"GREED IS GOOD" says "Gordon Gecko" (Michael Douglas, in his Oscar winning role in WALL STREET). From what I understand the speech was an attempt to paper over a massive character flaw by making it a type of mantra. It is hard to dismiss this obnoxious mantra. Most people (even if not as greedy as Gecko) do look for the main chance for themselves. We are all Gecko a trifle watered down. It has always been this way. In the 19th Century, in France, the powerful government adviser and minister (and historian) Francois Guizot made his mantra "Get rich quick.
Currently our economy may be starting a long and painful recessionary period. I don't propose to explain why, but many questionable actions are involved, and one is a lessening of serious government regulations meant to protect consumers, workers, bank customers, mortgage holders (and givers), and stockholders. In fact there has been a major assault for the last quarter century on the more notable achievements of FDR's New Deal in cleaning up the worst excesses of the "laizzez faire" economy that we had up to 1933. But the issue seems more complicated than simple labels make it.
This particular film from 1982 was a docudrama based on a book by Gordon Thomas and Max Gordon Witt. These two social historians have written on a variety of famous incidents. They write well, but only THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (modernized when made into a film) and THE DAY THE BUBBLE BURST were ever filmed. Unlike their other works, THE DAY THE BUBBLE BURST dealt with a financial disaster: the great Stock Market Crash in October 1929 that led to the Great Depression (and helped pave the rise of Nazism and the coming of World War II).
All of us study the causes in high school or college. Years of overproduction, of agrarian depression, of stock market shenanigans that were allowed to flourish ("bucket shops" from whence Jesse Livermore (Richard Crenna here) emerged; "buying stock on margin"; inflated valuations on stocks). For the Livermores and other operators in the know it was a paradise. Crenna - in one of his early scenes - is sitting with his secretary in a restaurant at noon on Wall Street, looking around the room. He wishes that he could be a fly on the wall for an hour. He'd hear enough to make a million dollars.
It was paradise as long as fools were willing to put in their money Hadn't President Hoover won the 1928 election promising that there would be two chickens in every pot and two cars in every garage? But what if the money dried up - if questions began to appear about prosperity?
Some wise people saw the light. Joseph Kennedy Sr. had been as questionable a plunger as Livermore, but in August 1929 he began pulling his sizable fortune out of stock. The story goes he overheard the fellow shining his shoes on Wall Street advise him on a complicated stock deal. Kennedy suddenly realized that this fellow was not the type to know anything stock deals, and if he was giving advice it was time to get out. Bernard Baruch also began noting the overproduction figures of industry and sold stock (and bought gold). Roger Babson, the stock market tipster, saw that a major correction in the overvalued stock was coming and advised his readers to curb their holdings. But these three were in a minority. Princeton economist Irving Fisher kept his large portfolio and suffered - fortunately (and ironically) he still had his job.
Still others saw nothing to worry about. Donald Ogden Stiers plays William Crapo Durrant, a man few recall today though they should. He was the man who created General Motors. But his stock manipulations had led to his being bought out of that firm, and by 1929 he headed Durant Motors. He saw no limits to the golden future, and we see him paling around with Jacob Raskob (head of the Democratic Party) who was helping to finance the construction of the tallest building in the world - the Empire State Building - with his friend (and former Democratic Party Candidate) Al Smith as President of that corporation. Durrant fully supports the project and offers money for the construction. Within three years Durant Motors was in receivership. Durant died in 1948 as a janitor in a bowling alley (he did own the alley though). Livermore, who enjoyed being one of the great "bears" on Wall Street - forcing down prices when he could for profit - eventually lost his fortune in the later 1930s. He committed suicide in 1941. A third figure in the story is Richard Whitney (Robert Vaughan), nephew of J. P. Morgan II, and Vice President (later President) of the Stock Exchange. Whitney had been using money from various funds he was a trustee of to play the market. In 1938 he became the first (so far the only) Stock Exchange President to go to Sing Sing Prison for fraud.
Others are in the story. The nine member Board of Directors of a bank in Flint, Michigan looted the bank of nine million dollars for their own investments - ruining many depositors. And the spookiest thing (on par with the shoe-shine guy advising Joe Kennedy) is a clever "medium" who gives her foolish customers tips on staying in the market while she divests herself of all her own holdings.
I don't think we are in as bad a situation on Wall Street in 2008 as we were some seventy nine years back, but with scandals in recent years who is to say?* I hope if they show this important film again you all watch it carefully.
(*Of course, since I wrote this review, we have been brought down pretty badly by the thieves, fools, and idiots on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C. who have brought us to a lousy economic mess.)
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