Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That is Breaking America

Matt Taibbi – 2010

Drawn primarily from pieces printed in Rolling Stone throughout 2008 and 2009, Griftopia is Matt Taibbi’s analysis of the 2008 financial meltdown, its causes and its aftermath.  Though not a specialist in economics, Taibbi undertook to understand the nature of the crisis because it was evidently the worst disaster of our time and yet so few citizens seemed to grasp what it was all about.  The reason for this, he points out, is that our politicians and news media seem incapable of dealing with subjects that don’t fit into the Left/Right dichotomy.  As in his previous book, The Great Derangement (2009), what he found was that a rigged system resides comfortably above the cultural battles of liberals and conservatives; one that has no particular interest in patriotism or the wellbeing of American citizens.  In looking into the rise of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, Taibbi observes that right-wing activists are basically conned into voting for deregulation of Wall Street because they’re persuaded that it’s an anti-big-government thing to do, but all this ends up doing it removing obstructions for investment banks to prey on the very people who have aided them.  Taibbi chronicles the slow-process of deregulation of the stock market starting in the 1980s, which reversed the trend of stability in the economy for a full 50 years prior.  What changed was that items once considered too important to gamble with – such as commodities and home loans – became open to speculation.  This led directly to the Savings & Loan scandals of 1987, the 1991 recession, the 1998 start-up bubble, and the housing mortgage bubble that burst in 2008.  Through it all, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan religiously claimed that the market was stable and encouraged investors to take risks, which every time benefitted the investment banks instead of the investors.  Special attention is given to financial giant Goldman Sachs, who emerged unscathed and even richer after the meltdown that it had recklessly helped cause.  As always, Taibbi finds staggering arrogance, corruption and incompetence under every scab and little hope for repair of this situation unless citizens begin to take an interest in the forces that are depleting their savings on a daily basis.