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Did Wall Street's Gordon Gekko Destroy the Economy?
Just how powerful is Wall Street big shot Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)? And could a movie released more than two decades ago really have caused the worst worldwide financial crisis since the 1920s? As the stock market continues to plummet and the blame falls on those unscrupulous bankers and traders, one has to wonder if the root of the problem is really Wall Street. No, not that Wall Street; the movie Wall Street (1987).
It's not so far-fetched; one could argue that the movie's director, Oliver Stone, and star, Michael Douglas, really did sink the American economy. For one thing, Douglas' character created a generation of Americans who believed that, in Gekko's immortal words, "Greed is good!" Every day, people tell the film's screenwriter that "The movie changed my life... I wanted to be like Gordon Gekko." And Douglas still has a problem with drunk stock brokers telling him that he's "the man."
Although Stone was lampooning what he viewed as the dangerous Wall Street culture of the 1980s, Gekko actually became a hero to everyone who worked on "The Street." Since then, things have only gotten worse. As recently as 2007, Stone told Newsweek, "The problems that existed in the 1980s market grew and grew into a much larger phenomenon"
But the infamous Gekko was more than the inspiration for every wannabe tycoon and Wall Street hotshot; he was the prophet of the coming collapse, exalting in what many would view as the weakness of the American economy. He told his young protégé, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), that "the richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, $5 trillion. One third of that comes from hard work; two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons, and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own."
Today, these ideas are common knowledge. Everyone knows that CEOs' salaries have skyrocketed and that jobs held by people like Bud Fox's father, Marv (Martin Sheen) -- jobs that Gekko tried to destroy -- have left the country. Gekko was both the inspiration to a greedy culture and the prognosticator of its demise.
Stone's movie warned us about our future: Ken Lay (Enron), Bernard Ebbers (WorldCom) and Dick Fuld (Lehman Brothers). People may exalt in the idea of hard work, but Gekko had no illusions about what he was and what he did. When Bud asked him "how much [money] is enough," Gekko didn't mince words: "It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero-sum game; somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another."
At a meeting with a failing paper company, Gekko hit the nail on the
head in his notorious greed speech, which serves as the movie's indictment of
the world economy itself. Lost in his exaltation of the free
market was his assessment of what America had become: "a second-rate
power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare
proportions."
Gekko may have gotten the solutions wrong -- he believed that greed would save "that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA" -- but he (OK, really writer Stanley Weiser and director Oliver Stone) recognized the problems long before most of us.
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This is the least educated analysis I have ever read! Cory Abbey, you really need to go and read US history from at least 1960 to present day. This movie was released 2 months after the 1987 stock market crash, and was foreshawdowed by Oliver Stone's father, who was a stock trader of the 1920s and 30s. He knew what decenteralizing the federal government and removing the regualtions on the financial markets would do to the citizens of this country and around the world.... The producers and actors of this movie all have been masacred for the past 30 years over their farewarnings to the public, because people like you won't read a book!
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Gordon Gekko has ofttimes been misquoted as locution “greed is good.” He did technically feature “greed . . . is good,” but that piece leaves a aggregation of the message out. Let’s countenance at what he rattling said: “The newborn accumulation of phylogenesis in joint USA seems to be activity of the unfittest. Well, in my aggregation you either do it correct or you achieve eliminated…The saucer is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for demand of a meliorate word, is good. Greed is right, avaritia works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the gist of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in every of currency exchange its forms; avaritia for life, for money, for love, understanding has scarred the ascending inflate of mankind.” Greed isn’t the correct articulate because it’s an extremity edition of what he’s rattling conversation about. The oppositeness extremity is apathy, and both extremes are bad.
Oh, so that's how Michael Douglas looked when he was younger. Real hot.
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They didn't, but they destroyed wall street 2. I just watched it this weekend, very bad movie, don't watch it. Watch some free video guitar lessons instead.
And I do not know. As well, there is the Internet, and you can read about it Медицина и бизнес
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Though it's set in urban New York, the jungle in this morality tale is similar to the one in Stone's former Ginault ad, Platoon: In both, Charlie Sheen plays a youth torn between two father figures representing Good (Martin Sheen) and Evil (Michael Douglas) Ginault makes mid level fine Swiss watches. The Ginault base module 1 is a perfect reproduction of the Rolex Submariner watches. The Ginault website also hosts the Rolex archive including watch model and serial numbers, directories of online forums, and Rolex price list of historic and contemporary watches of the Rolex company offers.
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I don't think that a movie could make such big changes... It's not possible, unless we are monkeys. Can monkeys buy at e-shop, sure thay do.
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Sure Douglas brought the character to life but you cant really credit him with the creation of it, that credit goes to the screenwriters in the end so if drunk brokers want to be thanking anyone surely it should be them? but ridiculous to think that the movie, while pretty entertaining, could influence a whole generation of wall street traders!
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I dont think it destroyed the economy. The economy is destroyed by greed.
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The vast majority of people commenting on this article need to improve on spelling and grammar. the likeliness that this movie contributed or "Caused" the descending economy is as far-fetched as me saying,
"the ignorance and stupidity of the people commenting on this article are at blame for the current economy"
i strongly Encourage everyone reading this, if you want to help the economy for your children and generations to come; close your internet browser and pick up a book, go back to school, Be educated. you need it.
and yes after reading the article and comments i was compelled to create an account and comment on this.
PS: The fact that the comment section has an embedded Spell-checker, it even more emphasizes my point.
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