This morning’s futile wrestling with a problem-set from a course I can only attend half the time due to overscheduling has produced a decision: I’m quitting the course. I have too much school as it is, and Algebra II is arguably the least urgent and definitely the most difficult course I’m taking, so it’s going to have to take one for the team. Maybe I’ll look into it this summer.
That means more time for:
-doing better at my other courses
-chess-playin’
-boozin’
-blogging!
It’s win-win. Or lose-win, but you know what I mean. I might even start running again – I think I’ve lost sufficient weight recently for my injury rate to be lower than it was last year.
Another person who’ll have more time on his hands is Jérôme Kerviel, the man who stands accused of losing five billion euros of his employer’s money in fraudulent trading. The moment I heard about it I thought there has to be something fishy about it, and of course there is. Every bank has sophisticated risk control and trade-approval mechanisms, ostensibly to prevent this sort of thing. Why didn’t they function here? Jean Veil, one of SocGen’s (Kerviel’s employer) attorneys in the case, says “Kerviel did not have the right to gamble […] a bank is not a casino.” Of course it’s a casino, that’s why they have “star” traders and risk control mechanisms in the first place. Had Kerviel’s trades turned in a huge profit, I don’t think SocGen would have minded.
The financial world has been behaving irresponsibly for five years straight and there’s every kind of unavoidable loss barreling down the road, as yet unannounced to the public. Quite possibly SocGen is surprised that Kerviel was so successful at doing what they basically wanted him to do anyway: piling on more irresponsible gambling to save them from the structural irresponsibility everyone’s been complicit in. They intentionally turned a blind eye and hoped that a roll of the dice would save their bonuses, urgently needed for this year’s payment on the yacht / villa / cocaine debt. They just didn’t realise they were gambling as much as they were.
