Tommy Marano started full-time at Bear Stearns in May 1983, after graduating from Columbia College. A history major, Marano started at the firm on the equity syndicate desk, working on the basic underwriting of equity offerings for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. He liked reading and writing the boring prospectuses. Then fate intervened. “I got paid a really lousy bonus one year by the head of the syndicate at that point, and I talked to my immediate boss and he said, ‘You ought to go talk to John Sites'”—who founded the mortgage department at Bear Stearns in 1981 and later became co-head of fixed income— “‘and ask John Sites if he has a role for you in the mortgage area because you like to read these books and they're complicated deals.’” Bear's mortgage-backed securities business rose from the ashes of the savings-and-loans crisis of the mid to late 1980s, when failed thrifts were desperately trying to get illiquid assets off their balance sheets. At that time, the margins on trading the bonds of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were huge, generally $2 to $3 on a trade and sometimes $5.
