Having lived in a collapsed empire before - I lived in Russia right after the Soviet Union collapsed - you can see a lot of the classic signs of an empire that's on its way out. Matt Taibbi More Quotes by Matt Taibbi More Quotes From Matt Taibbi Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. Matt Taibbi apologyplayerhands 'American Sniper' is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question. Matt Taibbi criticismmindwar 'Nobody goes to jail.' This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth - and nobody went to jail. Matt Taibbi walljailfacts 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. Matt Taibbi squidspowerfulblood 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. Matt Taibbi energyhousecountry To be robbed and betrayed by a fiendish underground conspiracy, or by the earthly agents of Satan, is at least a romantic sort of plight - it suggests at least a grand Hollywood-ready confrontation between good and evil - but to be coldly ripped off over and over again by a bunch of bloodless, second-rate schmoes, schmoes you chose, you elected, is not something anyone will take much pleasure in bragging about. Matt Taibbi betrayedhollywoodevil There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. Matt Taibbi literacyslavereason Why is JP Morgan getting so much heat? Maybe because it is a massive international crime syndicate. Matt Taibbi syndicateheatcrime Unquestionably, however, something else is at work, something that cuts deeper into the American psyche. We have a profound hatred of the weak and the poor, and a corresponding groveling terror before the rich and successful, and we're building a bureaucracy to match those feelings. Matt Taibbi cuttingsuccessfulprofound In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. Matt Taibbi greeddemocracyfreedom It's not a stretch to say the whole financial industry revolves around the compass point of the absolutely safe AAA rating. But the financial crisis happened because AAA ratings stopped being something that had to be earned and turned into something that could be paid for. Matt Taibbi compassfinancialsafe America is a country that has been skating for ages on its unparalleled ability to look marvelous on the outside. Matt Taibbi agecountryamerica 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. Matt Taibbi politicalpeoplethinking Within the cult of Wall Street that forged Mitt Romney, making money justifies any behavior, no matter how venal. Matt Taibbi making-moneywallmatter Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys of the world, is not adversarial combat, with cops and crooks duking it out in interrogation rooms and courthouses. Instead, it's a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats. Matt Taibbi partyjusticeyears 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. Matt Taibbi powerfulplayerbook Over the years, many in the public have become numb to news of financial corruption, partly because too many of these stories involve banker-on-banker crime. Matt Taibbi newsbankersyears 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. Matt Taibbi boxingcrazyhands One loves one's country the way one loves a family member. And sometimes that family member does really embarrassing, shitty things. But you still love them. Matt Taibbi doecountryway You can have somebody living next door to you and you can live in a completely different world from that person, which is definitely something we've never experienced before. So I think just because of the media landscape and the way we get our information now, we're more atomized and isolated from each other than ever before. Matt Taibbi mediadoorsthinking
