Introduction
The movie Wall Street is about the untrammeled greed and unscrupulous business practices that dominate the world of high finance. The movie tracks the meteoric rise of a young stockbroker under the mentorship of an unscrupulous corporate honcho. There are references to the unethical behavior of the stockbrokers and the subsequent fall from grace of the main character engineered by the protagonist.
The movie offers several threads of thought that debate the themes of regulation of the stock markets and how the system allows itself to be manipulated by individuals with a crooked bent of mind. Though the movie ends on an optimistic note with the arrest and conviction of the main character, the parallels to the current economic crisis are striking and it is instructive to study the movie for these to help us make up our minds about the issues at stake.
The most important message from the movie is the depiction of the fine distinctions between ethical and unethical behavior and also how the stock markets are regularly manipulated. The plot of the movie is about a young stockbroker Bud Fox who desperately wants to get to the top and thus tries to get the attention of a legendary corporate raider, Gordon Gekko. The movie develops in the way in which Bud wins over Gekko by revealing insider information about a small airline in which his father, Carl works and is the union representative.
This is the beginning of their relationship that makes Bud very rich and also gets him a girlfriend. In the mad scramble to the top, Bud coaxes more information from his dad much against the latter’s wishes. The story reaches a point where Bud begins to plot the takeover of the airline by Gekko and uses the savings from the union to restructure it. However, once he realizes that Gekko is out to sell the airline that would make his father and everyone else out of work, he has a traumatizing experience where he wrestles with himself and finally decides to derail the plan. However, once the stock plummets due to Bud’s machinations, Gekko sells his stake and finds out that Bud was behind the fall.
In the meantime, Bud is arrested by the SEC for securities violations. This scene is brilliant with a great quote from Bud’s manager to the effect that “when one stares at the abyss, it is one’s character that pulls him out”. The other famous dialogue from the movie that has been immortalized is Gekko’s assertion that “Greed is Good”. Ultimately, Bud confronts Gekko and tapes the conversation that leads to Gekko’s arrest. The final scene in the movie is where Bud is outside the courtroom with his dad advising him to come clean of his offenses.
Legal regulations
The movie underscores the fact that we need regulation over the market if we are to prevent people like Gekko’s from manipulating the system. Strict anti-insider laws and enforcing them as well are the need of the hours. If we consider greed to be the demon, we need relevant and applicable restraints. In the context of the current crisis, it’s been noted that many of the new financial instruments are so complex that only a few people in the system actually understand them.
Regulation seeks to prevent the inexplicable from being marketed to the gullible. The movie underscores this with the initially gullible Bud trying out the system to suit his mentor Gekko and paying a price for not knowing some relevant laws. We must require financial institutions to demonstrate the ability to present an easy and ethical simplicity in their products.
It has always been believed that self-regulation is the best form of enforcement and that it would work. And given the degree of market deregulation of recent years, the premise was that self-regulation would be enough to govern the market. However, it proved otherwise as a financial community that was still stuck in ethical relativism was never really going to go down the path of self-regulation. And this became a predictable behavior over the years.
Thus, what we need are new forms of punishment and the establishment of a cadre of honest and well-paid law enforcement officers who can demand and impose tough penalties that would not be written off simply as the costs of doing business.
Self regulation
The scene from the movie when Brad Fox is unable to sleep is particularly telling. He looks across from his balcony across the lights of New York City. In the midst of his new found opulence and its trappings..designer decorated apartment, swish blonde live-in girlfriend –seven figure salary, Italian suits; Brad allows himself the question “Who am I” in the midst of the feeling that his new found wealth has all been possible because he has thrown off not just his sense of values , but the values of his upbringing and those of his father and the community he came from.
In other words, there is an attempt to introspect in relation to what had happened to him. The movie shows that ultimately, Brad rejects philosophy of Gordon Gekko and tries to save the firm which he has helped to degrade and in which his father is employed. But the realization is driven more by a sense of loyalty that his father would be out of a job and that the livelihoods of others have been threatened. Thus this is partial and superficial and the moral aspect is slightly vague here.
When Bud turns on Gekko, it is from a mixture of self-regulation and ethical duty towards his father. The Loyalty that is shown here is superficial and one that is partly self-centered and self-serving. However, there are enough indications of the influence of the community in which Brad has been raised on his sense of morals and the values that still inhere in his character.
Of course, in the movie, it is always possible to have a conversion and atone for one’s sins. However, most of this would not matter unless the regulations also require that, within our organizations, we take steps to create organizations built on integrity and fair values. Thus as Rushworth says, “unless we can build into the corporate DNA a commitment to honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion — in other words, to doing what’s right — all the regulation and enforcement in the world will create only more high-stakes efforts to game the system” (Rushworth,2008).
Ethics in the mind
In 1987 it was still fashionable for that time to assert that ethics were relative, situational, negotiable, and wholly subjective. With the release of the movie Wall Street and the Gordon Gekko character whose signature line was “Greed is Good”, there was a sense of moral relativism that preached subjugation to the profits before people. In the intervening years, there’s been a remarkable divergence of thought. In many ways, philosophy and public thought — and parts of the corporate world — increasingly have rejected moral relativism, recognizing that humanity shares a core of ethical values centered on honesty and responsibility and that adherence to these values alone would bring in the kind of transparency and accountability that is needed. On the other hand, the financial community —or the parts which have become notorious— have gone along with the Gekko credo of profits and scant regard to ethical norms clinging to a moral relativism that dismisses ethics as the softer side that impedes innovation and risk-taking.
The first of these points emphasize the destructive nature of competition, pointing out that it makes for selfish behavior in those who engage in it. This is the portrait of Gordon Gekko as the selfish profit seeker and the person who puts the concept of the behavior of the “market” above everything else. However, it is pertinent to note that unless we develop a sense of ethics in the mind and not let ourselves be dragged down by the pursuit of mammon over everything else, we would be languishing without real progress and at each other’s throats.
Conclusion
Thus, the movie underscores the point that ethics are relative to the situation and that Bud though unethical with Gekko when he tries to win over his respect, converts himself to the side of the law. If these grey areas of the human psyche are to be dealt with, more than self-regulation we need regulation by the laws and the creation of a corps of people who would enforce them.
We cannot just rely on individual honesty since as the movie shows it can be bent to suit one’s needs and discarded in the face of conflicting loyalties. Self-regulation works over a longer period of time when the values are inculcated from the beginning. The systemic regulation by law enforcement agencies is a much better antidote to the prevailing sense of unethical behavior that we are witnessing all around us.
Sources
Kidder, Rushworth. “Ethics in a time of crisis”. Ethics News line. 2008.