Some people are claiming that Bernard Madoff's "great big lie" was the biggest con ever. Perhaps in terms of the sums involved it may have been (though adjustments have to be made for inflation). However, there was one misdirected genius who bestrode the financial world in the first third of the twentieth century, who negotiated monopoly deals with governments, and who took in the stock markets of the world: Ivar Kreuger, the "match king".
He went out in style, too; not for him throwing himself on the mercy of the finacial authorities like Madoff, but a bullet through the heart in a Paris apartment.
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