The French Fraud King - $7.14 billion fraud by one man

French bank Societe Generale said Thursday it has uncovered a $7.14 billion fraud -- one of history's biggest -- by a single futures trader who fooled investors and overstepped his authority. The trader, who was not named, used his knowledge of the group's security systems to conceal his fraudulent positions, a statement from the bank said.Could it be that markets were unwinding because of the $7B of bad trades being dumped on the markets? Could it be that Bernake has the fortitude of a bowl of Jell-O? Could it be that the Fed needs to get the hell out and let the supposed free market work without intervention? America is becoming the worlds financial bitch, and the tax payer is the condom. Bring on the Thunderbird and cheap hookers cause the dream is over.Even more strange is that Soc Gen's stock was only down 4% on the news. 4 percent! Two whole year's worth of profit wiped out in an instant, 4% penalty..Meanwhile, Apple guides Q2 earnings slightly lower than analyst expectations, >$20 billion in market cap is wiped out in the pursuant selloff of Apple shares.The fact is, it's not that the trades he made were so bad, he had taken positions that he wasn't allowed to take on the future markets. He managed to hold them for about a year, by removing them just before the controls (he had knowledge of the control dates since he had worked in the controls department just before taking his new position in trading), and putting them back just after. (and nobody still knows why he did all that).The problem is, his hierarchy finally discovered what he had done on january 19. They took the foolish decision to close all the positions he had taken before disclosing the case to the public... but they made that just at the time of the mondial stock exchange crack this week, and that's the reason why the loss reached €4.9 billion... If it hadn't been this crack at the exact moment they were closing all the positions, it could have been several billion of gains for the bank instead.

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