BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's letter: "Growing with your country"
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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink speaks in Washington on March 11. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Larry Fink — chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager — says in a letter to investors out Monday that for more Americans to share in the future growth of their country, "we have to make long-term investing easier, broader, and more accessible."
Why it matters: Fink, who calls himself a "long-term optimist," has worked passionately to stimulate a conversation about rethinking retirement in America.
- "The world is reorganizing around self-reliance — and that's expensive," he writes in the 17-page letter. "And that requires more long-term investment."
Zoom in: Getting more Americans invested in their own economy, Fink says, starts with "early wealth-building accounts and a long-overdue conversation about Social Security."
- Fink writes that much of today's economic anxiety comes from the feeling "that capitalism is working — just not for enough people. And a focus on short-term investing is not a fix for that. Rather, it is long-term investing that allows countries to build domestic industries, that lets people build enduring wealth, and shows how their country's growth can benefit them too."
- "At its best," Fink adds, "long-term investing performs a kind of civic miracle. When people invest their savings — over decades, not days — the capital markets put that money to work, financing companies, infrastructure, and jobs. And when that cycle happens in your own country, your future and your nation's future become linked. You help finance its growth. It helps finance yours."
Zoom out: Fink is concerned about making prosperity "feel increasingly distant to those on the outside." He wants the country to navigate the coming AI jobs disruption so we don't replicate, for instance, the hammering the Rust Belt took during globalization, and instead help as many people as possible benefit from the dynamism of the economy.
- In the short term, AI is spawning jobs that pay well: skilled trades, especially ones like electricians that are building the physical infrastructure of AI — data centers, power systems and electrical grids.
- "For decades," Fink writes, "many societies have equated success with a university degree and a white-collar path. As technology reshapes parts of that landscape, we need a broader conversation about opportunity, dignity, and the value of different kinds of work."
The bottom line: Fink notes that July won't just be the nation's 250th birthday. It's also the 250th anniversary of the widespread availability of "The Wealth of Nations" by Scotland's Adam Smith, the founding father of capitalism.
- "The two concepts strengthen each other," Fink writes. "Democracy depends on people feeling they have a genuine stake in their country's future."
