By Matt Taibbi
Random House, 250 pages, $30
Reviewed by Mike Stimpson
Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Matt Taibbi's work has been described as both juvenile and brilliant.
Juvenile because few serious political writers are as fond of profanity and insults.
Brilliant because the New Jersey resident delivers more insight than most of the Washington "insiders" and "pundits" you'll see on CNN and Fox News.
His fifth book, essentially a companion piece to the recent documentary Inside Job, has a bit of the juvenile: There's a dandy cuss word in its second paragraph, and the second chapter's title can't be printed in this paper.
But most of all, Griftopia is shot through with brilliant insights and eye-opening reportage. It's one of the smartest, funniest and most enjoyable books on U.S. politics you'll ever read.
Old narratives dating back to at least the 1960s are blinding people to reality in U.S. politics, Taibbi writes. Republican supporters think they're battling big government, while Democrats think their own party's victories are blows for justice and goodness.
"The reality is that neither of these narratives makes sense anymore," Taibbi declares.
Instead, he says, an elite "grifter class" is swindling ordinary Americans and being allowed to gamble recklessly with client money.
The grifters are the ruling class. Everyone else is either a sucker or a servant, or perhaps both, to that elite.
Americans are being "bled dry" by arrogant "financial criminals" who are aided and abetted by friends high up in government.
Foremost among his gangs of crooks is Goldman Sachs, the huge investment bank Taibbi describes as "a great vampire squid" voraciously sucking money from humanity.
He saves for last an update of a 2009 article on Goldman that raised hackles on Wall Street. It's a fine climax to his populist polemic, though not the best part of Griftopia.
That distinction belongs to either the chapter on Alan Greenspan or the one about "the great American mortgage scam" that led to 2008's financial meltdown.
Greenspan chaired the Federal Reserve, epicentre of U.S. monetary policy and financial regulation, for nearly 19 years ending in 2006. A disciple of libertarian icon Ayn Rand, he chopped away at Wall Street rules during his time at the Fed.
In Taibbi's estimation, Greenspan's years at the Fed laid "the foundation for orgiastic greed" and transformed the central bank "into a permanent bailout mechanism for the super-rich."
The Fed under Greenspan loosened and eliminated restrictions on Wall Street and repeatedly bailed out the financial sector by making money available at almost no cost to the high rollers when their big bets failed.
That anything-goes trading climate fostered and created speculative bubbles that included the tech bubble that burst and sent people's portfolios plummeting in 2000-2001, and the more recent mortgage bubble.
The book's mortgage chapter is notable for its clear, easily understood explanations of complex things like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations.
In fact, financial journalists might want to take notes on how Taibbi makes financial instruments understandable to those of us who haven't taken courses in high finance.
Even though Taibbi puts forth a great critique -- nay, condemnation -- of the system, he offers no solutions.
Then again, with a system so sick and corrupt, what solutions could be offered?
