Margin Call on Wall Street’s Moral Standards

Margin Call portrays the unethical character of employees of an unnamed Wall Street firm when a decision is made by the firm’s leaders to reduce the firm’s loss exposure to an imminent financial crisis by selling the firm’s toxic assets to its clients. The movie raises the following ethical question: would Wall Street employees compromise their moral standards and reputation for a huge pile of cash? 

The low-level traders are thrown into the moral dilemma mix at 6:30 AM when they are told by their boss Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) that the “party’s over as of this morning.” In order to induce the traders to destroy their reputations and careers by helping the company sell out its clients, the traders are offered a one-time $2.7 million payoff. When promised this bribe, the employees pick up their account folders without hesitation and begin to sell. 

CEO John Tuld’s (Jeremy Irons) career mantra for making a living in business is “be first, be smarter or cheat.” When he learns about the looming financial meltdown, he commands his employees to sell the firm’s worthless assets. Even though, Tuld knows that his orders will cause huge losses for the clients who buy these assets, at the end of the day, Tuld calmly has dinner in the firm dining room, showing no remorse for the lives he is ruining. 

From the occupants of the small cubicles to executives in the corner offices, questionable and even objectionable actions have been made in order to transfer the anticipated financial losses from the firm to its clients. Within the financial world, moral boundaries are nonexistent. At the request of the firm, individuals willingly discard their personal values in exchange for the firm’s payment of millions of dollars.

- Harlyn Croland