The title of this article is taken from
the 1987 film Wall Street, whose lasting legacy is a speech
given by Michael Douglas'
character, Gordon Gekko, at the shareholder meeting for a company he
is trying to take over. Here is the crescendo of that speech:
“Teldar
Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents
each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the
last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can’t
figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110
million dollars last year, and I’ll bet that half of that was spent
in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice
presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be
survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or
you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I’ve been involved
with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax
profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of
companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and
gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is
right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the
essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed
for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge
of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar
Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
Thank you very much.”
