Word: bankes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Last month, Tony Musulin was a nobody, a single 39-year-old man who drove an armored bank security van in Lyon, France. Then on Nov. 5, when two co-workers briefly left him alone to run an errand, he allegedly vanished with more than $17.2 million in unmarked bills. It only took police a few days to recover most of the stolen loot - nearly $14 million - in a storage unit in Lyon, and then on Monday, Musulin turned himself in to authorities in Monaco (without the remaining $3.8 million). Many Frenchmen may have been a little disappointed...
...This seems to be the essence of Musulin's support. Many people in France are still very angry about the economic crisis and hold a grudge against the banking system for being one of the causes of it. It's not surprising that a bank heist would have such broad appeal - it's almost as if Musulin was a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich (the banks) to give back to the poor (himself). As Sonia Mohammedi, one of Musulin's Facebook fans, puts it (in a Facebook message, of course): "His story reminds us of the society...
...everyone in France is sympathetic to the alleged thief, who police say planned the heist well in advance - he had cleaned out his bank accounts and his apartment before disappearing. "This admiration [for Musulin] makes me ashamed of France," commentator Philippe Bilger wrote in Marianne magazine, describing it as a deep break in the country's collective morality. There are anti-Musulin Facebook groups, too, although they are not nearly as popular. The group "Tony Musulin Is Not Robin Hood," for instance, has only one member...
...Even before the economic crisis, the French had made something of an antihero of Jérôme Kerviel, a young, rogue trader who lost $7.2 billion of the Société Générale bank's money in early 2008. He too had his moment in the Internet spotlight - there are still about 200 Kerviel fan groups on Facebook and websites selling T-shirts with phrases like "I am Jerome's girlfriend." These may see a surge in popularity now that Kerviel's fraud trial is set to resume next year in Paris after...
...Never mind that the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Moody's Investor Service, and various research houses and investment banks take the number at face value. Chang says "Beijing's statisticians have gone back to their old tactic of making up figures to support the Politburo's predictions." He points to inconsistencies in other statistical indicators: car sales jumped 94.7% in August, for example, yet gasoline sales rose just 6.4%. "There are reports that central government officials have ordered state enterprises to buy fleets of vehicles and that these businesses are storing them in parking lots across the country...