Oliver Stone And Gordon Gekko : Strange Bedfellows

Wall Street has been touted as one of the most accurate portrayals of Wall Street culture and recently spawned a sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The character of Gordon Gekko and his obsession with greed is still prevalent today, especially during the fall of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns in 2008. Many of the executives of those firms as well as Wall Street executives in general were referred to as being the “Gordon Gekkos” of our generation. Most news coverage regarding government intervention in the economy has been about Wall Street intervention as of the past few years.

“Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principals which direct them.” This is a quote by Napoleon Bonaparte; which relates to the action of Duddy Kravitz and Jordan Belfort. Duddy Kravitz is the main character of the novel “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” and Jordan Belfort is the main character of the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” which was a directed by Martin Scorsese, based off of the self-written memoir by Jordan Belfort.

For previous generations the stock market had been for the biggest businessmen and the large-scale speculators. But since mass production and mass prosperity had arrived the question came that why shouldn 't the stock market be open to all the people? Bankers and stockbrokers were both in

Hollywood films sometimes survive long after its initial release, moving its characters and messages into mainstream culture. One such example is Oliver Stones’ 1987 film Wall Street, which introduced the world to the infamous Gordon Gekko. Stone set his film in the 1980s around the time when several insider trading scandals and prosecutions were in the news. The film portrayed the high-flying lifestyles of New York traders and speculators and showed the extreme excess and greed of American culture. Gordon Gekko captured the essence of this greedy lifestyle with his “take-no-prisoners” school of capitalism. Gekko is portrayed as a corporate raider. He buys underperforming companies, breaks them up and sells their parts at a healthy profit.

Synopsis A childhood friend summed up the driving force in Bernie Madoff’s life: “Bernie wanted to be rich.” As a youngster growing up in New York City, Bernie realized that Wall Street was the greatest wealth creation machine the world had ever known. So, after graduating from college in 1960, he set his sights on joining the exclusive fraternity that ran Wall Street by organizing his own one-man brokerage firm, Madoff Securities. Madoff was one of the first individuals to recognize that computer technology provided the means to “democratize” Wall Street by establishing a system that made securities trading much more efficient and much cheaper. In the early 1970s, Madoff and several other individuals

Hence, the leadership style of Reed Hastings is extremely important for the purpose of this report and will be the key focus of the research as well. In the beginning of the year 2005, the analysts of Wedbush Securities Stock had place a price targeting at 3 dollars, the trading of which was being done at the price of approximately 11 dollars (Loftus

In my opinion Wolf of Wall Street is a quintessential and satirical analysis of the ever growing population of businessmen on Wall Street and their respective lifestyles. The basis on which I believe so is due to fact that throughout the piece there is a slew of exuberant and lavish activities which in reality would’ve directed a large amount of attention towards him. In addition to the activities throughout the movie; the fact that director Martin Scorsese promoted the use of improvisation in his film only supports the fact that he wasn’t intending for many of the showings to be accurate or have a certain tact. Furthermore, he let Leo Dicaprio have full control over the character in pinnacle instances which, in turn only proves my belief that

It is often said that perception outweighs reality and that is often the view of the stock market. News that a certain stock may be on the rise can set off a buying spree, while a tip that one may be on decline might entice people to sell. The fact that no one really knows what is going to happen one way or the other is inconsequential. John Kenneth Galbraith uses the concept of speculation as a major theme in his book The Great Crash 1929. Galbraith’s portrayal of the market before the crash focuses largely on massive speculation of overvalued stocks which were inevitably going to topple and take the wealth of the shareholders down with it. After all, the prices could not continue to go up forever. Widespread speculation was no doubt a

From the CEOs, the Government, prostitutes, and even Ivy League professors, the movie blamed anyone who had even the slightest role in the financial meltdown. In a more non-fiction type setting, the documentary aimed to exposed the corruption on Wall Street and how the government got involved. The documentary seemed to put blame on the greedy 1% of America. According to the film, people in power stay in power and simply rotate their position in power to other like individuals. So top Wall Street executives rotate to leading government positions and thus continue the cycle of greed and destruction. They generalized everyone on Wall Street to be greedy crooks who use drugs and spend corporate

““The name of the game, moving money from your clients pocket to your pocket”, Mark stated. “But if you can make your clients money at the same time it’s advantageous to everyone, correct?” “No, Mark replied…Okay, first rule of Wall Street-nobody and I don’t care if you are Warren Buffet or Jimmy Buffet- knows if a stock is going up, down or sideways, least of all stock brokers. But we have to pretend we know.”” (8)

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many commentators attempted to analyze the roots of the conflict from a political or economic perspective. Anthropologist Karen Ho, a veteran of Wall Street as well as an academic, attempted to understand the reason that Wall Street behaves the way it does in her 2009 anthropological study of American finance entitled Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street from a cultural perspective. The central paradox with which Ho begins her book is: " the economy experienced not only record corporate profits and the longest rising stock market ever, but also record downsizings," further concentrating the wealth in America (Ho 2009: 1-2). But how can corporations grow richer as the American public as a whole grows poorer? Corporations no longer view themselves as responsible for taking care of their employees, creating good products, or serving their original mission. Instead, the focus is on generating shareholder wealth (Ho 2009:3). Shareholders, not the larger public, have become the symbolic and real focus of firm strategy. The shareholder "symbolized and 'stood in' for the whole of the corporation and became the sole locus of concern and analysis" during the time Ho conducted her study in the late 1990s and continues to this day (Ho 2009:175)

The very next day that happened to be Gordon Gekko’s birthday Bud shows up at his office and was granted a brief interview. Gekko didn’t seem too impress with the stocks Bud had to offer, so as a result of Bud’s desperateness he provides Gekko with the information about Bulestar which the Federal Aviation Authority has yet to announce publicly. Buds act is an example of insider trading. Gekko became a lot more interested in what Bud had to say and then became one of his clients.

Money, sex, drugs, and greed-these four words are characterized and displayed profoundly throughout the movie Wolf of Wall Street. Based on a true story about the life of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the movie is narrated and gives insight to the struggle, power, and addictions that surrounded Belfort’s life. Belfort was a stockbroker who learned his way as an entry-level worker on Wall Street before creating his own company Stratton Oakmont. Belfort quickly learned that success on Wall Street was a result of doing any means necessary, regardless if it was the truth or providing a false sense of hope. His main scam involved selling cheap stocks and inflating the prices so the brokers can sell at a high price. Although this was illegal, Belfort was so involved and addicted to money and drugs that his scamming ways were irrelevant.

'The Wolf of the Wall Street', written by Jordan Belfort, is a high end structured novel which purely embarks the reader onto a journey exploring one's destined route to social statistic success as well as rotten failure. Self-discovery can possibly conclude to radical reinforcements of amorality, revolting and great human attributes. The story of Jordan Belfort primarily explored these multifaceted concepts through two core values of trust and loyalty. With the benefits of using third person perspective, Belfort can exemplify his past through strong subsidisation of literacy techniques used throughout his novel. Conclusively, Jordan Belfort uses the narration to give his audience a brief insight to his ongoing self-discovery.

This movie explains how crisis in 2008 happened in a financial institution in New York. The company exists since 137 years with John Tuld as the Chief Executive Officer. The leader of trading operation is Sam Rogers. He is in the company since 34 years.