discussion_weeks 9-11 research & journal

[Lily]

The movie Wall Street is a story of an ambitious stockbroker, in the
name of Bud Fox, who will do everything to get into the big leagues.
He has a strong desire to get to the top. Working for his firm
during the day, he spends his spare time working on an angle with the
high-powered, extremely successful (but ruthless and greedy) broker
Gordon Gekko, one of the biggest speculators on Wall Street. Gecko
explained to Fox his philosophy that “Greed is Good”. Fox took the
advice and worked closely with Gekko, soon finds himself swept into a
world of “yuppies”, shady business deals, the good life, fast money,
and fast women, something which odds with his family inducing his
estranged father and the blue collared way. Gekko has a plan of
breaking up and plundering the employees’ retirement of the Blue Star
Airlines, the company where Fox’s father worked for almost 24 years.
Gekko manipulates and takes advantage of Fox’s burning to desire to
succeed.

In analyzing the movie, I would compare Gordon Gekko to Bacevich book
“The Limits of Power”, to the presidents (past and present) of America
who has a strong desire to be the number one “superpower” among all
nations. These presidents has a good motive of helping other nations
especially those who needs help to recover from their economy. And I
remember, the Americans help Philippines from the attacked of Japanese
to conquered our country during World War II. Through helping other
nations they became the “superpower”, and famous. But I don’t agree
of putting too much budget training for the soldiers and just send
them to Afghanistan and Iraq that causes our economy goes down. How
about other countries? Are they also concerned about Afghanistan and
Iraq? Why only Americans? What is the motive of the America of doing
all of these? I don’t know! But I really appreciate what the
government is doing, but still the people assigned in their position,
some are doing their best but some are not that’s why they always
failed in their strategies. Government should look into the
qualifications, experience and commitment to their job in order to be
successful in helping other countries.