Investment giants BlackRock and The Vanguard Group stand to benefit from their ownership stakes in most of the corporations that imposed COVID vaccine mandates, and in some of the technology firms developing vaccine passports.
After the U.S. Supreme Court last month froze the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for large private employers, some companies — including Boeing, General Electric and Starbucks — dropped plans to implement the mandate.
Others, based on guidance issued in 2020 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, left the mandates in place.
Most of the large employers that opted to mandate COVID vaccines for their employees, even though the Supreme Court ruled they didn’t have to, have something in common: BlackRock and The Vanguard Group have ownership stakes in them.
BlackRock and Vanguard, two of the world’s “Big Three” asset managers, also are among the top three shareholders of COVID vaccine makers Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — which means the two investment giants stand to benefit from these companies’ soaring profits and the resulting rise in those companies’ stock prices.
BlackRock and Vanguard don’t just benefit from sales of COVID vaccines. As it turns out, they also have ownership stakes in technology companies developing vaccine passports and digital wallets.
BlackRock: the ‘fourth branch of government’?
Combined, BlackRock and Vanguard manage more than $15 trillion in global assets.
To put this figure into perspective, that amounts to more than three-fourths of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and more than triple the GDP of the European Union’s economic powerhouse, Germany.
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with more than $9.5 trillion in assets as of July 2021, while Vanguard held more than $7 trillion in assets as of January 2021.
Notably, Vanguard is the largest stockholder in BlackRock (7.61%), while BlackRock is the biggest stockholder in Vanguard (13.06%) — though the actual ownership structure of these companies has been described as “dark.”
In an August 2021 article about the two firms, Dr. Joseph Mercola pointed out that, far from the appearance of competition promised by capitalism, BlackRock and Vanguard own significant shares in companies that ostensibly compete directly with each other, such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, or Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.
This influence extends to the media. BlackRock alone owns significant shares in supposed “competitors” such as Fox News, CBS, Comcast (NBC), CNN, Disney (ABC), Gannett (USA TODAY and 250 daily newspapers throughout the U.S.), Sinclair Media (whose television stations reach 72% of the American public), and the Graham Media Group (Slate, Foreign Policy).
BlackRock is also politically influential and well-connected, having been chosen by the Obama administration to buy up toxic assets following the 2007-2008 financial collapse.
In 2020, BlackRock received a no-bid contract from the U.S. Treasury Department to manage a $454 billion fund, under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), for businesses adversely impacted by the COVID lockdowns early that year. It wasn’t the first time BlackRock had been granted a no-bid contract from the federal government.
BlackRock along with other firms also is engaged in a real estate purchasing spree, buying up entire neighborhoods of single-family homes and converting them to rentals, driving up home prices by reducing supply on the marketplace.
BlackRock’s real estate strategy echoes the words of the World Economic Forum: “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.”
This level of power and influence promoted none other than Bloomberg in 2020 to characterize BlackRock as the “fourth branch of government.”
BlackRock, Vanguard among top 10 stockholders in most companies mandating vaccines
It is unclear to what extent BlackRock and Vanguard are able to dictate the vaccination policies of the companies in which they hold a stake — but what is clear is that the two investment firms are among the top 10 stockholders in most of these companies.
Here’s a rundown of major U.S. employers that continue to mandate COVID vaccines for their employers, and these companies’ relationships with BlackRock and/or Vanguard (all ownership figures are accurate as of this writing):
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