How BlackRock Ended Up on Both Sides of the Bailout, Feat. Meltem Demirors

The Senate passed $2T in Stimulus. That includes a one time $1,200 check to impacted individuals and….you guessed it, billions and billions for corporate relief. Included in that are hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate bond buying programs. The Federal Reserve has recruited asset management giant BlackRock to administer three of those programs.  Here’s the kicker. As Bloomberg describes it: “under the arrangement [BlackRock] could buy some of its own funds on behalf of the central bank.”  Outrage is running rampant, and to help listeners sort through it, @NLW is joined by Meltem Demirors, Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares. In this conversation, they discuss: The government mechanics behind the “money printer go brrr” meme  The unfathomable failure of US intelligence in seeing the pandemic coming  The deficit of leadership across the political spectrum  What Blackrock means and why “they’re not even pretending anymore”  Why Twitter memes on their own can’t change the world Why bitcoin can and should be a gateway and tool for evangelizing more systemic change