Magna Cum Lousy -- Where Today's Bad CEOs Went To School

[girl gone mad]

Ouch!

Magna Cum Lousy -- Where Today's Bad CEOs Went To School (SLIDESHOW)
http://www.businessinsider.com/magna-cum-lousy-where-the-fat-cats-went-to-school-slideshow-2009-3

No big surprise: Most of the bankers, politicians and regulators who got us into this mess went to a handful of elite universities and business schools.

These schools obviously helped frame their philosophies, while providing the networking opportunities needed to climb the highest rungs of the corporate and political ladders. It turns out, of course, that those ladders were planted in mud, rather than solid earth. Whoops.

While you may get a kick out of sneering at the people who went to elite schools, that's not the point. The point is that these schools may have seen their glory days already, and enter a permanent state of decline. Why? Well for one thing, the money and power networks that supported these schools through generous contributions are crumbling. What's more, you can no longer go to one of these schools and be assured that they'll open the doors to the investment bank you thought you were going to get a job at. A big piece of that network has been lost.

But beyond that, when the crisis is over and the American economy starts to rebuild, we might ask: Gee, do we really want to hand the controls over to a Harvard MBA again? Do we really want to trust our money to a University of Chicago or Penn graduate, armed with formulas and beliefs about perfectly efficient markets?

In other words, do we want to hand power to the same class of folks that has it now? Or might we opt towards something fresh and new, that doesn't originate in the same aged, campuses of the Northeast

Slideshow http://www.businessinsider.com/magna-cum-lousy-where-the-fat-cats-went-to-school-slideshow-2009-3">here

[Hello_Kitty]

1. What the fuck are they putting in the water at Harvard?

Notable People

-- George W. Bush (Former President)
-- Jeff Skilling (Enron)
-- Steven Schwarzman (Blackstone)
-- Stan O'Neal (Former Merrill CEO)
-- Ramalinga Raju (Disgraced Satyam CEO)
-- Franklin Raines (Former Fannie Mae CEO)
-- J. Ezra Merkin (Big-time Madoff feeder)
-- Hank Paulson (Former Treausury Secretary)
-- Kenneth Griffin (Citadel founder)
-- John Thain (Former Merrill CEO)
-- Barney Frank (Congressman)
-- Rick Wagoner (GM CEO)
-- Jamie Dimon (JPM CEO)
-- Bob Rubin

Final Grade: F+

[izquierdista]

3. Urine from Wellesley

[ColbertWatcher]

18. Another thing that would be interesting to see is WHEN they went to school ...

... before or after Friedman?

And how many of the other morans on the list had classes together.

[wroberts189]

20. Barney Frank ..does not belong in this list ..his record is good. nt

[napoleon_in_rags]

2. That's a really interesting issue to me.

Why is the quality of education crumbling? One thing that strikes me is how effing useless so many (but not all) MDs are. People basically have to do their own Internet research and take charge of their own healthcare, the doctor is this bureucrat you have to approach to get treatments approved, not much more. How did that happen? I think the corrupting influence is money: When there was less money in being a doctor, you got really good people doing it, who's fundamental commitment was to medicine. Through time, the value of these people became clear and they made lots of money. This promoted a new wave of people, who's interest was money rather than medicine to take up the field. Now we see the effects of that in lousy expensive medicine.

I think there is a similar phenomenon with education. When the point of getting an education was getting an education, a lot less people went to college. However they proved so valuable that their incomes rose, and then going to school became about money as well. Then came the waves of people not interested in education, as proven by college professor pals of mine that report on the horrible level of plagarism in papers, and the general attitude that students are paying for the degree as a symbol, and should be allowed to buy it without too much concern to academic work. They are of course driving down the value of college degrees in the marketplace, as universities become degree mills.

So yeah, the Ivy league schools were doomed when they became about earning potential instead of education. Of course they will always admit some great minds to keep there reputations high, but they should be reminded about EVERYONE they've turned out, including the scammers.

[aquart]

6. At Columbia you could tell who they expected to get money from later.

The law school had the Alibi Cafe. The business school, its own cafeteria. School of the Arts? Not a dry crust of bread. Until one day a film student won an Oscar for what was basically a homework assignment. After that, vending machines magically appeared. Followed by a coffee bar.

[napoleon_in_rags]

13. The irony to me is the disconnect between contributions to society and money.

Like what makes the business students so much more "valuable"? I knew a chemistry PhD in Boulder, who's research was basically responsible for a major breakthrough drug in treating breast cancer. His pay was like $100,000 for the research, and big pharma released it at some incredibly expensive rate, citing R&D. Yet the research scientists clearly weren't seeing the dough. But do you hear about it? Did they make business moves to protect their profits? No, because those scientists are too fucking busy CURING CANCER to be spending time with press releases and lawyers and getting MBA degrees on the side. So those who do have the time to do those things pocket the profits from their work.

[Sanity Claws]

22. Alibi Cafe?

I went to Columbia Law and we didn't have such a cafe. What year was it put in?
I've had to go there recently since moving back to NY within the past year, where is it? I want to go check it out.
When I was at Columbia, you could tell it had a corporate orientation. It invited the huge corporate law firms to career fairs but did nothing to bring in public interest firms. Columbia changed in its orientation and started inviting more government and public interest firms years later but in my day, it was truly just a Wall Street tool.

[Hello_Kitty]

7. Same with financial stuff

The average person is supposed to be the expert on things like mortgages and investments while the so-called experts can't be depended upon to provide decent advice so you follow whatever they tell you at your peril.

[napoleon_in_rags]

11. Its killing us!

You're right, and it doesn't seem like rocket science here. The average person doesn't have time for figuring all that out, and you know who really doesn't have time? People busy contributing to society in real ways.Yet the experts consider their job to be manipulating public opinion rather than informing. I consider this to be the biggest problem nobody's talking about.

[CoffeeCat]

4. Ummm...ok...are we serious here?

"Bad CEOs"? Really!

These CEOs aren't "bad." They frickin set up a trillion-dollar cash windfall by selling and repackaging mortgages that
would turn to rot. Then, they sold insurance on these bad mortgages and made billions more.

These "bad CEOs" charmed and cocktail-partied their way into the pockets of America's most influential
politicians and leaders--and then they talked these leaders into making their crimes legal with unprecedented deregulation
and loopholes.

Are you kidding me? You think these CEOs are deficient? Stupid? Unaware of their actions?

They're frickin evil geniuses who cooked up a scheme to enrich themselves beyond their wildest dreams--while
wrecking the world economy---and remaining free to enjoy their untold wealth.

And now...they're about to get another trillion.

I know that people would rather believe that this country was brought down by morons who just didn't know what
they were doing, "Oh noes! They wrecked everything because they're stupid! And look...they went to Harvard!
Boy, we're so much smarter than people who go to Harvard!"

Um. No. You're not.

They planned this. They orchestrated all of this. It was well thought out, and they've gotten everything
they've ever wanted.

Let's not try to make ourselves feel superior, by falsely believing that this fiasco was a bungle by some idiots.

It was an economic transfer of wealth pulled off by evil masterminds who knew exactly what they were doing.

[girl gone mad]

8. That's a little bit over the top.

I absolutely believe the majority didn't see it coming until it was too late.

I'm friends with a banking executive. I used to tell him about the bubble back as far as 200 and 2005. He thought it was interesting, but swore up and down that nothing would come of it. I've got a close relative who works at the top of a hedge fund and was similarly clueless.

Of course, by mid-2007 most of them realized it was a clusterfuck and started scheming up ways avoid the writedowns, which eventually brought us to the Paulson plan and Geithner's continuation of it.

[CoffeeCat]

14. I'm not talking about the "majority"...

I'm talking about the people who orchestrated this fiasco.

Yeah, I have a friend who is a vp at Wells Fargo. I'm sure he wasn't in on it. I never intimated that
tens of thousands were in on it.

We're talking about less than 50 people. The people at the very top who were working in tandem with
the politicians.

It doesn't take much to get vice presidents and executives to help you orchestrate a downfall. You tell them
to do their job. You tell them to sell some sub-prime mortgages. You tell them to do the accounting...or the
marketing that their job description entails.

Many unsuspecting people were just "doing their jobs" but soon enough, many of them will realize that they were
used for nefarious purposes.

[snot]

16. personally i'd say a lot more than 50

'cuz you have to figure a lot of smarter underlings, not to mention their accountants and lawyers, also had a glimmer.

[notesdev]

28. I had the same exact experience

with a friend who worked at Fannie Mae, who swore (in 2005) up and down that housing prices could never drop, having a bushel of reasons backing up the case.

But I really don't believe people like Greenspan and Bernanke and Paulson and Geithner were clueless. I think they knew what was happening and engaged in it willfully.

[glitch]

25. As Michael Parenti says, these "idiots" are laughing all the way to the bank.

I don't think your post is over the top at all, I think it's right on the mark.

[Coyote_Bandit]

5. Remind me again

just where was it that Obama got his degree? And where did he teach?

Is there no cross contamination between law and business?

And is the teaching of efficient markets limited to only the elite universities?

[notesdev]

9. "educated menaces"

These people are learning how to control and manipulate the rest of us for their own benefit.

And yes, Obama is one of them.

If you look closely, you'll find that nearly every person that has been in a position of real power over the past decades has also been one of them.

Warm up the torches and sharpen the pitchforks.

[girl gone mad]

10. Columbia University

Notable People

-- Vikram Pandit (Citigroup CEO)
-- Henry Kravis (Private equity boss)
-- Alan Greenspan (Former Fed chair)
-- Mario Gabelli (Investor)
-- Scooter Libby (Former Cheney aide)
-- Ted Forstmann (Forstmann, Little)
-- Barack Obama (President)

Final Grade: B-

[Coyote_Bandit]

12. Proof

that the same elite university can grant degrees to both saints and scoundrels.

Thanks!

[alittlelark]

15. My hubby is a Moral Stanford MBA

Being surrounded by 'new money' likely helped.

Out here it is all about new ideas, energy, and outside the box thinking.

[cascadiance]

17. Hillsdale College is a wingnut paradise...

Notable wingnuts (graduating and on their staff):
Erik Prince - Blackwater ('er Xe) CEO
Chris Chocola - former Republican congress critter from South Bend, Indiana
Howard Kaloogian - conservative activist in San Diego, CA
Phil Crane - former Republican congress critter from Illinois
Edwin Ross Adair - former Republican congress critter from Indiana
Madsen Pirie - president of the Adam_Smith_Institute which is big on privatization and poll taxes.
Robert Murphy - free market economist
Russell Kirk - professor who was the author of the 1953 book "The Conservative Mind" and a fellow of the Heritage Foundation.
Carl F. H. Henry - first editor-in-chief to the magazine "Christianity Today", established as a vioce for evangelical Christianity and a challenge to the liberal "Christian Century".
George Roche III - Former president of the college that had a NASTY affair with his daughter-in-law that lead to her suicide!

[ColbertWatcher]

19. Great find, thank you for posting! n/t

[unblock]

21. blaming the schools for the ethics and judgement of a very small number of their grads is silly

although the schools mmay tout their success stories as well, which is perhaps almost as silly.

the schools mainly teach techniques, knowledge, and provide the opportunity for connections. they may have a course in ethics, or it may be covered in various classes as a sub-topic. but they certainly don't teach to be UNethical.

the scum who knowingly engage in unethical business practices, or put their personal financial interests above their actual job duties, bring that poor ethical judgement with them to college from their formative years, or perhaps go astray elsewhere.

in fact, some of the biggest problems we've had are due to violations of some very classic principles that they teach in school. e.g., don't over-leverage, don't borrow short to invest long, keep employee inventives aligned with investor incentives, etc.

[nichomachus]

23. Hillary and Bill went to Yale -- so did George Bush

Does that say anything good or bad about Yale?

You can't blame the school for what a person does in life, unless you can show that the school taught them that -- like some bumfuck bible college that teaches racism and homophobia.

I went to an Ivy League school and my other half went to MIT -- we're both pretty nice guys.

[HamdenRice]

24. Harvard -- a hedge fund that happens to teach classes, lost $11 billion on endowment

The joke was that Harvard had become a hedge fund that happened to teach classes. It had invested much of its endowment in hedge funds, and grew tremendously up to $36 billion or so by early 2008.

Then it lost about 1/4 of its endowment in one year -- estimated around $11 billion. Now it's sending out panicky emails to alumni, which are forwarded around numerous e-lists for their humor value.

But some analysts believe Harvard has lost at least $18 billion, and that because of the esoteric investments the Harvard MBAs who ran their investments got into, they never had accumulated the $36 billion in the first place.

The geniuses at the Harvard Business School had a lot to do with Harvard's "winning" investment strategies.

[PassingFair]

26. I don't think the SCHOOLS matter...

when greed, cheating and avarice are REWARDED,
greed, cheating and avarice will flourish.

Same thing happens in my office.

Then management acts "surprised" to find
that 1/2 of the customers are deadbeats
or bogus accounts.

"I'm shocked, shocked..."

[ThoughtCriminal]

27. Too many MBAs

Not enough engineers, chemists, scientists, etc.