This will be very short.
Almost everyone has now heard about Jerome Kerviel , a trader at France's Societe Generale who apparently cost his company some €5 billion.
If not, I commend Der Spiegel's interview with him; it's at http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,729155,00.html.
Anyway, someone posted a List of trading losses on Wikipedia.
The list is a 45-row spreadsheet and covers bad bets - ands bad bettors - from 1987 until now.
There are names that seem "Jewish" - Ramy Goldstein and Howard A. Rubin being two.
But there are many more names that most people would suspect are NOT Jewish. A few who I would think are "something other than Jewish" are Brian Hunter, Frances Yung, Heinz Schimmelbusch, John Meriwether, Kweku Adoboli, Rafael Sotero, Robert Citron, and Yasuo Hamanaka.
The biggest loser title, with a US$9 billion (US$9,000,000,000.00) loss, goes to Howie Hubler. His record setting "oops" occurred in 2007-8 while he was working at Morgan Stanley. Is Hubler Jewish? I couldn't find any biography on him to offer a clue.
To be fair, some of the names on the Wikipedia spreadsheet at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trading_losses may have been fall guys for the firm or for trusting others.
Why report this?
Simply because anti-Jewish voices - and, sadly some Jewish voices as well - will be braying that "Jews are swindlers," and other canards.
It is true that some of us insist on drilling holes in the bottom of the boat, sinking us all. Two Ponzi schemers used power tools to put holes in the boat, but a quick reminder, "Ponzi" is not a Jewish name. Take a look at http://yohanon.blogspot.com/2009/11/hole-under-seat-sinks-boat.html for a run down of famous Ponzi scheme artists.
It is unfortunate, but we are "just people" who for all our history have been like everyone else: weak and willing. Rabbis selling dope and laundering money. Ponzi schemers Madoff and Rothstein. The multitude gathering around the golden calf.
If we were the only ones to recognize our weaknesses, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad.
But the world watches us closely and is ready to loudly criticize whenever a Jew's behavior falls short of Torah expectations.
Maybe being "just like everyone else" is good enough for behind closed doors, but when our wash is hung out to dry for all to see, "just like everyone else" is not good enough. We are, after all, only "chosen" to be a "light unto the nations."
