What motivated Jérôme Kerviel to take an unauthorized €50 billion ($68.7 billion) position in equity index futures and, in the process, drain €4.9 billion from his employer, Société Générale? According to a new, tongue-in-cheek French comic book, or bande dessinée , all Kerviel wanted was a commemorative plaque in front of SocGen’s headquarters praising him for “earning his bank billions, even though no one asked him to.” The hardcover Le Journal de Jérôme Kerviel was published last month by Paris-based Thomas Editions. Its desperate hero, portrayed as a victim of an elitist culture of greed, makes trades based on his horoscope or how his concierge greets him in the morning. After landing in Paris’s La Santé prison, he persuades the warden to raise money by mortgaging the building, bankrupting the institution when it can’t meet payments. “We wanted to satirize [neo-]liberalism’s excesses and the ridiculous lack of control in high finance,” says Xavier Thomas, the publisher’s founder. Fans are buying in. Based on initial demand, Thomas has upped the book’s print run from 5,000 copies to 30,000.
