MADNESS OF WEALTH: 2/4: Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America by Charles Gasparino (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Go-Woke-Broke-Radicalization-Corporate/dp/1546007415/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
How did a bunch of rich dudes who run corporate America become the tools of left-wing radicals? Intimidated by activists on the left, virtually every major corporation in America has embraced woke politics. For years, these businesses could get away with progressive virtual signaling without worrying about alienating customers. Then the anti-woke counter-offensive movement arrived. As high-profile, disastrous backlashes at companies like Anheuser-Busch, Disney, Target and other companies reveal, companies who cave to the demands of left-wing social justice activists are being punished like never before. Customers are fighting back and taking their money elsewhere.
In Go Woke, Go Broke, New York Times bestselling author and veteran financial journalist Charles Gasparino calls out the nonsense and takes readers inside the radicalization of corporate America, based on numerous insider interviews and exclusive reporting. The story is wilder than you can imagine. Gasparino introduces readers to America’s most woke corporate leaders, tracing the origins of ESG and "stakeholder investing.” He takes readers along on for a rollicking ride through corporate America as he shines a light, unlike anyone else, on Fortune 500 companies that have suffered for caving to the silly and irresponsible demands of social justice activists and left-wing interests.
A respected financial reporter who has covered finance for more than 30 years, Gasparino is deeply sourced and has dug into countless episodes involving Wall Street greed, corporate hubris, and government overreach in enterprise. This explosive, untold story and in-depth examination of the seminal players, institutions, and forces of the markets shows that, for the sake of global stability, we must immediately pry the clenched fists of radical activists off the levers of the economy.
1907 NYSE
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchew with Charlie Gasparino. |
| 0:07.4 | Charles Gasparino is on Fox business all the time, covering breaking news stories. |
| 0:13.4 | But what he's done is the, he's done us the favor and the hard work of going back to when woke capitalism started. |
| 0:22.5 | And Zuccotti Park, Charlie and I both were there at different moments, seeing what |
| 0:27.1 | essentially was an encampment, not dissimilar to some of the encampments that have been |
| 0:32.2 | in the news recently, but it was centered around, well, it was sentimental, reminded me of my youth and the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s and 70s. |
| 0:42.4 | There were Marxist books laid out. |
| 0:44.9 | There were, well, there were no NLF flags, but in any event it was that, it would have been if it was 1969 and not 2011. |
| 0:53.7 | And the people who were there tended to be her suit and not corporate, |
| 0:58.2 | but they were objecting to something that was not true, but it was in the news, that the banks were |
| 1:04.9 | paying out big bonuses despite the fact that many people had lost their houses because |
| 1:09.4 | they'd bought something they couldn't afford. |
| 1:12.4 | That was the great recession. Here we are, though, talking now about some acronyms. And I need |
| 1:18.1 | some definitions, Charlie. You mentioned Larry Fink, and I find him a compelling person chiefly because |
| 1:23.5 | he talked to you. So many of these CEOs did not, and that's not helpful. That doesn't tell us |
| 1:29.9 | what happened. All right, you've mentioned ESG and T and DEI, those two things. There's also HR, |
| 1:38.7 | and I became suspicious after a while, Charlie, that the HR invented all this stuff. Is that true? Did they embrace it first |
| 1:46.2 | and then it went up the corporate ladder? Great question. I don't think so. I think it was |
| 1:52.5 | embraced at the top and I think it got infused into the corporate ecosystem at places like |
| 1:58.2 | Davos and the UN began with it with ESG environmental social |
| 2:02.5 | governance investing. Dei and you know in these sort of you know it's interesting you know |
| 2:08.0 | CEOs are very very very much into group think I mean all these guys they all go to |
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