I love Matt Taibbi (in a manly sort of way, of course) and he has written 2 more great pieces recently, one in the Guardian about Goldman Sachs and one at True/Slant about Sarah Palin. Both are worth reading in their entirety, but here are a couple of excerpts. First from the Guardian:
Now on to Palin:
Do yourself a favor and go read the rest. Your money back if it disappoints.
"So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.
Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in the 80s - and in the years since has aped other horrifying American trends such as boybands and reality shows in spreading across the western world like a venereal disease.
The investment bank's cult of self-interest is on trial against the whole idea of civilisation - the collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even if we can.
Now on to Palin:
The Republicans, meanwhile, are in the difficult position of trying to sell Wall Street's position on the Regulatory Reform bill to their base. That might not sound so very difficult, given that the Tea Partiers in particular continue to oppose further government regulation and have used the idea that Barack Obama's government is "taking over the banking sector" as a rallying cry. But Wall Street isn't exactly popular with the Tea Party, either, so selling their side of the debate on this bill is a bit of a sticky thing.
Leave it to Sarah Palin to come up with the solution.
Do yourself a favor and go read the rest. Your money back if it disappoints.
Carguy, I concur from my "limited" experiences with the Chinese. ;-) Ironically for a Communist country, they've embraced the squeeze the last $$$ of profit by hook or by crook, win by any means possible mantra quite wholeheartedly.
Their whole tainted (name any product) scandals are right out of the US 19th century Industrial Era free for all unfettered capitalism embodied by Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" expose of the meat packing industry. Another example by the way, of little or no government regulation that teabaggers want to regress to as the supposed "good ole days".
The Wasilli Vanelli spends over $100,000 a month from her PAC on consultants. The chance that she wrote her facebook post is about the same as me getting pregnant. She does not think, write or speak in complete sentences. To think she wrote the post would be to presume a level of competence we have not yet witnessed.
I work for a Chinese woman and about 75% of our employees are Chinese. Some from Taiwan and some from PRC. They are pretty interesting people and quite honest.
When all this broke a while back, I asked them if the Chinese Athletic Federation and the Chinese government would cheat to win Olympic medals. They're answer...."You betcha". Fake pssports and all.
My Chinese IT specialist said that, strangely enough, they put everything on-line and have very poor, if non-existant firewalls. When they "cheat" or "lie" they don't always go back and clean up their tracks.
Miracle of miracles. There is some justice. Of course, the ONLY people in the world who didn't know she was under age were the inbred morons who run the IOC.
!!!!NEWS BREAK!!!!
The U.S. Women's Olynmpic Gymnastics Team has just won the Bronze medal in Team Competition in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
I'll check with the judges..................
That IS permissable. OH MY!!!!
on a related topic....it's started. In the run-up to the elections, we'll get to watch conservatives rip eachother apart trying to out-conserveative their opponents. That's the thing about populist movements and jingoism.....it's never enough.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100428/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1831
Well thank you :) j/k
Des, Matt is one of my favs too (dare I say, great minds...)
I believe the greedy Reagan-esque peasant life insurance scam a good analogy myself.
Are any of you as impressed with our young people nowadays as I am? We've got some really really smart whippersnappers out there!
Would it be wrong of me to hope for more of a Ken Lay impression?
Excellent read. Thanks.
I just hope and pray we get to see several of these fellas doin' their best Jeff Skilling impression. "What...me guilty???"
I'm on my way...