Freddie Mac was my very first corporate gig back in 1997. I was brought into their corporate headquarters somewhere in Northern Virginia. I remember being impressed by the executives who rolled up their very white and starched shirt sleeves and got down to the business at hand. Learning to play the beautiful music of Brazil called Samba. It went over quite well and I remember impressing myself and leaving their headquarters full of ego and a double latte I picked up at the Starbucks in their lobby.
Over the next twelve years the hot industry of the moment would supply about fifty percent of my corporate gigs. First it was the dot.coms. then it was the technology industry, followed by the pharmaceutical companies and then the defense consulting firms. But always, spread thorughout those years were the very impressive bank meetings. Of all the companies that were represented by their ceo’s in front of congress this last week, I had been to at least one meeting of each of those banks. As well as most of the big national mortgage companies. Did them all. A lot of big extravagant meetings in Vegas or Miami or at posh training facilities north of New York City in Westchester County where trainees were greeted with five star accomodations, the best wines supplied to the room, the finest in diining and the lure of power and wealth exhibited through stately English type estates complete with neatly manicured lawns and perfectly stacked stone walls.
It was more then a unique situation to be in. Peering into the inner workings of the companies that are or were, the backbone of America. It would be hard to imagine that companies like Lehman Brothers would be non-existant in just a short time. That it would all come crashing down. That the meetings and the spending and the drumming would stop.
But it did. And rightfully so, the drumming.
