According to a March 24 report from Market Watch
"Fixed-income giant BlackRock Inc. and hedge fund firm Highfields Capital Management said Monday that they're backing a new company that will buy distressed home loans." The company will be called Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company, LLC, or PennyMac (every time I read that name it starts the Martha & the Vandellas song Jimmy Mack circling in my head and damnit, I only know one line). PennyMac will be headed up by Stanford Kurland, fomerly COO of Countrywide Financial. Depending upon how screwed you've been by the subprime fiasco, this development may be: a) laughable, b) ironic, c) nauseating. Personally, I find that it has opened up virtually limitless new career horizons for me.
My professional life has been one of - hmm, how to put this truthfully yet generously - underachievement. Although I went to college a year early under what was then known as the Early Admission Program I should have known what life had in store for me when I went back to my high school a year later to claim my high school diploma: the school secretary took it out of the bottom drawer of her desk where it had been living in a brown paper bag. Later, although I had the highest score of anyone in my group on the LSAT, I dropped out of college a year short of my degree and didn't finish it up until almost decades later. (Although I'm not sure if that tops my friend who received twin advanced degrees in Classical Studies and Latin and then became an itinerant hourly worker. Now some of the smartest people I have ever met have been hourly workers but I'm not sure that's what my friend's parents had in mind for him when they sat through all those graduation ceremonies.) When I went back to visit my high school debate teacher ten years after graduation, she suggested that I have a t-shirt made emblazoned with the word underachiever with all the letter "e"s written backwards.
I stumbled from one job to another, worked hard, learned new skills; was always proclaimed to have incredible potential and then somehow missed the mark. At one time or another I have been told by a variety of company vice presidents or even presidents that I would be either the "first female district manager in the company's history" or "the first female VP in the company's history"; I have been neither. None of these failings fall at anyone's doorstep other than my own. The Democrats and I have a lot in common. We both find ways to shake up talent and timing and pour up...well, nothing. I have always considered my lack of a high level resume as a stumbling block to the executive suite, that is until now.
Stanford Kurland left Countrywide in the fall of 2006 which some might argue relieves him for any of the blame Countrywide management should shoulder in the current credit debacle; although if I were on the grand jury hearing that case, I would have to bind the defendant over for trial (not that Mr. Kurland has been accused of anything). To my mind if you were at Countrywide 18 months ago you either knew something was amiss and decided to leave before it all fell apart or you were totally oblivious and left thinking everything was "otay, Panky." One doesn't speak well for you morally and the other doesn't speak well for your business acumen; either way it's taking The Peter Principle to previously untested heights to make this man not just CEO but Founder and Chairman of a company with mortgage in its name. But, hell, we're talking Wall Street here, this is about money not morals or accountability basically it all comes back to how does it work out for me? And it works out just fine for me, forget about padding my resume, lying about my education and skills, we are in a whole new world: the fewer qualifications you have, the more you have screwed up, the higher you should aim.
My first thought was law school but I'm almost 54 and that would take at least three years and then I'd have to study for the bar besides I'm way too qualified to start out as a student. I'm going to skip over mid-management, too; been there, underachieved, ready to move on. I'm thinking nothing less than a VP title will do, maybe even executive VP. In fact, I think I'm going to up the ante, I'm not even going to go for a
Judging by this essay, I think we have sorely mis-underestimated you. Carry on my friend!
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Thanks for the support (?) and comment.
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