Algérie Résistance

Werner Rügemer: « The EU has been a capitalist bureaucracy since its earliest stages »

Publié le 25 août 2026

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: You claim that giants like BlackRock and Vanguard are forming a new hidden global power. Do you think that today’s Western governments still have the political means to dictate rules to them, or have they become mere executors?

Werner Rügemer: BlackRock and Vanguard are the largest of several hundred financial players that emerged entirely anew in the U.S. as a result of the deregulation of the 1990s; these also include much smaller entities such as hedge funds and private equity funds (“locusts”). They pool the money of the super-rich and use it to buy shares in companies and banks.

This is how they first rose to prominence in the U.S. They have replaced traditional banks—BlackRock Vanguard, State Street, Wellington, Fidelity, Capital Group & Co. are now the leading shareholders even in the few remaining Wall Street banks. BlackRock & Co., acting collectively, are the largest shareholder group in the most important U.S. companies and banks, including Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia, and the largest defense conglomerates like Lockheed, Boeing, General Atomics, Raytheon/RTX and the largest pharmaceutical and energy conglomerates. And since the “financial crisis” of 2008—BlackRock & Co. didn’t experience any crisis—they have also become the leading shareholders in Europe’s most important countries, such as Germany, France, England, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, as well as in Asia, particularly in Japan.