POS - You should be reading Matt Taibbi

If you aren't aware of the brilliant reporting of Matt Taibbi you really need to check him out.  He is an investigative reporter for Rolling Stone, and his pieces on politics (where he'll call out BS by politicians in both parties) and Wall Street are flat out outstanding.  His language is a bit heavier on the profanity (which he uses to express his disgust and outrage at what he is writing about), but aside from that his writing is extremely intelligent and also easy to read.  He has a great knack for simplifying a number of the complicated things that Wall Street has done in recent years that has really damaged our economy, from the mortgage crisis, deregulation, and the LIBOR manipulation scandal.   His longer articles in Rolling Stone are very in depth and detailed about some of the worst things happening in our economy, often perpetuated by firms like Goldman Sachs.

If you have trouble understanding just how dangerous an unregulated Wall Street can be, you need to start with reading his book Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, it is a phenomenal read and also it is a fast read, despite the complex nature of some of the things he discusses.  In addition to his book (he has others as well) he regularly posts to a blog on Rolling Stone that can be found here:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog or you can follow him on Twitter http://twitter.com/mtaibbi 

For those of you that are in favor of the full deregulation of Wall Street I challenge you to read Griftopia.  If that book doesn't change your mind and open your eyes to just what full deregulation would do to destroy America, then you are either blind or naive.  For the record - I do not want total regulation of Wall Street, just common sense regulation such as the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act provisions that separate securities trading from commercial banking, as the ending of that restriction directly led to the economic crash of the past few years.  Read Griftopia, I guarantee you'll wind up agreeing with me!

*****UPDATE***** updated 8/30/12
Wow, I must have psychic timing.  The day after I originally posted this (although I wrote it about 2+ weeks before that), Taibbi came out with a brand new in depth research piece on Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital.  Make sure you read this, it is oustanding!