Ferengi dealers

'ROGUE TRADER' Jérôme Kerviel, sacked by the French bank Société Générale after amassing the biggest trading losses in history - £3.5 billion - revealed that he 'made a stock market killing' out of the 7/7 bombings in London.

Only days before the attacks he gambled on the markets that the share price of global insurance giant Allianz would tumble. When the London bombings took place in 2005, killing 52 commuters and injuring 700, the price of Allianz stock crashed and within minutes Kerviel had made about £350,000.

However, Kerviel claims that his ex-employers also "made a fortune" on the day of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York.

In fact, making money out of human disasters is meat and drink to hedge fund managers and city traders the world over - a point highlighted recently in the BBC2 documentary The City Uncovered.

In it, several mega-rich hedge fund managers boasted of how much money they made for themselves and their rich clients out of other people's suffering.

One talked of the gains he made from 'short-selling' airline shares immediately after 9/11 and after other terrorist acts such as the Madrid and London bombings.

Another, almost salivating, regaled the programme presenter with a tale of his highly profitable gamble that the sub-prime market would collapse, a situation in which millions have lost their homes.

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In The Socialist 28 January 2009:

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