The Long Johns, John Fortune & John Bird, explain in interview just exactly how the subprime mortgage crisis really happened. Realer than you’d think (stolen from Valleywag)
My current favorite banking scandal-related fact: Jérôme Kerviel, the mild-mannered French rogue banker who lost over €4.9 billion in one month and may have thereby perpetrated the current market cliff-jump, had eleven friends on Facebook.
Parenthetical: Richard Milhous Nixon probably has more friends on Facebook and he’s for reals dead, not just career dead!
But the best part is, after the news broke, one by one as the day continued those eleven friends de-friended him while the journalists of the world watched and snickered. Justice in action! The internet’s revenge is swift, ruthless, and public.
From the Guardian:
There was speculation he could have been trying to prove himself to the bank, to create his own spectacular method of making profits or simply prove the system could be broken. Union officials warned he might have been caught in a quest for a good bonus…”If he was a genius, then we didn’t spot it, ” said Dominique Chabert, his university tutor. He was “not a student who made an impression on his year, either in a good or bad way”.
Apparently France’s tolerance for tragically mediocre Walter Mitty figures is less than its tolerance for Mickey Rourke.
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raincoaster 
Are you drinking organic coffee tonite??????!
I came back by to comment on a different post and here you are, up with yet another good one!
I saw this dufus on CNN @ work this afternoon. We threw Tootsie Roll candies at him. This was after I picked my jaw off the floor, of course.
Billions. With a B.
Thanks.
Yeah, I can HARDLY WAIT for the books. I’ve got three on the Nick Leeson case, two on Long Term Captial Management…I’m a total fraud junkie! I slaver over this stuff.
Made all the easier by the fact that it doesn’t affect me. I have neither investments nor pensions.
I researched a bunch of fraud by the oil industry and gathered it together and posted it once upon a time. There were some FBI videos and audio recordings. I’ll have to find it, I think it’s buried in early 07.
Ha. Used the search function. That blank box that’s not labeled as anything whatsoever – like “search” maybe? Gotta luv themes.
Here it is –
http://dissfunktional.wordpress.com/2007/11/25/fbi-records-the-corruption-oil-executives-and-politicians/
Please do. I love that stuff and The Crime Library doesn’t touch it; they’re all about the serial killers and rapists. I miss APBnews.com.
I suspect it’s either in your moderation or spam box – it’s a link.
I shall dig it out. My spam’s dropped through a hole in the floor; could it be the mortgage lending crisis has cut off funding for Viagra spammers?
Thanks! Dug out. I have to do my paid blogging for the day but shall return to read.
the links will take you to the video(s) and audio if I remember correctly. fun stuff, and recent, ongoing drama.
This is a great video. Guess where a lot of our politicians have a lot of family money? Hedge funds.
Which is one reason you don’t hear that much about them. VF did a nice article on them a few months ago. The fraud/failure books coming out in a year should be an awesome crop.
Hilarious! It’s a constant stream of one-line sound bites like, say, CNN, except almost every one is a comedy gem.
Yes, and also painfully true. It’s like watching a YouTube of a prostate exam performed by Darth Vader.
Support and donate money to Jerome Kerviel
Visit site: http://jerome.siguranglas.com/
Oh yes, what a brilliant idea. The man let five BILLIION Euros slip through his hands in ten days.What in god’s name makes anyone think that he can be trusted with these funds you’re raising?
Also: he made half a million dollars a year. And he can’t afford a lawyer?
I’m leaving this link because it is the best example of the oblivious sense of entitlement of the upper middle classes that I’ve ever seen.