The book-publishing industry is famously glacial. Who knew, for example, when Amit Chatwani sold his blog-based satirical book about high-livin' finance playboys, Damn It Feels Good to Be a Banker, that it would be released right in the middle of a financial crisismeltdown and looming recession? The book was released in August, and back in April—after the Bear Stearns debacle—Hyperion was already cheerfully promoting it by saying "the economy may fall, but bankers never do." But that was just the beginning."I'm kind of hoping that people will look at it as a sort of historical document, a parody of a world that existed until basically a moment after it came out," he told the New York Times yesterday. Bad timing, sure. Yet, the book sounds extremely useful in erasing any shred of sympathy we might have for bankstas: "Bankers talk about everything in financey terms," Mr. Chatwani said... "The way they talk about girls—a guy will say he's going to short a girl because, you know, ‘There's a lot of overvalue here.'" But now? Oh, ho ho—look who's overvalued now!

"A lot of my dude friends when they meet a girl in a bar, they've stopped talking for once about what they do," he said. "If you tell a girl you work at an investment bank, that gets you a sympathetic pat on the back. That's not the response you're looking for."