Michael Pyle
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Mike Pyle – Institutional | BlackRock
2021-01-10 Kamala Harris Picks Member of World’s Largest Asset Firm as Top Economic Adviser The American Prospect reported on Wednesday that Mike Pyle, global chief investment strategist at BlackRock and one of the original members of Fink’s “shadow government,” will become Vice President Harris’ chief economist.
In March 2016, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink began hiring a “shadow government” of Democratic operatives and economic policy wonks. The reasoning was transparent: this coterie of revolvers would safeguard BlackRock’s interests in Washington whether or not Larry Fink was ultimately named Treasury Secretary, a role to which he long aspired and for which Barack Obama had already considered him.
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, managing just under $8 trillion of assets as of September 2020, much of which is invested passively in the world’s largest companies in everything from oil to green energy to cybersecurity to infrastructure development.
Though Clinton ultimately lost the election, Fink continued hiring Democratic operatives and remained personally involved in party politics. Now, as Joe Biden prepares to enter the White House, members of the BlackRock “shadow government” are queued up for major policy roles. They include Brian Deese, who will be the next National Economic Council director, and Wally Adeyemo, who will be a top aide to Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen. Yet the BlackRock figure set to join the administration with the deepest ties to both the firm and the neoliberal economic policies it benefits from won’t be serving in the White House at all, but rather as the top economic aide to Biden’s potential successor.
2021-01-06 Another BlackRock Veteran Will Join the Biden Administration
The Prospect has learned that Michael Pyle, currently the global chief investment strategist at leading asset management firm BlackRock, will become part of the Biden-Harris administration in the coming days. Pyle, an Obama administration veteran who also worked on economic policy in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, will become the chief economist to Vice President–elect Kamala Harris, according to sources familiar with the transition.
Pyle would be the third former BlackRock official to join the administration. Brian Deese, who was global head of sustainable investing at the firm, has been named as Biden’s national economic director. And Wally Adeyemo, former chief of staff to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, is the nominee for deputy Treasury secretary. Neither Deese nor Pyle would require confirmation by the Senate.
If anything, Pyle has a deeper relationship to BlackRock than his colleagues. He’s been there longer, since at least 2014. And his role as chief investment strategist is more central to BlackRock’s operations; he frequently comments on behalf of the firm in the media. BlackRock has drawn criticism for its contributions to climate change and its ability to use its influence inside governments to win favorable policies for its bottom line. It has been accused of self-enrichment while managing the Federal Reserve’s corporate-debt buying during the pandemic.
Pyle was seen as a likely candidate to re-enter the government four years ago. BlackRock recruited him from the Obama administration, where he served as a senior adviser to Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs Lael Brainard. Pyle also worked at the National Economic Council and the Office of Management and Budget. He was an unpaid adviser to the Clinton campaign on financial policy, and seemed destined for a spot if Clinton won the election.
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