If you want to hide a leaf, find a forest. Jérôme Kerviel, alleged to be the world's biggest rogue trader, will attempt to hide a €5bn leaf in a multi-trillion euro forest when he goes on trial in Paris today. Mr Kerviel's defence will be horrendously complex – and very simple. His lawyers will admit that what he did in 2007-8 – to bet more than the value of France's second largest bank on a series of trades on stock exchange futures – was insane. However, they will also argue that his actions were rational, even tacitly approved, within a global banking culture which had, itself, broken off relations with reality.

Put another way, the chief exhibits in Mr Kerviel's defence will be the subprime mortgage crisis and the global financial meltdown of 2008-9.

His legal team will be led by the star of the French bar, Maître Olivier Metzner. They will argue that Mr Kerviel, 33, was not a "rogue" trader at all. He never tried to steal a centime of the hundreds of billions of euros that flickered across his computer-screen.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/capitalism-in-the-dock-as-kerviel-goes-on-trial-1994133.html

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Gus: many of my investor friends think that most bankers (99.9 per cent) and traders should be in prison...