"Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works." If any three simple sentences could sum up the 80s, those are probably the ones. The 1980s were an age of illusions, one that was hedonistic in nature and self-loathing in practice. As Haynes Johnson recalls, it was "a society favored with material riches beyond measure and a political system whose freedoms made it the envy of every nation on earth." Released in 1987, Oliver Stone's Wall Street …showed first 75 words of 1815 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1815 total…e greediness that characterizes Gekko can only lead to failure of society and entrepreneurship, as can be seen in Wall Street. It is virtually "the understanding of the Law of Reciprocity, that one must supply in order to demand, save in order to invest, consider others in order to serve oneself, [that] is crucial to all life in society." In the end, greed is bad and reciprocity is good--supply-side economics with a hidden Confucius agenda.