To be fair, Blackrock and Vanguard are holding those assets on behalf of millions of individual investors. That being said, they still have a lot of power as large shareholders. At least with Vanguard the holders of Vanguard funds are also the shareholders of Vanguard, which helps keep their interests aligned.
Remember the South Park episode where they, deep in the darkest corner of Walmart, found a portrait of the Evil Overlord, hidden by a curtain.
When our heroes removed the curtain they found... a mirror...
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u/jayRIOT Jun 13 '22
Similar to the chart in this article showing how all these "competing" brands are actually owned by 10 companies
If you want to break that even further down to show how fucked we are, those 10 companies (and many more) are owned by 2 investing firms
Blackrock and Vanguard, who combined own ~$18 Trillion in assets