Greed Is Good

In the movie Wall Street, the character Gordon Gekko says that “Greed is good.” Greed, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary: is the selfish and excessive desire for more of something (money/power) than is needed. But to what extent is greed good? I believe that the initial intention of greed arose from the desire to obtain more than what they had, but rose to an elevated intention of power instead of acquisition of needs. Because as our history shows, money means power. The more you have the more power you can obtain. This country was not based on greed, but to advance and improve upon a system of government where there was greed and corruption, which led America to adopt the system of a free market.

With the recent recession our country is facing and the huge so called “bailouts” that the government is handing out, people are wondering what went wrong? I am not too sure on the details because it doesn’t matter at this point. All that matters is correcting the problem. But people became outraged when some people, such as John Thain, used the money from the bailouts for themselves. John Thain, who was the last chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch before its merger with Bank of America, spent $1,000,000 from a so called “bonus” to redecorate his office. Despite the dreadful year that Wall Street experienced in 2008, some questionable bonuses were paid to already well-off employees, and that set off the outrage. And with these questionable bonuses is the act of pure greed on their part. Why did he need to spend one million dollars to redecorate his office? I’m sure that there was no valid reason other than the fact that he was greedy and thought he could spend taxpayer’s money for something trivial. Greed is good, but is taken too far, and it leads to bad things.

Mini-Me ModelWorks makes a toy called the Smash-Me Bernie doll, depicting Bernard L. Madoff in a red devil suit and pitchfork. It comes with the doll itself along with a hammer to smash the doll with. If I had to make a smash-me doll of someone, it would be our previos president George Bush, because if it wasn’t for him and his cabinet, our recession would not be as bad as it is today, and there would never have been a war in Iraq, which in my opinion has now become an act of greed for oil, among other things.