The 1987 version of Wall Street was meant to expose the ills of materialism. Instead, it provided a surprisingly astute guide to how capitalism can work best. Investment bankers now await the film’s 2010 version with eager anticipation.

For all its ills, economies that leave markets to follow Gordon Gekko’s greed-is-good mantra – borrowed from Ivan Boesky’s “greed-is-healthy” – still generally support a higher standard of living than those with hard-left ideologies. Chasing the bucks weeds out inefficient operators. Sometimes society is best served by liquidating a dysfunctional company.

What politicians and regulators forgot over the ensuing two decades is that fear is also good – at least while it stays the right side of unreasoning panic. Markets deliver great results if greedy investors live in fear that taking one risk too many could cause them to lose everything. This is not true if greedy investors believe they will be bailed out from losing bets.