In his latest takedown for Rolling Stone, “The People vs. Goldman Sachs,” Matt Taibbi revisits his hate-hate relationship with Wall Street’s vampire squid. Opening with the words, “They weren’t murderers or anything,” Taibbi spends the next 6,001 words laying out a case for why we should be seeing Lloyd Blankfein in court — if not for shafting Goldman’s investors during the financial crisis, then for lying to Congress. Comparing the result of Senator Carl Levin’s two-year investigation into the mortgage crisis to a financial version of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Taibbi circles through the now-familiar story of how Goldman found a “white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once” to buy their toxic assets up through the findings from Levin’s report to conclude that “Goldman Sachs should stand trial.” Thankfully, he’s been tweaking his insult-o-matic metaphor machine with some impressive results.
In which he calls Goldman fat:
In which he compares Goldman to a deadly car dealership:
In which he drops the car dealership thing and just straight-up calls them killers:
In which he calls CDOs the kids picked last in gym class:
In which he wonders if Lloyd has brain damage:
Good luck topping this next time, Taibbi.
The People vs. Goldman Sachs [Rolling Stone]
