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Essay on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

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Project B: movie response

Global Financial Ethics – FIN6620

The movie response that will be covered in this essay will be on the film “Wall Street Money Never Sleeps ”. It was directed by Oliver Stone, released during 2010 and is the sequel to the 1987 film “Wall Street”. The film starts with the release from jail of Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko before cutting to a rather elaborate plot involving Shia LaBeouf as the young trader with (some) scruples, who's rising in a world that just happens to be collapsing at the same time, as investment banks run by the likes of Frank Langella and Josh Brolin teeter under the weight of the 2008 financial crisis. The story then carefully weaves in more and more to Gekko (who, conveniently, also …show more content…

This is one of the many flaws, which has been allowed to occur within the banking industry, to the point where it has become the norm (Peston, 2011).

One of the most prominent ethical issues presented in this movie is the idea of insider trading, which is the trading of stock with hidden information that the general publics is not informed about. It began with rumours being spread on “Zabel” by Bretton James who runs the rival bank Churchill Schwartz, which caused the rumours to become true, and Keller Zabel to be on the verge of collapse. Bretton James then insults Lewis Zabel by offering him $3/share when the firm was trading the previous week at $75/share. Zabel claims that this was revenge for letting Jame’s company go under eight years ago. These series of events causes Zabel to commit suicide by throwing himself under a subway. To avenge his mentor Shia Labouf releases rumours on Churchil Shwartz, which caused their shares to drop down 8% in pre market trading costing them $120million. Insider trading can be a very powerful tool within the financial sector; it can be used to make large profits as well as destroying others. As illustrated in the movie, Lewis Zabel took his life due to the results of Insider trading. It’s a criminal offence in most countries, however as Shia Labouf said it’s “hard to prove”, this is due to the difficulty of trying to prove what a person has heard via word of mouth. Because Insider trading is illegal,

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