That is more than the GNP for some countries! I can't imagine - I get antsy just thinking about it. When I hear these stories I always think I wonder what his wife says about this. I think this guy has a gmabling problem?!

Thats Crazy, I wish i could see, an half of that. It is crazy they would trust him with that mush money.

It is incredible. I think it would be quite a rush though, especially since it wasn't his money! : )

The really scary thing is that the trades that lost the $7.1billion weren't a one time thing. He was moving insane amounts of money on a daily basis for the bank. When he was making money, no one questioned his tactics. It was only when this huge loss caught up with him did his superiors get worried.

Losing a few hundred dollars per day day trading would be bad enough, never mind 7.1 billion. What an insane amount of money. I think if I had that amount of money I would not bother day trading, and would just keep the money in my bank account and gain on the interest.

Life is a games there are some loss and gain take it Sportively

There's nothing "sporting" when your addiction to gambling, which is really what day trading melts down to, when you're losing BILLIONS of dollars that isn't even your money to begin with.

The government needs financial regulation to change the laws to prevent some person like this at a bank from causing a financial meltdown. The problem is that companies like Goldman Sachs own our government so it may not happen.

Some have said that his supervisors were involved. The leverage that some banks had regarding capital versus bets was over 60 to 1 in Europe and over 30 to 1 in the United States. So the bets banks made as a whole were incredibly risky. So, this behavior is an extension of the culture of the elite bankster community worldwide.

I have tried to explain the nature of ponzi banking, that almost took down the world financial system, here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Banking-Scam-Elites-Keep-P onzi-Schemes-Alive-at-Mainstreet-Expense

I enjoyed reading the book by Nick Leeson, the trader who caused the collapse of Barings Bank. It's called "Rogue Trader" and goes in to some of the reasons why he was responsible for a $1.4 billion loss. There was a film with the same title but I got more from reading the book. I thought some of his managers should of stopped him but he did forge some documents, and that covered up some of the losses. His real problem was that he was gambling on the market going up and it kept falling. I'm sure there's other traders that have been in similar situations but were more lucky. I hope there are tighter regulations now and that banks monitor their traders much more closely.

The real question I wonder about is why would a bank allow an individual trader to have access to that much money to trade on?

Frankly I have a suspicion the trader lost the money on purpose. Or it was some how laundered to somebody else in a scheme. There's no way any bank on earth would not know this guy was losing millions before it reached billions. This has inside job written all over it(done with permission of a manager).