Newfound humility

Alumni: What a comedown for Goldman Sachs alumni. Just a couple years ago, executives who had enjoyed a successful career at the Wall Street firm were virtually assured of plum jobs running the world. One former Goldman senior partner, Bob Rubin, even managed to follow up his stint as President Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary with a lucrative, near decade-long position at Citigroup. But with the Washington route now effectively closed, former Goldman bigwigs seem to be settling for smaller-fry roles.

Jon Corzine, for example, is taking over as chairman and chief executive of MF Global — the $880 million broker spun out of the Man Group hedge fund in 2007 that had gobbled up the remnants of scandal-laden Refco. And his contract is, initially, just for a year.

That's hardly the path one used to expect of an erstwhile Goldman boss, US senator and governor of New Jersey. But he's not alone. Another former Goldman senior partner, John Thain, recently took the corner office at small-business lender CIT, fresh out of bankruptcy. That's a comedown for the former Goldman co-president who left to run the New York Stock Exchange and then the mighty Merrill Lynch.

Of course, both are trying to resurrect their careers. Thain is recovering from the taint of Merrill's near-collapse and rushed sale to Bank of America — not to mention the revelation he spent lavishly on office furniture as Merrill's losses mounted. Corzine was deposed in a Goldman coup in 1999 and, a decade later, lost what initially appeared to be a relatively safe election after a ho-hum stint in the governor's mansion in Trenton.

Neither is likely to transform their new firm into the next Goldman. But both firms give them platforms to prove themselves anew. MF Global is in the early stages of expanding, including hoping to become a primary dealer of US. Treasuries. And post-Chapter 11 CIT needs help to find its feet, or a new home, in a world where its wholesale finance funding model looks out of place. If Corzine and Thain succeed, their demotion to the second tier will probably prove temporary.