Greedy Bastards: How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vamp

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Greedy Bastards

by Dylan Ratigan

Ratigan transcends the talking heads and is an award-winning journalist respected and admired across the political spectrum. He rips the lid off of a deeply crooked system--and offers a way out.

FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New

Publisher Description

DYLAN RATIGAN'S mission is to uncover never-before-seen solutions to the most pressing issues of our time: government corruption, corporate communism, an ailing health care system, an age-old dependency on foreign oil, and a broken educational system. In this groundbreaking book, Ratigan makes a case that America has the opportunity to prosper, but only by setting clear goals. Ratigan believes that this country, now more than ever, needs passionate debate and smart policy, a brazen willingness to scrap what doesn't work, and the entrepreneurial spirit to try what does. Ratigan has compiled brash and fresh solutions for building a new and better America, and with this book he has started the debate America deserves.

Author Biography

Dylan Ratigan is the host of MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show, one of the highest-rated, daytime shows on the network. This make-versus-take, analysis-driven daily broadcast fearlessly takes on the world of politics, money, and the unholy alliance between big business and government. The former global managing editor for corporate finance at Bloomberg News, Ratigan has developed and launched more than half a dozen broadcast and new media properties. They include CNBC's Fast Money and Closing Bell, as well as DylanRatigan.com, which is home to his podcast, "Greedy Bastards Antidote." Ratigan left as host of Fast Money in 2009, provoked by outrage over the government's handling of the 2008 financial crisis. Since then, he has dedicated his work to launching platforms that engage and debate the U.S. government on policy, while opening the door for millions to learn more about money's often poisonous role in our democracy. His first book, Greedy Bastards, which will be released on January 10, 2012, details this broken system, and more importantly, illustrates how fixing these problems will release a renaissance of growth and innovation. Since late September 2011, more than 300,000 people have pledged support, millions of dollars have been raised, and an organization with a staff of a dozen people has been formed under Ratigan's leadership to pursue the singular objective to pass a 28th Constitutional amendment to separate business and state.

Review

""Greedy Bastards "is a fantastic book! It has the perfect tone and is completely convincing." --Lawrence Lessig, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
""Greedy Bastards" helps us better understand why we suffer recurrent, intensifying financial crises. First, cheating has become the dominant strategy in finance. Second, cheating is dominant because finance CEOs create such intensely perverse incentives that fraud becomes endemic."-- Bill Black, author of"""The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One"""and associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
""Greedy Bastards" is superb. Dylan's policy recommendations track with what the Committee for Economic Development has been saying on: health care, the federal deficit, corporate governance, education, a consumption tax, and campaign finance reform. His explanations are clear, and he nails health care with his criticism of the fee-for-service model. "Greedy Bastards "deserves wide readership!"--Charles Kolb, President of the Committee on Economic Development
"Exiles on Wall Street like us have a platform and a responsibility to speak out. Dylan's book shows that our problems don't stem from too much capitalism but not enough of it relative to our jerry-rigged system" --Mike Mayo, financial analyst and author of "Exile on Wall Street"
"Ratigan delivers an energetic, powerful, and at times unsettling portrait of America in crisis ... And even though his portrait of the U.S. is bleak, he believes we have options."--"Publishers Weekly"
"Readers will find a great deal to ponder, as Ratigan covers why and how he's certain the USA is 'going seriously wrong.'"--"USA Today"
"Some books explain a problem, this book gives you an entire world view. "Greedy Bastards, "puts everything in context and makes the enormity and entirety of our crises understandable. Dylan, as always, is incisive, sharp and pointed." --Eliot Spitzer
"This book might be the smelling salts that wake up America."--Alan Grayson
"Very sharp, funny, and splendidly written, Dylan Ratigan's new book is perfect for Americans disgusted with both our political parties who are trying to understand the roots of our broken economy and political system." -- Thomas Ferguson, University of Massachusetts, Boston and the Roosevelt Institute and author of "Golden Rule"

Review Quote

"Very sharp, funny, and splendidly written, Dylan Ratigan's new book is perfect for Americans disgusted with both our political parties who are trying to understand the roots of our broken economy and political system." - Thomas Ferguson, University of Massachusetts, Boston and the Roosevelt Institute and author of Golden Rule

Excerpt from Book

Greedy Bastards Imagine an ordinary man so desperate that he decides to rob a bank. For years, he''s worked a steady job, but when he loses that job, the only work he can find is as a part-time clerk in a convenience store. Still, he makes do. He cuts his expenses and relies on a little help from his family, though he hates to do so. Then he starts to develop health troubles. He''s nearly sixty years old, and he needs foot surgery. He develops crippling back pain and a frightening bone protrusion sticking out of his chest. He can no longer lift the stock he is supposed to load onto the shelves at the store. Although he could move in with his sister, he doesn''t want to be a burden, and he knows that she can''t afford to pay for his health care out of pocket any better than he can. So what choices does he have? He goes into the local bank and slips the teller a note. It demands $1--and health care. This is not a fantasy, and the man wasn''t crazy. He was thinking clearly about a crazy situation. Jail, he realized, was the one place where he could get health care without bankrupting himself and his family. "Because he only asked for $1," Yahoo! News reported, "he was charged with larceny, not bank robbery. But he said that if his punishment isn''t severe enough, he plans to tell the judge that he''ll do it again. His $100,000 bond has been reduced to $2,000, but he says he doesn''t plan to pay it." Jail, he said, was the best of his bad options. That true story is one glimpse of a country going seriously wrong. Our unemployment is stuck near Depression levels, prompting outcries on both the left and the right. "We''re well on the way to creating a permanent underclass of the jobless," wrote economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times. "One-sixth of America''s workers--all those who can''t find any job or are stuck with part-time work when they want a full-time job--have in effect been abandoned." In the National Review, Rich Lowry wrote, "The statistics tell a dire, but incomplete, story. We were built to work. When we want to and can''t, it is an assault on our very personhood." But even as the assault continues, our politicians seem not to notice, or not admit, how this country has changed. As Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, asked in the Wall Street Journal, "Do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don''t act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past." If jobs are a bad deal, housing is worse. More than one in four houses are underwater, and that figure obscures how bad it''s gotten in the hardest-hit states. According to data from CoreLogic, a private research company, 63 percent of all mortgaged properties in Nevada are worth less than the owners paid for them. In Arizona, it''s 50 percent. In Florida, 46 percent. Lacking jobs or stuck in low-paying ones, unable to sell their homes and move somewhere more promising, many Americans find that now is truly the worst of times. The US Census Bureau says that 43.6 million of us are now living in poverty--that''s more poor Americans than ever in the half century since records have been kept. Talk about a bad deal. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the US infant mortality rate is nearly twice as high as those of France, Japan, and Australia. In 2011, as food prices around the world continued to rise, the New York Times reported that 16 percent of Americans answered yes to the following question: "Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?" Compared with over thirty other "advanced economy" countries, New York Times columnist Charles Blow found that the United States now ranks among "the worst of the worst" on measures such as income inequality, student performance on math tests, average life expectancy, and the percentage of our citizens in prison. No wonder that in a CBS News poll, 70 percent of Americans surveyed felt that the country was going in the wrong direction. Even people who are used to feeling good about their lives are sensing the changes: the University of Chicago''s General Social Survey found that in 2010, only 29 percent of men and women reported being "very happy"--the lowest level of very happy people since the poll was first conducted in 1972. But if this is the worst of times for many, it is an explosively wealthy time for a fortunate few. While jobs, investment capital, and confidence in the future drain away, there is good cheer in corporate boardrooms. According to a 2011 survey by the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers from leading US companies, American CEOs felt more confident than ever before. And why shouldn''t they? A survey by Equilar, a private research company specializing in compensation, found that median pay for CEOs in 2010 had risen to $10.8 million: an astonishing 23 percent pay raise compared with just the year before. How about you? Did you get your extra 23 percent last year? The fact is, the very rich are doing very, very well, as they have been for two or three decades. Journalist Robert Frank, the Wall Street Journal''s first full-time correspondent about the very rich, found that "the United States is now the world leader in producing millionaires--even if it lags behind China and India in other kinds of manufacturing." Their demand for servants has raised butlering, once a dying career, into one of American''s fastest growing trades, along with maids, nannies, personal assistants, and private security guards. Butlering is one of our notable growth industries. It''s not supposed to be like this. The United States is still a wealthy country. Wealth in a capitalist country is supposed to be invested, making new ventures possible, turning our ingenuity into new industries, creating jobs, and helping the economy grow. In the phrase that President John F. Kennedy used often, a rising tide lifts all boats. But something has gone wrong in America. For the last few decades, the rising tide has been lifting only the yachts. Almost anywhere you look, if you just open your eyes, you will see ordinary, hardworking people struggling. Not far away, you''ll find a few greedy bastards making out like bandits. What defines greedy bastards? It''s not merely that they''re rich. I''m a capitalist; I am in favor of making lots and lots of money, as long as it comes from creating value for others. Americans have a long tradition of getting rich by making a great product or service that contributes to the growth of our country. But greedy bastards have given up on creating value for others and instead get their money by rigging the game so that they can steal from the rest of us. Do You Suffer from Greedy Bastards? Do you have greedy bastards in your state? In your congressional district? In your workplace? Are greedy bastards supplying your supermarket? Your big box stores? Are they lurking at your doctor''s office, your hospital, your gas station, your power company, your elementary school, your local college? If you have an infestation of greedy bastards, you need to be able to see them. You need to know how they got in, and you need to know what actions to take to get them out. So what do we do about all these greedy bastards? That question has obsessed me since 2008, when the banking crisis hit. At the time, I was hosting the financial news show Fast Money on CNBC. I''d made a career as a financial news anchor and reporter, chatting up the big traders and billionaire CEOs, and breaking the stories that helped investors pick the right stocks to buy and sell. My success in financial journalism was due in large part to the many personal relationships I''d built with the business leaders I interviewed, such as Carl Icahn, Mohamed El-Erian, and Bill Gross. Shortly after the federal bailout deal was reached in 2008, I had lunch with a banking CEO who asked if he could speak off the record. He said, "Dylan, do you see what is going on here? This is the largest theft and cover-up in American history." I didn''t have to take his word for it. My then thirteen years of financial reporting were my education in the ways that business can build up or tear down a country, and the most important thing I ever learned was that if you want to understand where a country is headed, you have to follow the money. So I followed the money trail, and I discovered that many bankers are no better than gangsters, shaking down the American people. As I explain in chapter 2, "The World''s Biggest Ongoing Heist," the theft was the banksters'' ability to sell bad insurance on loans and keep the income even when they failed to pay legitimate claims. The cover-up was the government''s choice to print trillions of dollars in new money to make it seem (for a while) as if the problem had been fixed. It was true: the financial crisis and bailout were indeed the biggest theft and cover-up ever seen. Greedy bastards are making almost unimaginable fortunes by skimming money from the customers they are supposed to serve and giving virtually nothing in return. And then those same greedy bastards get more taxpayer money to keep the scam going. My private conversations with top business leaders encouraged me to trust my own eyes. So while many business journalists were cheering the government for our latest "rescue" from crisis, I was

Details ISBN1451642237 Author Dylan Ratigan Short Title GREEDY BASTARDS Publisher Simon & Schuster Language English ISBN-10 1451642237 ISBN-13 9781451642230 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 330.973 Year 2012 Publication Date 2012-08-21 Pages 256 Subtitle How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires from Sucking America Dry Imprint Simon & Schuster Illustrations Illustrations, black and white Audience General

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TheNile_Item_ID:45172278;
  • Condition: Brand New
  • Format: Paperback
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-13: 9781451642230
  • Author: Dylan Ratigan
  • Book Title: Greedy Bastards

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