Wall Street’s naked lunch

Brilliant new essay† from Matt Taibbi:

The counterfeit nature of our economy is troubling enough, given that financial power is concentrated in the hands of a few key players—“300 white guys in Manhattan,” as a former high-placed executive puts it. But over the course of the past year, that group of insiders has also proved itself brilliantly capable of enlisting the power of the state to help along the process of concentrating economic might—making it less and less likely that the financial markets will ever be policed, since the state is increasingly the captive of these interests.

Steel yourself for this one.

† Via Zed Shaw.

Related posts:

The Japanese general election

The tragedy of Tohoku

The Big Three and the good fight