Taibbi's latest

Clearly nothing new here, but he makes everything easily digestible for the common man. A very fine display of writing.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511?print=true

 

There was an outstanding piece a few months back by Michael Lewis or someone like that about how the smartest students from the best schools, both undergraduate and business, are basically being pulled into the Goldman Sachs-type finance jobs where they add absolutely no value to the economy, nor socially. It was sobering. Even B-school professors were lamenting it, but they couldn't do anything about it. I think that's one reason that we are falling so far behind in science and so forth. Our best and brightest are all become phantom bankers.

 

Lewis Book - "Big Short" is the financial equivalent of Money Ball.

It is not flattering to Goldman.

 

Lewis has this coming out in October:

 

He has been serializing that, sort of (or maybe completely, I guess I'll know when I see the book), in Vanity Fair. I have posted the fantastic Ireland story previously, but he has also done articles on Iceland (also fantastic) and Greece (not quite as great but still a good read).

The Big Short was great. Every time I felt myself getting too confused to follow the math, he would throw in the point that basically it's OK if you don't understand this because the CEOs of Chase and Citigroup didn't either.

 

"Fine writing" and "Matt f-bomb Taibbi" should never be in the same sentence -- unless you're lauding the writer of Taibbi's obit.

 

Substantively, the financial press often pokes fun of Taibbi for oversimplifying complicated matters. I guess the counter would be that the financial press is in the back pocket of the Goldman Sachs-es of the world, but I find that to be a weak counter point. To me - and I'm hyperbolizing for effect here, so bear with me, DW fan club - Taibbi claiming that all of this stuff is just so simple is vaguely reminiscent of the religious right swearing that science is elitist gobbledy gook because they don't understand it.

"It's all so simple. God did it!" :: "It's all so simple. Goldman Sachs is evil!"

I also happen to hate his use of f-bombs and "douche bag" and "cock sucker" and so forth and so on. Juvenile.

 

Sell your GS stocks!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/analyst-sell-goldman-shares-drop-after-rolling-stone-article-20110512

 

Well the financial press has an incentive to make sure there is a financial industry, so yeah...they're going to look the other way. That's not a weak counter point. Anyway, the article is an explanation of the findings of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. Is their 650-page report wrong or over-simplified too?

And so what if Taibbi calls out these people with naughty words? This shit is so fucked up, it demands this sort of language.

 

It's an ad hominem attack that diminishes his point. Taibbi has little interest in persuading. He rabble rouses the faithful.

To the larger point, I don't know a ton about finance. But I do know this: If I wanted to know what was going on, I'd turn to the Wall Street Journal over Matt Taibbi every single time. Not a second thought.

 

Michael Lewis would leave them both whimpering behind the podium.

I agree with Dick here. I have seen a few instances where Taibbi goes into his F-bomb-laced diatribe and happens to catch the subject unaware, but when someone more in tune with that area reads up, he points out how off-base Taibbi is. And his manufactured outrage diminishes every point at the outset because you don't know if he really means it this time.