Public Employee Press

"Griftopia" or How Wall Street sunk the economy

Rolling Stone investigative reporter Matt Taibbi adds new outrages to the story of how Wall Street caused the world economic crisis and brings it all together in his angry, eloquent and understandable new book, "Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids and the Long Con That Is Breaking America."

He begins with the easy-credit policies of former Federal Reserve Chair Allen Greenspan and the bipartisan regulatory "reform" that stripped away the real banking reforms enacted during the Depression of the 1930s. These allowed the epidemic of fraudulent loans that credit-rating agencies helped market as solid securities.

With a surgeon's skill, Taibbi cuts through the media hype to examine the massive fraud the Wall Street grifters perpetrated on the American people.

He reserves a special place in hell for Goldman Sachs, the world's most powerful investment bank, which he calls "a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity." Goldman Sachs engaged in every scam and emerged unscathed while taking an outsized share of federal bailout funds with the aid of strategically placed alumni who served in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.

Taibbi also describes some of the outrageous schemes that fiscally starved cities and states have come up with, such as selling off public assets like parking meter revenues and toll highways to hedge funds and foreign sovereign wealth funds.

He laments that even as Wall Street readied fat 2010 bonuses while still escaping its fair share of taxes, many politicians are fast replacing a focus on the financial sector that caused the current misery with an effort to scapegoat the victims, especially labor, immigrants and the poor.

Calls for new Wall Street taxes, such as a financial speculation tax, go virtually unheard, while public employee pay, pensions and benefits are under attack, and America's appetite for the truth seems sidetracked.

"Griftopia" ($26) is available in the Education Fund Library, Room 211 at DC 37, for members to borrow.

—Ken Nash