Asset managers control a growing share of society’s essentials

Which bits of a country should the state control, and which can be privatised? In the last decades of the 20th century, the answer to one of the thorniest questions in political economy shifted decisively. Starting in Britain and America, in the 1980s governments sold off some $185bn-worth of assets (roughly equivalent to Australia’s GDP in 1985). The Soviet Union’s fall, and the transformation of eastern Europe from a communist bloc into a series of market economies, supercharged the trend. In big swathes of the world not only state-owned companies but housing, railways, sewage pipes, power grids and much else became private property.