Had it not been for Lehman's shock collapse, Bernie might well have got away with it. The same is true for many of his fellow financial fraudsters over time. Nick Leeson would have won his unauthorised bet but for the market tremors from the Kobe earthquake. Jérôme Kerviel could today be a star trader legitimately earning many millions if only the markets hadn’t suffered those freakish falls in early 2008. For every publicly-ruined rogue trader, however, there is surely another who today lives in luxurious anonymity.
You can almost picture the scene. One morning, amidst placid market conditions, of course, the rogue is called up to the top floor to account for his activities before senior management. After taking a mock dressing-down for having naughtily made so many hundreds of millions in unauthorised profits for the bank, he is sent off for a couple of weeks of exotic leave before quietly returning to his desk to continue his trades, but now with official blessing (and a good deal more scrutiny).
While the lure of instant, massive wealth is plainly one of the main motivations of the rogue trader, it is not the only one. The thrill of the ride and the feeling of having outwitted the system have also been shown to lure traders over to the dark side. Most of us, of course, will never go through this first hand. But thanks to a new board game, we can at least act out the final desperate hours of the rogue trader’s double-or-bust hi-jinks.
In Market Meltdown, you and your fellow players are traders - and the financial system is collapsing about your ears with ever more deepening severity. Every time your private jet completes a lap of the Monopoly-like board, you have to hand back billions to your panicking depositors - an amount that doubles up each round. As you haemorrhage cash, there's only one hope of your staying afloat - by taking bigger and wilder bets with whatever you've got left.
This game is quite literally a form of 'casino capitalism' - trading takes place via a roulette wheel. In the spirit of Libor-rigging, you can skew the wheel drastically in your favour if you're lucky enough to pick up a few key bits of insider data as you make your rounds. As in the credit crunch, the winner is the last (Gold)man standing. Best of all, your humiliation or survival can never take more than 40 minutes to decide, thanks to the game's toxic levels of leverage.
■ Market Meltdown is available to buy from www.clarendongames.com for £29.99, but Investors Chronicle has some sets to give away to a handful of our luckiest rogue readers. Just email your name and address to lauren.drew@ft.com or post your details to Lauren Drew, Financial Times, One Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HL and you can join the shoddy ranks of finance's most notorious swindlers - all from the comfort of your own home.
