Stock Buybacks and the Trillion Dollar Heist (with Senator Cory Booker)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Corporations are on track to spend more than $1.3 trillion on stock buybacks this year—money that could have gone toward higher wages, innovation, or community investment. That’s the real-life Trillion Dollar Heist at the center of our new comic from Civic Ventures, which follows Marta, a janitor who interrupts a corporate board meeting just as executives plot their next billion-dollar buyback spree. This week, we’re resharing our 2019 conversation with Senator Cory Booker, who explains how stock buybacks went from illegal market manipulation to one of the biggest drivers of inequality. Read the Trillion Dollar Heist Comic: https://bindings.app/read/7mINYO2H This episode originally aired February 26, 2019. Senator Cory Booker is a Democratic lawmaker from New Jersey who has served in the U.S. Senate since 2013. A Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law graduate, he began his career on the Newark City Council before serving as mayor from 2006 to 2013. In the Senate, Booker has focused on criminal justice reform, economic opportunity, climate action, and protecting civil and LGBTQ+ rights. Social Media: Marta Paul Constant Sarah Star Litt Alan Robinson Pippa Bowland AndWorld Design Mary P. Traverse Further reading: Trillion Dollar Heist Comic Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Paul Constant.
0:01.2	Hi.
0:01.9	Read any good comic books lately?
0:05.2	I do.
0:06.2	I read lots of good comic books all the time, but I think you mean to ask.
0:12.3	That's right.
0:13.1	The more pertinent question, hey, Paul Constant, written any good comic books lately?
0:19.8	Well, I have written a comic book, and it is something that I
0:25.4	am pretty proud of. I will leave it up to others to decide if it's good or not, but it is free,
0:31.0	and that counts for something. Right. And be clear, you are amongst your many talents. You are
0:37.0	an experienced comic book author.
0:40.3	What do you call the person who writes the book part of the comic book?
0:43.7	Yeah, comic book writer. I have written many comic books, including one, which is called Planet of the Nerds,
0:49.6	which was optioned by Paramount for a film adaptation that sadly didn't happen but is now
0:56.1	optioned by another company.
0:57.7	So it might eventually become a movie one day.
1:00.0	And I've always enjoyed comic books.
1:01.8	Comics are how I learned how to read.
1:03.5	I think there are a really important and sort of underserved medium for communication.
1:09.8	I think that you can get a lot of information across in a
1:12.5	comics page in a way that you can't on a page of prose. Right. And also aimed at general audiences
1:19.9	as opposed to with economics. One of the things that I think defines pitchfork economics is that
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Civic Ventures, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Civic Ventures and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.