Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America by Taibbi Matt

Author:Taibbi, Matt [Taibbi, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Published: 2010-11-01T15:00:00+00:00

Senator Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power. But Americans know better than that. We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices.

How about Barack Obama? He offered a lot of explanations, too. In many ways the McCain-Obama split on the gas prices issue was a perfect illustration of how left-right politics works in this country.

McCain blamed the problem, both directly and indirectly, on a combination of government, environmentalists, and foreigners.

Obama knew his audience and aimed elsewhere. He blamed the problem on greedy oil companies and also blamed ordinary Americans for their wastefulness, for driving SUVs and other gas-guzzlers. I remember him in the pivotal Pennsylvania primary, when Hillary had him running scared for a while, and he was honing a strategy of chalking up the high gas prices to greedy oil companies that, one supposed, were simply bumping up prices to pay for bigger bonuses.

“They have been in fat city for a long time,” Obama said in Wilkes-Barre during that campaign, referring to Exxon and other gas companies. “They are not necessarily putting that money into refinery capacity, which could potentially relieve some of the bottlenecks in our gasoline supply. And so that is something we have to go after. I think we can go after the windfall profits of some of these companies.”

Both candidates presented the solution as just sitting there waiting to be unleashed, if only one or the other would get the political go-ahead. McCain said the lower gas prices were sitting somewhere under the Gulf of Mexico. Obama said they were sitting in the bank accounts of companies like Exxon in the form of windfall profits to be taxed.

The formula was the same formula we see in every election: Republicans demonize government, sixties-style activism, and foreigners. Democrats demonize corporations, greed, and the right-wing rabble.

Both candidates were selling the public a storyline that had nothing to do with the truth. Gas prices were going up for reasons completely unconnected to the causes these candidates were talking about. What really happened was that Wall Street had opened a new table in its casino. The new gaming table was called commodity index investing. And when it became the hottest new game in town, America suddenly got a very painful lesson in the glorious possibilities of taxation without representation. Wall Street turned gas prices into a gaming table, and when they hit a hot streak we ended up making exorbitant involuntary payments for a commodity that one simply cannot live without. Wall Street gambled, you paid the big number, and what they ended up doing with some of that money you lost is the most amazing thing of all. They got America—you, me, Priscilla Carillo, Robert Lukens—to pawn itself to pay for the gas they forced us to buy in the first place. Pawn its bridges, highways, and airports. Literally sell our sovereign territory. It was a scam of almost breathtaking beauty, if you’re inclined to appreciate that sort of thing.

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