Wall Street and Its Relation to Financial Accounting

Wall Street is a movie written and directed by Oliver Stone. It was released in 1987 and it is about a young and ambitious stockbroker, Bud Fox, is eager to get to the top. His hunger for being in the top leads him to forget about ethical behavior and start trading illegally inside information for a greedy, Gordon Gekko, that takes advantage of him. At the beginning, like any young person, Fox is enjoying his wealthy success. However, when he discovers that Gekko plans to sell off Bluestar's assets (where Bud's father work) leaving Bud's father, Carl, and the entire Bluestar staff unemployed. This is where Bud has to choose ethics over success.

Many say that people learn about and ethic with their family; in Bud Fox's case his father was a moral person and always believed that Gekko did not apply an ethical behavior in his corporation success. But, unfortunately Fox did not listen to his father. Yet, a Executive Report by the Financial Executives Research Foundations understands that most of the corporations and financial executives believe that ethical behavior and financial integrity remain the rule of the day. Like Oliver Stone, the director, said: "''Wall Street'' is a gentrified ''Everyman,'' an upscale morality tale to entertain achievers who don't want to lose touch with their moral centers, but still have it all."

Wall Street was released a couple of months after the Great Depression. But in the movie this crisis is not really reflected. In the contrary, it shows how a young person went from being a stockbroker to a wealthy person in a short period of time even though his wealth was achieved by an illegal method.

Wall Street II: Money Never Sleeps, released in 2010 and directed by Oliver Stone, is sequel of Wall Street. This movie takes place after Gordon Gekko has been imprisoned for almost eight years for insider trading and securities fraud. His daughter, Winnie, and he do not have a good relationship because she blames him for her brother's, Rudy, suicide. Nevertheless, Winnie's fiancé, Jacob Moore is interested in Gekko's guidance in order to seek for revenge against Bretton James who ruined Keller Zabel, the company where Jacob used to work (and most importantly Jacob cared for the managing director, Louis Zabel, like if he were his father).

The main differences between these two movies is that Wall Street (of 1987) focuses more on the lack of moral that Fox and Gekko apply in their work environment while in Wall Street II does not focus on this. Wall Street II focuses on the fact that Gekko believes that "Greed is Good". Gekko admits that he's not interesting in the money, he's interested in winning; money is just the way to keep score. Also, another difference that these two movies have is that even though Wall Street was released a couple of months after an economical crisis, this is not