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Bullish On Books
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Jordan Belfort |
He first told his story in "The Wolf of Wall Street" - and now he's out with the sequel, "Catching the Wolf Of Wall Street."
The books take readers on an incredible journey filled with greed, drugs, unbridled debauchery, greed and yes, more greed.
I asked Belfort to write up something for Bullish to help the rest of us better understand how he - how others like him - think.
Below is Jordan Belfort's Essay for Bullish On Books:
Americans have lost faith in Wall Street, and they’re mad as hell and demanding answers.
They want to know how it’s possible for a relatively small group of self-serving power brokers, infected with the sickness of greed, to bring our entire financial system to its knees; they want to know how it’s possible for fat-cat CEOs from Detroit to have the utter audacity to fly to Washington D.C. in private jets, while seeking a $50 billion taxpayer bailout; and they want to know how some conniving bastard named Bernie Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ Stock Exchange who was considered a pillar of Wall Street, could turn out to be the biggest scam artist in financial history.
From John Thain’s million-dollar decorating-spree (while Merrill Lynch [BAC
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]was bleeding red-ink faster than a hemophiliac with a gunshot wound) to former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s $100 million-plus bonuses (while he was busy sowing the seeds of Citigroup’s [C
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] destruction, with risky derivatives) to the stupefying arrogance of Jimmy Cayne (who felt it more important to get high on grass and play contract bridge with his buddies, while Bear Sterns burnt to the ground, like ancient Rome), Americans are demanding answers—they deserve answers, for Chrissake!—as to what instigated such a complete and utter breakdown of responsibility and ethics among the very people who were supposed to exemplify such traits.
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You might find my bizarre personal life, which was so utterly self-destructive that it boggles the mind, to be laugh-out-loud-funny. Yet, it is my step-by-step journey from a wet-behind-the-ears Wall-Street-trainee, who came from a middle-class family with an impeccable reputation and an unwavering sense of duty, fair play and respect for the law, to a serial law-breaker, who, for quite some time, had convinced himself that the difference between right and wrong was that wrong meant getting caught that resonates today.
Of course I know better now. I know how utterly ridiculous that is, and how utterly devastated I would be if one of my own children, of which I have two, were to ever adopt such a ludicrous philosophy. In fact, I make it my business to speak to them about it often, doing my best to ensure that they learn from their father’s mistakes.
In the end, I served twenty-two months in jail and was hit with over $100 million restitution. Since then, I’ve worked very hard to pay investors back, and to regain my own self-respect. Neither has been easy.
- Warning: Explicit Language Read An Excerpt of "Catching the Wolf of Wall Street" Here
Nevertheless, I do my best each day to achieve those goals, hoping that people from all walks of life—from those at the highest levels of Wall Street to those in the very trenches of Main Street—will read my book and take away the intended messages, namely: that crime doesn’t pay, and that despite the ironic humor of being able to peer into the life of the temporarily insane, there is nothing glamorous about being known as a Wolf of Wall Street.
Questions, comments?
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