Susan Bradford is the author of The BlackRock Bamboozle and a dozen other books.

Born in 1952 to Frederick Allen Fink and Lila Ruth (née Raskin) Fink in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, Larry Fink grew up in Encino, California with his siblings, Steven and Patricia. An influential neighbor and close family friend was junk bond king Michael Milken, who partnered with Steven and Oracle founder Larry Ellison on a number of business ventures and helped elevate the Fink brothers to great heights.

In 1978, Larry joined First Boston where the he “pioneered” the mortgage-backed security (MBS), a scam that has devastated housing markets world wide while shoring up wealth and real estate assets into the hands of the financial elite.

After Commerce Secretary Peter Peterson convinced President Richard Nixon to decouple the dollar from gold and launch the fiat currency in 1971, a bank could “create” money by extending credit for home mortgages that homeowners were required to pay back through monthly payments, with interest.