Culture of “excess greed”

Gekko’s most famous line is “Greed is good,” even more emblematic is his defiant summation of his brand of capitalism: “I create nothing. I own.”
In Oliver Stone's movie Wall Street, Michael Douglas Oscar winning role, his character does his famous diatribe on how "greed, for lack of a better word, is good". The 80's segued into a couple of slumps, Black Monday in October of '87, a recession in the early 90's and of course, the Dot com meltdown in the late 90's. The latest meltdown, as a consequence of the housing bust, is no surprise that it happened yet many are shocked at the severity of the economic slump the world in presently experiencing.

Douglas's character, Gordon Gekko, is the personification of evil, greed and amoral cooperate soullessness for the 80's. Rightly or wrongly, AIG is the symbol for everything that is wrong with the complicity of Wall Street corporations and their role in the housing bubbles bursting. The issue of the bonuses going to the cooperate executive of AIG, have put the media, the politicians and the majority of Americans into a feeding frenzy. The populist uprising is on the cusp of reaching vigilantly justice.

Things in life are not as simple as good and evil though, nothing is black and while but shades of grey. The governments inaction, lack of regulation and incompetence amounts to some responsibility for the crisis that the country finds itself in.

In retrospect, more regulation of AIG would have been prudent. Obama is demanding more regulation and the issue of the bonuses are being recouped by taxing 90% of them. That is certainly more agreeable than Edward M. Liddys suggestion that they keep half of them.

The A.I.G. affair prompted President Obama to declare that a "culture of greed" demonstrated in A.I.G.'s dealings should have no place in a new Wall Street.

Jon Stewart captures through humor the shameless, pandering politician on this issue as well as their need to promote themselves, epically Representative (D) Paul Kanjorski, wanting to simplify the blame onto one person. I also find Senator Christopher Dodd's shameless reaction to be called out on his role in this, with allowed the loophole, which thus allowed the bonuses which formed the basis for the AIG scandal. I lost the clip while editing this entree.

Update: Here is another point of view which isn't in vouge but ought to be put in perceptive with all of this letter to the editor from Bill Mullin from Minneapolis, MN

The grandstanding members of Congress who questioned Edward M. Liddy on Wednesday ignored the substance of his testimony. He told the subcommittee that the bailout of A.I.G. is going well (the company’s exposure to its calamitous bad bets has been reduced from $2.7 trillion to $1.6 trillion). He made a management decision that reneging on A.I.G.’s contractual commitments to the people who are trying to work A.I.G. out of this disaster — made long before he got there — would be detrimental to the effort.
Mr. Liddy has more experience running businesses than all the politicians in the room put together. He came out of retirement to help save our nation and the world from the disaster that would be A.I.G.’s collapse. He is working for a dollar a year. His judgment was entitled to thoughtful study, if not the benefit of the doubt. Instead, he got vitriolic abuse from Republicans and Democrats alike.
Mr. Liddy is a hero who deserved better treatment from our representatives. Bill Mullin