Kerviel, SocGen and the French people.

[Joe Chi Minh]

(snip)

"... The story behind Kerviel's sting is astonishing. Yet, in many ways, the reaction to it is equally intriguing. Ordinarily, one might think, a dealer prepared to play fast and loose with billions of pounds would be reviled for his chicanery.

Yet instead, Kerviel is being hailed in his home country as a modern-day Robin Hood; the non-entity who dared to make a mockery of the greedy fat-cats who control the all powerful markets, and almost got away with it.

Before the scandal broke, he was a diffident loner. Now thousands have joined his online "fan club"; trendy young Parisians sport T-shirts bearing his face; he is even being dubbed "the Che Guevara of France".

Nor is it only among gleeful Left Bank subversives that Kerviel is being viewed as an anti-hero. He is the toast of bars in Middle France, where he is held to embody the social catastrophe that they fear will ensue should the French abandon a Gallic lifestyle to adopt the frenetic, profits-driven model of British and American capitalism.

A major opinion poll yesterday showed that only 13 per cent of the French population blame Kerviel for SocGen's losses, with half blaming the bank itself, and a quarter pointing the finger at the country's financial regulators.

For President Nicolas Sarkozy, who swept to power on a pledge to drag "Vieux France" to the forefront of the global market, this backlash couldn't have come at a worse time."

(snip)

The full article is here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=511842&in_page_id=1770

If only the Brits and Americans were as perceptive, though it's probably partly because they have some honest major polling organisations.