FRANKFURT (AFP) - Dirk Mueller is a stockbroker, and thanks to recent market turbulence, also a star, not because of dubious trades or massive losses but because his face was just right for the job.
"Mister Dax," the poster boy of the Frankfurt stock index, cropped up last week on the front page of the International Herald Tribune, The Times of London, the conservative German Handelsblatt and the left of center French Liberation.
Filmed by television crews, used in a Warhol-like pop montage in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Mueller, 39, incarnated the volatile stock exchange throughout the week.
On Friday, however, the frowning face of a man identified as Jerome Kerviel, a former Societe Generale trader who allegedly lost billions for the French bank, finally pushed Mueller off the front page.
But for many, especially in Germany, the market is Mueller, his kind and particularly expressive face, salt and pepper beard, neatly combed hair and white shirts attracting camera lenses like honey attracts flies.
When the Dax plunged, Mueller had his head in his hands, or lifted his eyes towards heaven. When the index of leading German shares bounced higher, he perked up, and graced the front page of the Financial Times Deutschland.
With television crews he spoke simply and got straight to the point.
Mueller was amused by his sudden rise, especially when he was compared by an Austrian newspaper to Knut, a cute young polar bear who has visitors flocking to the Berlin zoo.
"For most people, the stock market is still abstract, a place packed with computers where very large sums of money are moved about, where strange things happen," he told AFP.
"I try to put things into simple words."
With the Societe Generale scandal putting his profession into disrepute, Mueller also finds words to defend the man that many, maybe even he, have already tried and convicted.
"He was young, took on a lot of responsibility and had a chance to earn lots of money with financial products that have nothing to do with serious investing," Mueller said.
"He is not the one to blame for what happened, but the financial system. Which sometimes resembles a casino and no longer has much in common with the real economy!"
If Mueller says so, one is inclined to believe it. He was bitten by the stock bug at an early age and has worked for the ICF brokerage for 10 years.
That put him in a prime position, just below the graphic chart that shows the day's trading and right in line with the cameras.
Good will and a readiness to be interviewed did the rest.
Like his colleagues, Mueller had a trying week, he said.
But he had also expected a sharp correction on the market for some time.
"A large share of the losses came from speculation by a single trader at Societe Generale. Without him, it might not have been as strong or as long.
"But at any rate there is a structural crisis in the United States," Mueller said.
Expounding on his philosophy of the market, he said: "It is first and foremost the place where a good idea meets the money to finance it."
But, he added, "today it has been invaded by financial products that the market itself does not understand."
On top of a good presentation, he has an endearing touch of nostalgia and his feet firmly on the ground. Just what journalists were looking for.
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