Saturday, January 26, 2008

The Answer

In an article about the trader who lost seven billion dollars (!!!) of a French trading company's money, this appears:

The reactions from those who knew him have many in France and around the world wondering whether the lone trader should shoulder all the blame. Shareholders and politicians are now questioning controls at Societe Generale and other leading banks to determine if Kerviel could really be fully responsible for so much damage and, perhaps more importantly, if it could happen again.

The answer is: yes, he should. Lack of effective controls does not excuse actions. Others are responsible, and should be held accountable, for that glaring omission. If he took the actions that lost the money, he should be held responsible for those actions.

And yes, it will happen again.

2 comments:

SusieJ said...

Yes, he should. The WSJ is writing some great pieces about the guy, his brother, his family and his little quaint village where he grew up. The might be able for free on the Internet.

You have an award waiting over at my place.

Cerulean Bill said...

Really? My golly. I'll check it out. Thank you.

I've seen a couple of articles on the guy, though not, I believe, from WSJ. I was tickled by the idea that some warning signs were ignored. Thats the problem -- warning signs give false positives, and you learn to accept them being blown off. If you react every damn time, you get the 'wolf,wolf' deal.

I would imagine thats changed now... for a while.