"Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?", Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi does his usual thunderingly good job of cutting through the crap in his latest feature.

In April 2010 Taibbi wrote possibly the best profile of Goldman Sachs ever, "The Great American Bubble Machine," the teaser for which read, "From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression -- and they're about to do it again." In "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?" Taibbi further explores the earlier article's themes of corruption through the revolving door of corporate-honchos-turned-government-regulators-turned-corporate-honchos-again.

Taibbi's article is valuable not because he has some amazing new insights, but because he cites detail after damning detail about how these people gamed and continue to game the system. Attempting to summarize the article would end up restating it, so go and read it for yourself. If, however, you need a little inducement, here's as good a bit to quote as any:

To understand the significance of this, one has to think carefully about the efficacy of fines as a punishment for a defendant pool that includes the richest people on earth — people who simply get their companies to pay their fines for them. Conversely, one has to consider the powerful deterrent to further wrongdoing that the state is missing by not introducing this particular class of people to the experience of incarceration. "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."

But that hasn't happened. Because the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.

It's good to know, by the way, that at least one person on Capitol Hill is familiar with Office Space.

Just go read it. Set aside an hour or so, and read it. Whether you're liberal or conservative or hate those stupid reductive labels, read Taibbi's article, because if you don't understand why our financial system, and therefore our entire society, is fucked up, you will always be a victim. After all, the first step toward a solution is recognizing the damned problem.