“Money is a she. She sleeps in the bed with you with one eye open. Next thing you know, she might be gone forever” - Gordon Gekko

So for this week’s blog I spent the evening watching Wall Street- Money never sleeps. Although I’ve never seen the first film, Gekko’s character to me is based on the crooks of the 80’s like Michael Milken who’s insider trading and rigged deals were the fashion back then. After Gekko was sent to prison most people probably  presumed there wouldn’t have been a sequel but 23 years later here we are.

The writer definitely decided to cash in on the 2008 financial crisis and essentially stole the whole movie script from real world events. The film tackles the issues of MBS, CDOs and distressed debt through two Wall Street firms Keller Zabel and Churchill Schwartz  (basically Lehman Brothers/ Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase/ Goldman Sachs).

Keller Zabel gets caught with far too much debt, is targeted by merciless short sellers, and runs out of cash within a week. Which leads to meetings at Federal bank, discussions on credit-default swap, collateralized debt obligations and whether the government should bail out banks. Does this all sound familiar? YES!! Because I talked about this exact thing in my blog a few weeks ago discussing the Lehman brothers case. I enjoyed this film when I first watched it in the cinema; that’s why I decided to watch it again for this blog. But this time all I could do was make these comparisons and wondered did the writers actually do any work!?

The comparisons don’t just stop there; Bretton James, the CEO of Churchill Schwartz who comes across as a mix between CEO of JPMorgan and CEO of Goldman Sachs. There is no bigger example of the similarity than the fact Goldman Sachs  betting against the housing market at the same time it was creating mortgage deals; which is similar to what Bretton James was doing in the film.

The area that struck me the most was Gekko’s quotes in the film; "You're all fucked, you’re the Ninja Generation.  No income.  No job.  No assets.” As I suppose I am part of this Ninja generation this worried me. Why are we the Ninja generation? Can I blame the likes of Wall Street? Why are people like Lloyd Blankfein getting away with betting against the housing market, and how can Gordon Gekko get sent to prison for insider trading yet as soon as he is released he starts trading on the London stock exchange (I know Gekko is fictional but  I bet it has happened). 

‘The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy.’

Whilst researching this area I found a great article in The Rolling Stones, which ends with the paragraph above. This article perfectly sums up my feelingsto how they have managed to get away with these financial crimes (article link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216).

So after reading this article and watching the film the questions I’m left with this week include:

Are we being too soft with the stock market and financial crimes?

Who's responsible for our NINJA generation? And why are they never called to account?

Thank you for reading please feel free to leave any comments.