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" This is America: Corporate stealing is practically the national pastime, and Goldman Sachs is far from the only company to get away with doing it. "
Matt Taibbi
Company
Away
America
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" It's really interesting that we've had this great Tea Party movement that is all about restoring free market capitalist values, but what they completely fail to understand is that what we've got now is a situation where there is a small class of gigantic financial companies that have put themselves above capitalism. "
Matt Taibbi
Great
Financial
Small
" The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next. "
Matt Taibbi
Joy
Responsibility
Shame
" When push comes to shove, we all should know most Americans want the same things, but just disagree on how to get there, which is why it should be okay to not panic if the other party wins. "
Matt Taibbi
Why
Want
Push
" By incentivizing Wall Street players to sniff out inefficient or corrupt companies and bet against them, short-selling acts as a sort of policing system; legal short-sellers have been instrumental in helping expose firms like Enron and WorldCom. "
Matt Taibbi
Legal
Street
System
" The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term. "
Matt Taibbi
Government
Work
Short
" The threat posed by Bank of America isn't just financial - it's a full-blown assault on the American dream. Where's the incentive to play fair and do well, when what we see rewarded at the highest levels of society is failure, stupidity, incompetence and meanness? If this is what winning in our system looks like, who doesn't want to be a loser? "
Matt Taibbi
Failure
Loser
Winning
" What makes us feel pessimistic about the world, ultimately, is the way the media encourage us to believe that our fate hangs on the every move of the promise-breaking, terminally disappointing Teflon liars in Washington. "
Matt Taibbi
Feel
World
Way
" America is a country that has been skating for ages on its unparalleled ability to look marvelous on the outside. "
Matt Taibbi
Country
Ability
America
" We love wealth, and we hate poor people. I know people who work in TV news who have actually been told to do stand-ups rather than put interviews with poor people on the air. We physically don't want to look at them. "
Matt Taibbi
Look
Know
People
" Contracting corruption has been around since the construction of the Appian Way. "
Matt Taibbi
Way
Construction
Been
" '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
World
Street
Jail
" Within the cult of Wall Street that forged Mitt Romney, making money justifies any behavior, no matter how venal. "
Matt Taibbi
Making Money
Behavior
Street
" The NFL, sadly, has a fatal environmental problem: It kills its workers. "
Matt Taibbi
Environmental
Workers
Problem
" At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. "
Matt Taibbi
Time
Name
America
" Amendments occupy a great deal of most legislators' time, particularly those lawmakers in the minority. Members of Congress do author major bills, but more commonly they make minor adjustments to the bigger bill. "
Matt Taibbi
Great
More
Time
" If anything, the bailouts actually hindered lending, as banks became more like house pets that grow fat and lazy on two guaranteed meals a day than wild animals that have to go out into the jungle and hunt for opportunities in order to eat. "
Matt Taibbi
Grow
Animals
Day
" The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending - with the exception of the money spent on them. "
Matt Taibbi
Against
Government
Average
" What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing. "
Matt Taibbi
Situation
Money
Back
" 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
You
Politics
Crazy
" Obviously the commercial news media tries to get you worked up and terrified so you'll buy products that they're advertising. "
Matt Taibbi
Media
News
Products
" 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
Crisis
Compass
Say
" An unregulated derivatives market essentially gives Wall Street a way to place hidden taxes on everything in the world. "
Matt Taibbi
Street
Place
Hidden
" Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are. "
Matt Taibbi
Choice
Democracy
Good
" The race for the White House is normally an event suffused with drama, sucking eyeballs to the page all over the globe. "
Matt Taibbi
White
Race
House
" In a pure capitalist system, an institution as moronic and corrupt as Bank of America would be swiftly punished by the market - the executives would get to loot their own firms once, then they'd be looking for jobs again. "
Matt Taibbi
Looking
Own
America
" The one thing that I do is take really complicated systems and subjects and make them accessible to regular people. "
Matt Taibbi
People
One Thing
Complicated
" Private equity firms aren't necessarily evil by definition. There are many stories of successful turnarounds fueled by private equity, often involving multiple floundering businesses that are rolled into a single entity, eliminating duplicative overhead. "
Matt Taibbi
Successful
Many
Single
" I was a bit of a troubled kid growing up, let's put it that way. I didn't take pleasure in hard work. "
Matt Taibbi
Growing Up
Growing
Work
" It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. "
Matt Taibbi
Would
Say
Tea
" There are some who think that the government is limited in how many corruption cases it can bring against Wall Street, because juries can't understand the complexity of the financial schemes involved. But in 'U.S.A. v. Carollo,' that turned out not to be true. "
Matt Taibbi
Financial
Government
Corruption