Pity the Billionaire

By Alex Granados,

Published January 10, 2012 at 9:05 AM EST

Best selling writer Thomas Frank has a new book out that talks about how conservative politicians rewrote the script for the economic collapse of 2008 and turned it to their advantage. In “Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right” (Metropolitan Books/2012), Frank takes us through the great recession that began at the end of President George W. Bush’s second term as president. Frank says the recession was the result of failed faith in the free market, and that by all rights, the public should have turned against Wall Street and looked to government for better regulation. Instead, Republicans hijacked the conversation and shifted the blame for the economy onto government.

Alex Granados

Alex Granados joined The State of Things in July 2010. He got his start in radio as an intern for the show in 2005 and loved it so much that after trying his hand as a government reporter, reader liaison, features, copy and editorial page editor at a small newspaper in Manassas, Virginia, he returned to WUNC. Born in Baltimore but raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Alex moved to Raleigh in time to do third grade twice and adjust to public school after having spent years in the sheltered confines of a Christian elementary education. Alex received a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has a minor in philosophy, which basically means that he used to think he was really smart but realized he wasn’t in time to switch majors. Fishing, reading science fiction, watching crazy movies, writing bad short stories, and shooting pool are some of his favorite things to do. Alex still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, but he is holding out for astronaut.

See stories by Alex Granados

Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

See stories by Frank Stasio