The disappearing bezzle

My friend Herbie from the Last National Bank of Boot Hill understood about rogue traders. When another hapless bank owned up to losses ‘due to unauthorised trading’, he added: ‘They mean nobody authorised the guy to get it wrong.’

Now that a French trader called Jerome Kerviel has set a new record by losing £3.6 billion, Société Générale, whose money it was, is left to wonder how it happened and to search for some deep, dark conspiracy. It looks more like a familiar story with extra noughts on the end. A swashbuckling trader buckles when he should have swashed, and then tries to double up and cover up. The money all goes to the people on the other end of his deals.

This happened to Lloyds in Lugano and to Allied Irish Bank in Baltimore, and to a Japanese bank whose man in New York would never take a holiday and kept the books to himself.