Jerome Kerviel Anti-Anglo French Hero
JEROME Kerviel has committed the biggest individual fraud in history. In France, he’s a hero:
France behind the biggest ‘rogue trader’ scandal of all time. Some 300 miles west of Paris, in his home village of Pont l’Abbé on the Brittany peninsula, Kerviel is a hero – particularly with the ladies in the hair salon his mother used to own.
‘He was your ideal son-in-law,’ said 62-year-old Martine Le Pohon, who remembers Jérôme helping his mother out on Saturdays at Un Monde Imagin’ Hair. ‘And if it turns out that he has stood up to the system to the tune of €5m, well, as far as I am concerned, that makes him even more ideal.’
Maryvonne Even, 40, said Kerviel was a scapegoat. ‘He was probably caught fiddling – a bit – and the bosses decided to blame him for all their losses,’ she said.
But this is not just local Breton solidarity. In France, where there is profound popular distrust for big finance, strong opposition to ‘international capitalism’ and a belief in the ‘French model’ as opposed to ‘savage Anglo-Saxon liberalism’, the views of the ladies in Pont l’Abbé are widespread.
It’s all our fault…
Posted: 27th, January 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Money Comments (5) | TrackBack | Permalink
