Wall Street 2: Gordon Gekko is back

Many scandals, three recessions and one near-collapse of the entire banking system later, he is yet to be replaced as the embodiment of capitalism with the gloves off.

The one-liners from the film can still be heard wherever men and markets do battle: "Greed is good"; "Lunch is for wimps"; "Money never sleeps"; "What's worth doing is worth doing for money"; "If you need a friend, get a dog"; "Churn 'em and burn 'em".

Oliver Stone, who wrote and directed the movie Wall Street, rebuffed requests for a sequel for years. His original was not only a cinematic triumph, but it was also perfectly timed, coming out in 1987 at the end of an extraordinary, excessive run in the financial markets, which culminated in a spectacular crash, Black Monday.

There was no way, Stone reckoned, he could repeat his success. He also believed that America would never tolerate a similar era of excess. During the boom years, he was fearful of making another film about the financial industry as he "didn't want to glorify pigs". The events of the past 18 months put him back to work, interviewing money managers, journalists and corporate crooks, piecing together the story for Wall Street 2. Filming began last week in New York.

In an interview with The New York Times, Stone said he had written Gekko as a monster, only for him to become a heroic figure in pop culture. "I can't tell you how many young people have come up to me in these years and said, I went to Wall Street because of that movie'."

Michael Douglas said he had the same experience and that it had "probably been the biggest surprise of my career that people say that this seductive villain has motivated me to go into this business." He added that it is quite usual, when he goes out to dinner, to have a "well-lubricated Wall Street businessman come up to me and say, You're the man'".

Like Stone, Douglas was equally reluctant to make a sequel. It was the financial crisis and the behaviour it exposed which changed his mind. All the foot-dragging which had gone on for years turned into a sprint to make a film as evocative of the recent financial era as Wall Street was of the 1980s.

Gekko's Greed is Good speech is still shown to MBA students at business schools. It is intended as a morality lesson, but ends up feeling more like a pep talk. At my old business school, Harvard, Gekko's speech electrified a snoozy morning class on leadership. By the time Gekko was done berating the board of Teldar Paper, the entire class was grinning and alert. "I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!" boomed Gekko.

"The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, [for] knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much."

For most MBA students that speech is less a parody than a guiding philosophy. Over the past year, as Wall Street froze hiring and many MBA students struggled to find work, a wave of ethical re-evaluation swept business school campuses. A group of Harvard Business School students even came up with an MBA oath, vowing to be responsible, law-abiding, civic-minded business people.

It was not the kind of thing anyone bothered with when the economy was roaring along and students could still fantasise about gliding from business school into a world of Gekko-ish riches.

Stone based the "greed is good" speech on one given by Ivan Boesky, a high-living speculator whose prosecution for insider trading marked the climax of Wall Street's trading boom of the 1980s. Boesky operated from a marble-walled office on Fifth Avenue and by 1986 had built a fortune of $200 million trading the shares of companies involved in corporate takeovers.

Prosecutors then went after him and he was sent to jail for two years and fined $100 million. In 1985, Boesky told students at the University of California, Berkeley, that: "Greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself."

In Wall Street 2, Gordon Gekko has emerged from prison, where he spent time for the securities fraud described in Wall Street. He now helps a younger man, played by Shia LaBeouf, who is planning to marry Gekko's daughter.

The villains of the piece are not the independent traders like Gekko, who were subsequently replaced by hedge fund managers. It is the big, clumsy, malicious investment banks who rigged the financial system in their favour.

The Gekko-ish behaviour described in Wall Street has become adopted by the Establishment, with all the wickedness and selfishness but none of the style possessed by Gekko. And even worse, it has been dressed up as acceptable behaviour, courtesy of lobbyists and craven politicians who allowed the banks to run riot.

Academics who have studied Wall Street, the movie, say that it left such a deep impression on the popular imagination that Wall Street, the financial industry, has battled it ever since. When politicians see bankers coming to Capitol Hill or to a Commons Select Committee, in their minds they see Gordon Gekko.

When the public sees yet another financial scandal erupt, or Goldman Sachs bankers feasting on taxpayer bailouts then handing out bonuses, the soundtrack in their mind is Gekko lecturing that "greed is good". This has had a powerful effect on the way the financial industry is regulated.

Sequels don't have a great reputation, but if Stone and Douglas can pull this one off, if they can crystallise the horrors which unfolded at the summit of Wall Street these past few years, they will do us all a great service.