Protesters storm BlackRock’s Paris office

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/business/blackrock-office-stormed-paris-protests/index.html

by medo-bear • 3 years ago

67 91 3 years ago

legitster7• 3 years ago

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has played no part in the pension reforms. But workers targeted the company because of its work for private pension funds, according to protester Françoise Onic, a school teacher who spoke to Reuters.

Uh... this makes no sense. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but nope, it was intentional and targeted.

“The meaning of this action is quite simple. We went to the headquarters of BlackRock to tell them: the money of workers, for our pensions, they are taking it,” Jerome Schmitt, spokesman for French union SUD, told CNN affiliate BFM-TV.

Again, this makes absolutely no sense. The protesters aren't even aligned on why they are there. If this was about the pensions this moment would be a bit like keying your own car.

prepend4• 3 years ago

Mobs aren’t typically known for being smart or avoiding stupid actions.

What’s weird here is that it seems more like willful stupidity rather than just random mobs burning things due to chaos.

I think it’s some sort of availability bias. Black rock isn’t doing the thing they dislike but they are big and have an office in Paris; therefore, burn it down as an effigy of the system I dislike.

legitster7• 3 years ago

Well, the mobs have at least been pretty peaceful. So much as they have a goal it's to get attention. They probably had a dozen different targets they try to hit in a day, tell any media that show up why they are there, and then move on. Actually having a good reason is unimportant - they are just trying to hack a way into a news cycle.

anigbrowl8• 3 years ago

That seems strategic rather than stupid.

kneebonian• 3 years ago

In me it seems more of an expression with a general dissatisifaction with the current massive conglomerates that seem to be ossfying into a defacto ruling class.

Blackrock is a massive player that is by some accounts, possibly the largest and most powerful hedge fund in the world, that is doing things like buying up houses to rent out, pursuing ESG initiatives extensively etc.

It's not about the pensions so much as it is an expression of outrage about the powerlessness people are feeling and directing it at what is precieved to be one of the sources of that powerlessness.

dangwhy2• 3 years ago

buying up houses to rent out

I've seen this reported many times even in places like nytimes but never seen actual numbers behind it. I 've read number between 3% and even as high as 20% .

My impression was it was ordinary upper income ppl like high end tech workers , retirees ect that were doing most of the buying and renting. A vast majority of my friends now own rental properties by directly buying them or turning their previous residence into a rental.

We all want one evil villain to blame but reality is much more complicated. Thats why movements like occupy wall st acoomplish nothing. Wouldn't it be easy if the problem can be solved by taking down one evil dude in his castle.

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housin...

legitster7• 3 years ago

I have no idea why Blackrock is such a lightning rod for bad financial literacy.

Blackrock is not a hedge fund. They are an asset manager. They take your money and park it into the market for you. To the extent that they exercise any discretion over the market basically comes down to the stock blend they put into their otherwise very boring index fund options.

(BTW, BlackSTONE was the company that was buying up houses.)

In me it seems more of an expression with a general dissatisifaction with the current massive conglomerates that seem to be ossfying into a defacto ruling class.

Okay, sure. If you want to take down global capitalism, go for it. But functional pension programs rely on bond and investment markets to function. If French politicians are looking for ways to keep their pension programs from collapsing, attacking the mechanisms that service your pension programs dilutes your message.

yardie2• 3 years ago

I think you have Blackrock confused with Blackstone. A slightly different hedge fund that is heavily invested in REIT.

This is quite a common occurrence and even I get them confused.

wunderland• 3 years ago

Just because CNN writes “BlackRock ... has played no part in the pension reforms”, can you not see how the world’s largest asset manager — which manages many private pensions — would obviously have a clear interest in such pension reforms? This isn’t complicated.

legitster7• 3 years ago

Sure, but Blackrock managing your pension is all the same to them whether you start drawing on it at 62 vs 64.

If anything, the collapse of the French public pension system would be a net benefit to their business if people start fleeing to private investments.

realusername2• 3 years ago

And by how much those reforms are adding private pensions into the mix?

mistermann2• 3 years ago

Again, this makes absolutely no sense.

You might say the same about large quantities of public policy, written by The Experts, with little regard for public sentiment, in this so called "democracy".

Let's hope that the elites aren't too inconvenienced in their walled neighbourhoods by these non-expert's lack of expertise.

djaouen• 3 years ago

Good. Attack the weakest links in the chain of plutocracy!

dangwhy2• 3 years ago

weakest links

that would be ordinary people who invest in index funds like vanguard that hold blackrock.

Quickest way to bring blackrock down is if ordinary Joe chooses to not invest in blackrock shareholder (vanguard).

xboxnolifes• 3 years ago

Persuading millions(?) of people to do something is not what I consider to be an easy task. An ordinary person may be a weak link, but a million ordinary people is not.

anigbrowl8• 3 years ago

This would be true if the power relationship could be modeled as a single linear chain. But it's a network, so cutting a single link in the chain is no more effective than cutting a single strand of a fishing net in which one is wrapped. To be effective, that small cut would need to be replicated at scale across the whole market, and that requires humongous amounts of communication, organization, and administration to pull.

Boycotts can be effective, but only when issue and target are very easily and clearly defined (which is not always equivalent to 'honestly'). And the problem with boycotts is that they take a long time to spin up, and if you successfully focus all your boycotting energies on an intermediate target, the boycott coalition tends to fall apart after victory and you have to start over almost from scratch for your next objective.

paxys2• 3 years ago

A global corporation managing $10 trillion in assets is very far from the "weakest link". The protestors would have an easier time just toppling the government.

postsantum• 3 years ago

They made the mistake of being very powerful and drawing too much attention at the same time

skywal_l5• 3 years ago

There's been report a couple of years ago that Blackrock was in cahoot with the french government to privatize part of the pension system during the previous pension reform plan.

The plan was met with strong opposition and was cancelled following COVID. The current plan is quite different and probably not really what Blackrock had in mind initially.

Keep in mind that reliable polls for weeks now has shown that a vast majority of the population opposes the law. What we see here is just the radicalization of the movement following the complete isolation of the government who has refused to discuss the current plan with the unions (labor or business) as it is usually done in France. It was predictable and I fear it could get much worst.

srge15• 3 years ago

It’s normal that a lot of people are against pushing the retirement age back as everyone, individually, wishes to retire younger.

As a country though, difficult decisions must be made since life expectancy is increasing and a lot of baby boomers are retiring.

The left knows this but use the situation to get at Macron and amass political capital for the next elections.

All of this while the country is virtually bankrupt.

Edit: syntax

dhconnelly• 3 years ago

While it’s true that difficult decisions need to be made, it seems that the point of democracy is that such decisions should have popular mandates. This reform doesn’t seem to have anything close to a popular mandate

skywal_l5• 3 years ago

Yeah I am not a big fan of "difficult decisions" against your people and the whole TINA thing [0]. Historically it's not great. Democracy is about responsibility. The people is supposed to assume their decisions and if this is what they want it's what they should get. We are not talking a blocking minority here.

Leading against you people works for a while until your rule just become authoritarian. The point of contention here is that Macron says he was elected and discards the conditions in which he was elected. A lot of people voted for him to block the far right lady and not because they were in love with his platform.

It's the third time in 20 years this happens and my gut feeling is, there won't be a fourth time following that pension reform debacle, as a lot of people will just stay home the next time around. I hope I am wrong.

I guess the responsible behavior would have been to get a big tent government instead of a tone-deaf one. But we get the politicians we deserve.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative

strbean• 3 years ago

All of this while the country is virtually bankrupt.

Could you elaborate on this? Their debt in 2022 was 113.7% of GDP, compared to the USA's 764.7%.

anigbrowl8• 3 years ago

As a country though, difficult decisions must be made.

People often misuse the passive voice to lend weight to an argument by clothing it in the language of inevitability, as if policy were weather.

PoignardAzur• 3 years ago

There's been report a couple of years ago that Blackrock was in cahoot with the french government to privatize part of the pension system during the previous pension reform plan.

I disagree with that frame. "Report" sounds like there was a whistleblower leak or something like this. "Rumors" would be more accurate.

IIRC the "it's all Blackrock's plan" theories were all based on the fact that Blackrock consulted on the reform on one occasion. People ran with the idea because "Blackrock" sounds ominous as hell.

0xDEF3• 3 years ago

The US government should probably break up BlackRock. They are an entity so big they will inevitably cause conspiracy theories (and anti-American sentiments) around the world.

skywal_l5• 3 years ago

I disagree with that frame

Let's agree to disagree. Here are the reports:

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/carriere/vie-pro...

https://www.lesechos.fr/finance-marches/gestion-actifs/les-r...

And you can find many others.

legitster7• 3 years ago

People ran with the idea because "Blackrock" sounds ominous as hell.

This frustrates me to no end. Blackrock is probably the second most boring company in the financial space (behind Vanguard).

The only reason people are conspiratorial towards Blackrock is because some journalists back in the day confused them with Blackwater and Blackstone.

littlestymaar4• 3 years ago

Not giving the Légion d'honneur to Blackrock's French head in the middle of the previous pension reform would probably help avoiding rumors…

He was also member of a commitee set up by the French government in 2018 to “think about the reduction in public spendings”[1]…

There's no need for whistleblowers here, all of this was done in public…

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comit%C3%A9_action_publique_20...

0xDEF3• 3 years ago

Keep in mind that reliable polls for weeks now has shown that a vast majority of the population opposes the law.

I can find plenty of polls about how Macron and his government are unpopular.

But where are the polls about this specific law?

Keep in mind that Macron and his centrist government have always been unpopular and have only managed to win the second round of elections because it is against a far-right populist.

bondant• 3 years ago

Here are some:

2023-01-18 61% against https://www.ipsos.com/fr-fr/reforme-des-retraites-la-majorit...

2023-02-02, 64% against https://www.ipsos.com/fr-fr/lopposition-au-projet-de-reforme...

2023-04-05 68% against https://harris-interactive.fr/opinion_polls/observatoire-de-...

srge15• 3 years ago

France is such a shit show right now (source: I am French). The president is weak because of his poor result at last election and the the left is using this to create a crisis in the country. It doesn’t matter that the gouvernement is basically bankrupted and that the boomers will need to be fed, housed, payed and healed all the way until they die.

For a 70 millions people country, only 30 millions are considered active and soon we will have 20 millions retirees.

And knowing exactly this, the left is blocking the country, attacking to police and burning dumpsters.

In Switzerland, retirement is at 65 since a while ago and the retirement is financed through capitalization whereas in France, active people pay for retirees.

I let you guess which system proves to be the best for working people and retirees alike…

JumpinJack_Cash• 3 years ago

> In Switzerland

Switzerland wins because they are few people who make contrarian choices all the time and read the fine print on any international accord to see how they can free ride on the shoulders of all the other signatories.

Big countries like France, Germany, UK etc. they cannot be compared with the Switzerlands, Singapores, Hong Kongs of the world.

srge15• 3 years ago

I am not a Swiss but your comment sounds pretty insulting for them

Dma54rhs• 3 years ago

French retire way earlier compared to other euro small or big states.

yardie2• 3 years ago

The government made a contract and now they want to change the terms. "You pay into this fund now and we'll pay you back at 55....60....62....."

What you don't do is change the terms without consulting with the constituents. Because that's how you end your political career in the medium term and cause protests in the immediate term.

olivermarks3• 3 years ago

My take was that Macron was seen as a very unpopular globalist selling out the French people, do you feel this is accurate @srge? As is the case in many places, particularly the USA (where I currently am) the whole left/right party team sports system is often cited by the media to describe the factions and positions of groups of people. I feel this is breaking down, and that we have various anarchists on both the left and right attempting to destroy a system that isn't serving them. This distorts the perception of more moderate voters and positions. I'm highly aware of how tenacious the Gillet Jeunes were prior to the pandemic.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/01/11/the-gilets-jaunes-a...

srge15• 3 years ago

very unpopular globalist selling out the French people

Yes he was a banker before running for office. The left is pushing this narrative a lot. Forgetting that their leader is a millionaire who never worked in the private sector…

pil0u• 3 years ago

source: I am French

63% of French continue to approve protests [0] 73% of those surveyed approve when opponents of the reform block toll barriers and allow motorists to pass for free [1]

Your opinion does not look representative to me. It looks like French people have a social model that they want to keep.

[0] https://www.bfmtv.com/societe/sondage-bfmtv-retraites-63-des... [1] https://www.tf1info.fr/politique/sondage-exclusif-contestati...

srge15• 3 years ago

A social model has a cost. The choice is not between work longer or not. It’s between work longer or pay more. Macron choses the former. You may disagree but as the 5th republic allows him, he governs and he choses.

Also, government is not a popularity contest. In fact, maybe we should trust the politicians especially when they are pushing unpopular reforms.

Edit: words and clarity

akira25013• 3 years ago

The president is weak because of his poor result at last election and the the left is using this to create a crisis in the country.

Then the weak President probably shouldn't have used article 49.3 provisions to pass the unpopular law. Considering that the outcome of this decision was obvious and that they were warned specifically that this would happen, I'd say the President and his Prime Minister created this crisis.

The people are simply unwilling to let this mismanagement slide.

srge15• 3 years ago

The executive order (49.3) is constitutionally legal. The country needs reforms. If you don’t agree vote accordingly at the next elections.

0xDEF3• 3 years ago

Don't even try to argue European politics with the American techbros on this site. They support a violent anti-capitalist revolution in France while fantasizing about gunning down homeless people in San Francisco.

srge15• 3 years ago

Yeah I am surprised to be downvoted…

paxys2• 3 years ago

A weak president using executive powers to push through laws that the vast majority of the country opposes is leading to social chaos...who could have predicted this?

littlestymaar4• 3 years ago

France is such a shit show right now (source: I am French). All of that because the president is weak because of his poor result, but he's a narcissist who think he's smarter than anyone else and is unable to even form a majority with the traditional right party who shares most of his agenda.

And because he must always be the smartest in the room, the government has to be a bunch of idiots (this is almost a literal translation of quote from the prime minister, the exact quote being «Un gouvernement composé à moitié de débiles»).

When you govern a country with less than 30% of citizen's approval acting as if none of their opinions on the subject mattered, no shit people are unhappy and start doing stupid stuff…

anonu• 3 years ago

BlackRock is one of the few companies despised by both the right and the left.

Protesters storm BlackRock’s Paris office

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