The movie I selected is called the Wolf of Wall Street, and took place during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Jordan Belford is a young man from Queens who is first hired as a sales consultant, and forced to call over 500 business men a day. Soon after the crash, Belford is forced to leave, he continues his career selling penny stocks, or pink sheets. Belford does very well here, and soon is able to found their own brokerage firm, with his good friend Danny Porush, which they call Stratton Oakmont.
The new-era thinking that Belford came up with was really a con. Belford and Porush would own shares of risky companies that were going public or that they were taking public, and they had their brokers aggressively sell the stock to try and inflate the price. They would then sell the shares to make a good profit. As the stock collapsed, the investor would be left with nothing. They did this with Porush childhoods friend, and shoe company owner, Steve Madden. They made about $23 million off Madden, all three ended up in prison. He would launder money into Swiss banks, and had mob ties. Swindling hundred of millions of dollars out of peoples life savings.
There were many important political issues, social and economic changes that occurred while Belford was doing business, that very well did affect him. During 1987 was right when Belford got into the business. At this time the US has just ended the Cold War, with their fight with the Soviet Union. At this time international trade has been growing at a large amount. With an expansion of merchandise trade, and trade in services. During the 1980s and 1990s, trade competition became even more intense, and grew in parts of Europe and East Asia. There has always been a large trade barrier, but during the last half of the 20th century tariff levels of the United States, and of other industrialized countries dropped from 40 percent to only 6 percent. Technology advancements at this time in communication and transportation. Since the mid-1970s, financial deregulation and the creation of new financial instruments, such as derivatives, and technological advances in communications have contributed to a much more intact and successful international financial system.
The important political and opinion leaders, that changed in government was another reason why Belford was able to do what he did, he found shortcuts. When cheaper and sometimes better imports were being flooded into the US made it hard for the US to respond, forcing the US companies to shut down and move else where. Companies were forced to have to start giving employees smaller work weeks, with fewer hours. After the fall of theSoviet Union the U.S, was unchallenged as the worlds superpower. In 1992 Bill Clinton, part of the Democratic party, was elected. Soon after that in 1994, the Republicans gained control of the Congress for the first time in 40 years. This resulted i a government shutdown following a budget crisis, but soon after balanced the budget. The U.S. economy boomed throughout the 1990s until the NASDAQ crashed at the dot-com bubble burst in early 2000, and market the end of any growth.
There were very many lasting impacts n what Jordan Belford did. The main one would have to be him lying to his customers. Bu telling his customers that a particular stock was a good buy, even when it wasn’t, caused a lot of people to loose money. People would put all their life saving in with Belford and his briers, what they got out of it was nothing. Belford took a lot of money from people, and paid for it with four years in jail. He is also forced to pay back $100 million to the victims he affected. The government is now much more strict on buy and selling stocks, largely to do with what Belford did. Belford affected many people with what he did, and will forever be remembered as a lier and theft.
