Greed is good: Revisiting wolves of the Wall Street

Kankana Roy Choudhury

Moneycontrol.com

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about," said Oscar Wilde. This is particularly true of financial markets, where there is no clear dividing line between fame and notoriety. Driven by a lust for lucre and the desire to succeed at all cost, many cowboys of Wall Street blazed their way to glory through fraudulent means, only to burn out in the end.

Martin Scorsese's latest movie, The Wolf of Wall Street starring Leonardo DiCaprio is one such case. It is based on the true story of Jordan Belfort. In 1987, Belfort (DiCaprio) becomes a stockbroker at an established Wall Street firm. On the recommendation of his boss, Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey), Belfort adopts lifestyle of drugs and prostitutes to succeed. He passes the Series 7 Exam and earns his broker's license, only to lose his job when the firm fails after Black Monday.

Here are some of the other movies inspired by some real-life scams/frauds. (Source: IMDb.com)

Wall Street (1987): Directed by Oliver Stone, Wall Street is the story of a young and impatient stockbroker (Charlie Sheen) willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider (Michael Douglas as the towering Gordon Gekko), who takes the youth under his wing. Taking the advice and working closely with Gekko, Fox soon finds himself swept into a world of "yuppies", shady business deals, the "good life", fast money, and fast women; something which is at odds with his family, including his estranged father and the blue-collared way Fox was brought up.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010): A sequel to the 1987 movie, Gordon Gekko is now out of prison but still shunned by his peers. Gekko works his future son-in-law (Shia LaBeouf), an idealistic stock broker, when he sees an opportunity to take down a Wall Street enemy and rebuild his empire.

Rogue Trader (1999): Directed by James Dearden, the film is based on the real life story of the Barings Bank trader Nick Leeson (played by Ewan McGregor), an ambitious investment broker who singlehandedly bankrupted one of the oldest and most important banks in Britain. And for which he was sentenced to prison.

Boiler Room (2000):  Written and directed by Ben Younger, starring Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, the film is based on interviews the writer conducted with numerous brokers over a two-year period, and is inspired by the firm Stratton Oakmont and the life of Jordan Belfort. The film revolves around a college dropout who gets a job as a broker for a suburban investment firm, which puts him on the fast track to success, but the job might not be as legitimate as it sounds.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992): Times are tough in a Chicago real-estate office; the salesmen Shelley Levene (Jack Lemmon), Ricky Roma (Al Pacino), Dave Moss (Ed Harris), and George Aaronow (Alan Arkin) are given a strong incentive by Blake (Alec Baldwin) to succeed in a sales contest. The prizes? First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado, second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is the sack! There is no room for losers in this dramatically masculine world; only "closers" will get the good sales leads. There is a lot of pressure to succeed, so a robbery is committed which has unforeseen consequences for all the characters.

Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (2005): Directed by Alex Gibney, it is a documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall. The documentary chronicles Enron's dive from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Lou Pai, and Andy Fastow dominate. Along the way, we watch Enron game California's deregulated electricity market, get a free pass from Arthur Andersen (which okays the dubious mark-to-market accounting), use greed to manipulate banks and brokerages (Merrill Lynch fires the analyst who questions Enron's rise).

Margin Call (2011): Directed by JC Chandor, starring Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons and Demi Moore the film is about a respected financial company, which is downsizing and one of the victims is the risk management division head, who was working on a major analysis just when he was let go. His protégé completes the study late into the night and then frantically calls his colleagues in about the company's financial disaster he has discovered. What follows is a long night of panicked double checking and double dealing as the senior management prepare to do whatever it takes to mitigate the debacle to come even as the handful of conscientious comrades find themselves dragged along into the unethical abyss.

Too Big To Fail (2011): Directed by Curtis Hanson, the TV series chronicles the financial meltdown of 2008 and centers on treasury secretary Henry Paulson. The series gives a close look behind the scenes, between late March and mid-October, 2008: we follow Richard Fuld's (James Woods) benighted attempt to save Lehman Brothers; conversations among Hank Paulson (the Secretary of the Treasury), Ben Bernanke (chair of the Federal Reserve), and Tim Geithner (president of the New York Fed) as they seek a private solution for Lehman's; and, back-channel negotiations among Paulson, Warren Buffet, investment bankers, a British regulator, and members of Congress as almost all work to save the US economy. By the end, with the no-strings bailout arranged, modest confidence restored on Wall Street, and a meltdown averted, Paulson wonders if banks will lend.