Help me out here, for I’ll admit I am immensely dense on such things, but, are they saying here that a large part of America’s economic woes are directly related to Societe Generale trader, Jérôme Kerviel’s actions?

Over the next several months, his chagrined employer alleged Thursday, Kerviel used his inside knowledge of the security system and his brazenness as a futures trader to pull off one of the largest banking frauds in history, ringing up losses of more than $7 billion for Societe Generale.

The trader hid the massive fraud “using extremely sophisticated and varied techniques,” Societe Generale Chairman Daniel Bouton told reporters Thursday. Bouton and other bank officials had little explanation for Kerviel’s motivation, except to say he appeared to have acted alone and to have made no personal profit, instead creating losses through successive transactions of buying dear and selling cheap.
[...]

The disclosure of the losses was the latest shock to world financial markets as they struggle to recover from a massive sell-off earlier in the week linked to problems in the U.S. subprime mortgage market. Some analysts suggested that high-volume sales by Societe General on Monday as it secretly liquidated Kerviel’s tainted investments contributed to the global market drops that led the U.S. Federal Reserve to counter Tuesday with an interest rate cut of three-quarters of a percentage point. (emphasis mine)