Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America Audiobook

Quotes

• “Taibbi chronicles the corruption of the political process with indignation and dark humor. The takeaway? Be angry, but blame the right culprits.”

  — Time

• “A stinging new history of the financial crisis that heralds a return of Menckenesque, dirt-under-the-fingernails American journalism.”

  — GQ

• “A relentlessly disturbing, penetrating exploration of the root causes of the trauma that upended economic security in millions of American homes…a full-scale indictment of Wall Street and Washington.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “Matt Taibbi is [Hunter S.] Thompson’s heir…[Griftopia] is the most lucid, justifiably angry description of what happened and what continues to happen to our nation’s economy.”

  — Seattle Post-Intelligencer

• “Delving into complicated financial history and lingo, Taibbi deftly lays the subject bare, rendering heretofore dense subject matter simple without being simplistic…Taibbi asserts that the collusion between Wall Street and the White House has effectively turned the United States into a massive casino, in which working Americans are regularly bilked out of their savings and homes while the wealthy are repeatedly rewarded for their graft. It’s an important and worthy read but not for the Randian disciple or Goldman-Sachs alum.”

  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “A blistering examination of the upheaval that has roiled the American economic system over the past several years. At the heart of the upheaval, he says, is a vein of greed running up and down the real-estate industry, from mortgage brokers who falsified customer loan applications to banks that parceled out mortgages to second and third parties to rating agencies that signed off on highly suspect loans. Taibbi saves a good deal of venom for former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, arguing that Greenspan’s philosophy of easy cash, limited government oversight of markets, and bailing out ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions all fueled the recent economic meltdown. And Taibbi profiles a recently passed health-care bill severely compromised by an all-powerful insurance lobby. As critical as he is of the process—a process not likely to get fixed any time soon—he doesn’t seem to carry an agenda; instead, like any good investigative reporter, he mostly follows his nose.”

  — Booklist (starred review)

• “A ticked-off field guide to modern America, a place where the con artists of high finance call the shots…The author writes with populist fervor, but with the left-trending populism of an Upton Sinclair rather than a Father Coughlin…Taibbi writes carefully about such things as the way that ‘gamblers disguised as Wall Street broker’ manipulate commodities to the exclusive benefit of the small capitalist—grifter, that is—class. Meaty food for thought, steeped in righteous bile.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “The outrageous, unchecked greed and power of financial industry behemoths like Goldman Sachs and AIG are meticulously and succinctly described…Taibbi’s glib prose is punctuated with just enough irreverence and wit to allow him to appeal to more casual readers while providing sufficient detail to satisfy those looking for a serious discussion of the high-level manipulation of the economy.”

  — Library Journal

• “Think you understood the Wall Street collapse and what’s going on in America? Listen to Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia, and you’ll realize two things: You don’t have a clue what happened, and things are worse than either the right or the left can imagine. Taibbi, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, explains that the reason people aren’t gathered outside Wall Street institutions with pitchforks and torches is that the financial system has been deliberately made so complex that few understand it. Patrick Egan performs the book with a voice that sounds like a man barely keeping his rage inside, a style that is the perfect for this story of theft, deceit, and betrayal. It’s still happening. This is a true crime story.”

  — AudioFile