Ratigan - Greedy bastards : how we can stop corporate communists, banksters, and other vampires from sucking America dry

Id like to acknowledge those who wrote this book with me: G. F. Lichtenberg and Dr. Jeffrey Spees.

Id like to acknowledge all of those who supported us while we wrote this book like Derek Evans, Audrey Benson, Steve Friedman, Chris Richards, and the Ratigan Family, not to mention all of those who have supported this endeavor from its beginning like Richard Chapman, Matt Winkler, Marty Schenker, John Raymond, Elliott Verner, Jason Del Col, Aprille Goodman, Lance Goodman, and John Melloy.

Special acknowledgement is due to Meredith Fein Lichtenberg for supporting Greg in this year-long mission; to Jon Karp, Ben Loehnen, Richard Rhorer, Kelly Welsh, Jackie Seow, Gina DiMascia, Irene Kheradi, Eric Rayman, Jessica Abell, Sammy Perlmutter, Lisa Healy, and everyone at Simon & Schuster working to bring it to life; to Richard Pine at Inkwell Management; to Ken Sunshine and Marni Tomljanovic at Sunshine Sachs; to Alan Berger at CAA; and to the staff in Dr. Spees laboratory at the University of Vermont who worked without their leader for a month so that Jeff could work with us on this book. Thanks, too, to Scott Buschkuhl at Hinterland for his work on the jacket and the diagrams and to Jim Hunt for drawing the books political cartoons.

This book is possible because of the generous time given to us by experts such as Mohamed El-Erian and Bill Gross at Pimco, Dr. John Noseworthy at the Mayo Clinic, Salmon Kahn at the Kahn Academy, Mark Fisher at MBF Clearing, Susie Buffett at the Sherwood Foundation, Jimmy Williams at The Get Money Out Foundation, Gary Parr, Deputy Chairman at Lazard Freres, Christine Choi and Richard Branson at The Virgin Group, Michael Eisner at Tornante, Frank Aquila at Sullivan & Cromwell, Richard Grasso at Gladiator Holdings, Phil Griffin at MSNBC, Atul Gawande at The New Yorker , Nick Negroponte and Frank Moss at MIT, Andrew Jenks at MTV, Carl Icahn at Icahn Associates, Jon and Pete Najarian at Optionmonster, Mike Bloomberg at Bloomberg LP, Andrew Chapman and Marcus Samuelsson at the Samuelsson Group, Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania governor, Dan Dimicco and Pat McFadden at Nucor Steel, T. Boone Pickens and Jay Rosser at BP Capital, Josh Fox, filmmaker of Gasland , Frank Islam, Ed Crego, and George Munoz who authored Renewing the American Dream , Barry Ritholz at Fusion IQ, James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, Robert Kennedy, Jr., at the National Resources Defense Council, Bill Fleckenstein at Fleckenstein Capital, Arianna Huffington at the Huffington Post, Martin Bashir at MSNBC, and Deepak Chopra along with countless other solution seekers who show us every day all the new ways things can be done.

And finally to the truth squad who led the effort to turn the grand story told in this book into cold, hard, irrefutable fact: Matt Stoller, Gretchen Gavett, Brendan Crane, Megan Robertson, Betsy Korona, Brian Nerkowski, Mary Murphy, Tammy Caputo, Jesse Rodriguez, Sasha Walek, Nick Tuths, John Estrada, Chris Schwarz, Charlie Hitchens, and Dominic Palumbo.

Thank you all.

DYLAN RATIGAN is the host of MSNBCs The Dylan Ratigan Show , an opinion-fueled daily broadcast program, and the podcast Radio Free Dylan . The creator of CNBCs Fast Money and formerly the coanchor of CNBCs The Call and Closing Bell , Ratigan started his career in print journalism and rose to become the global managing editor at Bloomberg. He has worked as a regular on-air contributor for ABC News and published articles in newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Miami Herald , and the Chicago Tribune . His coverage of the Enron scandal at CNBC earned him journalisms coveted Gerald Loeb Award.

DYLAN RATIGAN is the host of MSNBCs The Dylan Ratigan Show, a make-versus-take debate and analysis-fueled broadcast program that tackles the world of politics, money, 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 including CNBCs Fast Money, and The Dylan Ratigan Show, and a nonprofit foundation, Get Money Out.

Join him online at dylanratigan.com and on Twitter (@dylanratigan).

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Imagine an ordinary man so desperate that he decides to rob a bank. For years, hes 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. Hes 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 doesnt want to be a burden, and he knows that she cant 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 $1and health care.

This is not a fantasy, and the man wasnt 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 isnt severe enough, he plans to tell the judge that hell do it again. His $100,000 bond has been reduced to $2,000, but he says he doesnt 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. Were well on the way to creating a permanent underclass of the jobless, wrote economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times . One-sixth of Americas workersall those who cant find any job or are stuck with part-time work when they want a full-time jobhave 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 cant, 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 dont 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 its 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, its 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 povertythats more poor Americans than ever in the half century since records have been kept. Talk about a bad deal.