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This is my favorite book so far about the financial crisis. It's not the most informative, or the most well reasoned; you won't really come away with a more sophisticated understanding of derivatives or CDOs; there are few if any policy prescriptions.

But for sheer moral outrage and pitchforked-prose, it is unbeatable. The culprits of "the long con" may not ever be held to account in a courtroom or feel the public's outrage in the pocketbook - but at least they have not escaped Taibbi's poisoned pen.

From the enablers like Alan Greenspan ("the biggest asshole in the universe"), Robert Rubin, Mayor Daley and Rahm Emanuel, to the perps at JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and of course Goldman Sachs ("the vampire squid sucking the lifeblood out of America,") the rogues are outed and out-shouted.

And best of all, Taibbi reserves his highest scorn for the hapless financial reporters who (with a few notable exceptions) were present at the scene of the crime but failed to sound the alarums.

The financial press, according to Taibbi, embraces "a sort of on-going validation of the Ayn Rand/Alan Greenspan fairy tale, in which [Goldman bankers'] riches and power sufficed as testimony to their social value." If Taibbi's prose is a bit over-the-top at times, it seems justified if only to burst the bubble of that fairy tale.