KEY POINTS:
Describing Jerome Kerviel as a rogue trader is a slur on rogues. One dictionary definition of the word is "an animal of vicious character that has separated from the main herd".
Kerviel ran up €4.9 billion ($9.3 billion) of losses for his employer, French bank Societe Generale, by
building up huge futures positions and has been blamed for causing the stock market crash on Monday.
But was his behaviour really so very different from the rest of his banking herd? SocGen, like many of its peers, has also written off billions of pounds linked to the sub-prime lending that has plunged the world into financial crisis. That red ink is deemed "legitimate" because people didn't break the rules to make the losses - but the distinction is not much of a comfort to bank investors, including pension funds, which plunged back into deficits because of last week's share falls.
Neither will it be very consoling if, as looks almost certain, the financial crisis evolves into a recession in the real world, jeopardising more jobs, homes and savings.
Booms and frauds go together as naturally as strawberries and cream; we saw that in the high-tech boom of the early Noughties, which spawned the WorldCom and Enron frauds. When managements are in an expansionary mood, it is fatally easy for corporate culture to tip over into arrogance.
People at the top fail to ask pertinent questions about gains that seem too good to be true; a mad dash for sales and growth takes precedence over prudence, standards slip.
Regulators and auditors, who should be acting as watchdogs, can also fall into laxity, their critical faculties blunted by the gung-ho atmosphere and, in the case of the auditors, the large fees they can earn for advice and consultancy. Swindles go unnoticed or unchecked until they come to light in the bust.
Rival banks are not crowing about SocGen's misfortune, because they know it is unlikely to be an isolated incident.
They could easily be in its shoes. A boom climate takes its toll on susceptible personalities; in the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, London, or La Defence, Paris, it is not financial hardship but the pressure to keep up with high-earning peers that drives people to dishonesty.
Kerviel did not even make a personal profit out of his activities, other than swelling his bonus - but the desire, in a boom, to appear a success is a potent one; if the man at the next desk is making millions, the pressure is on to keep up.
Nick Leeson, who was jailed for the Barings bank fraud in 1995, says that being a successful trader is "more intoxicating than champagne, more exhilarating than sex" because it brings the admiration of your peers and the satisfaction of outwitting other dealers. So when he couldn't do it for real, he faked it.
Whatever the psychology, the behaviour of relatively lowly individuals such as Kerviel or Leeson cannot be viewed in isolation from the prevailing culture at their banks and in the wider markets. At Barings, Leeson was able to run amok because his superiors did not have a grip on the complex trading instruments he used, or adequate controls in place. This is a lesson that a dozen years on, should have been learned, but it seems not by SocGen.
It is astounding that a junior trader earning about €100,000 a year - peanuts in City terms - could run rings around his multi-millionaire bosses after the banks have droned on ad nauseam about their enhanced risk management controls.
SocGen also needs to produce an explanation of why it took so long to tell the markets about the fraud, which came to light on Friday and was common knowledge in the City a full day before it was formally announced.
Its boss, Daniel Bouton, whose offer to resign was declined by his board, has experience of alleged financial shenanigans - he faces trial this year, along with 137 others, over a Franco-Israeli cheque fraud.
The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and his Chancellor Alistair Darling will be relieved that this is a French scandal, not another British one. But again, is it so very different from Northern Rock? As Roger Steare, professor of organisational ethics at the Cass Business School, has pointed out, the SocGen fraud is evidence of a "systemic deficit in ethical values" in the banking industry.
If Kerviel is to be labelled a rogue, he is just one in a very big gallery.
- OBSERVER
