Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
Written by Matt Taibbi [more]
Preface: A Grifter is a swindler, or con artist. Taibbi feels the US economic and political system is run by grifters so much that the last ten years have created a grifter's utopia - Griftopia. This Rolling Stone writer's account of why he thinks the bubble economy has developed if filled with hyperbole and is vulgar and irreverant, but he makes some really good (and scary) points about greed in our financial system. Like Michael Moore movies, his views are extreme and one-sided; unlike Michael Moore movies, Taibbi favors research and facts over anecdotes and contrived vignettes.
A favorite quote:
"When the economy imploded, the country had for a time been treated to the rare spectacle of a perfectly bipartisan political disaster, with both Republicans and Democrats sharing equally in the decades-long effort at deregulation that opened the door to the Grifter era. And the crisis forced a nation of people accustomed to thinking that their only political decisions came once every four years to consider, for really the first time, the political import of regular or even daily items like internet rates, gasoline prices, ATM fees and FICO scores."
