Hickey, an alcoholic salesman, returns to his favorite New York saloon of misbegotten souls to preach an odd form of salvation. He is sober, yet profoundly troubled.

Normally a buoyant spirit, telling bawdy stories and buying drinks for the house, he exhorts his comrades to kill “tomorrow dreams which keep you from making peace with yourself.”

The stock market, which will eventually recognize that many companies are still profitable, is like a crazed Hickey, telling us what we need to know – and don’t want to hear. It’s a time for reckoning after more than $25 trillion has evaporated from global equities this year.

While it’s largely up to central banks to get money and credit markets flowing again, there’s a lot you can do to right your own ship.

History has a lesson to teach us on this. Some of the calamity of the Great Depression was due to the inaction of central banks, new trade tariffs, profound lack of regulation and the massive leveraged gambling of investors during the 1920s.

Flash ahead to 2004, when millions from California real-estate flippers to barons of Wall Street banks drowned themselves in the punch bowl of easy borrowing. Buy as much home as you can! It’s an investment! Get into as much debt as possible since money is cheap! Such was the feel-good, snake-oil sermon of our time.

There were few temperate angels in the bender known as the ownership society. There were no effective watchdogs. The laws designed to guard us were muzzled by a wrong-headed political philosophy that says government shouldn’t protect investors.

The Glass-Steagall Act, the main rampart of New Deal banking safeguards, was repealed in 1999. Huge opaque and complex markets for an estimated $50 trillion in derivatives and commodities were deregulated – and still are.

Yet in recent weeks, a chastened Congress as well as central bankers such as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a scholar of the Depression, have examined what happened from 1929 to 1939. And they have acted aggressively to restore liquidity to the commercial-paper and money markets. Bernanke has been joined by like-minded counterparts in Europe and China.

That wasn’t the case in the 1930s when inflation and fascism began to ravage Europe. Most of Asia was desperately poor.

A coordinated tapping of the biggest global money spigots last week will help, although it’s too soon to say whether it will restore confidence to markets or stave off a recession. Banks still need to know their loans will be repaid.

Fortunately, the governments of Germany, Ireland and Denmark have thrown blanket guarantees over their bank deposits. In the U.S., the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. raised its outdated $100,000-per-account coverage to $250,000. Perhaps they will boost it more before this crisis is over. In any case, you know where to put money you can’t afford to lose.

The financial world has changed dramatically over the past month, although three perennial truths haven’t:

 • There is a limit to how much you can borrow because at some point you have to pay it back.

 • Saving and long-term investing have never been more important. There’s some wisdom to buying “when there’s blood in the street.” Emulate Warren Buffett by buying quality companies at low prices and holding them.

 • Determine what’s a viable investment. Your home isn’t. It’s a domicile that costs you money every second you occupy it.

If you need your money within five to seven years, stay out of the stock, real-estate and commodities markets. Want to invest in something really solid? Further your education and job skills.

Then get into a savings vehicle. I’m a true believer in “bottom-up” economics. That is, once consumers become savers on a large scale, it’s a tide that lifts all boats.

For the bottom-up theory to work, spending and borrowing will have to give way to a new culture of saving.

“The reason Wall Street is in trouble is that Main Street is broke,” says Peter Schiff, president of Darien, Conn.-based Euro Pacific Capital Inc.

To get whole again, the U.S. needs a national recovery program that consolidates all savings accounts into just two tax-advantaged types for short- and long-term funding goals. Why do we need dozens of separate accounts and tax breaks for retirement, college, medical expenses, business and real estate?

If done right, the failed Age of Froth will yield to the Age of Redemption. I’m not referring to religious atonement, but invoking the definition of the Latin root word “redimere,” meaning to buy or take back.

We need to pay ourselves back through savings and recover our “tomorrow dreams.” It will require some sacrifice and thrift – and honest cops policing often inebriated markets.

John F. Wasik, co-author of “iMoney,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.