Pound Pup Legacy

It's 9/11

My twins were 4 months old... my oldest was in 1st grade; my second was in pre-school.  Hubman was at the Totowa station for some NJSP meeting.  I was breastfeeding both babies, watching Regis and Kelly when the show got pre-empted.

I remember what a beautiful day it was.

I remember everyone's husbands coming home, and the kids rushing off the school busses in a big buzz.

I remember being alone, hubman telling me he had to go to Battery Park because they were needed there.

I remember a dear friend (Nabil) telling me he just left the city that morning just as the towers fell.

I remember last November, (Thanksgiving), visiting The Roosevelt Hotel, taking a tour with one of the managers, and he showed me the room where Michael Douglas gave his Greed Speech... and I remember thinking:  "Greed is what got us all here in the first place".

Perhaps that's the wounded adoptee in me choking-out that last sentence, but I believe it applies as much as everything else does.  Greed (the need for more, for the sake of money, and wrong-doing -- "pay-back") is greed... and that's NOT good, or healthy, especially as it relates to adoption.

'Greed is Good'

The most memorable scene in the film is a speech by Gekko to a shareholders' meeting of Teldar Paper, a company he is planning to take over. Stone uses this scene to give Gekko, and by extension, the Wall Street raiders he personifies, the chance to justify their actions, which he memorably does, pointing out the slothfulness and waste that corporate America accumulated through the postwar years and from which he sees himself as a "liberator":

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, 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.

His truncated catchphrase from the speech, "Greed is good," came to symbolise what some describe as the ruthless, profit-obsessed, short-term corporate culture of the 1980s and 1990s and by extension became associated with so-called unrestrained free-market economic policies.

The inspiration for the "Greed is good" speech seems to have come from two sources. The first part, where Gekko complains that the company's management owns less than three percent of its stock, and that it has too many vice presidents, is taken from similar speeches and comments made by Carl Icahn about companies he was trying to take over. The defense of greed is a paraphrase of the May 18, 1986 commencement address at the UC Berkeley's School of Business Administration, delivered by arbitrageur Ivan Boesky (who himself was later convicted of insider-trading charges), in which he said, "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself."

Ultimately the "Greed is Good" speech could be seen as related to what Adam Smith concluded about human nature. Smith believed that in general honest people freed to pursue their own interest would fare better than they would under a system that dictated what was "good." In the process, persons pursuing their own interests would eliminate inefficiencies and allocate commodities where they would benefit the greater society.

Wall Street is not a wholesale criticism of the capitalist system, but of the cynical, quick-buck culture of the 1980s. The 'good' characters in the film are themselves capitalists, but in a more steady, hardworking sense. In one scene, Gekko scoffs at Bud Fox's question as to the moral value of hard work, quoting the example of his (Gekko's) father, who worked hard his entire life and died in relative mediocrity. Fox's stockbroker boss (played by Hal Holbrook) as an archetype old man mentor, says early in the film, that "good things sometimes take time", referring to IBM and Hilton - in contrast, Gekko's 'Greed is Good' credo typifies the short-term view prevalent in the 80s.