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.
No comments:
Post a Comment