BLACKROCK MONEY MANAGERS

“Remarkably, the Wall Street institution that may be the most powerful of them all is also among the least known.
BlackRock is the largest money management firm in the world. Its chairman, Laurence Fink, oversees more
money (about $4.5 trillion) than Germany .has GDP [Gross Domestic Product]. Fink regularly takes calls from governments and businesses from around the world seeking his advice and, as Susanne Craig reported in the [New York] Times in 2012, the company has exerted "enormous influence as a behind-the-scenes adviser to troubled governments" in places like Greece and Ireland. When seeking to analyze the health of a bank, the US Treasury Department often turns to BlackRock, leading a senior bank executive to call it (in an article in Vanity Fair) "the Blackwater of finance, almost a shadow government." Fink himself is worth more than $300 million and sits on the boards of many institutions, including NYU and the Museum of Modern Art. Nonetheless he and his company have managed to escape serious journalistic scrutiny.”

Massing, Michael, ‘How to Cover the One Percent,’ The New York Review, January 14, 2016, pp: 74-76.

CARLOS SLIM IN MEXICO

“The power of the megarich does not stop at America's borders. As Chrystia Freeland writes in her 2012 book Plutocrats, ‘the rise of the 1 percent is a global phenomenon,’ with the world bifurcating into the rich and the rest. A website on the power elite could offer links to its international members. A page on Mexico's Carlos Slim, for instance, could point out that his fortune (estimated at more than $70 billion) is equal to about
6 percent of his country's total annual GDP [Gross Domestic Product], helping to make it one of the most unequal societies in the world.

“As a 2014 Oxfam briefing paper explained, most of Slim's wealth derives from his having gained near-
monopolistic control of Mexico's telecommunications sector when it was privatized twenty years ago. Over the
seventy years that Oxfam has spent fighting poverty around the world, the report stated, it has seen "first-hand

  how the wealthiest individuals and groups capture political institutions for their aggrandizement at the       expense of the rest of society." It's impossible to understand Mexico's many problems without taking into account Slim's dominance, yet he rarely appears in reports about that country. Earlier this year [2015], Slim more than doubled the number of shares he owns in The New York Times Company (to nearly 17 percent), making him its largest individual shareholder (though the Sulzbergers retain control). It's interesting to note that Slim rarely appears in the paper's news pages. On the surface, this seems a glaring conflict of interest.”

Massing, Michael, ‘How to Cover the One Percent,’ The New York Review, January 14, 2016, pp: 74-76.

HELEN DRAGAS AT UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

“With state governments slashing allocations for higher education, public universities have tried to
fill the gap through fund-raising campaigns, opening the way for wealthy donors and trustees to gain a greater say in their operations. The most highly publicized case came in 2012 at the University of Virginia, when Teresa Sullivan was suddenly forced out as president. As was widely reported, her
ouster was engineered by Helen Dragas, the real estate developer who headed the university's Board of Visitors and who acted in concert with a small group of board members. They gave only vague
explanations for their decision, and as protests by students, faculty, and alumni mounted, the board reversed its decision and Sullivan continues to be president.

“Similar but far less publicized clashes have occurred in Texas, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oregon, and, most recently, North Carolina. There, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina, working with Republican legislators, pushed out Tom Ross, the popular president, and in October they
announced his replacement: Margaret Spellings, who served as secretary of education under George W. Bush and, more recently, as the president of his library. Many students and faculty protested the decision as reflecting political considerations.”

Massing, Michael, ‘How to Cover the One Percent,’ The New York Review, January 14, 2016, pp: 74-76.