Wall Street Director Fears 'Double Bubble'
12:33pm Friday October 08, 2010
Graham Fitzgerald
Wall Street director Oliver Stone has told Sky News he fears the world will not learn the lessons of the last recession and will make the same mistakes again.
The 64-year-old, whose own father was a highly successful businessman, says he has seen four "bubbles" in his time. "By bubble I mean the whole economy of a country takes a quantum leap up and expectations rise," he said. "It happened in the late 60s, it happened again in the 80s with Reagan. "It happened in the late 90s with the internet bubble where we were paying huge fortunes for companies with no profitability, then again in the real estate bubble." Stone says he is not sure what the next bubble will be, adding: "It may be a green bubble." But he believes whatever form it takes it will involve governments. "The state is going to play a much larger role in countries' economies and there'll be some form of state bubble," he explained, "It's gonna happen."
Director Stone (C) with the stars of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Stone, whose latest movie, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, has just been released, says bankers undoubtedly played a major part in the global economic downturn. There are some, he says, who "should have walked the plank" while others should have been "thrown in jail". But he insists as in all walks of life we should remember there are good bankers as well as bad. "It's not a black and white issue," he told Sky News.
"There are many bankers who did well in this whole crisis. They did not get greedy they played by the rules." Asked what he thought caused the last recession, he replied: "What happened was that dumb money was washing all over the world and we had so much of it people started to play games to make more and more money. "It wasn't like they had enough, they wanted more."
