Goodbye Gordon Gekko

July 26, 2010
The financial meltdown of 2008 was primarily attributed to greed getting the better of common sense on Wall Street, where a house of cards built on irresponsibly risky lending and investing eventually came crashing down. The winner-take-all attitude that exemplified the Street was perfectly personified by Gordon Gekko, the ruthless wrecker of companies from Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, Wall Street. Goldman Sachs veteran Scaramucci served as an advisor on the recently-completed sequel and argues that greed leads good people to make systematically worse decisions until they can no longer be called “good” at all. He feels that a desire for money above all else will leave one envious and unhappy regardless of material possessions. True happiness, he believes, can be found by identifying and pursuing your passion and “paying forward” your good fortune. These are popular sentiments as the backlash against materialism burns on, and they are imbued with a certain degree of legitimacy coming from a Wall Street native, but Scaramucci’s platitudes often read like they came from a note-sized list of tips bloated into a book. Scaramucci has good intentions, and his advice is sound, but his material is insufficient to make for a truly captivating book.