Tower and his plutocratic pack are no ordinary band of psychopaths. They are men who have made their fortunes bilking entire nations out of trillions … men engaged in enterprises so preposterously profitable that there is no way they cannot be exploitative. For unlike the robber barons of the 19th century, Tower’s billionaires produce almost nothing that is useful or socially redeeming. Instead they rip the public off with their Wall Street skim-scams, through fiscally destructive mergers—yes, 80 percent of mergers line the coffers of the key players but impoverish everyone else—through their predatory casinos, and, of course, through their debt-derivative con games that Warren Buffett has called “financial weapons of mass destruction.” Theirs is an avarice so arrogant, a self-entitlement so maniacal and a hubris so soaringly grandiose that at some level these people have to be … deranged.
—Jules Meredith