By: Jim Hoover

Matt Taibbi in Griftopia does an effective job of tracing the myriad of ways average Americans have been screwed by a wide network of what he calls grifters, or swindlers, in a confidence game that was blessed by government officials in all branches and at most levels of government.

Mr. Taibbi’s book relates many of the grifting ways – mortgage scams, commodity bubbles, outsourcing, and health care reform  that kisses the health care industry. The grifting means include deregulation, campaign contribution payouts, Supreme Court help, and Federal Reserve assistance.

Grifters provide no value to society. Like parasites they feast on the healthy and produce nothing for others. They are a growing part of a service sector, engorging almost 79% of our economy.

The biggest players are Wall Street executives. The smallest are unethical agents. Probably the largest and most powerful of the operatives is Goldman Sachs, which virtually dictated terms of Wall Street’s rescue by taxpayers.

The sad part for us is that the looting has already resumed: once again with very weak regulations in place and even those are failing because of the irresolution of Democrats and the direct help of Republicans.

In the criminal world, most wrongdoers are easy to identify, involving assaults against your property or your body, but crimes of the grifters is not as easy to detect. Americans know they are being robbed, but it is difficult to trace who the looters are and just how they accomplish their crimes. This provides a viable opportunity for grifters and Republicans to blame the government and/or unions.

Indeed, their crimes have been allowed, if not sanctioned, by our government and business leaders, and Americans continue to be victims, this because of oversight and regulation of top-rung executives and their agents is still almost non-existent.

It is like the threads of our economic and political society are being ripped out by greed and corruption of our leaders and there is nothing left in our checks-and-balance system that can stop the unraveling.

A relentless campaign is being staged by Republicans to hide and help the perpetrators and to weaken or destroy any regulation of swindler activities. In fact, many Republicans (for example, Darrell Issa in the House and Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin) are trying to shift the blame for the savage business downturn to unions and labor.

With aggressive participation of Republicans, lack of media vigilance, and favorable treatment of business by the US Supreme Court, the hope for the resurgence of fair business practices and a more egalitarian society are being dashed, especially with the new Republican majority in the House.

Though there is distressing proof that Wall Street types are the perpetrators, our leaders are not willing to identify them or prosecute them. They are too high up and their companies are too big to fail — more so, after a taxpayer-subsidized merger-fest of remaining financial goliaths, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs.

Let’s look at one area of the scams and see how it is continuing.

The floodgates for speculation first opened in 1991 when Laurie Ferber, appointed by Bush Sr. to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, opened the commodities speculation door to a Goldman Sachs subsidiary. Since then, sixteen more pillars of privilege were given special access.

Amazingly enough, these exemptions were virtually secret.

To the detriment of billions of global citizens, including millions of Americans, many of the commodity speculations were long-term and were assured to raise the prices of most traded commodities drastically, evidenced by gas prices of over $4 a gallon in 2008, a severe hardship for millions of Americans. The price has settled a little lower today, almost like the level is calculated to suit economic conditions and what the people will stand for.

Several commodity indices were established, one of which was the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI). It tracks 24 commodities, including agricultural, livestock, energy (most notably gas and oil), and precious metals.

In less than five years, from 2003 to mid-2008,commodity  indices rose from $13 billion to $317 billion. As a result, the prices of all index commodities rose sharply. Even now the fleecing is resuming: Gas prices have risen to over $3.60 per gallon in California.

Neither party seems to have a clue what is happening, but maybe that’s just their own scam. Two years later, little regulation has been imposed. At this point, we should be smart enough to know that it isn’t supply and demand or lack of refineries or whatever natural reason politicians might give, but plain greed of a few of what Matt Taibbi calls grifters, who legally loot with the permission of our government.

Many willfully ignorant Americans don’t even know they are victims of scam artists. Grifters know that books like Griftopia don’t reach a large audience.

Accordingly, ignorance is their ally.