OPINION
2
Meet Wall Street's Most Shameless Failures
'Mulligan Club' keeps hustling disastrous securities
By Drew Nelles
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Posted Sep 2, 09 10:00 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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You'd think the men who hyped and traded the financial instruments responsible for the recession wouldn't be allowed to touch another dollar. Instead, they’re “charter members of Wall Street's Mulligan Club,” Steven Pearlstein writes in the Washington Post, buying and trading the same "crappy securities" like “golfers who treat themselves to a second drive after hooking the first one deep into the woods.”
Stanford Kurland is partially responsible for running Countrywide Financial into the ground, but he's recently raised hundreds of millions of dollars for his new company; Jay Levine moved from heading RBS Greenwich Capital to making a $5 million salary at Capmark Financial Group and assembling his own trading house. Just who would give these men more money? Why, “other members of the Mulligan Club,” says Pearlstein, who are “clever enough to know that some day they, too, might be looking for a second swing at the ball.”