Major bank 1.2 trillion in the red

On the heels of last year’s meltdown comes the news that EBANK has frozen its accounts, $1.2 trillion in the hole.

It’s the old story–in the words of the new CEO, “controls were not enforced, auditing was never completed and reporting was almost non-existent.”

On the bright side, the real-world fallout should be minimal–EBANK only exists in the virtual world of EVE Online. Which just makes it more interesting, really–people are people, no matter how we’re interacting. (Here’s the full article, which is worth reading.)

And really, how different is EBANK from any other financial institution? Merrill Lynch’s customers and trading partners generally go to a computer terminal to interact with it, most of its transactions are computerized, and many of them have lost all real-world meaning (almost nobody who buys, say, wheat options actually takes possession of wheat when the contract comes due).

Hat tip to Andrew Leonard for pointing to the original article.