Opinion Greed isn’t the point

Parenthetically,and this is too delicious not to note,Cannes will also see the first screening of French auteur Jean-Luc Godard’s latest film,Socialisme (Socialism). Stone on capitalism and Godard on socialism at the same festival — that’s something.

Non-parenthetically,Godard’s 1979 movie,a big one in his filmography,Sauve Qui Peut/ La Vie (English title: Everyman for Himself) has this memorable dialogue that feeds right into Stone’s filmic attempts to critique Wall Street. In Godard’s film,a pimp,while admonishing a prostitute who thinks of going independent,tells her,“Nobody is independent,not whores,not typists,not duchesses,not servants,not champion tennis players… only the banks are independent.”

Well,the banks aren’t independent,are they? Not after the financial crisis,with trillions of public money shoring them up. And there have been bank bailouts throughout financial history.

But stylishly leftwing Godard overestimated banks’ omnipotence. Why? Because for stylishly leftwing (SLW,for shorthand) critics — Stone is at the top part of this list — of capitalism,especially capitalist finance,banks have their own mythology: moneymen,people who make money out of money,who are therefore up to no good and,worst of all,they own us.

At least the latest financial crisis should have demonstrated we,taxpayers,can own banks,too. And financial history demonstrates another simple lesson: banks seem omnipotent when they do fancy stuff and they do fancy stuff when the governments we elect set rules that engender fanciness.

American finance,the provocation for much of SLW critiques,was fairly plain vanilla for most of the period of America’s sturdy post-war growth,when the country emerged as an undisputed economic superpower. Capitalist finance supporting robust capitalist economic performance doesn’t require seemingly omnipotent banks.

Okay,question: why are we being dreadfully,economist-like prosaic when assessing artistic critiques? Because artistic critiques of capitalism would be no less stylish and much less woolly were they to leave aside the myths and the consequent easy but wrong hits. Godard could have easily left out banks from the pimp’s dialogue and still made his point.

The reason why SLW critics should give economics a little more chance becomes clearer when we look at Stone’s iconic one-liner contribution to SLW critique. In Stone’s first Wall Street movie,Gekko famously said,“greed is good.”

The apparent sheer effrontery,the vulgarity,the insensitivity of that mantra has been the ballast on which many SLW theses have floated. Post-financial crisis,even non-SLW types wondered whether bankers’ avarice didn’t really represent an awfully big morality deficit.

From what has been credibly reported on the story of Stone’s second Wall Street movie,critique of the same morality deficit informs the plot. Indeed,Stone told Michael Lewis — the latter previewed Wall Street II for the Vanity Fair — that he’s doing the sequel because the financial crisis for him was “the collapse of capitalism and collapse of our society”. Phew! So,Gekkoist immorality — “greed is great” as the new signature Gekko one-liner? — probably looms even larger in post-crisis Wall Street.

But Stone,and other SLW critics didn’t and don’t get it. Greed,in the context of assessing capitalist finance troubles,isn’t the big or the relevant thing at all. True,greed — wanting something more than one needs,especially wealth — is inseparable from capitalist ethos. But greed doesn’t cause collapse. Ask yourself,up to what point should an increase in greediness be tolerated vis-à-vis the goal of stable finance. It’s a meaningless question.

Greed is always there. Crises,which come only sometimes,are caused by stupidity,by overconfidence,by certain sets of finance rules and,as the Goldman case is making clear for this crisis,by fraud.

No one should empathise with capitalist financiers who have been stupid or overconfident. And fraud in capitalist finance is immoral,dreadfully so; bilking your client destroys a fundamental banking principle. Remember here how Gekko gets his comeuppance in the first Wall Street movie. He’s jailed for insider trading — that means fraud,not greed,and that’s fraud in part allowed by bad government rules and in part by overconfidence.

In his sequel,Stone apparently has two banks,one modelled on Bear Stearns and one on Goldman Sachs. Bear and Goldman are good exemplars of financial stupidity,overconfidence and possible fraud. So,what Stone has done is great,or would be great,if we knew for definite that he has strayed from the SLW critique. But hearing Stone,and hearing others well-informed about his sequel,it appears greed is the motif — Gekko,out of jail,wants to be back in,big time,and he,horror,uses his daughter’s young financial analyst boyfriend to do it.

If Stone’s film treatment of Wall Street is unreformed,it’s disappointing. W,Stone’s film on George Bush (another favourite SLW target),was actually fairly nuanced. There was some empathy (Stone’s description; others called it sympathy) for the film’s “bad guy”. Many American SLW critics took issue with Stone for the film. So,Stone can critique the rightwing and avoid at least some of the easy and wrong hits.

Post-crisis Wall Street cries out for a caustic but non-woolly movie treatment. There’s already a candidate for that yet-to-be-made movie’s iconic bad guy one-liner. It comes from Stone. Speaking to Lewis,and recounting that he had read three books on Enron to comprehend the scandal,Stone says,“I couldn’t understand a ****ing thing”.

Read the pre-crisis Goldman emails that US regulators have unearthed,where so-called financial whiz kids cheerfully admit their inability to comprehend what they have created. That’s not greed,that’s stupidity/ fraud/ overconfidence.

“I couldn’t understand a ****ing thing” is exactly what the big moneyman should say as he receives his comeuppance in a better kind of Wall Street film.

saubhik.chakrabarti@expressindia.com