Stupid greed indeed

The € 4.9 bio fraudulent record losses made by a trader of Société Générale in France might have been much higher indeed. The thirty one year old adventurer (a synonym for financial "expert" ?) was playing around with € 50 billion. But of course, his supervisors were totally clueless. And what is a mere € 50 bio ?

€ 50 bio is more than the market value of the second biggest French bank and about the same amount as the GNP (I know, but that's what was written in my source) of countries such as Slovakia and Quatar. By the way, for the ignorant, GDP (GNP) is a measure for all the wealth created in one year in a given country.

When I was at university, one of my professors was speaking about the nature of credit. He compared it to a pyramid standing on its very top. He said that such an unnatural position could not be kept forever, especially when the base was way too wide as compared to the top. The slightest tremble, and down it comes. That was in the late fifties.

Down it came a couple of times since, but never with a sufficiently hard crash to teach the dumb and greedy. And it probably never will be enough. Greed, like human stupidity, has no limits.

By the way, would one have heard about fraudulent record gains if the guy had been lucky ?