The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America (with Mehrsa Baradaran)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran joins Nick and Goldy to reveal how neoliberalism wasn’t just a misguided economic theory—it was a “quiet coup” that rewired our laws, courts, and institutions to elevate capital above democracy. Drawing from her new book The Quiet Coup, Professor Baradaran explains how this ideology became like the air we breathe: a pervasive worldview that shapes our politics, our markets, and even the way we understand ourselves. They explore how elite power captured the machinery of government, why the market has become a runaway algorithm fueling inequality, and what it will take to break free from an ideology so deeply embedded we mistake it for common sense. Mehrsa Baradaran is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the nation’s leading experts on banking law, inequality, and the racial wealth gap. She is the author of The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America, The Color of Money, and How the Other Half Banks. Her research traces how financial policy, legal structures, and political power shape inequality in the United States. Social Media: @mehrsab.bsky.social Mehrsabaradaran @MehrsaBaradaran Further reading: The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America The Color of Money How the Other Half Banks Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics TikTok: @pitchfork_econ YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.
0:10.6	The last five decades of trickle-down economics haven't worked.
0:14.8	But what's the alternative?
0:16.3	Middle-out economics is the answer.
0:18.6	Because the middle class is the source of growth, not its consequence.
0:23.1	That's right.
0:28.7	This is pitchfork economics with Nick Hanauer, a podcast about how to build the economy from the middle out.
0:36.9	Welcome to the show.
0:41.9	We're recording this podcast in a year in which a very loud coup has been going on before our very eyes,
0:50.8	as the Trump administration and his cronies have been really quite publicly dismantling
0:58.5	democracy, all of our democratic institutions and norms. But it turns out this didn't happen in a
1:04.8	vacuum. There's been a quiet coup going on for at least the past 50 years, according to our guest.
1:14.2	Yes, it's true. And today we're talking with Mersa Beridharan, who's a professor of law at
1:19.7	UC Irvine and one of the country's leading experts on banking inequality about her new book,
1:26.2	The Quiet Coup, Neoliberalism and the Looting of America.
1:30.4	You know, what's super interesting about her perspective, which is somewhat different from ours,
1:35.1	although highly aligned.
1:36.1	Yeah, very aligned.
1:37.5	Aligned, but just a different flavor.
1:39.5	What she focuses on is less the economics of neoliberalism and more the way in which it has
1:48.0	influenced our legal and institutional structures, which is equally valid and important, right?
1:54.6	And, you know, how corporate power quietly captures laws and has hollowed out democracy. I think that's just so
	...

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