Sarkozy and Kerviel's French-American dream - by Paul Bets
This week has been a bonfire of French vanities. The Société Générale scandal has left the credibility of one of France's most respected banks, its highly regarded chairman, Daniel Bouton, a classic product of the business elite, and the French capitalist system as a whole in ashes.
This seems, at least, the prevailing impression outside France. How could a country that has always denounced the brutal excesses of Wall Street capitalism have fallen prey to what it likes to call le capitalisme sauvage? After all, even with its new arch-liberal president, Nicolas Sarkozy, France has always boasted an enlightened, state-led system of economic and social management - the antithesis of free-market, Anglo-Saxon capitalism. Mr Sarkozy, predictably, called this week for Mr Bouton's head, but the SocGen board ignored him and reaffirmed confidence in its chairman. So did the bank's employees. So much for so-called political cronyism at the top of leading French blue-chip companies. Even more interesting is the way the rogue trader - Jérôme Kerviel - is turning into something of a popular hero, or rather anti-hero, as the man who nearly broke one of the country's biggest banks.
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