Word: banking
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Kerviel was no superstar either. He had graduated from what's described as an élite school in Lyons with a degree in "trading" (OK, fellow history majors, once but only once: Hah! Hah! Hah!). But at SocGen, a bank that had made a name for itself trading derivatives - the ever more exotic instruments now available to investors worldwide - he worked in what his colleagues sniffily called "the mine": a trading desk that made uncomplicated up-or-down bets on the direction of Europe's largest stock markets. Kerviel made about $145,000 a year...
...switch "superiors." And like Leeson, he disappeared for a few days, apparently holed up in a Paris apartment, just before the roof fell in. The comparisons are more than cursory. One of the lessons of Leeson (supposedly burned into the brain of trading desks everywhere) was to separate what banks call "the back office," where trades are processed and recorded, from the trading desks. Leeson had run the back office while also trading, which made it easy - for a while - for him to hide phony trades. Kerviel didn't run SocGen's back office, but had come from what...
Among the more laughable aspects of the SocGen debacle is that, in its wake, the bank's top management has been sending out signals that it was the relatively mundane nature of Kerviel's work in "the mine" that led to the lax controls. The implication is that everything is just dandy on SocGen trading desks for vastly more complicated derivatives - including those based on worthless subprime mortgages, which are now crucifying bank balance sheets and roiling equity markets all over the world. Have no fear, folks: management is watching those like a hawk...
...still save seeds today, mostly in national seed banks that often specialize in native crops: pistachios in Iran, rice in the Philippines. When a disaster like the Irish potato blight of the 1840s hits, scientists can search the seed bank for an old variety that might prove resistant. Since pests and pathogens are constantly evolving, a well-stocked seed bank "is our best line of defense," says Geoff Hawtin, director-general of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia...
...that defense is in peril. Often, the seed banks with the richest collections are located in unstable countries that don't take care of them. When Afghanistan's seed bank was looted during the Taliban's rule, rare varieties of walnuts, cherries and apricots were lost. Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an agricultural NGO, estimates that as many as half the seed banks in the developing world may be at risk...