Question for Discussion:   What does
Wall Street and the 1980's obsession with
the Yuppie lifestyle tell us about American
society and culture in the last decades of
the twentieth century?

Reading:  Mintz and Roberts, pp. 298-308;
Hertzberg , "The Short ,Happy Life of the Yuppie ;
Quart and Auster, pp. 150-160; Kevin Phillips,
"Graph of Growing Economic Inequality";
A Rising Economy that Lifts only Yachts
: Great Graphs of Increasing Income Inquality ;
"How Unequal are We Anyway?" ;
Roger Ebert review of Wall Street;
Kempley, "Review of Wall Street"

Critical Reviews of  Wall Street (1987)

• Internet Movie Database: Wall Street (1987)

• Memorable Quotes from Wall Street

• Roger Ebert's review of Wall Street

• Rita Kempley's review of Wall Street

• History and the Movies: Oliver Stone
  Interview

• Oliver Stone 1997 Commencement 
  address to UC students

• Roger Ebert Review of American Psycho (2000)
  
  
• Salon.com Review of American Psycho
  
  
• 1980s TV Show: Family Ties (182-1989)
  
  

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  Yuppies and Yuppie Culture in
  the 1980s and 1990s

• Bizarro: Proud of Ourselves or Rich?
  
  
• Urban Dictionary Definition of Hippie
  
  
• Urban Dictionary Definition of Yuppie
  
  
• The Yuppie's dilemma: Economic Insecurity
  and Downsizing
  
  
• The Scum-Sucking Yuppie Materialist
  
  
• YUPPIE SCUM SAY- "DIE YUPPIE SCUM!"
  
  
• A Yuppie's Prayer
  
  

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  Corporate Crimes and Stock Manipulations in the early 2000s
  
  
• The Corporate Scandal Sheet
  
  
• Behind the Enron Scandal
  
  
• Called to Account: The Enron Scandal
  
  
• The Enron Affair
  
  
• Wall Street's Den of Thieves
  
  

  ---

  
  The Ivan Boesky Case
  
  
• From Pinstripes to Prison Stipes:
  The Ivan Boesky Case
  
  
• The Michael Milken Case
  
  
• 1986: Time Ivan Boesky Cover
  
  
• James Stewart: Den of Thieves (1992)
  
  

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  The Decline of the American Dream
  in the 1980s
  

• How the Pie is Sliced: America's Growing 
  Concentration of Wealth (in-class)
  
  
• Income Gap for Richest and Poorest
  Families Widens in the 1990s (in-class)
  
  
• A Rising Economy that Lifts only Yachts
  : Great Graphs of Increasing Income Inquality (in-class)
  
  
• The American Dream is less Common
  in the United States (in-class)
  
  
• Two Decades of Extraordinary Gains for
  Affluent Americans (in-class)
  
  
• Inequality Matters: Get the Facts
  
  
• Test your Economic IQ- Economic Trends
  in the 1980s
  
  
• Vanishing Jobs
  
  

  ---

  The Global Economy and the Decline 
  of the American Dream

• When Corporations Rule the World- 
  An Economic System Out of Control
  
  
• Assualt of the Corporate libertarians
  
  
• Ending Corporate Governance
  
  
• “100 harshest Facts” (web);

---

President Reagan's Economic Programs

• U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK

• U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK FAQ

• U.S. Military Spending during the Cold War
  

• U.S. Military Spending: 1946-1996
  
  
  

"Greed is all right, I want you to know that,
 I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy
 and still feel good about yourself."  
        Ivan Boesky, speaker at the School of  Business
Administration, University of California, Berkeley; later
sentenced to three years in federal prison.

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1.  Is Gordon Gekko's larger goal the money he makes on his deals or making the deal and beating someone else out of their money?

Bud: How much is enough?

Gekko: It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another.

2. Is Gordon Gekko like Donald Trump, who wrote in his autobiography, The Art of the Deal, " that money no longer interests him very much....[I am]  more motivated by the challenge of a deal and by the desire to win."

3.  What does Gordon Gekko mean in his speech to the Teldar board when he say: "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works."

4.  Why is Bud Fox so attracted to Gordon Gekko?  Why does he want to be a player?

Gekko: I'm gonna make you rich, Bud Fox. I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing.

5.  Why do "players" need to wear good suits, own fancy high-rise apartments, own the best artwork, and generally flaunt their wealth?  These are the same characteristics associated with Yuppies.  What does this tell us about the Yuppie stereotype?

6. Does Gordon Gekko earn his money honestly?  If he uses "insider information" to buy stocks that are sure things, is he really playing  by the rules?  Is Wall Street (1987) suggesting that stock  speculators like Gekko are sharks feeding off the gullible average investor and mismanaged corporations?

7.  Why does Bud Fox keep telling his father to get a better suit?  Why is dress so important to Bud?

8. How does Wall Street illustrate what William Palmer calls "the yuppie drive to make large amounts of money quickly, to succeed in a ruthless competitive world, to acquire the most expensive material goods, to spend rather than save, to party extremely hard as a reward for working extremely hard, to sacrifice human relationships for one's job"?

9. Why are yuppies like Bud Fox and Darien Taylor willing to give up or risk their personal relationships, their emotional integrity, and their characters for money and power and social status?

10.  Why does Bud Fox turn against Gordon Gekko in the end?  Does he side with his father's principles of character, integrity, and honor over Gekko's obsession with money and power at any cost?

11.  What does Bud Fox mean when he tells Gordon Gekko that no matter how hard he tried he couldn't become Gordon Gekko because he was still just Bud Fox?

12.  When Bud Fox turns against Gekko, Darien tells him that Gekko will destroy him and take everything he has.  Is this the ultimate yuppie nightmare that money, success, power, and status will be pulled out from under them despite what they do?

13.  Did Gekko really expect Bud Fox to stand by while his father's company, Bluestar Airlines, was bought and sold off into pieces so that Gekko could make a killing?

14. Is the American economy described by Gordon Gekko really a social darwinian "survival of the fittest" world in which the strongest prey on and destroy the weak and innocent?

Gekko: The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own.

15.  One of the larger yuppie fears portrayed in Wall Street is the fear that if you're not a player, if you're not on top of the money game, then you will be one of the losers, one of a great mass of Americans who are being screwed by the players and the money men.  Is this why Gordon Gekko tells Bud he can either be a player or be nothing?

16. Bud's father, Carl Fox, says: "Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others."  Is Bud Fox afraid that the only way to make it is to become a player because the only way to really make it in this world is to "live off the buying and selling of others"?  If you're not preying on others and exploiting others weaknesses, then you are just one of the prey for the stronger, more ruthless players.

17.  Why is money and power so much more attractive to Gordon Gekko than love, family, and emotional and psychological integrity?  Does Gekko see love and emotional relationships as weaknesses?

18. Does American society really value those who work hard, produce, and create even though most of these people are not wealthy, powerful, and socially prominent?  Why are Americans so fascinated with men like Donald Trump?