Sunday, January 27, 2008

2008's first Cult Icon...

The Jérôme Kerviel story is my current obsession right now...
How this well-to-do trader beat the system to accumulate losses of €4.9 billion is staggering...
Was it all him trying to get that extra bonus?
Was Société Générale losses so bad that they needed a scape-goat?
Or did Kerviel just want to show everyone the extent to which the current French financial market is in?
The more I learn about these equity derivatives, the more fascinated I am by this ludicrous scandal...
It seems every hour there is another new breaking news interruption to this story...
The blue-collar folk in France see him as a hero. A man who stood up to the greedy rich pigs of their nation.
I have to agree with them.
At the tail-end of 2007, he had actually made a profit of €1.5 billion for SocGen...
But to cover up this paper-trail he had left behind him (as the profit he made was still done illegally), he actually started making deliberately bad bets against the current market so he could balance his winnings out...
Obviously he wasn't expecting the stock market to collapse so badly at the start of last week (at this point SocGen were only down €1.5 billion)...
But by Wednesday, it had risen to its current & startling figure...
He is in police custody now, so no doubt we will hear more stories throughout the week...
But right now, all I have to say is Vive le Jérôme Kerviel...!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you. This is really gripping me right now, I think what he has done is genius.