I don't have a lot to add to what some other's have written about this book. Having lived through these financial events and experienced the frustration, as a working stiff, of seeing mega-assholes fuck up the economy then get bailed out by the taxpayer, it is nice to find a writer who actually CALLS them assholes.

Yes, that is kind of a petty way to feel, but I'm good with it. ( )

It feels really good to read something by someone as truly pissed off about the economic situation as Taibbi is. He's not a financial reporter. He has not drunk the CNBC Kool-Aid. There are parts of this book (notably the chapter on Alan Greenspan) that feel a tad drawn out, but overall, his rage against Goldman Sachs and the rest of the crooks is sustained and deserved. It's a good read if you're feeling disillusioned by the state of things. ( )

Fantastic and provocative. Takes Democrats to task as much as or more than the GOP for selling our government to banks/insurance companies. Taibbi's incredulous and totally biased tone works--how could you not take a position against this bullshit? ( )

I slept through half of the book and it wasn't an audio book. I don't remember long stretches of it. I had to force myself to read it and I normally love Taibbi. So, yeah. This is why we have the government that we do. ( )

There was a lot going through my head when I was reading Taibbi's latest must-read book: disgust, anger, wonder, even laughter at his still-incredible powers of description, but at the very end, after I'd finished and had to take a minute to absorb what I'd just read, what I felt most was sadness. More than anything else, this is a book about a country in decline, a country that can't even recognize what its problems are, let alone try to fix them; instead feverishly running through one fraudulent get-rich-quick scheme after another. If you've been paying attention to the news at all for the last few years, you know that the American economy is not exactly in peak health. This is what happens when both the financial sector and government officials decide that the country is more profitable to loot than to invest in, and use their time to convert money from America's decaying physical assets into NoVa chalets. The chapter on how state and local governments nationwide have started selling off infrastructure to shady megabank investors at fire-sale prices to temporarily plug budget holes is stunning in its depiction of short-term thinking, but it's not like they have any options. Meanwhile, the saying that the easiest way to rob a bank is to own one is still true; it's pretty clear that not only do the lucky recipients of the trillions of dollars of free bailout money not have to worry about continuing to own their banks, they don't have to worry about the robbery either since they've paid people to make their crimes perfectly legal, and, as Tea Party cheerleaders like Rick Santelli repeatedly insist, even noble and laudable. Our entire national dialogue is broken. We've become so used to open corruption and kindergarten-level debates that even after the should-have-been-seismic event of the 2008 election, the same groups of Wall Street criminals continued their business of looting the country practically undisturbed by politicians like Obama who were eager to water down even the most timid reforms in exchange for money. Memories of eras like the New Deal and the Great Society have faded to the point where even suggesting that the government should maybe ask health insurance companies to be slightly less sociopathic puts you in the company of Stalin. PJ O'Rourke had a great line: "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." Unfortunately, he might be right. This is an excellent polemical counterpart to the nerdier Hacker & Pierson book, but be warned that you won't walk away from this one feeling very good about America. ( )