From Clerk to Rogue Trader to Facebook Laughingstock

You don’t need a fancy education to lose $7.2 billion and become an Internet laughingstock. In the clubby world of French banking, Société Générale traders are usually the Gallic equivalent of Ivy League MBAs, but Jérôme Kerviel, a lowly biz school grad, worked his way up from shy clerk to secretive junior trader, the New York Times reports. Clearly, this man deserves the Nobel Prize for Economics.

At least that’s the thinking of more than 100 Facebook users who've joined a group to push Kerviel’s candidacy, the Guardian reports. Another group, “Let’s poke Jérôme Kerviel,” is dedicated to sending irritating “poke” messages to him through the social networking site. On Kerviel's Facebook profile, all but one of the 11 friends he had yesterday morning have deserted him. (More Jérôme Kerviel stories.)