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Gordon Gekko is coming back. The slick villain of Oliver Stone's 1987 classic Wall Street is to return in a sequel tentatively called Wall Street 2.
In the 22 years since Gekko appeared on screen, played by Michael Douglas, no movie or TV character has come close to capturing the essence of Wall Street. Gekko's aphorisms remain part of financial lore: “lunch is for wimps”, “if you need a friend, get a dog”, “it's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation”, “If this guy owned a funeral parlor, nobody would die”, “like all Brits, he thinks he was born with a better pot to piss in” — and the immortal “greed is good”.
It seems to have taken the urgency of the financial collapse to bring the original participant back together. Only a couple of months ago, Oliver Stone had abandoned the project, saying the team had not found the right way to approach the subject. But now, he is back in as director. Michael Douglas will return as Gekko, and young star Shia LaBeouf is reportedly in talks with 20th Century Fox to play the ingénue trader taken under Gekko's wing.
All we know of the story is that Gekko will be the central character, and the events depicted will echo what we have learned about Wall Street's practices over the past year.
My own guess is that Gekko won't be a Madoff-style fraudster, but more like a powerful short-seller, forcing the collapse of banks and other firms, championing the free market and spitting venom at regulators.
* One of the few retailers thriving these days is Jos A Bank, a 100-year-old menswear firm. Its revenue is surging and its stock has doubled since November. The secret is aggressive marketing to recession-hit buyers. It recently offered to refund up to $199 of a suit's price and let customers keep it if they are laid off before midsummer. The firm's chief executive says: “It's like giving all of our customers a bit of unemployment insurance.”
* The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Schapiro, revealed this week that the SEC has 150 ongoing hedge-fund investigations. That means fewer than 4% of all the hedge funds registered in the US are being investigated. Given all the criticism, the industry has taken, this doesn't seem so bad.
