[bwd]

And remember that Gordon Gekko was Oliver Stone's foil for Carl Fox (the father of the main character) who was meant to embody the evil of the 80s takeover era. This speech was based on a University of California speech given by Ivan Boesky, in which he said: "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself."

[gaius]

Gekko was the embodiment of capitalism itself and therefore amoral, not evil.

The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!

[bwd]

I disagree. There is a huge difference between insider trading and buying a company to sell off pieces of it and make the remainder more efficient through reorganization, even if the reorganization includes layoffs. In the former case, you are abusing your access to information that others do not have in order to make a profit at their expense, and this is why it is illegal. In the latter case, you are making a positive contribution to the wealth of the stockholders of a company, even though this might cause hardship to some of the employees who will have salary/benefits cut or even lose their jobs. Gekko embodies both of these behaviors (as did some of the participants in 80s takeovers), but I don't believe that insider trading properly represents capitalism.