Yes, that’s Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko. But it’s a different Gordon Gekko, not the one in Oliver Stone’s 1987 classic, Wall Street. A role for which Douglas won the  Academy Award for Best Actor in 1988.
This Gordon Gekko is the one in Stone’s sequel, Wall Street: Money Never  Sleeps. It’s 2001, and Gekko has just gotten out of prison after  doing eight years for insider trading and various other white-collar crimes.
He’s got no real money, but there is $100 million out there that he can’t get at. It’s squirreled away in Switzerland in his estranged daughter’s name. You’ll have to wait for the rest of the story when the movie is released on September 24th.
So why did Stone do his first sequel?
I was nicely recompensed to come back 23 years later to follow up the story, which I wanted to do because we’ve reached a new level of greed. I’m shocked at the exaggeration of wealth. I thought that era was coming to an end in 1987 but it kept going and has reached unbelievable proportions.
In many people’s view, greed was one of those reasons why we are where we are today. In fact, there is a growing body of research in the relatively new field of behavior economics that examines the social, emotional and cognitive factors of human economic behavior.
One of those academics is Peter A. Ubel, professor of medicine and psychology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He describes his work as exploring the quirks in human nature that influence our health, happiness and society. Professor’ Ubel’s book, Free Market Madness, investigates the irrational part of our psyche that leads people to such behavior as eating too much and taking out mortgages they can’t afford.
But if you’re a business owner like I am, you’re not seeing too much of that anymore. It’s an economy made up of people that Jay Suhr calls “The Cautionary Generation”. So how can we as business owners grow our companies in this type of economy? Consider the reference Suhr makes to what the Economist said in a Special Report published in April:
In the next couple of years the businesses that thrive will be those that are miserly with costs, wary of debt, cautious with cash flow and obsessively attentive to what customers want.
We can do that!
Jerry Kalish is founder and President of National Benefit Services, Inc., a Chicago-based retirement plan consulting and administrative firm. He blogs at The Retirement Plan Blog, and can be reached at jerry@nationalbenefit.com.
Spotted your web site via bing the other day and absolutely liked it so much. Carry on the great work.