Matt Taibbi Quotes & Sayings (Page 4)

“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.”

“It's increasingly clear that governments, major corporations, banks, universities and other such bodies view the defense of their secrets as a desperate matter of institutional survival, so much so that the state has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and/or threaten to punish anyone who so much as tiptoes across the informational line.”

“Over the years, many in the public have become numb to news of financial corruption, partly because too many of these stories involve banker-on-banker crime.”

“What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust math to these bundles of securities and slapping AAA ratings on them.”

“Everything in America is so uniform. In Russia, everywhere you go is completely insane.”

“Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove.”

“One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas.”

“America's always had a real passion for lunatic movements. That's one of the things we're probably known for around the world, I would imagine.”

“I'm a product of an East Coast liberal arts educational system.”

“Like wars, forest fires and bad marriages, really stupid laws are much easier to begin than they are to end.”