"The Ninja Generation" Gordon Gekko

Michael
Mar 3, 2017
4 min read

There is a dormant fire is being fed.

People no longer want more. They are demanding it. Thinking about it constantly. The people I interact with daily are unbelievably hungry to do something non-conventional. Apparently, I'm being told, Life is too short. (Music to my ears)

First, A little off topic, I'd like to make a particular mention to the mini autobiography of my experiences to date. Interestingly enough, the experience people most identified with and have been reaching out to me about are my experiences surrounding the details in the run up to being sectioned.

People opened up, laid out raw their own experiences and what it meant to them to read what I wrote. some very very powerful stuff and I hope that these individuals will be able to share their experiences with the world as they are, quite truly, astonishing.

Thank you for sharing with me.

So...

"The Ninja Generation"

when I talk about the new generation or the 'young gods', as I like to dub them/us (I don't use spaPchat... does that exclude me from the young guns? Let me know!) It feels to me that the dawn of the millennium was a shift in the paradigm of thinking.

No doubt about it, The internet was and is a game changer, fueling creativity and expression like a global library (one we actually want to go to) for all.

Want to Start learning a new language? simply go on youtube.

Diet advise, google for a plethora of info. Start ups? you get the idea.

dreams are now being pursued and realised at an accelerated pace. Businesses are waking up to the fact that it is big business to facilitate the business process and That means people are investing in their dreams.

Facebook has innovated with a massive drive to corporate pages, youtube allows users to monetise their pages or 'channels' (Genius) with top earners earning 8 figures from their room. Twitter is a platform where people are connecting with the world as well as their heroes and vice-versa in an unprecedented way.

Not one of the above is a product you can feel or touch in any way?! How cool is that?

AS you can see we've come a long way.

And don't even get me started on soft/hardware. In ten years we've gone from a mobile phone, to a mobile everything. The evolution of the app - another game changer, and deserving of its own article.

We are moving.

The Fire is growing.

And Yet...

The older generation see us as fucked.

When asked about the future prospects of “children today,” Americans generally said that when today’s kids grow up, they would be worse off financially than their parents. And there are plenty of reports echoing this negative sentiment for our future.

The next generation?

musing referred to by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps as "THE NINJA GENERATION" (I love this speech)

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"You are all pretty much Fucked.

You do not know it yet...

But you are the ninja generation.

No income, no job, no assets.

You’ve got a lot to look forward to...

Someone reminded me the other day that I once said, greed is good. Well it appears greed is not only good, it is legal.

We are all drinking the same cool-aid.

But it is greed that makes my bartender buy three houses, he cannot afford with no money down. And it is greed that makes your parents refinance their 200,000 dollar mortgage for 250,000 dollars. Now they take that extra 50 and go to the shopping mall so they can buy a new plasma TV, cell phones, computers and an SUV. And hey, why not a second home while we are at it.

Gee Wiz, we all know the prices of houses in America always go up. Right?

It is greed that makes the government of this country cut the interest rates to 1% after 9/11 so we can all go shopping again.

They got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars for credit, CMO, CDO, SIV, ABS. You know I honestly think there are only 75 people in the world that knows what they are.

But I will tell you what they are, they are WMDs. Weapons of mass destruction.

When I was away, it seemed that greed, got greedier. With a little bit of envy mixed in.

Hedge fund managers came home with 50 to 100 million bucks a year.

So Mr. Banker, he looks around and says. My life looks pretty boring. So he starts leveraging his interest up to 40%, 50% to 100%. With your money not his.

Yours.

Because he could.

You are supposed to be borrowing not them.

And the beauty of the deal is no one is responsible.

Last year ladies and gentlemen, 40% of all corporate profits came from the financial services industry. Not production, not anything remotely to do with the needs of the American public.

The truth is we are all part of it now. Banks, consumers they are moving the money around in circles. We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids and we call it leverage.

I call it steroid banking.

Now I have been considered a pretty smart guy when it comes to finance.

Maybe I was in prison too long, but sometimes it is the only place to stay sane, looking out from the bars and say, hey is everyone out there nuts?

It's clear as a bell to those who pay attention.

The mother of all evil is speculation. Leverage debt. The bottom line is, it is borrowing to the hilt.

And I hate to tell you this, but it is a bankrupt business model.

It will not work. It is septicemic, malignant and its global. Like cancer, it is a disease. And we got to fight back."

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Look back at the beginning of this speech. "No income, no job, no assets."

A generation expected to inherit nothing is a blessing disguised as a curse.

It is freedom.

An old man reflected back on his life and he told a young god.