An excerpt from Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Banker

Ugh. This absolutely fails as satire. Reciting tiresome clichès with heightened snobiness does not make comedy. Good satire makes one laugh in recognition at something familiar seen in a new way. The writer here seems unaware that he's covering well-trodden territory, and adding a supercilious tone, devoid of personality or humor or writing style, is simply unfunny. I'm sure a lot of bankers actually do think this way-where's the satire, the twist? Who cares?

A number of my classmates from one of the named non-banker schools were offered jobs at Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, etc upon graduating. I believe one of them was told, "You belong here," in her offer. This crap is meant to be funny and it utterly fails.

This is one of the worst articles I've read online in a while. Not just because of the vapidity, or the feeble attempts at humor; the misuse of language and lack of structure is what you'd expect from a high-school student. Phrases like "it is all facilitated by one overarching fact" or "we don't work in the layman's concept of finance" are risible. I guess you could argue that Amit is imitating a banker who can't write well; but if so, it's not bad enough to be entertaining.

"Schools and banking follow the same basic patterns as all things in nature. For example, look at the most discrete element of matter: the atom. In basic orbit, the electrons of an atom cannot jump from any given energy level to another; they are restricted to the orbitals in which they belong, their ground state.

Finance operates by these same rules. Kids from middle-tier schools stay at middle-tier Banks and top-tier kids stay in the top tier. Just like no electron can hop from e1 to e5, there's no Miami of [sic] Ohio student who miraculously ends up at a top private equity firm -- that shit just doesn't happen."

Is this supposed to be a parody of a banker who has no understanding of particle physics (but thinks he does) or does that description actually apply to the author? If the former, it's not much of a joke. If the latter, it's a bit embarrassing. And is the typo also supposed to indicate a banker who can't spell?

I realize this is supposed to be parody, the "Borat of Wall Street", but parody is pointless unless it's done cleverly, and has something to say beyond mere exaggeration.

Actually, there IS a Miami of Ohio. It's a term used to separate Miami University (based in Miami, Ohio) and The University of Miami (based in Miami, Florida).

That being said, it's a pretty bad attempt at satire. The hiring preferences may be true in the beginning, but once someone gets a few years of experience under his or her belt, school becomes irrelevant. I think a hiring manager would take a "Miami of Ohio" go-getter over a Harvard lazy SOB any day.

Thanks for the correction Sbeetle. I had never heard of that school before.

If jerk-off bankers really think that one's school is so important, then I have no problem with Amit making fun of that mistaken idea. What's most important for me is that the satire in some way attacks the superficiality or even emptiness that leads to that kind of personality.

Satire requires saying one thing but meaning something else. It's not just taking a stereotype and exaggerating it a little bit. Ideally, one would want this kind of satire to tacitly present some kind of explanation as to why these people get so fucked up. As it stands, it's one dimensional.

I'm looking forward to this book alot.

Don't be jealous just because your school wasn't mentioned. My school was lampooned. I still appreciate the humor.

Also, this book is meant to appeal to the kind of young impressionable guy who would read this excerpt and think, "Sick." Not some Oberlin literary types...

meh

sbeetie:
Clarification: Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), not Miami, Ohio. Thanks for pointing out the Miami clarification, you just had the city wrong. Thanks!

Hey Anon:

So sorry! Seriously, I knew that. Grumble. I hate when I do that.

Hey Mujokan, why don't you stroll over to leveragedsellout.com and read more, you poor (read: no money), intellectual doof.

I went to Miami of Ohio and now I'm a commercial banker for Bank of America in Cleveland. You Wall Street guys think you are so hot but I go to McSorley's every weekend and get a bottle of Absolut on my CapitalOne Platinum! I kind of look like Sarah Palin's daughter's baby's daddy .. HOLLER!