Griftopia by Matt Taibbi

For those of us unschooled in the financial services sector and relatively unaware of it's stranglehold over our government, the US economy, and the manipulation of the world economy this book is gold. Taibbi's biting wit and ability to explain things in layman's terms makes this book a must read. His now famous quote from "The Great American Bubble Machine" article in Rolling Stone is a teaser for the book:

"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates."

Most importantly Taibbi gives us a history of the rules and regulations that the biggest players have shredded for their benefit and to the detriment of people all over the planet, just in the last 30 years. I nodded my head as I remembered my 4 days in a cubicle (fucking torture for me anyway) at a JP Morgan office that had me pulling the signature documents out of mortgage files so they could be scanned and put online. This was in 2006, and I had never seen mortgage documents before but something smelled rotten in Denmark to me. I KNEW what I was looking at didn't make any sense:

Shitholes sold at over-inflated prices to minorities with revolting balloon payment seconds. The unquestioning little hamsters on wheels that worked in this office did NOT want me learning anything, or even voicing my confusion. They thought I was stupid and incapable of learning what they wanted me to do. If any of those tools understood that I was questioning this all-mighty banking behemoth, they never let on, even after I snarled back at them that there weren't any rocket scientists in that place. They looked at me like I was a heretic when I questioned the intelligence of the person who wrote the fire-drill plan. The fires were bad here later that year, with multiple homes lost in the area very close to the place I was and I've often wondered about that.

So, moving on, Taibbi makes us aware of what was supposed to be a temporary law signed by FDR which is wreaking havoc in our healthcare system called the McCarran-Ferguson Act that exempts the business of insurance from most federal regulation, including federal anti-trust laws to a limited extent. The inablility to change that helped make the healthcare reform bill a joke.

The venality, criminality, and arrogance of the financial sector during the bail-outs is going to get worse. The revolving doors between government and business have only recieved some grease. Today's news is only another example:

Business Background Defines New Chief of Staff

The food riots in 2008 were caused by commodities traders and speculators and so were shitloads of other bubbles, including the housing bubble. They get in and manipulate the prices by injecting a bunch of money, running up the prices, getting their commissions and getting out before the crashes they create happen. I remember the Enron traders and how they made my electric bill double in one month, and the rolling black outs they caused and laughed at, so I hate those testosterone fueled pricks. I should have known it was them, but I wondered whether it was supply and demand.

The consolidation of banks makes me feel like I'm watching that old Pac-Man game.

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