Economy
Gekko was Wrong…Greed is Bad
September 16, 2008 by REALonomics · Leave a Comment
EDITORIAL
A re-post from iVoteAmerica, dated Monday, September 15, 2008.
In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko proclaimed to shareholders, “Greed is good!” Gordon was wrong. Wall Street was wrong. The real estate and mortgage industries were wrong.
Oh, by the way…Alan Greenspan was wrong too when he proclaimed that subprime lending was “innovative” and “beneficial to consumers.”
Sound economics and the art of lending are predicated upon the borrower’s capacity to service the debt, pay it down over time and deliver return to the lender.
The concept of borrowing without capacity is foreign to all western economies and you won’t find it on any campus in America in Economics 101. Neither you nor many of your friends was ever taught the principle “you can have something for nothing.”
No One Whined about the Flow of Money
From about 2000 through 2005 greed was good to Wall Street and to the real estate and to the mortgage industries. No one whined about the money back then.