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The Federal Reserve is expanding its balance sheet, signaling the potential return of quantitative easing (QE). Quantitative easing is essentially money printing: the Federal Reserve creates new money to buy government bonds or other assets. Its stated goal is to put money into the financial system, lower interest rates, and stimulate the economy when it’s weak.
Previous rounds of QE pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets, driving mortgage rates down and pushing home prices to record highs. That surge priced out millions of young Americans entering adulthood while housing supply hit a historic low.
Economists have long warned that no generation will feel the effects more directly than Gen Z—an entire generation already jaded by rising housing costs, wage stagnation, and a rapidly shifting economic landscape.
If QE continues, experts say liquidity could once again flow into the real estate market, pushing prices even higher. For a generation already facing the worst housing affordability in modern U.S. history, this could cement Gen Z as a generation of forever-renters.
So who stands to benefit from this?
BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager—a financial giant controlling over $10 trillion in assets spanning stocks, bonds, real estate, infrastructure, and global markets. Unlike a bank, it doesn’t lend money or take deposits. Instead, it manages investments for pension funds, governments, corporations, and wealthy clients, using their capital to buy massive stakes in companies and assets worldwide.
BlackRock’s sheer size allows it to shape corporate decisions, influence government policy, and dominate public markets without meaningful oversight. Since it manages government funds while investing in the same markets influenced by its guidance, critics argue the firm faces serious conflicts of interest.
While BlackRock insists it is not buying single-family homes, it openly invests in real estate through mortgage-backed securities, rental housing developments, and major industry players. One example: Dallas-based Invitation Homes, which owns nearly 80,000 single-family rentals nationwide.
The company frequently claims it is confused with Blackstone—another major private-equity firm that owns over 61,000 single-family homes and more than 250,000 rental units across the U.S. Notably, Blackstone originally owned a stake in BlackRock before the firms split and became independent.
BlackRock has also blurred the line between Wall Street and Washington. It has hired former regulators and policymakers, including Dalia Blass from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Brian Deese, a former BlackRock executive, later served on the National Economic Council. Adewale Adeyemo—former chief of staff to BlackRock’s CEO—went on to serve as U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
What’s perhaps most concerning are BlackRock’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The firm holds the first wholly-owned foreign mutual fund license in China. Since U.S. investors are legally barred from directly owning Chinese firms, BlackRock’s clients instead hold shares of offshore shell entities—structures designed to bypass those restrictions.
A 2021 letter from Consumers’ Research warned that under a 2017 Chinese law, companies must provide intelligence to the government upon request. In 2023, a congressional committee opened an investigation into whether BlackRock invested U.S. retirement savings in Chinese companies blacklisted for national security and human rights violations.
The committee later revealed that BlackRock invested more than $429 million in companies tied to the Chinese military and surveillance state.
The global economic order is clearly undergoing realignment. Marco Rubio recently argued that the United States is shifting from a unipolar era to a multipolar one, as China and Russia rise as strategic competitors. With that acknowledgment from senior U.S. officials, the question becomes: how much foreign influence—especially from adversarial governments—should be permitted in America's private financial sector?
Gen Z entered adulthood in one of the most volatile economic periods in modern history. For them, renewed QE isn’t a theoretical policy debate—it determines whether they can afford housing, build savings, pay off debt, and eventually start a family. Will they realize the American Dream—or will they own nothing and be expected to feel grateful?
