BVI News

Dickson Igwe

This 2010 has seen the return from the dead of the enigmatic, amoral, ruthless and charismatic Gordon Gecko in the form of a new movie: Wall Street- Money Never Sleeps.  This is a sequel to the first Wall Street movie, which was a blockbuster of the late 1980s, the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and a free for all type economic and laissez-faire culture that began in Ronald Reagan’s second term, and that for all intents and purposes, basically destroyed the Soviet Union and a Russian backed socialism in Europe.
That first Wall Street was a movie which was iconic to those heady days of currency and stock exchange dealing; it marked a new frontier and epoch that was the start of a consumer driven, service oriented, investment banking culture in the West. Wall Street 1987 was a powerful cultural and economic statement of the times, as is this Second movie to the current economic and global status quo starting in 2007.

Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in 1987 was Poster Boy of a North American cum Western European avante-garde cultural and economic epiphany; a new culture of greed and ostentation that was symbolized by a Wall Street investment banking system that saw the emergence of the investment banker- termed a yuppie – as a new paradigm in Western culture.

The Porsche; the ubiquitous mobile phone; hedonism; the salacious wine bars of New York, Hong Kong, Frankfurt and the City of London; multi-million dollar yachts moored in Monaco and Grand Cayman; private jets; sumptuous mansions; tall and leggy blue eyed blondes; cold blooded corporate raiders with the ethics of a �Count Dracula;’ those were the symbols; the regalia and signs of the late 1980s and 90s.

Wall Street 1 was a mural of the embryonic casino type banking culture that led to a myriad of illegal and dubious activity on the banking high street, especially New York’s Wall Street, and ultimately to the Crash of 1987. Gecko, the unscrupulous but ultimate insider and �dodgy’ financial and investment banker, ended up in jail for years on charges of fraud and illegal insider dealing and trading in that first episode.

Fast Forward twenty years, to the banking meltdown of 2007; a debacle caused by sub-prime mortgages that would never be repaid; a leveraging in the Western banking system that was a bottomless pit of borrowing from Asia; an arcane and esoteric motley of financial products from derivatives and Hedging, to Speculation and Arbitrage; Equity and Currency Swaps to Exchange Traded Futures and Options; of futures exchanges and futures contracts.

The 2000s saw the creation of ultimately meaningless and casino type financial products that would bleed millions of small investors of their financial futures; the Western Banking System in 2007 was a bullet train speeding toward a precipice without any driver at the helm. A banking system of products and services that even the most brilliant of bankers found �head scratching’ and mysterious; arcane.

The irascible Gordon Gecko emerges once again in 2007, and after years in prison; Gecko is as aggressive, immoral and hungry for victims as ever: a veritable wolf in wolf’s clothing. This time the �vicious prowler’ has figured it out once and for all: while he was in prison, he had, as most prisoners do, time to think. His colleagues on Wall Street have created the biggest credit bubble in history.

The Federal Reserve is in panic; this banker of the big banks is utterly flummoxed; and mainly by the fact that its policies have created a consumer driven, service oriented, U.S. monoculture of investment and financial gaming and gambling: a new casino economics, and the United States has mortgaged its future to China and Company to the tune of 14 Trillion dollars and rising, with no clear strategy for reducing this ever increasing debt load. The US financial system is staring down an abyss of apocalyptical proportion. But Gecko is drooling; as opportunistic as ever, ravenous; he smells a rat, and he is out for the kill.

Gordon Gecko gets back to work once again: this time he is Stock Exchange Bear Extraordinaire and Omnipotent; he thrives on pessimism; on the failures of former colleagues; on fear, anxiety, human suffering, and panic.  Gecko helps- albeit on the periphery of this gargantuan financial anomaly- to create the conditions for a fatal pessimism and despair that leads to the financial meltdown of 2007.

And again this quixotic sharpshooter is ready for the kill; as investment and merchant banks, mega corporations, insurance companies, large manufacturing concerns, listed companies, large and small investors, collapse like a pack of cards; with men committing suicide, and others literally thrown to the wolves; his shrewd investment in pessimism, in economic disaster, in financial sorrow pays off for this �arch villain.’

His bearishness is requisite for the times; once again, Gordon Gecko is surfing the gigantic investment banking and financial assets waves of the current tumult; Gecko is a world class Californian type surfer: masterful, controlled, super-cool. Once again this Arch Criminal is ahead of the curve, leading the global investment banking game; he is Wheeler Dealer Maximus, and Financial Olympiad; but unlike the Gecko of 1987 who ended up behind bars, the Gecko of 2010 ends up a billionaire.

Gecko raids his own daughter’s trust fund; money that was quietly hidden and squirreled away before his incarceration, one hundred million dollars in a vault in Zurich. This veritable �hyena’ uses this �ill gotten’ cash to invest in businesses that are doing well in the midst of this financial freefall; Gecko is once again defying gravity, he buys into companies going in the opposite direction to the rest of Wall Street: alternative energy stocks, research and development oriented type businesses, long term securities, highly secure global instruments; gold and secure assets, and investments in China and the Far East.
His returns are requisite: 1000% is Gordon Gecko type capital gain and return on investment. Yes, Gordon Gecko is the ultimate Comeback Kid: a brilliant poker player, cynical, blunt, brutal and deceptive; older and wiser; and more philosophical than the Gecko of the 1980s; but ex con Gecko is still the quintessential rogue and ruthless opportunist; the classic scamp.  This is a great movie.

Dickson Igwe is a Christian Minister, Author and Writer

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