Wealth is in the air

Damien Hirst
Painful Memories/Forgotten Tears, 2008
Gold plated, glass and Cubic Zirconia

I just finished reading "Greed Never Left" by Michael Lewis, a retrospective of Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. If you've been keeping up with the latest movie news, Stone and his Hollywood entourage are preparing to release an overdue sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Stone expresses his usual pessimism about American capitalism, telling Lewis he returned to the world of finance and greed because we're apparently witnessing "the collapse of capitalism and the collapse of our society." This of course is Stone at his most ironic. After the release of Wall Street Michael Douglas was accosted by Wall Street bankers claiming kinship, seeking him out to say, "Man, I want to tell you, you are the single biggest reason I got into the business. I watched Wall Street and I wanted to be Gordon Gekko."

Stone's grave outlook, the ongoing housing crisis, and an anemic economy does make it difficult to imagine business as usual. But in Asia, the engines of enterprise are just starting to roar, with 62 out of 92 new billionaires on the annual Forbes list hailing from China, India and Japan. They are captains of industry as well as innovators like Lei Jufang, one of few women on the list who is pioneering a path in Tibetan medicine.

I've thought about an Asian equivalent to the wheeling, dealing, greed mongering world of Wall Street, and I don't think there is one. Could this be a by-product of a cultural gap between our two modernities? Does an emphasis on family values prevent moguls from reckless capitalism that has become so glamorous in the United States, a path so dangerously alluring that it is ultimately unstoppable? Only time will tell.