Crime crime, everywhere a crime. This book details how they play out and how those consequences severely differ between the rich and poor. Or you know, read the cover.
This is an easy read. Even though the subject matter is half financial dickery at the top and half the hard-luck tales of the U.S.'s poor, you'll easily digest the contrast in how "justice" is conceived and carried out. In contrast to Too Big To Fail, which is essentially too big to read for all the chapters dedicated to Dick Fuld correspondence, Taibbi provides just enough email or text correspondence to make sure you understand the depravity of our nation's hedge fund managers and traders. At the end of the loops and laws you'll get an "X + Y = why this was so fucked up."
Taibbi provides a lot of details, but you can't help but think you could get the gist with bullet points. It's a fairly long book to hear the sordid details of a few main characters' experiences with our criminal justice system. These include tales of the consequences quotas New York police meet by arresting people for standing in front of their houses to how likely you'll get abducted AFTER you get deported to Mexico. The challenge is to find even one remotely positive thing to say about any step in the process.
Granted, if you believe we actually serve justice and think people get what's coming to them, this is absolutely the book for you to hopefully shatter that worldview. If you're even marginally informed about private prisons, prejudicial if not outright racist laws, and were awake in 2008, this is just a chance to feel ever-more depressed about how deep the problems really go.
It's a book like this you hand to conspiracy theorists. The joke being that there isn't a conspiracy. Systemic fraud is out in the open and rewarded. They'll let you follow the money to temp workers, the shell companies, and locally kicked-back coffers. Why use violence or intimidation when you can just pay everyone to be on your side? Just buy the laws you need to keep the scam going.
Granted, if you believe we actually serve justice and think people get what's coming to them, this is absolutely the book for you to hopefully shatter that worldview. If you're even marginally informed about private prisons, prejudicial if not outright racist laws, and were awake in 2008, this is just a chance to feel ever-more depressed about how deep the problems really go.
It's a book like this you hand to conspiracy theorists. The joke being that there isn't a conspiracy. Systemic fraud is out in the open and rewarded. They'll let you follow the money to temp workers, the shell companies, and locally kicked-back coffers. Why use violence or intimidation when you can just pay everyone to be on your side? Just buy the laws you need to keep the scam going.
This is a long essay on the failings of our nation's soul. The reasons we create systems of justice are lost. The people who have the least to give and the hardest roads to travel are targeted. Any effort to expose or prosecute the willful behaviors that lead to collapsing economies all over the world are often ignored or leave the whistle blowers on a proverbial ice barge floating out to sea. This is testimony, so damming, it's to the point just past absurdity and hopelessness. Read, if you can stomach it.
P.S. If you just come across this book in your travels, just read page 382.
P.S. If you just come across this book in your travels, just read page 382.
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