It was 1987. The height of the "me generation". Hippies and Yippies had become "Yuppies". Young. Upwardly mobile. Professional. The epitome was featured in the very popular movie, Wall Street. His name was Gordon Gekko.
Portrayed by actor Michael Douglas, Gekko was a "corporate raider". He would buy struggling companies, strip off and sell the assets, and then dump what little was left. Including employees.
In a tasty bit of irony, Douglas (one of my favorite actors) later portrayed "President Andrew Shepherd" in "The American President".
And in a perfect example of life imitating art, a real-life Gordon Gekko is running for Andrew Shepherd's real-life job, under the name Mitt Romney.
Gekko and Shepherd are fictional characters. The son of the late George Romney, Mexico-born former adversary of Barry Goldwater (and himself a candidate in 1968), Mitt Romney is all too real. And so is his
corporate raider company, Bain Capital.
His
single largest source of contributions (like that of the current occupier of 1600 Pennsy' Avenue) is Goldman Sachs. You might remember them. A former CEO of Goldman Sachs was Secretary of Treasury in 1998 when mortgage qualifications were "eased". Another former Gold Sachs CEO held that Office 10 years later when the inevitable, predictable, and predicted result of that "easing" came to roost upon all of us, in the form of a $700,000,000.00 "bailout".
Any bets on what happens if Gordon Gekko gets Andrew Shepherd's job?
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