If we continue on this track, then I can see a future uprising in America like we are seen in the Middle East countries. It might not come in my life time but in the future if we stay on this path. The only think that prevents this today is like Bill Maher said “the American people are too stupid” to understand when they are being hoodwink. They care more about Charlie Sheen life style than what’s going on to destroy unions in the US. I worked on Wall St for over 25 yrs and these guys are crooks thinking only about how to hold on to their empire. The SEC is a joke; and self regulating exchanges are bigger joke. When we wake up and smell the coffee and see that these guys are gambling with our hard earn money and we are losing while they get rich. What wrong with that picture.

The Best Government money can BUY

Who will tell the People William Greider 1994

Bill Black search on You tube

Politics: "The conduct of public affairs for private advantage."
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

BRAVO!!!!!!!!

Thanks to Wall Street, I'll be eating my cats food soon, even that is becoming too expensive. Can't the public insist that the people who caused this meltdown be arrested and held accountable? What can we do? Let's reinstitute the Wall Street sales tax again, that would solve our budget crisis. Why isn't the government doing this? I'm so frustrated. All I hear is that the dollar won't be worth anything "0" in 2012. Buy Gold, buy silver, it's scary.

I was wondering the same thing about why he's calling from a pay phone, but maybe it's just more reliable to call using a land line, even if it is ancient pay phone technology!

Why doesn't Matt have a cell phone? I didn't know pay phones still existed.

If they won't go to jail we need a web site that lists all the names and what they did so that their family names are tarnished in public for all time. Right now they all live quietly in wealth. You have to dig around a bit to find their names. Might as well include all the politicians and government officials that let these guys go. Their kids should grow up ashamed of their wealth, change their names and give it all away. I know it won't happen, but it would be nice.

"Galaxy" is a good word! These folks do NOT walk among us, too far removed, only sitting in a jail for 20 years will bring them back down to earth. And let's make sure they are not sitting a cushy fed jail either!

I find it so infuriating to know that there are Americans sacrificing their lives everyday to secure this country and our lawmakers let these SOBs get away with destroying the economy of the nation and everyday American lives..

if those execs didn't report all of their upfront income, even afterwards, doesn't that mean they also didn't pay taxes properly on it, and can't they still be pulled in for that?

oops Griftopia! But I still highly recommend the book - and as an iconoclastic economist I have been waiting and watching the bubble burst since 2005.

Yep, NOTHING BUT loopholes.

How do we change these gross advantages these people have? It seems like it's a very big onion with too many layers!

I bought and am enjoying Utopia. But, as enlightening and incisive as it is, I wish the writing were a little less jejeune and then it would get a much wider audience, which it fully deserves.

As much as I appreciate Matt's incisive articles and crusades, his often vulgar vocabulary and just plain UGLY metaphors render him a third rate journalist at an institution (Rolling Stone & affiliates) that is more or less irrelevant! GROW UP MATT!! (But I won't hold it against you if you help a couple of these financial cretins into the clink!)

Well, to get away from Wall Street means that you are going to put your money under your mattress. Otherwise it's very hard to escape their tentacles!

The real question is, why do people put ANY money into Wall Street altogether? When I was growing up in the 1950s, I didn't know anyone who had money on Wall Street. If they had any money, it was either in a bank or in US savings bonds, or a Christmas club at the bank, etc. After the Depression and war, most people did not trust Wall Street. And you had to put a 30% down payment to get a mortgage on a house. It took a while for Wall Street to sucker in half the country's savings again, but very quick to lose a large amount of it. Wall Street is, and always has been a speculative crap shoot.

Can anyone say "politicians in my pocket"?

That's why all these Banksters are still living it large!

this, is the important discussion,not bernie madoff.