You are so right - it can all be traced to Clinton and his rescinding that Executive Order that Roosevelt put in place. By doing that, he allowed banks and brokerage houses to operate under the same umbrella and that's when all the greed started.
Interesting that the movie Wall Street came out in 1987.
from Wiki:
Greed is Good
Arguably the most memorable scene in the film is a speech by Gekko to a shareholders' meeting of Teldar Paper, a company he is planning to take over. Stone uses this scene to give Gekko, and by extension, the Wall Street raiders he personifies, the chance to justify their actions, which he memorably does, pointing out the slothfulness and waste that corporate America accumulated through the postwar years and from which he sees himself as a "liberator".[26]
The inspiration for the "Greed is good" speech seems to have come from two sources. The first part, where Gekko complains that the company's management owns less than three percent of its stock, and that it has too many vice presidents, is taken from similar speeches and comments made by Carl Icahn about companies he was trying to take over.[26] The defense of greed is a paraphrase of the May 18, 1986 commencement address at the UC Berkeley's School of Business Administration, delivered by arbitrageur Ivan Boesky (who himself was later convicted of insider-trading charges), in which he said, "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself".[26]
Ultimately the "Greed is Good" speech could be seen as related to what Adam Smith concluded about human nature.[26] Smith believed that, in general, honest people freed to pursue their own interest would fare better than they would under a system that dictated what was "good". In the process, persons pursuing their own interests would eliminate inefficiencies and allocate commodities where they would benefit the greater society.[26]
Wall Street is not a wholesale criticism of the capitalist system, but of the cynical, quick-buck culture of the 1980s.[26] The "good" characters in the film are themselves capitalists, but in a more steady, hardworking sense. In one scene, Gekko scoffs at Bud Fox's question as to the moral value of hard work, quoting the example of his (Gekko's) father, who worked hard his entire life and died in relative mediocrity. Fox's stockbroker boss (played by Hal Holbrook) as an archetype old man mentor, says early in the film, that "good things sometimes take time", referring to IBM and Hilton - in contrast, Gekko's "Greed is Good" credo typifies the short-term view prevalent in the 80s.[26] |
