Greed no longer just good, it's legal in 'Wall Street 2'

Oliver Stone is a prickly pear. He'd be easy to imagine at a family's holiday dinner table, standing up halfway through the feast, a nearly empty glass of wine in his hand, launching into a paranoia-ridden diatribe about government conspiracies, secret assassinations and maybe even unreported alien encounters.

It'd be comic, if we didn't know deep down inside that Uncle Oliver is possibly right.

Stone has just finished filming Wall Street 2 and took some time off to speak to students at American University in Washington, who can actually take a course called "Oliver Stone's America." (If that means getting to watch Charlie Sheen movies for credit, sign us up.)

"The individual Gekko would no longer exist in this new Wall Street," Stone said, referring to Oscar-winning role played by Michael Douglas in 1987. "The big players now are major banks and hedge funds ... the money's too big."

In the just-completed sequel, Stone said, "greed is now legal." (Whoa. It's too close to Christmas for that sort of perspective.)

According to the Associated Press, Stone also blasted the mainstream media (who doesn't?), the defense industry, the war in Afghanistan and President Barack Obama.

FIVE MORE LINES ABOUT GREED IN 'WALL STREET':

5. "There's no nobility in poverty."

4. "When you've had money and lost it, it can be much worse than never having had it at all."

3. "What's worth doing is worth doing for money."

2. "It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation."

1. "The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do."