Wall Street Greed

What, exactly, makes an American an American? This question has been asked and answered since before this country was officially founded. Men and women of a multitude of races and culture have written and spoke of it. Both ends of the spectrum have been addressed extensively. From admiring ambition to condemning corruption, nothing has been left out. In America there are three things that, to me, truly define us. A nationwide greed, awe inspiring in its magnitude, which gives the Capitalistic system we run on life. A deeply ingrained sense of patriotism, hewn into us by our revolutionary forefathers, that has earned us many powerful enemies and allies. The underlying distrust of our own government, which allowed us to create our democracy,

The movie takes place in the early 1990’s, when Jordan Belfort partners with Donny Azoff to start his brokerage firm, Stratford-Oakmont. After the introduction given by Jordan, we follow his life from the time that he is 22 years old when he had just started on wall street, all the way to the time of his arrest. Throughout the movie, you can see Jordan’s narcissistic personality aid him in his rise to the top and eventually lead to his fall.

In warning about the evils of greed, Jesus used a parable: “There was a rich man blessed with [fertile land.] He thought to himself, ‘What will I do? I have no place to keep all my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘I know what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger barns! I will put all my good things together in my new barns. Then I can say…Rest, eat, drink, and enjoy life!’“But God said to that man, ‘Foolish man! Tonight you will die!... Who will get [your things] now?’ This is how it will be for anyone who saves things only for himself. To God that person is not rich.” (Luke 12:13 21)

“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. Ambition is a theme that is visible within the novel “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” and the film “The Wolf of Wall Street”. Both Duddy Kravitz, the main character of the novel, and Jordan Belfort, the main character of the film, are both are excessively ambitious and would do anything to accomplish their goals and to become a successful individual. Growing up in poverty may provoke ones ambition; however it has the ability to cloud ones judgement and morals, and may guide one on the path of illegal activity.

“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.

As said in every economics class, the reason every business goes into business is to make money. The same can be said in criminal cases involving businesses. In the majority of cases, executives and people highly ranked in the company tend to bend the numbers in the financial/accounting areas of the business or corporation. They do not do this for fun, but rather to make money. Something needs to be done before corporations really get out of hand.

Despite Gekko’s initial attempts to warn Wall Street of the economic downturn and market crash that has yet to come, still no one believes him because people look into him as a man that has been reduced his standing in a financial world. That’s why he decided to rebuild his relationship with his daughter, Winnie. But it seems that it has been difficult for him to that because her daughter blames him for what happened to his son Rudy. At the same time, Jacob, fiancée of Winnie suspects Bretton James for the death of his mentor. And to satisfy his feelings or to seek revenge for his mentor, he made a trade with Gekko by helping him in exposing illegal trades of Bretton in exchange of helping Gekko to rebuild his relationship with

The stock market is what one would know as a collective group of buyers/sellers that trade stocks, also known as shares on a stock exchange. These securities are listed on the exchange itself and trade freely each and every day. On the exchange, stocks move hands day in and day out. Companies are able to get their stock listed on the exchange at any time that they want. There are other stocks, too...known as OTC stocks or over the counter stocks that go through a specific dealer. Larger companies tend to have their stocks listed on exchanges all throughout the world. Participants in the market can be anyone from your grandma, to retail investors, day traders, institutional investors, and so forth. One notable exchange is the NYSE; also known as The New York Stock Exchange. Moving forward, a stock market crash is when a decline of stock prices takes place throughout the stock market that results in a catastrophic loss of wealth via paper. The crashes are driven strictly by panic 9 times out of 10 a crash takes place. As a crash is happening, panic occurs; the panic keeps evolving and ends up like the snowball effect before you know it. A crash occurs when economic events take place. These events are always bad news... The behavior of traders follows, which leads to a crash when panic ensues. Crashes normally occur of a seven day period and may extend even further. Crashes happen in bear markets as the market is already weak to begin with. Once traders see a drop in prices,

The problem to be investigated is the application of business ethics. In the business world, ethics are extremely important. Ethics are prime elements that help a business to grow and to become more productive. It is by applying proper business ethics that a business can operate in a moral or ethical business environment and managed to conduct all activities in a manner that maximizes profits while not compromising all other non-economic concerns(Schwab, 1996). Businesses have over the years failed to nurture business ethics in order to fulfill shareholders' interests and to have a culture that is oriented towards profit maximization and high performance(Jennings, 2012; Sims & Felton, 2006). This has led business to have gray areas in their activities. Gray areas are those situations or problems that do not fit exactly into any ethical analysis. These are the activities which may be represented to be immoral as a result of lying and false representations on the part of the business.

The Meltdown is a PBS special on the events of the financial crisis of 2008, in a timeline format, revealing the thinking behind decisions made during the fateful months before the stock market crash in August of that year. Some financial gurus on Wall Street devised a plan to bundle several mortgages together into a group, and then selling that bundle to another group of investors looking to invest in securities. The lender did not need to earn money from the loans he was giving out, he merely gained enough of a profit from the bundling operation that billions were being made on Wall Street from 2005-2008. The problem is that these bundles were risky, and as credit unworthy individuals defaulted on their mortgages, the entire system crumbled into what is now known as the Stock Market Crash of 2008, and have subsequently lived during the Great Recession.

Wall Street is the great and powerful financial district of the world. With that statement being true Wall Street isn’t perfect. Wall Street has faced many problems throughout its existence as recessions and depressions came into play and single handedly pushed America into a financial crisis. As early as 1929 till as recent as 2008 recessions still occur and throughout the existence of Wall Street they will never stop existing. The argument of whether or not a recession could be predicted is a topic that many have different views on, some say yes and some no, this argument will never simply go away as recession will still occur in the future. It is just a matter of opinion. Although Wall Street has been known as something great and something this country relies on and takes great pride in, Wall Street isn’t actually an unstoppable force. When a recession occurs many people fail to realize that there are causes of a recession and as much as they would like to admit that they aren’t part of that cause, they actually are. There are many causes of a recession or depression ranging from horrible investments from big corporations to uncontrollable spending from each individual. While corporations and banks play essential roles in causing recessions and depressions, individual’s economic behaviors also cause recessions and depressions to deepen and lengthen.

In 1929, the stock market was one of the most horrible days in the Wall Street history of the United States. Many called Black Tuesday the day that the market declined thirteen percent; others say it was a great stock market crash. Even when historians mention that the big Crash was not, the reason for the Great Depression they say that the cause was the Stock Market itself. Everything started in October 24, 1929 was the day the investors lose millions of dollars, in shares in a single day. This caused this manufacturing world to go down, soon after the Great Depression one of the major and one the last the longest exactly ten years from 1929 to 1939. What was the cause for this to happen history mentioned, that the market was

The movie 'Wall Street' is a representation of poor morals and dissapointing business ethics in the popular world of business. This movie shows the negative effects that bad business morals can have on society. The two main characters are Bud Fox played by Charlie Sheen and Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas. Bud Fox is a young stockbroker who comes from an honest working-class family but on the other hand, Gordon Gekko is a millionaire who Bud admires and wants to be associated with. Greed seems to be a huge theme of this movie. This movie portrays the unethical society we live in. It shows how money oriented society has become and that people will do almost anything to get ahead.

Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex, he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in

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.