Now it seems is legal.
You are all pretty much fucked.
You do not know it yet, but you are the NINJA generation. No income, no job, no assets. You’ve got a lot to look forward to.
Someone reminded me the other evening that I once said, “greed is good”. Now it seems is legal.
But folks, it is greed that makes my bartender buy three houses he cannot afford with no money down. And it is greed that makes your parents refinance their 200,000 dollar house for 250,000. Now they take that extra 50,000 and they go down to the mall, they buy a new plasma TV, cell phones, computers and an SUV. And hey, why not a second home while we are at it. Gee Wiz, we all know the prices of houses in America always go up. Right?
It is greed that makes the government of this country cut the interest rates to 1% after 9/11 so we can all go shopping again.
They got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars for credit, CMO, CDO, SIV, ABS. You know I honestly think there are only 75 people in the world that knows what they are.
But I will tell you what they are, they are WMDs. Weapons of mass destruction.
When I was away, it seemed that greed, got greedier. With a little bit of envy mixed in.
Hedge funders came home with 50 to 100 million bucks a year.
So Mr. Banker, he looks around and says.
My life looks pretty boring.
So he starts leveraging his interest up to 40%, 50% to 100%. With your money not his.
Yours. Because he could.
You are supposed to be borrowing, not them.
— And the beauty of the deal is no one is responsible.—
Because everyone is drinking the same Kool-aid.
Last year ladies and gentlemen, 40% of all american corporate profits came from the financial services. Not production, not anything remotely to do with the needs of the American public.
The truth is we are all part of it now. Banks, consumers they are moving the money around in circles.
We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids and we call it leverage. I call it steroid banking.
Now I have been considered a pretty smart guy when it comes to finance.
Maybe I was in prison too long, but sometimes it is the only place to stay sane, looking out from the bars and say, hey is everyone out there nuts?!
It is clear as a bell to those who pay attention. The mother of all evil is speculation. Leverage debt. The bottom line is, it is borrowing to the hilt.
And I hate to tell you this, but it is a bankrupt business model. It will not work. It is septicemic, malignant and its global. Like cancer, it is a disease. And we got to fight back. How we going to do that?
How we are going to leverage that disease, back in our favor?
I will tell you, three words… Buy my book. (applause)
Transcripción que hice del discurso de Gordon Gecko en Wall Street 2, Money Never Sleeps. (batallé con algunas palabras, ya me dirán ustedes… but it’s pretty much the same thing).
