In the 1987 classic, Gordon Gekko is found guilty of insider trading and is sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.

In 2010, Gekko returns to serve up cold revenge and rebuild a fortune from the $100m he had stashed away in his daughter’s name in a Swiss bank account. In the movie, Gekko predicts the 2008 Wall Street crash and cashes in by manoeuvring and investing in the areas he had identified as being the next bubble.

The movie in itself is a fantastic way in which to explain exactly what led to the crisis, how it panned out and what is in store for the future. Gekko explains that the current capitalist system is an outdated model.

He explains that a buck (dollar) is still a buck, no matter how much steroids are injected into it. What he tried to explain is that greed is “good” in the sense of it being the driving factor to make economies grow.

But take it another way, if a dollar is a dollar, then no matter how many times it moves around in increasing circles, it is one day going to come crashing down. In the 90s we saw the .com bubble burst with thousands of dollars, euros and sterling going down the drain. In the millennium decade, we saw the sub-prime (property) mortgages bubble burst.

The movie draws on current market trends and Gekko predicts the next bubble to be green energy with salt water fusion and solar paneling being the future. But what we do not understand is that although there are strict rules and regulations, the multinationals control it all. Banks are no longer lenders, they are borrowers who invest our money into these hare-brained bubbles.

Not only, but companies control the markets by investing (your) money left, right and centre, sometimes even against their own ‘product’ in order to influence the market. This is known as insider trading. It is very hard to prove, but it happens on a daily basis. Take this as an example… if an oil trader knows that oil is still king, then it would be very easy to kill off a viable deal (wind power for example) by trading with someone who offers solar energy...

Many would say, “As if they would do that…” The truth is that they do. Financial services is an ever-expanding market and it provides jobs and expertise. Malta is aiming to establish itself as a centre of excellence and this is good. But we should not put all our eggs in one basket. This newspaper saw the crisis coming a mile off. Like others who warned about it, we were pooh-poohed. The banks and the EU and the US Treasury tell us that Capitalism can be saved by good governance and less greed. The real truth is that Capitalism has failed and is slowly dying. Whether anyone likes it or not, the bailouts that banks – even countries – have received are nothing more than state protectionism in the socialist model. Socialism has also collapsed as an economic theory. The world badly needs a new business model to work on. In Gekko’s words, “the current system is toxic. It is a cancer. It is malignant and it is global. It is time to fight back”.

How to do it is another matter entirely. Perhaps former football legend Eric Cantona was not so mad in saying that we should all withdraw our money from the banks.