Google stresses ethics and responsibility. Bill Gates devotes his time and wealth to philanthropy. Salesforce.com dumps 1 percent of its equity into its foundation. And, these days, green is good.

Of course, some things have changed little since the '87 crash. You might not remember the international events that helped precipitate the market implosion.

On October 16, Iran hit a U.S. oil tanker off the coast of Kuwait with missiles. Early morning on the 19th, two U.S. Navy ships shelled an Iranian oil platform. Have a familiar ring? By the time the markets in New York opened, Middle East tensions had mixed with domestic economic concerns, and the potion melted the Dow like acid.

The crash was made worse by a new capability called program trading. Computers could watch stocks and indexes and trigger trades on their own! What a concept!

But only big guns like Goldman Sachs had the wherewithal to do it. For individual investors, the game suddenly felt rigged. How could a middle-class dad compete against arrays of microprocessors and tech wizards armed with algorithms?

Today, same thing. Dad may have a laptop that's as powerful as a whole 1987 Goldman trading room, but so what? Hedge funds hire complexity theory Ph.D.'s and run predictive software that could make Nostradamus look like an ignoramus. The investing game feels more rigged than ever.

All in all, makes you wonder if 2007 is a better place to be than 1987. Sure, the Cold War is gone, corporations are a bit nicer, and everyone's got email. Yet war looms, the economy teeters, real estate sags, and financial institutions have massive trading systems with hair triggers.

By the time you finish this essay, the Dow could crash again. October seems to be a popular month for such shenanigans.

Michael Douglas has said he wants to make a Wall Street sequel, but it couldn't be nearly as much fun as the original.

Twenty years down the line, jail time behind him, banned from the securities industry, an updated Gekko might be more like an idle retiree in Boca Raton. Lunch would probably be a highlight of his day. Point him to the buffet.