Griftopia: The Astonishing Tale of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Outrageous Power Grab in US History

Cody AllenCody Allen: We live in a divided America and it is not the one you think. It is not Republican or Democrat, Black Lives or Blue. Yes, there are some people divided on these lines, as there will always be people divided on any political issue, but The Great Divide is between the rich and the poor. There is “one [set of rules] for the grifter class, and one for everybody else,” Taibbi writes. For us ordinary citizens, the government is a scary beast that cracks down when we don’t follow the rules. For the elite grifter class, the government is a collaborator in extracting money from the lower rungs of society and distributing it to the ruling class.

If you want to understand how this happened, a good place to start is with Alan Greenspan. He is the human embodiment of a political and economic hypocrite; the trends he set during his twenty-year tenure as President of the Federal Reserve have left us with a broken system. On the one hand, he preached free market economics, while on the other hand he gave massive governmental bailouts to the banks on Wall Street. These two ideas cannot co-exist, as the definition of a free market is one with no financial safety net. It is a...

United States on Feb 02, 2021

Richard C.: Explains how the average American has been fleeced by big finance & the rich over the last 50 decades, starting with Ronald Reagan, & successive administrations since. The successful lobbying, watering down, or outright eliminating safeguards & laws enacted since the last depression, for just 1 example, to limit abuses & excesses by financial institutions leading to what we saw in 2008 with the mortgage baloney.

Canada on Aug 12, 2019

Kieran Roberts: Book was in good shape when it arrived, no complaints

United Kingdom on Feb 10, 2018

badams: fantastic reading! covers a lot of topics and can seem to jump around a bit, but there is a tremendous about of depth in each area.

United Kingdom on Jan 20, 2016

Sayo: Matt tells a fascinating story here, full of detailed intrigue and executive connivance. But the real story is that those most affected by the amoral conduct of Wall Street will do little about it, other than a little symbolic "pissing in the wind." There is an old saying, "Collectively, as a society, you get the government you deserve." Today's America, and the rest of the West in large measure, have not been subjected to the brutalities that their forefathers experienced. The West, collectively, no longer has the requisite intestinal fortitude to confront such difficulties. Crime is crime, whether perpetrated by well dressed corporate executives in suits or heavily armed men in full leathers. Crime injures both its immediate victims and the broader societies to whom they belong. And as USA no longer has the necessary internal fortitude to confront corporate crime, it will as it must, continue to suffer even greater injury. A tragic outcome for your Republic and one entirely of your own making.

Of course the present outcome would not have been possible without the generations of indifference to the actions of the Supreme Court of the United States. If the financial...

Australia on Jan 03, 2016

Xerxes: If you're interested in the nature of the financial leviathan that strangles our political/economy, this is the book for you. Don't be intimidated by the content, Taibbi turns what would be usually considered wonk-ish into an enjoyable book.

Canada on Jun 20, 2014

zstopperuno: America's biggest financial bubble burst in 1929 and then the bubbles went away for fifty years until they started re-appearing in the 1980's as the American economy became increasingly bubblicious, leading to the crash of 2008. The book Griftopia by Matt Taibbi is the story of how the grifter class brought the bubbles back through a campaign of political lobbying aimed at both policy-makers and the general public.

The key to reviving a bubblicious financial system was getting rid of the regulations designed to prevent bubbles. In order to sell the de-regulatory proposals it was necessary to offer something in their place, and that something was the concept of self-regulation. As ridiculous as the concept sounds, the advertising campaign for it was successful and this book provides an insightful explanation as to how it was done.

Taibbi gives us an excellent example with Alan Greenspan of the disconnect between what we're sold and what we actually get. As Taibbi writes, "Greenspan's rise to the top is one of the great scams of our time. His career is the perfect prism through which one can see the twofold basic deception of American politics: a system that preaches...

United States on May 19, 2011