“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.”
Matt Taibbi in Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
Taibbi’s latest book is very informative—eye-opening—though not written in his usual over-the-top, profane style. Or at least, written in a tamer version of it. If you’re interested in what is going on in our economy and how little politics matters, I recommend the book. The chapter on commodities futures, from which the above quotation is taken, is worth the price of the book by itself.
Did you know BTW, that all the parking meters in Chicago are owned by a consortium that includes the United Arab Emirates? Or that so are parking meters in Nashville, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and other cities? Or that Pennsylvania Governor Rendell tried to sell the Pennsylvania Turnpike?
When you’re trying to sell a highway that was once considered one of your nation’s great engineering marvels—532 miles of hard-built road that required tons of dynamite, wood, and steel and the labor of thousands to bore seven mighty tunnels through the Allegheny Mountains—when you’re offering that up to petro-despots just so you can keep the lights on in the state house into the next fiscal year, you’ve entered a new stage in your societal development.
I’ve been away from home the past 10 days, right when my preorder of Griftopia should have popped on my Kindle. But, I ran out of the house in a hurry and didn’t take the Kindle with me. Thanks for reminding me!