A working definition of Schadenfreude...

I pity poor old "Leveraged Buy-Out", which would be the most wounding thing one could do to him ("one" being a person not blessed enough to work in front office advisory M&A at a bulge bracket investment bank), but only for his timing. After the events of September 2008 it's going to be a while before anyone preens about working in a Bulge Bracket investment bank on Wall Street. At this point (still in September 2008) there are only two left, one (Morgan Stanley) looking likely to go the way of all flesh in coming days (horror of all horrors courtesy of *Wachovia*!), and the last man standing, Messrs. Goldman, Sachs & Co, facing a very uncertain road ahead as an independent investment bank no matter how excellent its risk management, deal execution and intellectual capital may be.

So I pity the anonymous "Leveraged Buy Out" simply because, as a result of his timing, this excellent and brutally funny little book will either disappear into the same gaping void that claimed Bear Stears, Merrill Lynch, AIG and Lehman Brothers or, worse, be held up by moronic lefties as a poster child for everything that was wrong with Wall Street.

It is no such thing. It's actually a riot - imagine a young Hunter Thompson or Tom Wolfe writing with verve about modern day Wall Street but not as an outsider or an ingenue, but fully steeped in the technical and cultural world of a 24 year-old master of the universe.

I have no doubt that whoever wrote this was a genuine insider - the observations and devastatingly funny sending up of the minutiae (such as the distinction between IBD and FICC and importance of never using your mouse when manipulating a spreadsheet) would never be apparent to an outsider who hadn't done a significant stretch. I spent 7 years at Goldman myself (as a lowly inhouse lawyer, resolutely in unglamorous back office), and but for the inevitable comic hyperbole, Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker rings very true. I loved every moment.

So it's kind of a historical document, even though it is pure satire. It captures the zeitgeist, circa August 2008, and if you've had any interaction with the IB fraternity in their prime - that is, before the Sub-Prime got them, you'll find this hysterically funny. ( )