Rogue Trader

Société Générale, the bank where I have my current account, have just revealed that a rogue trader has been discovered who has cost them 7 billion dollars! The fact that they will still announce a profit for 2007 just illustrates how uncompetetive banking is in France - it makes banking in the UK seem like great value. I have to pay a fee every month just to operate a debit card, and an annual fee to have an overdraft facility whether I use it or not.. then they take all this money from the customers and allow their incompetent and out of control trading staff to blow it on junk shares. Apparently it wasn't because of some complex misvalueing of derivatives backed by US sub-prime loans, just "plain vanilla futures hedging on European equity market indices" by one of its Paris traders. Brilliant.