BlackRock and the pension system in Chile and Mexico

Abstract

Since the 1970s, and with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods monetary order, the conditions were created that made possible the formation of a financialized regime that transformed the economic and financial markets, generating constant uncertainty, deregulation and promoting structural reforms that have contributed in large part to the search for new spaces of valorization and liquidity. These reforms have favored the interests of the financial sector, promoting numerous privatizations -banking, State enterprises, insurance, pensions-, the individualization of risks, the precariousness of the labor market and new forms of accumulation. In this context, financial institutions such as BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, whose presence in Latin America has increased in various sectors of the economy.

In this sense, this article seeks to analyze BlackRock's influence on the reorganization of the pension systems in Chile and Mexico. In particular, its role in increasing the profits of financial institutions through speculation and exposure to greater risks of the savings of the working class by investment funds, and the transfer of losses to workers, which is reflected in the decrease in the amount of their pensions.