Fascination with Rogues

[RPEX]

Just wondering what people's thoughts are:

In every trading game, trading simulation or any kind of interactive activity between traders or aspiring traders i have seen. There is always a hard core of people with names relating to either Nick Leeson or Black Wednesday.

I understand the fascination with the second one, business and economics correspondents seem to love referring to Black Wednesday because their memories must have been loaded with much drama. For spot FX (retail) traders of today it is probably something of a wet dream, given the degree of certainty on the movements in the cable rate (for the record i reckon i probably would have lost everything on selling the bottom).

But the fascination with Leeson is weird. I've heard at least 4 young people, apsiring to work as dealers, say that he is their 'hero'. Aside from the fact that there are plenty of other similar stories around, many of which feature much cleverer protagonists (Milken, Kerviel, NatWest Markets Swaps, or the Japanese traders that had a sex change to look insane so that he couldn't go to prison!), but no one seem s to mythologise them in quite the same way. Should Leeson be seen as a 'role model', when some might say that he might have contributed to the demise of the school-leaver barrow-boy in City hiring practices.

What's your take on these fascinations?

 

[Mr. Charts]

I don't have a fascination with rogues, but for most people it's a vicarious pleasure suffused with schadenfreude.
Richard

 

[BSD]

I don't have a fascination with rogues, but for most people it's a vicarious pleasure suffused with schadenfreude.
Richard

Now, that is one fitting assessment described in a most eloquent sentence destined to be remembered through the ages.

:clap:

 

[Lee Shepherd]

It's glorified by media. In Leeson's case it's also a film.

This guy is a class idiot. He is not a hero and only bought about one of Great Britain's longest standing bank collapse. Even our Queen was a customer. The amount of people he put out of work is rarely talked about. The amount of stress he unloaded on colleagues and even outside market players was unbelievable but again rarely talked about. We know the heartache that Northern rock customers and their employers have had to face in recent light, Barrings was a far bigger operation.

He was not authorised to trade with the banks money, this guy was trading against SEC regs and against the Law of the land as well as international law. He is a crook, a criminal for which he has served his time. The thing that makes me laugh the most is that you can hire him for after dinner speeches.

Why the fcuk would I want a crook telling my guests how he bought about the collapse of an international operation through criminal activities.

The man is a baffoon for which anyone holds as their idle is put in the same boat.

 

[Paul71]

I don't have a fascination with rogues, but for most people it's a vicarious pleasure suffused with schadenfreude.
Richard

Suffused...that's my word for today, Richard. I will use that word today.