Welcome to the truth of a comfort show.

Today's returning guest is James Corbett of the Corbett Report.

He's here to talk about BlackRock and some of the other financial giants who seem to be buying up everything.

And then also just the general trend of monopolization.

He previously came on to talk about opium and also the media. And I always really appreciate your

time, especially the time of night you have to do these things. So it's just really good to have you here

again, James. How you doing? I'm doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances.

Thank you for having me back on.

Yeah, so just to kind of jump straight in, some people have heard of Black Rock, some people probably have never heard of them.

Would you just kind of explain to people who they are and just a brief history of how they was founded?

Sure. If you go to the Bastion of Truthiness, Wikipedia, you can get the standard encapsulation of Black Rock in a few words. So they're an asset management company,

they're an investment firm. You might see different ways that it's described, but I don't think any

one of them quite does justice to what BlackRock

has become anyway over the years. It started out specifically as an investment proposal that the founder

Larry Fink took to the offices of the Blackstone Group, which is an investment firm that's been around for quite a long time.

And Larry Fink had just come off of a terrible, horrible – he was something of an investment

Wonder Kid who was a rising star on Wall Street until at first Boston Bank, he managed to lose

$100 million in a single quarter.

And that was back when $100 million actually was a lot of money.

I suppose that doesn't sound like a lot in this day and age.

But anyway, it was a pretty big loss.

And supposedly, at least the lore has it that Larry Fink was reeling from this.

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