Abstract
Oliver Stone’s1 1987 film, Wall Street, proved to be positively prophetic as the U.S. economy went into a meltdown in the fall of 2008. Stone made this film during the Reagan era (1980–1992). In the film, the character Gordon Gekko was the greedy Wall Street speculator, and justified h is creed of greed with both charm and a hint of malice. It’s clear that no good can come from this. In real life, however, the creed of greed has dominated for decades on Wall Street and been given ethical cover by the idea that the market is guided by an “invisible hand” and thus its profit-making is always good.
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Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
—Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.
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Notes
Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla, Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2008), p. 291.
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© 2010 Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
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Thistlethwaite, S.B. (2010). Financial Meltdown. In: Dreaming of Eden. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113473_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113473_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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