The economic culture of the 1980’s began a trend of greed and illegal business. The movie “Wall Street” accurately portrays the wrongdoings of business people during the 1980’s. Such actions as insider trading and just shady business in general became common during this era. Businesses were doing whatever they could to be a step up on their competitors and if it involved “cheating” in some way to do so, that is what they did. Occurrences such as these did not only happen in this movie and in the 1980’s, but they have happened today and been made public. Scandals such as Enron and Martha Stewart’s latest insider information scandal are perfect examples illegal business in our economy. “Wall Street” and the present day illegal actions taken by business people tie in perfectly to the economic culture of the 1980’s.
“Wall Street” portrays the fast paced and money hungry world of the stock market and unveils a darker side of greed with insider information and shady business. Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen, is a young stockbroker trying to climb up in his business. He decides to try and get Gordon Gekko as a client, who is played by Michael Douglas. Gekko takes Fox as his stockbroker and shows him the ropes but Fox later discovers he is a rich and greedy broker making money the easy way through insider information. Gekko tells Fox that, “The most valuable commodity I know of is information” and sends him to learn everything about Gekko’s rival Larry Wildman. Fox learns about Larry’s plan to go after Anacott Steel and informs Gekko who buys into the company before Larry. Gekko explains greed as, “capturing the essence of evolutionary spirit.” This “evolution” is seen in Fox as he begins as a struggling stockbroker and turns into a greedy informant. In the end, it does not pay off for him and he is looking at some serious jail time in the near future.
While "Wall Street" gives us viewers a look at what happened concerning rich business people in the 1980's, occurrences such as these happen frequently today. The first of which was the Enron scandal of a few years ago concerning a small company that blossomed quickly into the seventh largest company in the United States. The only reason it reached such a high plateau was because they lied about their profits and were accused and later charged with a range of shady dealings. More recently was the scandal involving Martha Stewart. This one related much closer to "Wall Street" in that it was a stock trading scandal. She was tipped off to sell about 4,000 shares of ImClone stock and was later caught. These scandals along with the plot of the movie "Wall Street" epitomize what began in the 1980's economy and still occurs in our economy today.
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