Wall Street II is a Disaster

Stock broker era exploded in the 1980s, which was a way in for hungry young guys, many of which did not even have a college degree. Bud Foxx, up for a point, illustrates that. While Solomon Brothers was famous for hiring guys straight off the street for their bond trading, in general, that was not the case.

The debt market overshadows the equity market, but when in comes to the masses, it's all about stocks. The movie would not have been as good focusing on junk bonds, for that you can just view a documentary on Milken.

 

Just look at Box office result, number doesn't lie, a bad movie from start to finish. financial disaster movie mixed with bad romance, resulting awful tastes. 2 stars top for all actor's best efforts. stone sucked this time.

 

In the 80's Brokers (PURE sales people just like today), could make $4,000+/day easily by skating that thin churning line pitching stocks buy/sell.

Now? Lol! It's all packaged product sales these days. Any guy who pitches stocks only is either going broke, or charging a massive riff...

 

Yeah, it's not a disaster at all. I think it will be a cult classic. Give it 10 years and we'll see how well this movie was made and we'll see how much in detail was put in to reflect the current financial industry.

BTW: Did you see the picture of George Soros shaking hands with Bretton James in the movie?

 

Yes, I caught that. What made me smile a little is Christian Baja in the movie, and subliminally pitching Superfund. And I'll note, I'm not saying Superfund is a bad fund. I bought A shares for my retirement account four years ago.

The film wasn't as bad as others here may say. Well, compared to what's out there, it's not a waste of $ to see imo. Probably the last film for Michael Douglas with stage 4 throat cancer. Hate to see that as he broke the mold in the original Wall Street...

 

I thought the movie was pretty good. Dunno what the complainers were looking for - lots of 'action' scenes, bass pumping as GG slams in and out of billion-dollar positions on his Ninja dom?

Not as iconic as the original WS, but then it wasn't going to be. Stone struck a good balance between mass appeal, homage to the original and a bit of meat for finance types. The original came out in a different era and went for a different message. GG and Fox eventually imploded due to their unbridled greed, this time around the theme was that money and wealth for wealth's sake isn't everything. Very appropriate to the times IMO. Might be that the two films serve nicely to bookend Wall Street's era of dominance (aka the Greenspan years )).

 

best line:

"you all don't know it yet, but you're fucked!"

 

Loved that line as well.

 

Hey, good post! I happened to like the movie. I could watch it twice, and since I've already seen it on the big screen, I'll buy it when it comes out on blu ray.

Now the original, I really couldn't count how many times I've seen it. I'd say over a dozen times minimum. Enough that I used to be able to recite Gekko word for word. Lol

 

Here is Gekko's new speech he gives in the movie.

"You’re all pretty much fu****. You don’t know it yet. But, you are the NINJA generation. No Income, No Job, No Assets. You got a lot to live for too. Someone reminded me the other evening that I once said greed is good. Now it seems its legal. But folks, its 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 two hundred thousand dollar house for two fifty. Then they take that extra fifty and go down to the mall. They buy a plasma TV, cell phones, computers, a SUV, hey why not a second home while we are it, cause gee whiz we all know the prices of houses in America always go up, right?

And its greed that makes the government of this country cut interest rates down to one percent after 9/11 so we can all go shopping again. And they got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars of credits, CMOs, CDOs, SIVs, ABS . You know I honestly think that there’s maybe only seventy five people in the world who know what they are. But I’ll tell you what they are - WMDs, weapons of mass destruction! That’s what they are.

When I was away, it seems greed got greedier with a little bit of envy mixed in. Hedge funders were walking home with fifty, hundred million bucks a year. So Mister Banker, he looks around and says my life looks pretty boring. So he starts leveraging his interests up to forty, fifty 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 everyone is drinking the same Kool-aid.

Last year ladies and gentlemen, forty percent 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 are all part of it now. Banks, consumers, we’re moving the money around in circles. We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids. We call it leverage. I call it steroid banking.

Now I’ve been considered a pretty smart guy when it comes to finance 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?”

Its clear as a bell to those who pay attention, the mother of all evil is speculation, leveraged debt. The bottom line is borrowing to the hilt. And I hate to tell you this, it’s a bankrupt business model. It won’t work. Its systemic, malignant, and its global, like cancer. It’s a disease and we got to fight back. How are we going to do that? How are we going to leverage that disease back in our favor? Well I’ll tell you. Three words, “Buy my book!” Prices and profits work."