MADNESS OF WEALTH: 4/4: 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
⏱️ 6 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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batch who is my colleague, Charles Gasparino. |
| 0:08.8 | His new book, Go Woke, Go Broke, is the story of these last, maybe more than a dozen years |
| 0:15.2 | of what is called woke capitalism. |
| 0:18.5 | It has a lot of acronyms. |
| 0:20.1 | The inside story of the radicalization of corporate America. |
| 0:22.9 | But we come to a point where woke capitalism is still out there. |
| 0:28.0 | It's still being practiced at the human resources level. |
| 0:32.2 | Questions are still being asked of employees, all of that. |
| 0:35.9 | But there seems to be no longer a surge of it. |
| 0:40.5 | There's backpedaling. |
| 0:42.3 | And Charlie goes through some of the backpedalers. |
| 0:44.9 | Why? |
| 0:45.4 | Because they lost money. |
| 0:47.3 | BlackRock down with $14 billion of withdrawals. |
| 0:51.8 | You mentioned a IS shares of global energy down 27% when everything else is doing well. |
| 0:58.8 | And Larry Fink, recognizing that ESG wasn't the best idea for him to gain success forever. |
| 1:07.8 | And so he's backed off and become something of a moderate. |
| 1:10.5 | But this is a list that got me, Charlie. |
| 1:13.4 | Goldman is discontinuing or at least cutting back on diversity programs. Ken Griffin goes to Florida. |
| 1:20.9 | David Solomon of Goldman is thinking about Texas. Am I over interpreting these things? |
| 1:28.2 | It looks like they're abandoning ESG. |
| 1:31.1 | They are. |
... |
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