“Greedy Bastards! How Can We Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other
Vampires from Sucking America Dry,” was written by Dylan Ratigan. Simon & Schuster
published the book in 2012. This book is the work of a Journalist’s study of the American
government and large corporations. Ratigan attempts to expose the corruption that has been
deteriorating the national economy; it is his hope that with awareness, the American people can
take their country back from the banksters and vampires.
Our country has been taken over by the banksters and vampires. In this book Ratigan
expresses his frustrations with the financial system. The financial system is an instrument that
allows money to flow through health, energy, and education. Finance is a government authorized
service for the specific reason to drive money into the other industries. This is why the
corruption of the financing institutions is so fundamentally wrong and un-American. The main
issues we face in this book are: Americans pay taxes to relieve debts due to bailouts, corporations
have taken jobs overseas leaving Americans with a very high unemployment rate, hospitals are
making money by keeping people sick, the educational system is not helping students achieve
higher knowledge and leaving us in debt, Americans are oil dependent, and politicians are
allowing industry executive write bills that effect our people. He states that the remedy to
stopping the Greedy Bastards is through the VICI, which stands for visibility, integrity, choice,
and interest; if we hold corporations to these standards we can realign the interests of the large
conglomerates with that of the people.
Dylan Ratigan is very clever in using “banksters” and “vampires” for appellations of what
he calls the “greedy bastards.” The terms help illustrate what Ratigan believes as a true story of
our country going seriously wrong. Banksters and Vampires are the large corporations that are
running the United States. An example of his illustration is that “bankers are no better than
gangsters, shaking down the American people” (Ratigan 6). The banksters have the ability to sell
bad insurance on loans, they can fail to pay the claims on the insurance, and still have income
flowing in. He argues that banks do not serve their customers, but rather prey on their
customers; this is how the banksters are like vampires. Vampires are creatures that feed off of
the blood of humans or animals, such as the very famous Dracula. Vampires weaken their prey
and eventually kill them such as a vampire industry provides the lowest quality product or
customer care weakening the nation then killing it. In a vampire industry the best and most
successful employee is the one who is greediest, their job is to take the customers money by any
means possible. Ratigan explains that “greedy bastards extract the lifeblood of countries, which
is capital: the money, resources, and human potential that must flow through the body politic to
nourish a nation’s health and growth” (Ratigan 7). The greedy bastard offers the people a low
price on a good or service—it sounds like a great deal —but the catch is that at some point in this
deal it will take a turn for the worst. For example, you buy a cheap candy bar, but at some point
you know that you will bite into a rock that will break your teeth. Ratigan explains, “every bite
increases the chance that you will bite down on the rock […] the greedy bastard will take little or
no responsibility for the harm you suffer” (Ratigan 11). We are left with the extra expenses
incurred for biting into that rock, such as dental expenses. If we continue to make these very bad
deals we will drown ourselves in debt and eventually end up economically crippled. The
banksters, vampires, and greedy bastards are sucking us dry.
Ratigan explains that there is a widespread of unethical, immoral, and sometimes illegal
behavior among policymakers within corporate suites and government offices. One example in
his book is “The World’s Biggest Ongoing Heist,” in which Ratigan explains that the American
people have been paying for a bailout, through taxes, for the financial crisis of 2008. Taxpayers
are paying for a bailout that only partially stopped a collapse of the entire financial system. The
taxes to be paid have been estimated by “Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the
International Monetary Fund, […] at roughly $3 trillion, or about $12,000 per US citizen”
(Ratigan 19). Rather than fixing the debts owed by the United States, the Federal Reserve
printed more money simply making matters worse. The interests of the banks and that of their
clients has not been realigned, this has also made matters worse. A large amount of the money
being printed went into real estate; homebuyers received very large loans and the biding began, it
drove the housing prices up. The “banksters and the politicians responsible for exploiting the
system are still doing exactly what they were doing before. They continue to give out loans
knowing that the families will default; the financial institution does not worry, they know that
they will still receive their money. No one was held responsible, and the system remains broken”
(Ratigan 21).
Ratigan states that “Big industry—companies such as Caterpillar, General Electric, John
Deere, Cummins Engine, and automakers, among others—[were] investing far more in China
than here [in the US]” (Ratigan 60). The increasing amount of corporations leaving the United
States has dramatically increased layoffs and pay cuts for Americans. “Our economy used to be
based on making things ourselves, which provided jobs for Americans as well as consumer
goods” (Ratigan 59). This is no longer the case, we now consume products that have been made
and packaged in other countries—mostly China. There is an overwhelming amount of Chinese
goods flowing into America. These large corporations produce product in other countries and
ship it to the US to be sold here. According to Ratigan bankers used “taxpayer money to send
jobs and investments out of the United States [and it] is an outrageous betrayal of the entire
system” (Ratigan 77). The Federal Reserve receives taxpayer money to promote growth of the
American economy. The Federal Reserve has funded corporations, but they are not promoting
growth in the United States. The growth is happening in other countries.
Ratigan blames the unemployed declining nation on people like Richard Fisher, president
of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, who “was angry that there weren’t enough imports”
(Ratigan 62). Labor costs are the main driver of corporations sending jobs overseas. Declining
employment has lead to declining family incomes, which has driven Americans to seek out the
Chinese-made bargains and Wal-Mart’s everyday low prices. This means that multinational
corporations have a double benefit, they save money by hiring very cheap labor in China, and
they can weaken the rights and wages of the US employees. The limited amount of jobs force
Americans to accept pay cuts, and they are much less likely to strike, thus putting corporations in
control.
