Love and Greed

Watching Wall Street (for the umteenth time) this week had me thinking about my last post and our Great Recession. Conservatives accurately lay the blame at the feet of liberals who forced banks to loan money where it should not have been loaned in the interest of “fairness.”

Liberals lay the blame at the feet of greed, capitalism, lax regulation – or all of the above.

But greed and capitalism are not the same thing – although liberals will assert otherwise; if not in their words, then certainly in their policy making.

While greed is a necessary element of capitalism, as attraction is to procreation, the villain in this Great Recession is not greed or capitalism.

In Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is Good” speech to the shareholders of Teldar Paper is widely celebrated and at the same time offered as a cautionary tale respectively by proponents and opponents of the American entrepreneur’s quest for profit.

Having heard it again in its entirety, I was reminded of another famous passage, misused and misunderstood by those who would unintentionally, or intentionally as it were, twist its meaning by ignoring it’s full context or deliberately plucking it therefrom.

Exhibit A: “Money is the root of all evil” which is derived from scripture. Observe it however, in full context:

1 Timothy 6:10 (KJV) [emphasis mine]: For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Exhibit B: The infamous and polarizing “Greed is Good.” Now, behold the famous passage from Gordon Gekko [emphasis mine]:

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re not here to indulge in fantasy, but in political and economic reality. America, America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. Now, in the days of the free market, when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company!

…

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.

…

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.

Thank you very much.

As an aside, read it again.

…and pretend he’s not speaking in 1985.

Now there have been plenty of bubbles and subsequent crises where unchecked greed coupled with insufficient regulatory oversight or intervention led to systemic havoc and widespread suffering.

This just isn’t one of them.

Only the federal government led by ill-informed “visionaries” can create a crisis this wide and this deep. More of the same can not and will not restore our economy.

It’s high time the other 53% of us came to grips with that fact.