with nature, and its support of life on this planet. Our inability to call a spade a spade is killing us.

[@iansinclair8905]

there is a place for private sector input but in managing and maintaining over time, the whole lifetime of the built asset. The design and build benefits from public sector input - esp teh design

[@iansinclair8905]

Very interested in this subject. The question for me, is how to actually make a financial system that can live to fight its corner against the opache and politically sophisticated, and combined power of " rentier " capital. Socialists have proved incompetent and powerless, and then brutal and corrupt. We obviously have to work within the system that we have inherited, and where our friends earn the means to pay for there wants and needs?

[@iansinclair8905]

agree Reeves and labour are likely to be blindsided

[@brianwheeldon4643]

Re the Global South. The G7 and IBRD, IMF plus Saudi Arabia and other similarly wealthy nations must provide Loss and Damage, definitely not more Loans and Debt. Sometimes I wonder at the lack of general knowledge and international banking systems-geopolitik of the liberal educated at our universities. This discussion revolves around the minutiae of an issue being discussed in a silo with blinkers on. Don't worry, you won't lose your tenure and pensions ladies and gentlemen, if you think outside your silo and actually link areas of concern. Are you aware the global power output of humans is ~19 terawatts? We cannot produce this output and stay within planetary boundaries. we will globally need to roughly halve that output and produce with fully green sources of energy if we are to stablise the planetary climate so we can then proceed to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Everything is connected.

[@futuristudios]

🤔