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Paperback
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN13: 9781400051267
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Who filled the trough? Who set the table at the banquet of greed? How has it been possible for corporate pigs to gorge themselves on grossly inflated pay packages and heaping helpings of stock options while the average American struggles to make do with their leftovers?
Provocative political commentator Arianna Huffington yanks back the curtain on the unholy alliance of CEOs, politicians, lobbyists, and Wall Street bankers who have shown a brutal disregard for those in the office cubicles and on the factory floors. As she puts it:
“The economic game is not supposed to be rigged like some shady ring toss on a carnival midway.” Yet it has been, allowing corporate crooks to bilk the public out of trillions of dollars, magically making our pensions and 401(k)s disappear and walking away with astronomical payouts and absurdly lavish perks-for-life.
The media have put their fingers on pieces of the sordid puzzle, but Pigs at the Trough presents the whole ugly picture of what’s really going on for the first time—a blistering, wickedly witty portrait of exactly how and why the worst and the greediest are running American business and government into the ground.
Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski, Adelphia’s John Rigas, and the Three Horsemen of the Enron Apocalypse—Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andrew Fastow—are not just a few bad apples. They are manifestations of a megatrend in corporate leadership—the rise of a callous and avaricious mind-set that is wildly out of whack with the core values of the average American. WorldCom, Enron, Adelphia, Tyco, AOL, Xerox, Merrill Lynch, and the other scandals are only the tip of the tip of the corruption iceberg.
Making the case that our public watchdogs have become little more than obedient lapdogs, unwilling to bite the corporate hand that feeds them, Arianna Huffington turns the spotlight on the tough reforms we must demand from Washington. We need, she argues, to go way beyond the lame Corporate Responsibility Act if we are to stop the voracious corporate predators from eating away at the very foundations of our democracy.
Devastatingly funny and powerfully indicting, Pigs at the Trough is a rousing call to arms and a must-read for all those who are outraged by the scandalous state of corporate America.
From the Hardcover edition.
Arianna Huffington, popular pundit, columnist, and author, is not known for her polite criticisms or her carefully worded complaints. In the course of Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America, the corporate CEOs, accountants, politicians, and lobbyists at who she takes aim receive little relief from their porcine characterization first intimated in the book's title. And while she is full of invective for Enron's Kenneth Lay, Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, Dick Cheney, and others, she backs up her outrage with dollar figures, dates, names, and specific information. The voluminous research is made more digestible by Huffington's direct and often amusing writing style (she characterizes a CEO's process of getting a loan approved by a corporate board as being akin to Tony Soprano getting a loan from Paulie Walnuts). Interspersed between chapters are entertainingly informative sidebars, including quizzes on executives' avarice and games where you match the CEO to his yacht. Occasionally, Huffington's anger gets mired in name-calling, which deflates her points. And while she spends ample time and space outlining the particulars of a flawed power structure, she dedicates little time to offering practical solutions toward remedying the problems. But Huffington is not trying to write a political science textbook or a party platform. As a highly readable indictment of corporate and governmental excess, Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America is highly successful. --John Moe
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| Insightful |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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What a great book. What a sad book. What an insightful book. And this was only the begining. Things got worse as we all know. Arianna was just ahead of everyone else on this Corporate Greed stuff. But that's what happens when you refuse to let yourself be brainwashed by the "Corporate Media". God bless her for writing this book. Too bad no one listened earlier. Now that so many trillions have been stolen from the world economies, especially the US, it may be "too late" to get our democracy back. The corporations (without a soul) are almost totally in commant now. Would love to get her current take on all the greed and corruption that followed.
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| An eye opener! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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An eye-opener kind of a book. Must be distributed to schools so that we might be able to protect future generations from the disastrous effects of the corporatism-mindset in its various forms (financial, political educational etc.).
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| Pigs at the Trough |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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This was a very poorly written book. It was repetitive, rambling and boring. I suspect she had someone write it to make money.
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| Corporate fascism. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Although published in 2003 the information in "Pigs" is still relative in exposing current corporate practices, i.e. the control of the US government by big business. Corporate fascism is no joke and rare is the elected official who has not succumbed to the lure of monied lobbyists. The topic is serious but the book is an easy read and meant for sharing.
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| Pigs at the Trough |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Great book with lots of data that I was missing. I was already mad about the corporate greed. Now I'm even madder. It really is time to get the Constitution back in again. Arianna H did a great job and her humor makes for easy reading. I am about halfway through and I read some every night. It definitely is just what I wanted. You go, Arianna.
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