In The Great American Stick-Up, long-time Los Angeles Times columnist and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer has a controversial thesis: the great financial meltdown, the crash widely regarded as the result of extraordinary circumstances, is, at its heart, an old-fashioned swindle. The architects of our financial calamity knew what they were doing, and now they are the figures anointed with the task of repairing the damage by the Obama administration.A veteran reporter with exclusive access to whistleblowers, Scheer reveals how Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Phil Gramm, and others colluded in the fundamental corruption of our economic system. The shocking twist is that the prelude to the meltdown was not due to astonishing misuses of powerbut rather the clandestine business of business as usualand these are the figures still in charge of our financial destiny.