joining us now is contributing editor at "rolling stone" matt taibi. matt, a great piece. lot of research went into this. >> yep. >> a lot of plain speak. no b.s. attitude you have taken here. but in terms of it being the bailout being one of the biggest and most elaborate lies sold to the american populous, tell us why you think so. >> the story started out as sort of a where are they now review of what the bailouts accomplished and what happened to the bailout recipients and what evolved into, as i did my research, was i found that there had been so many lies told in the course of the bailouts over the last four years and it became about what the bailout inspector calls the original sin of the bailout, which is there was a moment in time when the government decided that it was going to start lying on behalf of the banks. they were going to start calling unhealthy banks or insolvent banks solvent and healthy. that evolved into we're going to allow failing banks to pass stress tests. we're going to accept their phony accounting. then it became we're going to pretend they'r

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got any responses to matt taibi or maybe washington's intransigence has got you angry? you want to vent. finds me on facebook. tweet me. my handle is @alivelshi. hanks for joining the conversation this week on "your money." we're here every saturday 1:00 p.m. eastern and weekdays at 3:30. have a great weekend. >>> it's 4 p.m. in the east, 1 p.m. on the west coast, i'm martin savidge in for fredricka whitfield st. a pleasure to be with you. if you are just tuning in thanks very much for joining us. these are the top stories we are following right now in the cnn newsroom. >>> the gun control debate, it takes center stage on tuesday. that's when vice president biden's expected to present his recommendations to president obama on how to reduce gun violence in this country. a ban on assault weapons likely to be among those proposal. new york senator charles schumer today asked walmart and other retailers to stop selling those guns voluntarily. >> i'm urging our country's major gun retailers like walmart and sports authority, to suspend sales of modern assault-style weapons u

matt taibi is a masterful writer with rolling stone, i think -- i like matt a lot.it crazy but masterful at putting this argument forward. you start with mentioning that the funds were used in some ways for retention bonuses. this latest chapter doesn't help aig's reputation. you really say the government failed in changing the way wall street thinks. >> no, i think what the real lesson, my assignment was to look at the bailout, was it an accomplishment, was it not? what i think we focused on in the end was they told so many lies on behalf of these companies over the years. in the interest of instilling confidence in the markets, that in the end they ended up vouching for a system that was bankrupt or was insolvent. we're stuck vouching for that system now. that's the problem. where does that end? when you start lying for a company, you end up having to keep doing it over and over again. you have to publicly endorse the health of these companies. that's the ongoing legacy of these bailouts. >> where does it end is an interesting theme of your story. in fact, i want

trickle, trickle down, the tax cuts, your next book, matt taibi. >> matt would be the perfect person to pick this up, couldn't agree more. >> guest: yeah. >> guest: we love him. and trickle down most assuredly has been discredited, i would think. alto it keeps coming -- although it keeps coming up. that's what's so disheartening. all of these things keep coming up like they're new, and they're not. and i guess maybe you always have new listeners out there or new viewers on tv, but there's nothing new. >> guest: what he, what you talked about on the unfunded pension plan is quite interesting. and, in fact, we've got the section in the book on pensions. and one of the reasons don and i like to do what we do is that you always learn new things, or you may relearn old things that you may have forgotten. and pensions are a perfect example of really the heart of a lot of the problems of the american middle class has. the '50s, '60s and '70s more and more people received pensions and were able to look ahead to secure retirements. but in the case of private industry, since the '8 0s on, duri