Matt Taibbi: Hit the Bankers Where it Hurts

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi supports Occupy Wall Street no matter what. But “because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now,” he writes, “it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous.” The time is approaching where the movement will have to deliver some concrete demands, so Taibbi gets to work suggesting some: end the monopolies of “too big to fail banks,” tax financial transactions to pay for bailouts, and strip firms that take bailout money of their right to lobby against taxpayers. Nicole Gelinas of the conservative City Journal seconds Taibbi’s conviction that banks are flouting the rules, succeeding “not by giving people needed or wanted products, as Apple did, but through their ability to hold the entire global economy hostage.”