tavis: good evening, from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. first up tonight, a conversation with veteran journalist and "rolling stone" contributor, matt taibbi, and the connection between wall street and washington. he draws a line between the politics between the financial system. the book is called "griftopia." and jeffrey wright joins us from new york in advance of the broadway debut of "a free man of color." matt taibbi and jeffrey wright coming up right now. >> all i know is his name is james and he needs extra help

with his reading. >> i am james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference, you help us all live better. >> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, nationwide insurance is proud to join tavis in working to improve financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment one conversation at a time. >> and by contributions from your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: matt taibbi is a contributing author for "rolling stone." his latest book is called

"griftopia, bubble machines, vampire squid and the long con breaking america." matt, thanks for being on the program. >> thanks for having me. tavis: let me start with the quote that was the impetus for the book. it says, "the first thing you need to know about goldman sachs is that it's everywhere, the world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." you said that over a year ago in "rolling stone." it becomes the impetus for the actual book. i recall when that quote came out, as you will recall, there was much conversation about that quote and whether or not journalists should be writing such harsh things. take me back to the quote and what you recall about the controversy about it. >> what was funny about the

quote is it almost didn't get into the magazine because the fact-checkers called me up and they were atwitter over the fact that squids don't have blood funnels. so we very nearly got into a factual problem and i tried to explain to them that was part of the joke. but, yeah, i was trying -- this is very difficult material, this wall street struv. it's very dense. it's boring to a lot of people. we had to use some narrative techniques, fiction-writing techniques, to get people excited about the material and i turned goldman sachs into a james bond-style villain and that helped focus people's attention, i think, on some of the issues. i didn't have to make anything up in order to do that. this had the advantage of being true. but we did use some of those techniques and some of that language, i thought it was a way to get people interested in material that otherwise they wouldn't have paid attention to. tavis: before i come back to the

material, specifically, the book, "griftopia," it occurs to me that you work for a publication that has a great deal to say about the serious issues many americans are wrestling with. "rolling stone" is given credit for bringing down a top general. a top general was brought down by a piece in "rolling stone." you've taken on goldman sachs and generated a lot of controversy around your reporting about the financial collapse. talk to me about the power of magazines these dies like "rolling stone" to have real stuff to say about real issues. >> we're kind of a dying breed in this profession. the print magazine and journalism industry is in a great deal of trouble. one of the things that happened when the business started to give way to the internet and broadcast television, is that a lot of organizations started cutting investigative journalist

and fact checkers. so there's very few places left in the journalism business where somebody like me has the luxury of spending two or three months, orb michael haste, who did the mcchrystal piece, spending two or three weeks on a story and traveling to afghanistan and not producing something every day. that's rare these days but it's valuable and it can still have an impact if we allow journalists to do that kind of things. tavis: what is, then, in "griftopia," the griftocracy? >> i'm talking about a small group of banks that have become too big to fail and have become intertwined with government to a point where they're immune to capitalist consequence. it's great that we've had this tea party movement about

restoring free market values but what they fail to understand is that what we've got now is a situation where there's a small class of gigantic financial companies that have put themselves above capitalism. they've rigged the game so they win no matter what happens and no matter how stupid they account and they did in the financial crisis, act incredibly stupidly, and they not only died out, but ended up ascendant and made more money than before. tavis: a couple were let go. and i understand the point you're making. a few did die out, lehman, merrill lynch. but there are others who only survive because we, the american taxpayer, bailed them out. explain to me what you mean when you say above capitalist

consequence since we bailed them out. >> we shouldn't have bailed them out. goldman sachs, morse -- morgan stanley, a lot of these companies would not have survived in 2008 if they had not been able to call up their former co-workers in government, the great example was goldman sachs calling up hank paulsen, former head of goldman sachs, and not only having him greenlight the a.i.g. bailout that resulted in $13 billion that went straight to goldman sachs, but they got permission to change to a commercial bank. i think without the ability to reach out to the government at a time of need and get enormous bailout money and special favors, a lot of these companies would have fallen on their face

or gone bankrupt and they didn't do that. tavis: juxtapose for me your terminology of government as a slavish lap dog to these financial institutions versus the obama administration and democrats in congress telling us that what they gave us a few months ago was financial reform with teeth in it. >> obviously, they're going to say that. but most of the people i talk to on wall street, they'll all tell you that the -- what was passed, the dodd-frank bill, while it had good things in it, most notably the ban on proprietary trading -- really, there wasn't anything done to change the essential problems that led to the financial crisis. the biggest problems, again, being that these banks are too big now, that the main problem is that we cannot let these banks fail no matter how irresponsible they are and there were efforts early on in the

dodd-frank process to try to break up these companies and make them smaller but we failed to do that and that's an important problem we didn't address. tavis: is it just the banks or broader than the banks? i raise that because many times on this program, while this was going on, the healthcare debate, that is, the stock of the healthcare industry went through the roof the week it was announced they cut the deal with the obama administration. so clearly, they were happy, if there was going to be healthcare reform, they were happy with what they got, again, to the point that their stock went up. so is it just the financial industry that has government by the throat? or does it move beyond that? >> actually, i included a chapter in this book about the healthcare reform, specifically to point that out, that, in fact, the insurance industry, you know, they were able to survive this entire healthcare reform effort without having anybody touch their antitrust exemption.

not many people know that insurance companies are legally allowed to collude and set prices, all the things, the movie "the informant" with matt damon in it that villainized agricultural companies for getting together and setting a price on corn product, people don't realize that that's legal in the insurance industry and that was preserved throughout this process because the insurance companies were able to meet with the obama administration and cut backroom deals and create and craft something they called healthcare reform that didn't touch the essential subsidy of their industry. tavis: what happens to the griftocracy now that republicans will be running the house and the tea party has made a statement. what happens to the griftocracy now? >> clearly, there hasn't been a lot of difference between the democrats and the republicans with regard to the policy towards wall street. if anything, the democrats have

really been worse over the last 15 years or so. the two major deregulatory actions that led to the financial crisis, the repeal of the glass-steagall act in 1998 and commodity futures modernization act in 2000, those were both done under bill clinton's watch. but the republicans are very much anxious to do the bidding of wall street. the day after the elections last week, one of the first things they announced was their intention to roll back the volcker rule, the one thing in the dodd-frank rule that wall street guys told me was a good thing, the ban on proprietary trading. the first thing they decided to do was to roll back the volcker rule. that tells you about their priorities. i think a lot of ordinary tea parties that they elected these guys with a mandate to end bailouts and subsidies on wall street but one of the first things they did was reach out and do a favor for wall street.

tavis: 30 seconds left, matt. you say, to my read, some of your harshest critique for alan greenspan. >> what i was trying to do is show this mentality, this incredible contradiction in greenspan's personality, because he ideology -- he publicly advocated the ideology that government should be no part of wall street but he created the mechanism that allowed wall street to continually bail themselves out. there's a contradiction between no regulation on one hand, no government, and total welfare state on the other hand. and that's where we are right now. tavis: it's a great deconstruction of what happened

when this crisis hit. the book is called "griftopia, bubble machines, vampire squid, and the long con gripping america." up next, jeffrey wright. tavis: jeffrey wright is a terrific actor which many of us know from his award-winning performance in "basquiat." his latest project of john guerre, "a free man of color." here, a sneak preview of "a free man of color." >> didn't you used to be a slave? >> don't be fresh, mama. even though born of a slave, i purchased my freedom and became my father's heir. >> my father's heir, a very rich, very white father left my boss everything, including me. i do all the work, he does

nothing. >> i beg your pardon, each morning i may be found at my desk writing a play. >> where did you get the nerve to write a play? does your masterpiece have a title? >> "a free man of color," the sanctity of surfaces, the value of veneer, lift the curtain, we begin! tavis: jeffrey, good to have you back on the program, sir. >> thank you, travis. tavis: you guys have been in previews and the show has a lot of good buzz. how do you know -- i know you are a serious thespian, how do you know after all these previews when you, personally, are ready for the big night? >> well, you know, the wonderful thing about doing stage is that you're continually mining through the story and down into the character, so it evolves every night, and, of course, it's a new play. it's a play that has epic

dimensions to it, a lot of history behind it. so there's a lot to discover. so we're still in previews now. and we really treat these previews as rehearsals because we're continuing to flesh out and change things within the script, even. so, you know, we're ready for -- we're ready -- we'll be ready for tomorrow's performance and then we'll continue to drive through and open on the 18th, as you say. but it's been a great process to this point as we pull back the layers of this thing and present it to the audience in its fully realized form. tavis: i'm going to sit back and let you explain what these layers are all about and what this play is about in its fully realized form. take it away. >> the play takes place in early

19th century new orleans, and also, to a large degree, haiti, around the time of the louisiana purchase when you had all of these wonderful international, multiracial confluences at work to create what is the city of new orleans. new orleans was very -- very different from much of the united states in that a lot of these influences were allowed to flourish. so you had, as an expression of that, jazz, for example, which was the coming together of these many different influences, but grounded in something that was truly american, because all of these influences were allowed to flourish and be celebrated. so the play deals with that, that dynamic, and at the center of all of this, is a free man of

color, the character that i play, who is interacting with the rush of history that is being driven by, you know, characters like napoleon and thomas jefferson, tucant lavateaur, all coming together at a time when there was upheaval in new orleans at a time when jeffersonian democracy was imposed on the place and there was a shift in the dynamic where one control system was replaced by another and prior to jeffersonian democracy, prior to new orleans being part of america, there was a laxity socially, sexually, racially, that existed, and the play deals largely with the contradiction of the coming of america and the coming of democracy and the contradictions that came with it, a reintroduction of slavery,

for example. so the play is examining the history of new orleans from that standpoint. and, as well, deals, as i said, with haiti, because there was such a haitian influence on new orleans at that time. after the revolution in haiti, the population of new orleans doubled because of the migration out of haiti by not only free people, but also rebellious slaves, as well. so a lot at play. a lot at work and a lot at play within the story that we try to flesh out. tavis: knowing you to the extent i do, i think i know the answer to this question, but i want to pose it anyway, which is how you go about selecting the kinds of roles on stage or on film that you want to play these days, and i sense that there's an appreciation you have, given your explanation now, for complexity of character. >> well, i like to be kept on my toes. i look for a challenge.

i don't like to recreate steps that have walked. i like to see if i can create something new. that makes it exciting for me. in this case, i didn't so much choose this play as i was chosen by john guerre and george wolf, who are the real creative forces behind the birth of this play. george, when still artistic director of the public theater, commissioned john to write a play about new orleans set at this time that combined kind of the european traditional influences of restoration comedy and, you know, the underpinning influences of american history -- excuse me -- so what we have is a story that begins

as a restoration comedy but kind of unravels into an american tragic farce. george has had a long love affair with new orleans and john guerre is one of the great american playwrights so the two came together with the idea they would write something with me in mind soists chosen for this one and i accepted gladly. tavis: how much an honor is that when you have two persons of that stature who specifically write something for you on the stage? >> it's a great honor and slightly intimidating because you have to be worthy of their choice and of their work. but george knows me better than -- knows me, as an actor, better than anyone. we worked on "angels in america," so he has a very good

send of what i'm curious about as an actor and we also share, i think, certain creative aspirations through our work. one of the things that's most exciting for me about this is it's an opportunity to use all the classical tools, you know, of our trade, but do it within the context of something specifically american. we, as actors, we do shakespeare and shakespeare's an extraordinary playwright, no doubt about that. but we have to put ourselves into his cultural reality. and it works very well. you can take "macbeth" and transplant it into the civil war era. but in this case, i've been given an opportunity to use classical gesture and heightened language and do it within the context of a very specific american, cultural and historical environment. and that's a real thrill for an

american actor, but also for an american audience, i think. tavis: when you put yourself into something, and, again, when one sees your work, one knows that you embody these characters so beautifully, you put yourself into everything you do. when you put yourself into it and it's not met with the kind of critical acclaim or box office success that you hoped or thought it might be, how do you process that? i ask that against the backdrop -- anyone who has actually seen "cadillac records" knows it is some of the best work you have ever done. i have seen that thing a dozen times and can't stop watching it. anybody who has seen that will tell you jeffrey wright killed that but it was not met with the box office success one would hope. when you point yourself into a character and it comes out that way, how do you, as an actor, process that? >> i blame somebody else. i try to pinpoint the person who

should shoulder responsibilities and most often i find them. you know, it takes -- it takes a collaboration, whether it be theater or film, to make something, you know, fully successful. and, you know, you don't often find all of the components that are going to allow that to happen. i tried to just focus on what i can control. at the end of the day, it may mean they need to find, you know, other elements of control within the work that i do and start producing some of these things, as well. and that, you know, that may be a next step. but the best thing about doing what we do is that it's collaborative and the worst thing is that it's collaborative. so you try to put yourself in situations in which you're with a group of people who share a

common aspiration for the piece. so i've found that, now, lincoln center has been a really extraordinarily nurturing environment for this play. george wolf, john guerre, and the rest of the cast, mo staff is a part of this. veteran actors like john mcmartin from the world of broadway have come together and we're celebrating nightly this story and opportunity to present the new historical american play that has immediate contemporary relevance and resonance. the play was commissioned prior to katrina, prior to the earthquake, obviously. but we hope that it does shed some light on the historical forces that led to the vulnerabilities that folks in new orleans and folks in haiti unfortunately found themselves within in these last years.

so we're in a good place now. we're enjoying what we're doing. tavis: anything about new orleans and haiti is always timely, it seems, and anything starring jeffrey wright is worthy of seeing. it's called the play on broadway, "a free man of color," opening november 18. hold my tickets, i'll be there mid december to check you out in person. always good to have you on the program, sir. >> thank you. tavis: that's our show tonight. you can catch me on the weekends on public radio international and access our radio podcast through pbs.org. until then, good night from l.a. thanks for watching. keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time as former silicon valley c.e.o. rebecca

costran. >> all i know is his name is james and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i'm james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference -- >> thank you. >> -- you help us all live better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, nationwide insurance is proud to join tavis to working to improve financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment one conversation at a time. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions from your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.