Griftopia
2010 non-fiction work by Matt Taibbi
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America is a 2010 book by American political journalist Matt Taibbi about the events that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
It argues that the crisis was not an accident of the free market but the result of a complex and ongoing politico-financial process taking place in the United States whereby wealth and power are transferred to a super-rich "grifter class" that holds a grip on the political process. Taibbi maintains that "all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a tiny oligarchy of extremely clever criminals and their castrato henchmen in government."
Critical reception was mixed. One observer described Griftopia as "necessary ... corrective" of the assertion that bubbles are inevitable in the market system, and another review said the book contests the idea greed of the American consumer was a primary cause of the problem. More negative reviews described Griftopia as "superficial and one-sided" and as spoiled by Taibbi's use of hyperbolic and profane language.
Contents
Griftopia contains seven analytical essays, followed by an epilogue, and a note about the author's sources. Taibbi names most sources he interviewed. However, in some instances sources remained anonymous for their protection. Other sourcing is self-evident from publicly known material.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5608961. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Griftopia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.