Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi Shows No Sympathy for the Devils on Wall Street

No matter what one thinks about the fraud charges brought by the SEC against Goldman Sachs, the Senate hearings held over the past two days or Wall Street in general--and disgust over the tactics and corrupting greed of many of America's leading financial power brokers seems to be one issue on which members of both parties can agree--a heaping helping of praise, and likely even credit for future reforms, is due Rolling Stone National Affairs writer Matt Taibbi.

With painstaking detail and a gift for simplifying the complex complicity of Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms, Taibbi has written a series of sensational articles in which he takes fat cats to task, not with empty harangues, but with razor-sharp, highly insightful precision.

Back in July 2009, Rolling Stone published Taibbi's article entitled "The Great American Bubble," which presaged the SEC's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs by accusing the firm of betting against its clients at the end of the housing boom. In a remarkably researched expose of nearly 10,000 words, Taibbi detailed how Goldman has engineered every market manipulation since the Great Depression by repeatedly positioning itself in the middle of a speculative bubble and selling investments they know are garbage.

As Taibbi points out in his article  covering the Senate hearings this week--"The Feds vs. Goldman"--after last July's article, the "sneering Wall Street cognoscenti scoffed" at his charges of gross corruption by Goldman Sachs. Although no great glee can be felt due to the havoc wreaked on the world's economy--of which I was a downsizing victim--it's nice to note that Taibbi's insinuations--and his passionate work--have seemingly been validated.

In addition to Matt's ongoing multi-faceted Taibbi Blog, at least two other of his Wall Street-related Rolling Stone articles are well worth your attention, particularly for a great overview of how Goldman Sachs and others have betrayed the American people:

"Wall Street's Bailout Hustle" reveals how Goldman and other big banks pocketed the bailout money and are bringing America to the precipice of yet another crash. Taibbi describes a number of Wall Street con jobs and how instead of investing in small businesses and other avenues to stimulate the economy, the banks just opted to make only themselves richer.

Of the many incredulous ploys that he explains in layman's terms, one that I was particularly struck by was that after receiving billions of interest-free dollars from the government, meant to stimulate lending, the banks instead purchased newly issued Treasury bonds. So essentially Wall Street just lent tons of money it got free from the government back to the government, but with interest. In doing so, they made additional billions from the bailout money, without using much of it to aid the people on Main Street. No wonder Goldman Sachs just announced its first-quarter profit up 91 percent, to a staggering $3.46 billion.

In "Looting Main Street," Taibbi exposes how the nations biggest banks are ripping off American cities--Birmingham, AL being central to the story--with "the same predatory deals that brought down Greece."

All in all, pretty amazing stuff and absolutely spectacular reporting. Although others have exposed some of the same-type of malfeasance--most notably, Michael Moore, especially with his Capitalism documentary--Matt Taibbi has been on top of it since the beginning and has educated me more than anyone with his outstanding journalism.

He definitely deserves a Pulitzer Prize, my thanks & admiration, and the appreciation of anyone--of any political stripe or social status--who believes in financial fair play.

(All above illustrations are by Victor Juhasz and from RollingStone.com with great appreciation extended and no violation intended.)