CBC's Amanda Lang looks at ways the financial system is rigged in some people's favour

Every day, trillions of dollars are exchanged by buyers and sellers on trading floors across the world. The places where that happens are colloquially known by the faceless moniker of "the markets" but every time somebody buys a barrel of oil, a shipment of potash, a Royal Bank share or a Japanese yen, there's a real person behind that transaction.

Historically, the system works because people have confidence in the rules and believe they are treated the same as anybody else.

But it's getting harder and harder to ignore the stories of powerful people cheating the system for their own gain. As the bad apples add up, it gets harder and harder to ignore a troubling realization — "everything is rigged."

That's what financial journalist Matt Taibbi says in an interview with Amanda Lang airing on Monday night's The National. After years of reporting on some of the best examples of Wall Street stacking the deck in its favour, Taibbi has concluded that the entire system underpinning the global economy is rigged in some form or another. And it's not just financial markets that are at stake. The real economy, with factories, services, goods and jobs for real people, is under threat.