I am Alladin

Image from  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer

You may be thinking "open sesame" or some Disney cartoon remake of the Alladin story, but what I am referring to is the huge Blackrock supercomputer called  Aladdin (Asset, Liability and Debt and Derivative Investment Network) which is an electronic system built by BlackRock Solutions, the risk management division of the largest investment management corporation in the world. 

The one that is buying up massive tracts of land and real property driving up housing costs.  Yeah, that one.  

In 2013, it handled about $11 trillion in assets (including BlackRock's $4.1 trillion assets), which was about 7% of the world's financial assets, and kept track of about 30,000 investment portfolios. As of 2020, Aladdin managed $21.6 trillion in assets.

Just to put that in perspective New York State has the third-largest economy in the United States, with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of approximately $2.32 trillion as of 2024. 

This data point only makes sense from a social justice point of view if you go back to 1968.  In that year TRW acquired Credit Data and began surveilling the financial transactions of basically everyone.  Fast forward to 1996 and you have Bain Capital (Mitt Romney) buying TRW credit reporting and renaming it Experion.  Today 3 credit reporting agencies determine if you can get a loan.  They have a complete lock on us. 

Ever missed a credit card payment?  Watch what happens!!  Your score will drop 100 points from that one transgression. 

However this story is not about credit, but surveillance.  Experion is like a handicapped version of Aladdin; which not only compiles financial data on everyone, every corporation and everything, but also an algorithm that uses predictive programming with data from many sources (including your social media feed and shopping data from places like Amazon and Walmart). Essentially, they can direct huge flows of money based on what they are seeing out in the world. 

What these flows of money mean is that they can move markets and manipulate democracy.   If a president or a congress makes a law that would curtail their profit making it is entirely possible with 21 billion in assets Blackrock (alone or with other hedge funds) could create market volatility, tank certain sectors of the economy or just create problems with credit markets.  

The sad fact is that there is a very incestuous relationship between the banks and hedge funds as evidenced by the Archegos Capital Management incident that resulted in the loss of 100 Billion dollars. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve have no controls on these folks.  They are essentially the private government running the government. 

So ... what does this have to do with Quakerism and the work of OPJ? It all points to these questions: 

• What right do companies have to our data? 
• What right do they have to sell and trade our data? 
• Who gets to control the data, manipulate the data, use the data against us?
  • many people do not even know that online sellers like Amazon, TicketMaster, Uber and many others use dynamic pricing (that means the price changes minute by minute) and will raise the price of an item if it is in demand or if there is an urgency to buy it. 
  • for example, diapers ordered late at night cost 4-7% more than during regular business hours. 
  • Target will charge less for an item if you are outside the store in a nearby location than if you are inside the store. 
  • FYI -- it was Quakers who came up with fair pricing practices.  
    In the mid-1800s, Quakers revolutionized retail by introducing fixed, honest pricing to counter the era's common practice of haggling
    . Driven by convictions of integrity, equality, and simplicity.
  • Is there anywhere that we can be free of the chaos of the market? 
• Is there any area of our lives that can be private?  

As clerk of OPJ, I'd like to raise awareness of the fact that the US DOES NOT HAVE ONE SINGLE DATA PROTECTION LAW TO SHIELD US CITIZENS FROM THE ABUSES MENTIONED ABOVE. 

We need to have something similar to what the EU passed.  

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in effect since May 25, 2018, is the primary, strict EU law governing data protection and privacy for individuals in the EEA, with heavy fines up to €20 million or 4% of global turnover. It mandates explicit consent, data minimization, and grants individuals rights to access, erase, and move their data. 

Find out more about this issue here.

~ Joseph Olejak