'Real-life Gordon Gekko' is voting for Bernie Sanders

Financier Asher Edelman, inspiration for the Wall Street protagonist, says the Vermont senator is the only candidate who can take on the banks

The financier dubbed a "real-life Gordon Gekko" is backing Bernie Sanders in the US presidential race, as the only candidate who can take on the big banks and prevent another crash.

Asher Edelman, one of several inspirations for the cut-throat Wall Street protagonist, says that the Vermont senator will bring urgently-needed "regualtion and responsibility" to high finance, while "Hillary Clinton is beholden to the banks for their largesse in funding her campaign".

"The likelihood of any Republican candidate taking on this key issue is not even worthy of discussion," Mr Edelman, one of the most well-known corporate raiders of the 1980s, writes in an article for the Guardian.

Ahead of the New York primary next week, Mr Edelman writes: "No candidate other than Bernie Sanders is capable of taking the steps necessary to protect the American people from a repeat of the recent debacle that plunged the nation into a recession from which we have not recovered."

Mr Edelman, who is thought to be worth around $25million, says that Wall Street remains inadequately regulated since the Glass-Steagall Act of 1999 - introduced during Bill Clinton's presidency - which ended the separation of retail and investment banking.

He says this resulted in the 2008 crash, with the bill picked up by the taxpayer, and an ongoing "recession" in the incomes of all but the top 20%.

The economy remains at risk of depression, Mr Edelman argues, because the big banks' exposure to derivatives is "10 times those of 2007-2008" and four of the big banks have balance sheets, and in four banks alone, it exceeds the GDP of the entire world.

He contrasts the funding of Mrs Clinton campaign with that of Mr Sanders, who "is the only independent candidate who escapes the malaise of being bought" because he relies on small donations from ordinary Americans.

Mr Edelman, who is also an art collector, is cited as one of the men on which Gekko, the banker who played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 blockbuster and its sequel in 2010, was based.

Another is Louis Stone, father of director Oliver Stone, who created Gekko with screenwriter screenwriter Stanley Weiser.