Jerome as Che

I’ve reported on various angles of the SocGen story – here, here and here. Here’s yet another one, from today’s WSJ:

Reviled by Société Générale as a malevolent fraudster and "mutating virus," [Jerome] Kerviel, 31 years old, is now being hailed by a growing band of fans as "Robin Hood," "the Che Guevara of Finance" and even a genius worthy of the Nobel Prize in economics. "Let's be honest: No one likes banks...and people like the rich to get cheated," says Christophe Rocancourt, a celebrated French con man who swindled wealthy Americans in the 1990s by masquerading as a French member of the Rockefeller family, a film producer and various other people. * * *

The French Communist Party, meanwhile, has compared Mr. Kerviel with Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army officer whose persecution by the military hierarchy at the end of the 19th century has become a byword for gross injustice. * * *

An American outfit is hawking "Jérôme Kerviel Is a Hero" T-shirts, and a British oddsmaker Ladbrokes has opened betting on who will play Jérôme Kerviel in a likely future film.

This Kerviel film likely will be consistent with the portrayal of capitalism in film I’ve chronicled in my Wall Street & Vine. Films present Kerviel-types not as aberrant criminals, but as commentaries on the evils of capitalism.

Consider Kerviel’s main antecedent, Nick Leeson, the Singapore currency trader who broke Barings Bank and the subject of 1999’s Rogue Trader. As my article discusses, the film’s title was ironic: "Leeson may have exceeded his trading authority, but the firm created his job and incentives and set him up to do exactly what he did." Part of Rogue Trader’s “message is that even business people cannot distinguish luck and business skill.” Moreover, even successful trading is just a zero sum game in which “money moves from one pocket to another.”

So by hurting their banks, Leeson and Kerviel aren’t hurting innocent shareholders or undermining valuable capital markets. They’re providing a day of reckoning for a fundamentally evil system.

That's why the filmmakers will have a field day with Kerviel. I just wonder where they’re going to get the money to make their film, and where they’re going to put their profits.

Comments

[Ulrich]

Let's see if the victims of a not-so-improbable layoff would be so happy with Che-Kerviel... We can consider that capitalism will be safe for a billion years with such idiots as enemies.