#F29 OWS - Matt Taibbi's Teach-In at Bryant Park, NYC (Part 1 of 4) A Christmas Message From America's Rich | The Real Housewives of Wall Street | Rolling Stone Politics. Wall Street's Bailout Hustle | Rolling Stone Politics. Wall Street's Naked Swindle | Rolling Stone Politics. Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics. The Great American Bubble Machine | Rolling Stone Politics. The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. Invasion of the Home Snatchers By now, most of us know the major players. But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. The Feds vs. They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. BUBBLE #1 The Great Depression Goldman wasn't always a too-big-to-fail Wall Street behemoth, the ruthless face of kill-or-be-killed capitalism on steroids —just almost always.
Where to go? The People vs. Goldman Sachs | Rolling Stone Politics. They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it. Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about.
We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial. This article appears in the May 26, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The Most Pontifical Metaphors in Matt Taibbi’s Latest Goldman Screed. In his latest takedown for Rolling Stone, "The People vs. Goldman Sachs," Matt Taibbi revisits his hate-hate relationship with Wall Street's vampire squid. Opening with the words, "They weren't murderers or anything," Taibbi spends the next 6,001 words laying out a case for why we should be seeing Lloyd Blankfein in court — if not for shafting Goldman's investors during the financial crisis, then for lying to Congress.
Comparing the result of Senator Carl Levin's two-year investigation into the mortgage crisis to a financial version of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Taibbi circles through the now-familiar story of how Goldman found a "white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once" to buy their toxic assets up through the findings from Levin's report to conclude that "Goldman Sachs should stand trial. " Thankfully, he's been tweaking his insult-o-matic metaphor machine with some impressive results.
In which he calls Goldman fat: We now know, unequivocally, that this is bullshit. Rolling Stone Politics | Taibblog | Matt Taibbi on Politics and the Economy. Thank You, Rolling Stone | BLOG ENTRY Today is my last day at Rolling Stone. As of this week, I’m leaving to work for First Look Media, the new organization that’s already home to reporters like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras. I’ll have... February 20, 2014 10:35 AM ET Ex-Morgan Stanley Chief Jams Foot in Mouth, Complains of CEO Abuse | BLOG ENTRY There's a ton of interesting stuff going on in the Wall Street sphere of late – I'm trying to find some time to do a proper write-up of the extraordinary lawsuit just filed by the Better Markets...
February 13, 2014 5:30 PM ET The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet | ARTICLE Call it the loophole that destroyed the world. It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. While the rest of America obsesses over... February 12, 2014 11:00 AM ET Latest Health Care Flap Shows Media at its Most Boring | BLOG ENTRY There's a reason why people hate politics in this country.