Griftopia

Starred review from November 8, 2010
Taibbi eviscerates Wall Street for what he considers frauds perpetrated on the American people over the last ten years. Delving into complicated financial history and lingo, Taibbi deftly lays the subject bare, rendering heretofore-dense subject matter simple without being simplistic. Blame for the recent mortgage collapse, commodities bubble, and tech bubble are laid at the feet of a relatively small number of bankers and traders who, in the author's opinion, act without fear of reciprocity from a U.S. government no longer representative of the American people. He begins by awarding the title "Biggest Asshole In The Universe" to former-Fed Chief Alan Greenspan, taking him to task for willfully or stupidly disemboweling what little regulation the financial markets may have had before his tenure. This theme resounds throughout, and Taibbi asserts that the collusion between Wall Street and the White House has effectively turned the United States into a massive casino, in which working Americans are regularly bilked out of their savings and homes while the wealthy are repeatedly rewarded for their graft. It's an important and worthy read, but not for the Randian disciple or Goldman-Sachs alum.

October 15, 2010

A ticked-off field guide to modern America, a place where the con artists of high finance call the shots.

"There are really two Americas, one for the grifter class, and one for everybody else," writes Rolling Stone correspondent and frequent TV commentator Taibbi (The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, 2008, etc.). Given that almost everybody in that "everybody else" category knows nothing about how finance works, it's all too easy for the grifters to convince us that Wall Street is our friend and Washington our enemy. The author writes with populist fervor, but with the left-trending populism of an Upton Sinclair rather than a Father Coughlin. He has no use for the teabagger crowd or its prom queen, Sarah Palin—who, he writes, with memorable venom, "looks like a chief flight attendant on a Piedmont flight from Winston-Salem to Cleveland, with only the bag of almonds and the polyester kerchief missing from the picture." For all that, he does not discount the wrath that Palin and her cohorts express; even though it's misplaced, he writes, it's very real. Whether his patient explanations will ever reach that crowd remains to be seen, but Taibbi writes carefully about such things as the way that "gamblers disguised as Wall Street brokers" manipulate commodities to the exclusive benefit of the small capitalist—grifter, that is—class. The author writes with scorn for recent political maneuverings that amount to giveaways great and small to the con artists, not least of them the health-care reform package so despised by right-wingers—who, Taibbi adds, have ever since "disgraced themselves by spinning out one easily debunked lie after another" and otherwise behaving like infants.

Meaty food for thought, steeped in righteous bile.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 15, 2010

Rolling Stone contributing editor Taibbi (The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion) lucidly deconstructs the high-finance shenanigans of Wall Street and political power brokers that have fleeced the U.S. economy to the tune of billions of dollars. The outrageous, unchecked greed and power of financial industry behemoths like Goldman Sachs (the "Vampire Squid" of the title) and AIG are meticulously and succinctly described. The evidence of actually criminal, or at least morally criminal, financial misdeeds should spark fury in the average person, but Taibbi concedes that it is exceedingly difficult to get anyone to pay attention to the real stories behind corporate bailouts, the mortgage scam, lax financial regulation, and health-care reform as well as those who stand to profit at the expense of the rest of us by exploiting the industry to their advantage. VERDICT Taibbi's glib prose is punctuated with just enough irreverence and wit to allow him to appeal to more casual readers while providing sufficient detail to satisfy those looking for a serious discussion of the high-level manipulation of the economy. Recommended for anyone interested in understanding the economy and how it got that way.--Donna L. Davey, NYU Libs., New York

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2010
Rolling Stone contributing editor Taibbi delivers a blistering examination of the upheaval that has roiled the American economic system over the past several years. At the heart of the upheaval, he says, is a vein of greed running up and down the real-estate industry, from mortgage brokers who falsified customer loan applications to banks that parceled out mortgages to second and third parties to rating agencies that signed off on highly suspect loans. Taibbi saves a good deal of venom for former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, arguing that Greenspans philosophy of easy cash, limited government oversight of markets, and bailing out too big to fail financial institutions all fueled the recent economic meltdown. And Taibbi profiles a recently passed health-care bill severely compromised by an all-powerful insurance lobby. As critical as he is of the processa process not likely to get fixed any time soonhe doesnt seem to carry an agenda; instead, like any good investigative reporter, he mostly follows his nose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)