Jerome Kerviel, the rogue French futures trader who almost single-handedly caused a stock market meltdown which resulted in the Fed’s decision to cut US interest rates, has been found guilty of breach of trust, forgery and entering false computer data. The sentence passed down by the judge is being described by commentators as “pant-wetting”.

While we’ve all dabbled with a bit of speculation in the futures market*, what really seems to have annoyed people was the covering up of his reckless and fraudulent trades, at times amounting to up to €50 billion. By the time he was finally caught, his trading had lost his employers a very healthy €4.9 billion. While that kind of loss is generally met with stern disapproval in financial circles, in Kerviel’s case, it was also met with a 5 year prison sentence. He can, however, at least be grateful that he doesn’t have to pay back the money that he lost.

Oh wait, that’s right; he totally has to pay it back! All €4.9 billion of it.

To put that into perspective, if Kerviel had that amount in €1 coins, it would weigh over 40,000 tons and take up 990,000 cubic metres which, incidentally, is roughly the same amount of space taken up by the entire population of Cambodia.  2oceansvibe worked that out for you just now, using science.

Kerviel, currently working as an IT consultant on a salary of €2,300 a month, will take up to 177,000 years to pay back the full amount. His former employer is also well within their rights to force him to hand over all his earnings bar a small monthly sum for “basic needs”, for the rest of his life.

[Source:Sky News]

*This isn’t even remotely true. I don’t even have a savings account.