Sallie Mae Announces 600 Jobs, Formerly Overseas, For NEPA-

Call me synical but what the hell was Sallie Mae doing sending 2,000 jobs overseas in the first place. The dog and pony show by Paul Kanjorski and Bob Casey today detracted from asking that question which is germane to any discussion about "BRINGING BACK JOBS". You don't mean to tell me that Sallie Mae was exploiting the cheap labor overseas. Nahh...that would never happen. Kanjo and Casey should have thought this one through a little more. Why did they let the jobs go overseas?

Let's take a few highlights from the SEC filings for SLM-stock ticker symbol for the private firm, Sallie Mae.

Our primary business is to originate, service and collect student loans. We provide funding, delivery and servicing support for education loans in the United States through our participation in the Federal Family Education Loan Program (“FFELP”) and through our non-federally guaranteed Private Education Loan programs.

At December 31, 2008, we had approximately 8,000 employees.(Note-According to their Form 10-K filings for years 2005 through 2007 they had 11,000 employees.)

Our primary marketing point-of-contact is the school’s financial aid office.

To sum up ,although all of their business is derived in the United States one quarter of their work force is overseas and will continue to be for the near future.

If you look here you will find the principal facilities owned and leased by Sallie Mae. Are any of those facilities overseas? I don't see a one.

I went down their corporate structure and clicked on every entity. Not one listed an overseas address.

In 2004 their Form 10-K listed 9,000 employees. As previously stated the number was increased from 9,000 to 11,000 in 2005 and remained there through 2007. In the 2008 filing the number was decreased to 8,000 employees.

So basically they fired 3,000 employees in the U.S. Evidently they replaced them with 2,000 people overseas in India etc. Now they want to bring them back. Magnanimous of them isn't it? Instead of hailing them for gesture they should be chided for the first act because all of their loans originate in the U.S. according to their filings.