WALL STREET Gordon Gekko introduced me to the inside of Wall Street.

I mean not that I am so into Wall Street as of now, yet, and also my little knowledge of the technical knowhow needs to be attributed to my GD/PI prep for B-Schools, Gordon Gekko gives you an inside peek of the air blowing inside. Its all about the money honey! Wiki says Gordon Gekko is a fictional character, the main antagonist of the 1987 film Wall Street and the antihero of its 2010 sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. both directed by Oliver Stone. Gekko was portrayed by actor Michael Douglas, whose performance in the first film won him an Oscar for Best. Co-written by Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser, Gekko is claimed to be based loosely on several actual stockbrokers, including Stone's own father Louis Stone.[4] According to Edward R. Pressman, producer of the film, "Originally, there was no one individual who Gekko was modelled on," he adds. "But Gekko was partly Milken", who was the "Junk Bond King" of the 1980s, and indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and fraud in 1989.[5] In 2003, the AFI named him number 24 of the top 50 movie villains of all time.[6] In 2008, Gordon Gekko was named the fourth richest fictional character by Forbes who attributed US$8.5 billion net worth to him.[7] Here are two of his in-the-movie speeches. One from each of his two movies.

Wall Street (1987)

Well, I appreciate the opportunity you're giving me Mr Cromwell as the single largest shareholder in Teldar Paper, to speak. Well, ladies and gentlemen we're not here to indulge in fantasy but in political and economic reality. America, America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. Now, in the days of the free market when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company! All together, these men sitting up here own less than three per cent of the company. And where does Mr Cromwell put his million-dollar salary? Not in Teldar stock; he owns less than one per cent. You own the company. That's right, you, the stockholder. And you are all being royally screwed over by these, these bureaucrats, with their

luncheons, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes. Teldar Paper, Mr Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analysing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pre-tax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) You're all pretty much fucked. You don't know it yet, but you're the NINJA generation. No income. No job. No assets. You got a lot to look forward to. Someone reminded me the other evening that I once said, "Greed is good." Now it seems it's legal. But, folks, it's greed that makes my bartender buy three houses he can't afford with no money down. And it's greed that makes your parents refinance their $200,000 house for 250. And then they take that extra 50 and they go down to the mall. And they buy a plasma TV, cell phones, computers, an SUV. And hey, why not a second home while we're at it? Because, gee whiz, we all know that prices of houses in America always go up, right? It's greed that makes the government in this country cut the interest rates to one-per cent, after 9/11 . So we could all go shopping again. They got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars of credit. CMOs, CDOs, SIVs, ABSs. I honestly think there's may be only 75 people in the world who know what they are But I'll tell you what they are. They're WMDs. Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's what they are. When I was away, it seemed like greed got greedier with a little bit of envy mixed in. Hedge funders were walking home with 50, 100 million bucks a year. So Mr Banker, he's looks around, and he says, "My life looks pretty boring." So he starts leveraging his interests up to 40, 50 to one with your money. Not his, yours. Because he could. You're supposed to be borrowing, not them. And the beauty of the deal no one is responsible. Because everybody's drinking the same Kool-Aid. Last year, ladies and gentlemen, forty per cent of all American corporate profits came from financial services. Not production not anything remotely to do with the needs of the American public. The truth is, we're all part of it now. Banks, consumers, we're moving money around in circles. We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids, and we call it "leverage." I call it "steroid banking." I've been considered a pretty smart guy when it comes to finance. That was fantastic, man. And maybe I was in prison too long. But sometimes it's the only place to stay sane and look out through those bars

and say, "Hey! Is everybody out there nuts?" It's clear as a bell to those that pay attention. The mother of all evil is speculation. Leveraged debt. Bottom line. It's borrowing to the hilt And I hate to tell you this, but it's a bankrupt business model. It won't work. It's systemic, malignant, and it's global. Like cancer. It's a disease, and we got to fight back. How are we gonna do that? How are we gonna leverage that disease back in our favour? Well, I'll tell you. Three words. Buy my book.