I’m reading Griftopia by Matt Taibbi right now. It’s like an edgier and more recent version of Liar’s Poker. Taibbi is a journalist with Rolling Stone, and his writing style is pretty fast paced, a bit profane, well researched and definitely from his particular viewpoint. This book is an expanded version of this essay.

Liar’s Poker was a good story because of it’s first-person perspective. Lewis was personally involved in much of the book, and where he wasn’t, it was also well researched. Taibbi was “there” in the same sense that all Americans were “there” and his writing easily matches Lewis’ for depth and readability. Taibbi pulls no punches as he tirelessly walks the reader through the events leading up to the various financial crises of 2008. He devotes a whole chapter to Alan Greenspan, and utterly skewers him and the whole nutty Randian Objectivist movement. That chapter definitely made me think differently about Greenspan. While Greenspan was heading up the Federal Reserve, his economic analysis never quite seemed to add up, and now I’ve got a much better insight into why that may have been the case.

Taibbi walks you through the gas spike that happened during the Obama/McCain circus. That whole spike didn’t make sense to me back then, though I always figured it had something to do with instability due to peak oil. Turns out it was a direct result of some newly opened loopholes for commodities speculation, which were essentially closed to normal investors like you and me, but available to investment banks like Goldman Sachs.

And speaking of Goldman Sachs. Geez. He unloads on them (justifiably) throughout the book. Hilariously, he included a blurb from Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman) on the back of the book. Anyway, it’s a good read, though I’d be surprised if it didn’t make you more cynical about big business and government.