I was a young teacher of Marxist-Leninist political economy in Siberia when I watched the 1987 Hollywood film Wall Street, in which a rogue trader becomes rich after learning that his competitor had flown off in his private jet to a small town to sign a contract. Later life imitated art: on hearing in 1998 that George Soros had flown into Nizhny Novgorod to meet Russian Prime Minister Sergey Kiriyenko, I invested all my money in a property in Moscow. Unfortunately, two months later, a spectacular financial crash followed.