Is Greed really good?

25 years ago, Gordon Gekko told us that greed was good. That it was the essence, not only capitalism, but of every aspect of our society. When we look back at that movie moment, we see that it fell almost halfway between the beginning of what economist Jeff Madrick calls the Age of Greed and the crash and recession of 2008/2009. How did we get to the economic landscape we face today? Are there common threads and specific personalities that have forever changed our financial markets? If so, can we trace them to the crises we face today and will it better enable us to understand how to move forward? Economist and journalist Jeff Madrick thinks so and he's laid out the proposition in his new book Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present. My conversation with Jeff Madrick: var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}