Why am I directing so much of my ire at Charlie Scharf? One could argue that he is just the innocent man they brought in to clean up the mess made by our prior self-serving management, right?
I should be more angry at Stumpf, Tolstedt, their weak yes-men who looked the other way, the bank managers and regionals who relentlessly pressured our minimum-wage bankers, our HR department who didn't protect the 5000 fired employees, our Board who’s job was to act as fiduciaries. How did one organization manage to employ so many greedy, ruthless, entitled, immoral, dishonest, power-centric, dysfunctional, lazy narcissists for so many years?
So why am I so irritated with Charlie Scharf? My gut tells me that, someday, we will look back and say that he and his well-compensated buddies were more of the same, maybe worse. There’s something about an individual that demands $36,000,000 to come in to a company and do it’s dirty work, laying off 50,000 to 60,000 workers. Making a fortune off the backs of others. I don’t think anyone with a soul, a conscience, a heart can rationalize that. And part of it is that he that he has been so ruthless, non-communicative, and hidden through the process. A snake in the grass.
Some of the people out here try to lower our standards for what is socially/morally acceptable by trying to defend him: “Look folks, he’s just the fall guy. He’s getting paid to do a job. It must be done. There are no other solutions. All the other banks are the same. Well how else is he supposed to do it? This is how it’s done everywhere. Somebody has to do it.” There’s an element of truth in each rationalization I suppose, which muddies the water, but overall I think I want to stand up for trying to raise people’s expectations not lowering them.
Famous quote: “What’s right is right, even if everyone is against it. And what’s wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”