Seven and a half billion United States dollars
From time to time, we hear that the private sector should do pretty much everything because it is more efficient, more effective, better and so on. While I don’t doubt that there are problems with the public sectors (nota bene plural), there are some problems with the private sector, too.
As I understand it, someone earning less, including bonus, than one hundred thousand pounds a year is not particularly senior and shouldn’t be in a position to do a lot of damage. For all people, particularly after the Nick Leeson affair that brought down Barings Bank, you would expect there to be pretty robust risk management procedures in place. One wonders, then, how someone relatively, according to the Financial Times, junior at the French bank Société Générale could be allowed to lose – wait for it – seven and one-half billion United States dollars. That is US$7,500,000,000. Seven and a half billion dollars is more, according to the World Bank’s figures for 2006, than the entire gross domestic product of the following countries:
Malta, Armenia, Chad, Namibia, Mauritius, FYR Macedonia, the Bahamas, Mali, Burkina Faso, Papua New Guinea, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Nicaragua, Benin, Haiti, Niger, Laos, Barbados, Moldova, Fiji, Malawi, Mongolia, Guinea, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mauritania, Swaziland, Rwanda, Togo, Suriname, Lesotho, Central Africa Republic, Sierra Leone, Belize, Eritrea, Cape Verde, Antigua and Barbuda, Bhutan, Lucia, Burundi, Republic of Maldives, Guyana, Seychelles, Djibouti, Liberia, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Comoros, Vanuatu, Samoa, Timor-l’Este, the Gambia, Solomon Islands, Guinea-Bissau, Dominica, Tonga, São Tomé and Príncipe and Kiribati.
While I readily conceded that none of these are economic powerhouses, some are hardly basket cases either.
It does not excuse, for instance, different parts of the government apparently repeating the cock-ups over sending things through the post, it does imply that the private sector can make quite spectacular mistakes as well.
xD.
