The Barackster and ‘Griftopia’?
Greetings, folks. Going to press here on a Friday afternoon at Rolling Stone; have a very long feature coming out next week on the topic of why nobody on Wall Street is going to jail.
I got a very surprising piece of news this morning; apparently the American Booksellers Association presented a list of books to president Obama for the White House library — and my book, Griftopia, was one of them. My editor joked that one of Obama’s aides probably hurtled across the room, Six Million-Dollar Man style, to keep the book out of the president’s hands.
More coming, and the Supreme Court has its first ruling on the way…
Read an excerpt from Griftopia
Note: Apparently Obama had an exchange with a bookseller about the book:
I was the last person to hand him my book. “I figured somebody had to bring a political book” I said as I handed him a copy of Matt Taibbi’s “Griftopia,” a jaundiced, startling view of the financial meltdown. “Oh I know who Matt Taibbi is,” Obama said. “He sometimes doesn’t have a very high opinion of me.” As if to prove his point, he opened the book to an early page and read aloud the chapter heading, “The Biggest A**hole in the Universe,” a portrait of Alan Greenspan. “He’s not talking about you there,” I joked, giving him a pat on the shoulder.