Blandt firsernes wannabe-yuppies med forkærlighed for in-your-face kapitalisme–og ja, der findes nok en enkelt eller to blandt Punditokraterne og vores læsere–var Gordon Gekko fra den ikke just særligt pro-kapitalistiske Oliver Stones 1987-film Wall Street om end ikke en helt så dog en slags ikon, som man på småpubertær vis kunne genere venstreorienterede venner og lærere med at idyllisere. Sådan en slags lavpandet John Galt.
Og til dem af os, er der (måske) godt nyt: Fortune Magazine fortæller således:
December marks the 20th anniversary of the movie Wall Street, and the fanfare has begun.
EVER SINCE Gordon Gekko ran afoul of the SEC at the end of Oliver Stone’s 1987 classic, Wall Street, diehard fans have been wondering when the LBO kingpin would resurface. Well, the wait is over. A sequel is in the works–with Douglas to star–and there have already been two different story lines developed for the film, tentatively called Money Never Sleeps. And each speaks to how finance has changed since the original’s release.
Stone, whose father’s brokerage firm inspired the original, was involved in the sequel at first but pulled out to pursue other projects. In a script Stone conceived with the film’s original screenwriter, Stanley Weiser, Gekko gets out of jail, sets up a hedge fund in China, and tries to reunite with his son. (For readers who never wore red suspenders, in the original, Gekko attempts a takeover of Bluestar Airline before being charged with insider trading.)
But in a chat with FORTUNE about the movie–which turns 20 in December and is being commemorated with a special-edition DVD–Stone says Gekko’s time may be over anyway. “Gordon Gekko couldn’t manipulate the markets like he did back then,” he says. “It’s so big, so huge, that to be a minor player, you need to be a major bank.”
The current screenplay that is in development with 20th Century Fox is being written by former New Yorker scribe Stephen Schiff and is still a work in progress. But Schiff says that he and producer Ed Pressman have met with moguls in London, sheikhs in Dubai, and hedge funders in New York to give the aging Gekko global flair.”
Så drenge (og evt. piger): Find jeres manchetknapper og røde seler frem og gentag efter mig: “Greed is good”:
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 pretax 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.
