alt Hacker News> "The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good." ... few people know that these words are based on an actual commencement speech delivered in 1986 at The speaker? Ivan Boesky, who would be convicted just eighteen months later in an insider trading scandal.
I did not know this! Thank you for posting!
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The whole character and his role in pop culture I find very frustrating.
The guy is the antagonist in the movie so you're not supposed to like him and he's written that way. He's a strawman and his whole speech is how the real version of him would sound filtered through the ears of someone who disagreed with him.
So you end up with people holding him up as an example that disagree and agree with him but the both of those groups are choosing the sides of a caricature that doesn't understand the point he's trying to make. It's weird.
Further interesting facts gleaned from wikipedia;
Boesky was born to a Jewish family in Detroit. His family owned several delicatessens and taverns in the city. Although he lacked an undergraduate degree, he was admitted to Detroit College of Law (now Michigan State University College of Law) and graduated in 1965. In the 1980s, Boesky served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and at New York University's Graduate School of Business.
Time magazine ran a December 1, 1986, cover story about his "scam," dubbing him "Ivan the Terrible."[11]
Per a plea bargain, he received a prison sentence of 3+1⁄2 years and was fined US$100 million. Although he was released after serving only 20 months, he was permanently prohibited from working with securities. He served his sentence at Lompoc Federal Prison Camp near Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Boesky smoked Marlboro cigarettes and lived till 87 yrs.
Boesky was also featured in Titans The Rise of Wall Street on Amazon Prime