Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi
Matthew C. "Matt" Taibbiis an American author and journalist. Taibbi has reported on politics, media, finance, and sports, and has authored several books, including The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking Americaand The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth2 March 1970
CountryUnited States of America
I don't often get angered by the things press spokespeople say. Most of these people have difficult jobs and are often forced to be the public faces of policies they had nothing to do with creating.
In the years just after 9/11, even being breathed on by a suspected terrorist could land you in extralegal detention for the rest of your life.
I actually never thought that Barack Obama was anything but a typical Democratic party politician, which to me meant that he was probably in bed with Wall Street.
When push comes to shove, we all should know most Americans want the same things, but just disagree on how to get there, which is why it should be okay to not panic if the other party wins.
The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.
We may be many things, we Americans, but we always get the job done.
'Nobody goes to jail.' This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth - and nobody went to jail.
Within the cult of Wall Street that forged Mitt Romney, making money justifies any behavior, no matter how venal.
Why is JP Morgan getting so much heat? Maybe because it is a massive international crime syndicate.
There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power.
There are some who think that the government is limited in how many corruption cases it can bring against Wall Street, because juries can't understand the complexity of the financial schemes involved. But in 'U.S.A. v. Carollo,' that turned out not to be true.
An unregulated derivatives market essentially gives Wall Street a way to place hidden taxes on everything in the world.
The mistake our politicians so often make with these industry leaders is in thinking they are interested in, or respectful of, the power of government. All they want is to keep stealing. If you can offer them the government’s seal of approval on that, they’ll take it. But if you can’t, well, they’ll take that too.
What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust math to these bundles of securities and slapping AAA ratings on them.