Wall Street 2 – money never sleeps speech – script

Wall Street  – the money never sleeps speech

I saw Wall Street 2 this weekend. Although the reviews were mediocre I liked it. One of the best scenes was when Gordon Gecko was giving a lecture to some students about greed. What he did in about three minutes was, this ex-Wall Street insider, described the cause of the financial crisis almost poetically.  Why the economy is in a mess. It was a bit dramatic but it was one of the best explanations for the financial crisis in summary form.

Gordon Gecko shakes his head and says:

You are all pretty much screwed. You do not know it yet, but you are the ninja generation. No income, no job, no assets. You’ve got a lot to look forward to.

Someone reminded me the other day that I once said, greed is good. Well it appears greed is not only good, it is legal. We are all drinking the same cool-aid.

But it is greed that makes my bartender buy three houses, he cannot afford with no money down. And it is greed that makes your parents refinance their 200,000 dollar mortgage for 250,000 dollars. Now they take that extra 50,000 dollars and go to the shopping mall so they can buy a new plasma TV, cell phones, computers and an SUV. And hey, why not a second home while we are at it.

Gee Wiz, we all know the prices of houses in America always go up. Right?

It is greed that makes the government of this country cut the interest rates to 1% after 9/11 so we can all go shopping again.

They got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars for credit, CMO, CDO, SIV, ABS. You know I honestly think there are only 75 people in the world that knows what they are.

But I will tell you what they are, they are WMDs. Weapons of mass destruction.

When I was away, it seemed that greed, got greedier. With a little bit of envy mixed in.
Hedge fund managers came home with 50 to 100 million bucks a year.

So Mr. Banker, he looks around and says.
My life looks pretty boring.

So he starts leveraging his interest up to 40%, 50% to 100%. With your money not his.
Yours. Because he could.
You are supposed to be borrowing not them.

And the beauty of the deal is no one is responsible.

Because everyone is drinking the same cool-aid.

Last year ladies and gentlemen, 40% of all corporate profits came from the financial services industry.
Not production, not anything remotely to do with the needs of the American public.
The truth is we are all part of it now.
Banks, consumers they are moving the money around in circles.
We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids and we call it leverage. I call it steroid banking.
Now I have been considered a pretty smart guy when it comes to finance.
Maybe I was in prison too long, but sometimes it is the only place to stay sane, looking out from the bars and say, hey is everyone out there nuts?
It is clear as a bell to those who pay attention. The mother of all evil is speculation. Leverage debt. The bottom line is, it is borrowing to the hilt.
And I hate to tell you this, but it is a bankrupt business model.
It will not work. It is septicemic, malignant and its global. Like cancer, it is a disease. And we got to fight back. How we going to do that?
How we are going to leverage that disease, back in our favor?
I will tell you, three words….

I did not have the script nor did I record this film.  I did the best I could do from memory so maybe a few words are off but here it is. I recommend you see the film and do not listen to the reviews. It is pretty good if you like the stock market, trading, and economics. It is directed by Oliver Stone and stars Micheal Douglas and produced by 20th century Fox.  I give full credit of course to the Wall Street the money never sleep quotes to these people. It is their intellectual capital. I am sure someday they will release the full script for Wall street the money never sleeps, but for now, you can just see the movie it is better than just reading about it.

Did the film portray Wall Street right? I use to work down there and if anything he was too kind. People are so lost in their lifestyles that they are out of touch with real life.  It is good to strive and work and even earn money, but ‘what good is it if a man gains the world and loses his soul in the process’?

Stone is a very controversial director but in this case, I basically agree. The banks got free easy money from the Federal reserve and gave it to people who never should have gotten it. When the banks got in trouble, the government bailed them out. No one is responsible for such speculation and the tax payers must pay for the next 20 years.

Oh one more thing, just remember, money never sleeps.

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Comments

7 responses to “Wall Street 2 – money never sleeps speech – script”

  1. NavyBrat

    Excellent post!
    I wish everyone could spend three minutes to read or view this.
    I took the trouble to go through the scene and check the narrative.

    It begins at about 28 minutes in.

    I will tell you, three words….
    (Watch the Movie!)

    1. Mark Biernat

      NavyBrat thanks for the reply. I removed the quote you typed and will have to go back and correct any omissions in the text that I made and you corrected. I did this to avoid duplicate content, so thank you very much for your comment and corrections on the movie Wall Street 2 the money never sleeps. I agree, everyone needs to see this movie. It pretty much tells it the way it is in the world of finance and government. I am not some counter culture Hollywood guy. Rather, I study economics and the movie was right one. Excess credit expansion by the Fed cause a bubble and collapse. Now we are all pretty much screwed as the world becomes more competitive.

  2. Peter

    This speech is one of the best speeches that describes what happened in the financial markets all over the world during the last decade, I am saying this because I am senior banker and I can tell you briefly this what exactly happened, SPECULATION was the main problem, assets values dropped heavily, a property of a $100 million value, worth now a $15 million, this property was a security to finance man loans for the amount which is much more than its value today, and there are lots to say, we learnt expressions that we have never heard of before, it was a big bubble, every where in this world, and now every one has to pay for senior bankers mistakes, greed greed greed is the word, every one wanted a huge bonuses, bonuses by the end of the year is becoming like drugs, and believe me we are still living it until now the problem is not over yet, we are only kicking the problems away from us, but we are not really solving them, and it will come back in different time, I have to stop here else, I need 1000s of pages to explain what’s in my mind, god help us

    Peter

    1. Mark Biernat

      The speech alone makes it worth to see the movie. I think that in clear terms, even though little dramatic, it explains what is going on in the financial world today.

  3. mario

    I’m not english so I apologize for my poor words
    but i believe Oliver Stone is making movies
    where the crude reality is always mixed with the nature of the man,
    of what is right and just and how we must fight to respect
    what remains of our humanity. Yes, I agree, the speech alone worths
    an entire movie but we see also how compassionate he is
    when Michael Douglas comes out of the jail and nobody waits for him
    look at his face, look at the sequence of the kiss on the bald
    head of the adoptive father who is about to commit suicide.
    I have been a trader I know this world, we know the bonus
    the corruption, the kick backs, but making a movie on Wall Street
    and move our spirits at the same time is really great.

  4. Law Man

    I cut and copied this speech and sent it to my ex-wife. She put me in the poor house, resulting in me having to file for bankruptcy. The was engaging in high risk borrowing without my knowledge and when the chickens came home to roost, I got hit in the mouth. As it turns out, my name was on everything too. Imagine that. Anyway, she is still borrowing from lenders, with no means of ever paying them back. She is destined to be broke. I sent this to her, so she would know that the lenders made a fool of her, resulting in a high cost to me. I appreciate you putting this on the web. I tried to obtain a clip of the opening scene on YouTube, with no luck. However, this was/is a more that suitable alternative. Now she can read it over and over again, though the likelihood of that is greater than the likelihood of me winning the lottery.

  5. I know this is an old post from 2010 and not sure who posted the script above but found this when searching for similarities between this film/speech and The Big Short which I saw last night. Great movie but could it undermine trust in the system? Are diving markets linked? Interesting article from my brother in Australia, //bit.ly/thebigshortpanic

    I also looked for the original speech from Gecko and think this may be the script here: screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Wall-Street_Money-Never-Sleeps.pdf

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