I appreciate that Matt Taibbi’s article spends so much time refuting the “no one could have known” narrative that was firmly established by propaganda during and post-Great Recession.

The blog “Calculated Risk” spoofed this even at the time with their “hoocoodanode?” taunt (fuck I miss Tanta to this day*) and it seemed obvious to me — who at the time was only vaguely paying attention to this — that the inevitable housing crash was going to cause problems of some type.

This colorful language – dominoes, a confidence game, an “iceberg,” a “storm” – artfully disguised reality. This wasn’t weather coming at them, but the consequences of years of untrammeled criminal fraud.

One of the most successful propaganda efforts in all of history was that poor little babies, just no one could have known that all of the criminal fraud, money laundering, and financial “engineering” was going to lead to trouble. Really, that probably kept a few thousand bankers, mortgage lender CEOs and other similar slimeballs out of prison.

And I was amazed how well it worked! I had friends explaining to me confidently that the callow delicate CEOs who only had access to every blatantly criminal activity and had explicitly approved everything undertaken by their organization could have had just no idea the wild speculative fraud and swindling their companies were up to.

I’d write or say, “You know, that’s not how companies work, right? No one puts $50 billion on the line and the CEO and top execs don’t know every detail about it?”

And they’d say,”But I read in the NYT that they didn’t know!” Or something very similar.

“Oh, ok then. That makes it true.”

As I said, one of the largest criminal conspiracies in history was followed up by one of the most well-organized and successful propaganda efforts of all time. Taibbi is one of the few who refutes that revisionist history every chance he gets. As the propaganda effort was to the benefit of most journalists and others, most didn’t bother to say a word against it and never will.

*I am puzzled how I can intensely miss someone I never met in person, never did anything but read words on a page, heck never even knew what she looked like until after she died. But I do, and so do a lot of other people. One of the best non-fiction writers ever to live.