what the ?

The 20 Largest Trading Losses in History

During a tour in 2006, I read a local newspaper item in Southern China that reported hundreds of millions of losses to internal bank corruption in half a year. One could assume that in a FULL year they would find twice as much?
But what about the ones they won't acknowledge or even find out??
Funny how big money corrupts everyone everywhere.

The 20 Largest Trading Losses in History

also
Bre X Minerals 1997, 6 billion in market cap. wiped out. gold scandal;
Parmalet 2003, at 17 billion ;
World Com 2007 for financial mis statements;
and the biggest
ENRON over 31 biliion

Who Is Jerome Kerviel?

I think I see a trend:
Jerome went long on futures; Amaranth was bullish on natural gas;
Long Term Capital was bullish on Russian bonds; Yasuo (Sumitomo) was bullish on copper: A L L banks were bullish on ABCP, CDO, SIV,etc BUT only Goldman went short and profitted. Even they were not that smart, GS just had better risk controls.

The trend is : too lose big money go long in a bear market.
Seem like we're in the mother of all bear markets.

David S. ---- I think you may see it correctly; this week's drop is only a false bottom caused by the too quick unwinding of the french position.
Unfortunately it could be just a precusor to bigger problems.