“People are beginning to become disturbingly comfortable with a kind of official hypocrisy. Bizarrely, for instance, we've become numb to the idea that rights aren't absolute but are enjoyed on a kind of sliding scale.” PeopleKindIdeasRightsComfortableAbsolutesScalesInstanceEnjoyedOfficialsHypocrisyNumb Book:The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap Source: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
“Once you give an NFL player permission to have thoughts, you invite all kinds of mischief.” GivingKindPlayerAll KindsNflInvitesPermissionMischiefNfl Players Author:Matt Taibbi
“In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance.” KindHandsBigsChanceCrazyModernIgnorantBoxingAmerican Politics Author:Matt Taibbi
“What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust math to these bundles of securities and slapping AAA ratings on them.” KindBigsMagicSecurityLowsMathIncomeDustBubblesMortgageRatingBundlesLow IncomePixiesBorrowersSlappingGoldman SachsPixie Dust Author:Matt Taibbi
“You know what an effective deterrent to crime is? Jail! And do you know what kind of criminal penalty actually makes people think twice about committing crimes the next time? The kind that actually comes out of some individual's pocket, not fines that come out of the corporate kitty.” PeopleThinkingKnowsKindNextIndividualCrimeFineCriminalsCorporatePocketsJailDo You KnowPenaltiesNext TimeThink TwiceKittiesDeterrentCommitting Crimes Author:Matt Taibbi
“In the new American ghetto, the nightmare engine is bubble economics, a kind of high-tech casino scam that kills neighborhoods just like dope does, only the product is credit, not crack or heroin. It concentrates the money of the population in just a few hands with brutal efficiency, just like narco-business, and just as in narco-business the product itself, debt, steadily demoralizes the customer to the point where he’s unable to prevent himself from being continually dominated.” KindDoeHandsProductsEconomicsPopulationCreditDebtCustomersNightmareNeighborhoodCracksEnginesBubblesBrutalEfficiencyGhettoHeroinDopeCasinosScams Author:Matt Taibbi
“We paid for this instead of a generation of health insurance, or an alternative energy grid, or a brand-new system of roads and highways. With the $13-plus trillion we are estimated to ultimately spend on the bailouts, we could not only have bought and paid off every single sub-prime mortgage in the country (that would only have cost $1.4 trillion), we could have paid off every remaining mortgage of any kind in this country - and still have had enough money left over to buy a new house for every American who does not already have one.” KindDoeStillsCountryEnoughHouseEnergyLeftGenerationsCostPaidBrandsAlternativesPlusPrimeHighwaysMortgageHad EnoughBrand NewGridsBailoutsPaid OffAlternative Energy Author:Matt Taibbi
“This story is the ultimate example of American’s biggest political problem. We no longer have the attention span to deal with any twenty-first century crisis. We live in an economy that is immensely complex and we are completely at the mercy of the small group of people who understand it – who incidentally often happen to be the same people who built these wildly complex economic systems. We have to trust these people to do the right thing, but we can’t, because, well, they’re scum. Which is kind of a big problem, when you think about it.” PeopleThinkingFirstsWellsKindStoriesProblemBigsHappensPoliticalDealsAttentionEconomyGroupsEconomicCenturyExampleBuiltMercyUltimateTwentiesCrisisComplexesRight ThingBig ProblemsEconomic SystemsSmall GroupsAttention SpanScum Author:Matt Taibbi
“There really are two Americas, one for the grifter class and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land, the world of small businesses and wage-earning employees, the government is something to be avoided, an overwhelming, all-powerful entity whose attentions usually presage some kind of financial setback, if not complete ruin. In the grifter world, however, government is a slavish lapdog that the financial companies that will be the major players in this book use as a tool for making money.” IfsWorldKindTwoBookUseGovernmentPowerfulAttentionCompanyClassPlayerLandMajorsToolsFinancialRuinsMaking MoneyEmployeeOverwhelmingEntityEarningSmall BusinessAvoidedSetback Author:Matt Taibbi
