Why Wall Street Matters
by William D. Cohan · 27 Feb 2017 · 113pp · 37,885 words
January 2016. And then he paid homage to one of the most recognizable cultural touchstones about modern Wall Street when he referred to the famous “Greed is good” scene in Wall Street, the 1987 Oliver Stone film, where Gordon Gekko, played with oleaginous glee by Michael Douglas, lectures Bud Fox, his young and
Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War
by James Risen · 15 Feb 2014 · 339pp · 99,674 words
all, Wall Street. He had been Michael Milken’s right-hand man in the heyday of Milken’s famous Beverly Hills trading desk during the “greed is good” era of insider trading in the 1980s. When a hungry federal prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani went after Milken for insider trading, he tried to get
Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy
by Robert A. Sirico · 20 May 2012 · 267pp · 70,250 words
, capitalism provides the greedy person a socially beneficent alternative to exploitation. Remember villainous business executive Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street? “Greed is good,” he claimed. Unfortunately, many real-life defenders of capitalism argue along the same lines. Greed, they claim, is the stimulant that drives the economy. And
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creatures with intrinsic value and dignity, ends in and of themselves rather than the mere means to another person’s wishes. The opposite of the greed-is-good error is the notion that desire of any kind is wrong. But the capacity to desire is actually a good thing that’s built in
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or the market economy that mandates a selfish dog-eat-dog ethic. The Apostle of Selfishness We began this chapter with Gordon Gekko announcing that greed is good. As he goes on to say to the shareholders of the fictional Teldar Paper Corporation, “Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the
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enormous increase in spending.” Those words aptly describe Western Europe today, particularly Greece, France, and Italy. None of this is a call to embrace the greed-is-good mantra. We spent the last chapter slaying that dragon. Let’s not have him rise from the dead here. Judeo-Christian morality minces no words
The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
by Andrew J. Bacevich · 7 Jan 2020 · 254pp · 68,133 words
Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, released in 1987. Stone’s film centered on a cutthroat business executive, Gordon Gekko, who operated on the principle that “greed is good.” In comparison with Trump’s real-life brashness and extravagance, the celluloid Gekko looked like a piker. Like Gekko, however, Trump embodied values that seemed
A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market
by John Allen Paulos · 1 Jan 2003 · 295pp · 66,824 words
writing on the board many years ago. (Inspired by a remark by stock speculator Ivan Boesky, Gordon Gecko in the 1987 movie Wall Street stated, “Greed is good.” He misspoke. He intended to say, “e is good.”) Many of the formulas useful in finance are consequences of these two formulas: A = P(1
Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants
by Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi · 14 May 2020 · 511pp · 132,682 words
the best form of competition for purposes of creating a healthy, prosperous, and just society. Indeed, as we’ll see, it is often the worst. Greed Is Good. Greed Is Right. Greed Works. President Ronald Reagan told the nation in his first inaugural address, “government is not the solution to our problem; government
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: Absolutely not. Competition, Collaboration, and Fairness Can Coexist While many people, not just the Chicago School jurists, quote Adam Smith to justify their belief that “greed is good,” far fewer consider the Scottish economist’s other important book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this book, Smith praised the virtue of prudence—“The
13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown
by Simon Johnson and James Kwak · 29 Mar 2010 · 430pp · 109,064 words
Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction: 13 Bankers 1 Thomas Jefferson and the Financial Aristocracy 2 Other People’s Oligarchs 3 Wall Street Rising: 1980– 4 “Greed Is Good”: The Takeover 5 The Best Deal Ever 6 Too Big to Fail 7 The American Oligarchy: Six Banks Epilogue Notes Further Reading Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION 13
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status as the paradigmatic bank of the 1980s, the same decade that produced the original Oliver Stone Wall Street movie, with Gordon Gekko’s famous “Greed is good” speech. Looking back, however, Salomon seems so … small. When the Business Week story was written, it had $68 billion in assets and $2.8 billion
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7.25 percent, then the dealer only pays the company 0.25 percent (the difference between the floating and fixed rates), or $250,000. 4 “GREED IS GOOD” The Takeover Derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn’t be taking it to those who are willing
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raider Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas). Although the movie’s story shows the corruption and ultimate downfall of Gekko, it is remembered for his “Greed is good” speech, which justified the pursuit of money above all else. As screenwriter Stanley Weiser wrote recently, many people would later tell him the movie made
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perceived as the ultimate door-opener, a respectable way to make money and then, like Robert Rubin, go into public service. The point of the “Greed is good” speech was that by pursuing profits (both for your company and for yourself) you were contributing to the greater good. For college seniors, it was
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Too Big to Fail” (lecture, Exchequer Club, Washington, D.C., October 21, 2009), available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/tarullo20091021a.htm. CHAPTER 4: “GREED IS GOOD” 1. Reported in Thomas B. Edsall, “Alan Greenspan: The Oracle or the Master of Disaster?” The Huffington Post, February 19, 2009, available at http://www
Money: Vintage Minis
by Yuval Noah Harari · 5 Apr 2018 · 97pp · 31,550 words
history – revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody, not just myself. Egoism is altruism. Smith taught people to think about the economy as a ‘win
Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk
by Satyajit Das · 14 Oct 2011 · 741pp · 179,454 words
out of the boy. He actually had instructions, probably pinned on the wall: “Nothing from this office should go forth which discredits the capitalist system. Greed is good.”14 Like his mentor, Greenspan was his own splendid creation. Celebrity Central Banking Greenspan reveled in the age of celebrity central bankers: “The only central
No Such Thing as Society
by Andy McSmith · 19 Nov 2010 · 613pp · 151,140 words
voice of the times in the USA. In 1989, Gordon Brown wrote an assessment of Thatcher’s record, to which he gave the title ‘Where Greed is Good’. Yet, having grown up in reasonable comfort, and having married a rich man when she was young, Mrs Thatcher herself was not greedy; the political
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