Griftopia
Hardcover edition
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| Author | Matt Taibbi |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Spiegel & Grau |
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Publication date
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November, 2010 |
| Media type | Print, e-book |
| Pages | 252 pp. |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Great Derangement |
| Followed by | The Divide |
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America is a 2010 book by the political journalist Matt Taibbi about the events that led to the financial crisis of 2008.
It argues that the crisis was not an accident of the free market but the result of a complex and ongoing politico-financial process taking place in the United States whereby wealth and power is transferred to a super-rich "grifter class" that holds a grip on the political process. The book has been described as a "necessary ... corrective" of the assertion that bubbles are inevitable in the market system, and contests the notion that the greed of the American consumer was a primary cause of the problem.
Taibbi maintains that "all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a tiny oligarchy of extremely clever criminals and their castrato henchmen in government."
Griftopia contains seven analytical essays, followed by an epilogue, and a note about the author’s sources. Taibbi names most sources he interviewed. However, in some instances sources remained anonymous for their protection. Other sourcing is self-evident from publicly known material. The introductory chapter is focused on the Tea Party movement whose members are aiming for simple solutions with less government intrusion. Taibbi maintains that the real world is too complex, and the Tea Party adherents are being manipulated (and financed) to do the bidding of Wall Street. Dismantling of regulations and absence of control has been part of the problem of the recent fiasco. Taibbi sees the Tea Party as "top-down media con" initiated by CNBC's Rick Santelli when he denounced not the huge bailout of the banks but rather the relatively small bailout for people facing foreclosure.
Alan Greenspan, an Ayn Rand acolyte, is described as the major enabler of the bubble economy and financial crisis. Taibbi catalogues his string of economic prognostications that were "awful at best". He holds him accountable for fueling economic bubbles during his watch at the Federal Reserve by pushing money and abandoning traditional evaluations when advocating that "ideas" (not financial results) had become the new paradigm of financial evaluation. Greenspan is criticized for advising the public to use adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) in preference to fixed–rate mortgages shortly before his raising of interest rates. Taibbi accuses Greenspan of turning the Federal Reserve into a permanent bail-out system for the super-rich.
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