Ivan Krstić was the security lead for the One Laptop Per Child project. Here's his completely unrelated retelling of the downfall of Adolf Merckle, one of the world’s richest men, who committed suicide yesterday by throwing himself under a train. Merckle is actually ancillary to the story; it's really more about how Porsche perpetrated "one of the most masterful hacks of the financial system in history." It's fascinating!

This is a brilliantly clear explanation.

The key phrase is "infinite squeeze" which is a condition where shorts are forced to buy at any price determined by owners,

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12523898&...

...this is the worst possible condition of a financial market, in which a class of investors can literally dictate prices without limit (IIRC, German authorities stepped in at some point to prevent catastrophe).

"On paper, Porsche made between €30-40 billion in the affair. Once all is said and done, the actual profit is closer to some €6-12 billion. To put those numbers in perspective, Porsche’s revenue for the whole year of 2006 was a bit over €7 billion."

Just shows how out of whack the whole economy is in that Porsche could make more money for their shareholders by playing financial games then actually manufacturing products.

It ends with a bit of a thud, but I had no idea Ivan Krstic was this good a writer. Really great pacing.

He really should have just resigned and tried to leave with a bit of real money to have a comfortable (you know, by normal-people standards) retirement. It's sad to see heinously rich people kill themselves over money.

Question: how is it that nobody knew how much VW Porche owned?

Is there no way to see who owns a certain stock, or what stock a company owns?