The return of Gordon Gekko - Money Never Sleeps

[fustercluck]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0VHiONkot8

First of 6 parts on a John Stossel special on greed. I watched it in school and think he's spot on. You don't have to agree with it, but greed helps us a shit ton more than most people think about.

John Stossel is a douche (ps didn't watch any of the videos )

 

[JS80]

Hmm, no that's not quite the same thing, Microcap fraud and manipulation is chump change compared to the OTC derivatives market.

Read this for a good briefer on just how pie-in-the-sky nuts the situation is :

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2008/10/the_size_of_der.php

Do you even know what any of those huge numbers mean?

 

[fleshconsumed]

Didn't really like the first one, but I'm kind of curious how this one will turn out.

 

[Arkaign]

Do you even know what any of those huge numbers mean?

Well when you boil it down, derivatives are financial instruments or contracts derived from actual assets (ideally).

The problems come from any number of directions, a lot of it with the OTC / black box situation, where the derivatives may or may not be actually backed by something other than insane amounts of leverage, and with the same assets being packaged and sold in different ways to multiple investors at the same time.

The big scare is that if there is too much action towards recouping the investments made in derivatives at the same time, the financial system will collapse. We'd probably see a financial system freeze by the larger western governments in that case to prevent all of the value from going to zero, but yeah, with what functionally amounts to derivatives backing derivatives backing derivatives, there is enough vapor wealth out there to equal GLOBAL GDP for many decades. 85%+ of current derivatives value has accrued in the past 20 or so years IIRC. Did the global economy suddenly multiply in value by several orders of magnitude in two decades? Nah, it's just people playing with numbers.

Many volumes could be written about the issue, but they've absolutely exploded over the past two decades.

http://www.forbes.com/2003/05/09/cx_aw_0509derivatives.html

 

[Arkaign]

LOL, that problem has been around for as long as debt was invented.

I would like to think so, and agree in principle, but nobody has ever seen this amount of leveraging (AFAIK), in all of known history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Financial_Turnover.jpg

Look at 1970, 2.7 trillion in economic turnover / trades. Not even 3x GDP.

Look at 1980, 17.8 trillion in economic turnover. Now it's over 6x GDP.

Look at 1990, 227.4 trillion in economic turnover. What?

Look at 2000, 508.4 trillion. Over 50x the GDP of the USA, and a lot more value than exists in all property on earth.

 

[RaistlinZ]

I go out of my way to avoid movies with Shia in them.

 

[SSSnail]

Just a reminder, tomorrow is the day.

 

[Fritzo]

Shia Labeouf fail.

Ugh. Do not want. Then again, I don't really like the first one either (I'm not debating it being well made, I just don't like it, in large part because I don't like any of the characters).

I can't even stand Sarandon (get her daughter instead) and Sheen anymore. Josh Brolin would be a good fit for a movie like this though I think.

They did get the original director and plenty of the original cast, but I still just don't think this is going to be good. The original worked well and was perfect for the time, but with the state of things this is either going to get/seem too glib on the social commentary (to be fair that was what made the original, but there's a fine line that has to be tread, and Hollywood can't seem to figure out how to walk it much anymore).

They should have just hired Douglas, Pacino, and Alec Baldwin and had them be tycoons and giving monologues about it all the time.

Well, I see you've convinced yourself, so please don't see it.

 

[BoberFett]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0VHiONkot8

First of 6 parts on a John Stossel special on greed. I watched it in school and think he's spot on. You don't have to agree with it, but greed helps us a shit ton more than most people think about.

Good show, Stossel is the man.

 

[MotF Bane]

Shia LaDouche. Not interested.

 

[Kadarin]

How does Shia LeBoof get work? He's the worst male actor out there right now.

 

[KeithTalent]

Excited about this, except for Shia, guy is a dial tone. Other than that it looks great.

KT

 

[OBLAMA2009]

im never go to movies but im looking forward to this one

 

[0roo0roo]

too bad oliver stone has lost the plot, his crazy views are on display in his "documentary" on south america. he's highly skeptical of everything and see's evil everywhere cept for when it comes to south american crack pot leaders..mans full of sh*t.

 

[0roo0roo]

http://www.salon.com/life/this_week...ature/2010/07/31/this_week_crazy_oliver_stone
"....In a Sunday newspaper interview read 'round the world, Stone cavalierly told the U.K. Times about the "Jewish domination of the media" and stated that Israel "fucked up United States foreign policy for years." The director, who promised his "Secret History of America" documentary would present Hitler and Stalin "in context," went on to assert, "Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support. Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people."

Oh, boy. This coming six months after explaining that Adolf Hitler was "an easy scapegoat" and that "We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'" didn't go over so well. And the tiny mustache he's been carrying around his face lately didn't help matters either..... "

 

[SSSnail]

Yup, given enough time and surely Adolf will show up somewhere.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Isn't it bad enough that the real Wall Street already raped our buttholes? Now the Wall Street movie is trying to rape our eyes and ears with Shia LaBeaoueiyf.

 

[Whoozyerdaddy]

I watched it last night... Aside from being boring as he'll it just plain sucked.... Even the story blew ass. What a letdown. I so wanted to like this movie... It was epically bad. If you can even stay awake long enough to get to the end to see just how big a douche Gekko really is it's still a terrible movie. Almost as bad as The American, that wretched POS George Clooney tried to pass off as an art film.

 

[Mike Gayner]

FFS I didn't know Shia Ledouche was going to be in this. Epic failure.

 

[Whoozyerdaddy]

Believe it or not... Shia didn't ruin the film. They could have put anybody in his role and it still would have sucked ass. I feel bad for Michael Douglas that this might be his last movie.

 

[PottedMeat]

too bad oliver stone has lost the plot, his crazy views are on display in his "documentary" on south america. he's highly skeptical of everything and see's evil everywhere cept for when it comes to south american crack pot leaders..mans full of sh*t.

stone needs to hook up with john milius again and make another conan movie.

 

[classy]

I watched it last night... Aside from being boring as he'll it just plain sucked.... Even the story blew ass. What a letdown. I so wanted to like this movie... It was epically bad. If you can even stay awake long enough to get to the end to see just how big a douche Gekko really is it's still a terrible movie. Almost as bad as The American, that wretched POS George Clooney tried to pass off as an art film.

I decided to pass on both.

 

[911paramedic]

Had the misfortune of watching this yesterday, what a POS. This movie isn't even worth watching if it were on cable.

 

[LegendKiller]

Well when you boil it down, derivatives are financial instruments or contracts derived from actual assets (ideally).

The problems come from any number of directions, a lot of it with the OTC / black box situation, where the derivatives may or may not be actually backed by something other than insane amounts of leverage, and with the same assets being packaged and sold in different ways to multiple investors at the same time.

The big scare is that if there is too much action towards recouping the investments made in derivatives at the same time, the financial system will collapse. We'd probably see a financial system freeze by the larger western governments in that case to prevent all of the value from going to zero, but yeah, with what functionally amounts to derivatives backing derivatives backing derivatives, there is enough vapor wealth out there to equal GLOBAL GDP for many decades. 85%+ of current derivatives value has accrued in the past 20 or so years IIRC. Did the global economy suddenly multiply in value by several orders of magnitude in two decades? Nah, it's just people playing with numbers.

Many volumes could be written about the issue, but they've absolutely exploded over the past two decades.

http://www.forbes.com/2003/05/09/cx_aw_0509derivatives.html

So, no, you really don't know what they mean. You just post some random article that has no bearing on the number. That FT reporter is just that, a reporter, and a shitty one at that.

 

[Zebo]

Greed is good, but many of you missed the bowl experiment which is about working greedy together to get even richer. For example, Without educating our people with masters and PhD's in computer science Bill Gates never would have been able to open shop in USA, hire 100K smart people, much like you see no high tech coming out of Haiti.