No great secret, my hatred for financial services companies has been abundantly vindicated in recent months. I only fear that everyone else who needs to work for a living hasn’t caught on yet.
Years ago, I was “invited” to a recruitment activity at First Marblehead, a servicer of student loans to those who’d exhausted the less expensive, government-backed programs.
The career fair, or whatever deceptively positive descriptor they came up with for this exercise in sadism, took place in several rooms that were populated with terrified-looking applicants and steely-eyed, scowling First Marblehead employees.
I didn’t stay, of course, and read today that even the Wall Street Journal is so revolted by First Marblehead’s CEO, Daniel Meyers, that they tarred and feathered him in print:
Meyers earned nearly $100 million, almost all of it in the sale of company stock; together with other Marblehead insiders, $660 million was taken.
The Journal notes that Meyers used $10.3 million of his fortune to buy an ocean-front property in Rhode Island.