Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Banker

“In the fall of 2005, I moved to New York City to work as an Analyst at a Bulge Bracket Investment Bank. Leading a wave of other recent Princeton graduates, I casually stepped from one of society's most elitist playgrounds to another. It felt completely natural. Since then, my friends and I have made the city our own. Frequenting the city's hottest nightclubs and bars, we throw the best parties, and we experience its most beautiful women. Essentially, we run shit. We dominate The Scene, and it is all facilitated by one overarching fact: We work in finance.”

So begins Amit Chatwani’s Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Banker: And Other Baller Things You Only Get to Say If You Work On Wall Street, a 224-page lampoon of the investment banking industry.

Though Chatwani, who’s been called the “Borat of Wall Street” by BusinessWeek, has actually never worked in the banking industry (he’s a strategy consultant and the brains behind the Leveraged Sellout blog), he claims to have lived in New York with nine other bankers and says he’s friends with many former bankers (who now, he says, work on the buy side).

Since its release two weeks ago, Damn, it Feels Good has been well received, and today it even collected an all-important endor$ement from The New York Times. The Times concedes that while Chatwani’s humor can be of the 12-year-old variety, much of it will bring a smile to your face—to which I agree, especially if you’ve worked in finance, have friends in the industry or have even just attended what Logan (the Princeton-educated investment banking protagonist of Damn, It Feels Good) says are the top feeder schools for banks. Indeed, as an ex-Penn, I mean Wharton grad, I have to admit that his satire in the following excerpt is spot on:

“In and of itself, Wharton is a fairly exclusive place, but the nature of its being lumped together with a big, ugly mass of mediocrity creates insecure, overcompensating alumni. As a result, you will never hear a Wharton grad admit he went to UPenn. Even if he snuck in through the back door to Wharton after his second year, he will undeniably declare "Wharton" when he meets you, like a leper proudly extending his one good finger to shake. I see the rest of your disfigured hand, buddy, and it's revolting.”

For more excerpts, click here.