You don’t know what crude oil tastes like, do you? I do. You’ve seen the stuff in movies, but it’s usually fake. I’ve never seen convincing snow in a movie, ever, and I’ve never seen convincing crude oil in a movie. You probably don’t even know what crude oil smells like. If you’re a thinking person, one who is aware of how gasoline is processed, you might surmise that it smells like diesel fuel. If you’re a thinking person who hangs around at the tarmacs of airports, you might think it smells like jet fuel.

You’re wrong.

In a previous life, I worked at a pipeline which shipped crude oil from the producers on site at their oil wells and sold that oil to a larger pipeline. My job was to drive around to the producer’s sites, analyze the quality of the oil to be shipped, and then set timers on pumps so that the oil would flow to our distribution center. We had to wear scuba masks and don air quality monitors to protect ourselves against Hydrogen Sulphide gas when climbing the tanks which held the oil. It was a summer job between university, so I also had to mow lawns and make coffee. I didn’t have to wear the scuba mask while mowing lawns, despite the fact that that would have looked cool. For one summer, I actually had my own truck with a centrifuge for analyzing oil and an unlimited supply of Varsol, with a high power motor as strong as a car wash’s. It was to clean things that were dirty with crude oil. Infinite Varsol!

Once, while testing some crude oil, I dropped a tube while moving the oil from the centrifuge. It hit the sink in such a way that the crude oil being tested splashed on my face. As luck would have it, my mouth was open at the time. It was probably in the midst of saying “oh” in “oh crap”, so I got a huge mouthful of fresh crude oil in my mouth. Upon tasting it, I said to myself, “well, at least I know what crude oil tastes like now.”

Oh, yeah. Crude oil tastes like blenderized dead and rotting trees. The mouth-feel of crude oil is something like soy sauce that has been reduced for hundreds of thousands of years. The aftertaste is, predictably, terrible. Not recommended.

what about lorenzos on yokohama tires?
what about when people say “take that chain off boy, you’re blinding me”?
what about the 40 billion candle light atop the Luxor?
what about drink till we throw up?
what about candy coated helicoptors with leather covers?
what about private planes with 30 inch lorenzos?

- Enron Poem

First off, I will never get to work at Goldman Sachs. To all those who would be aghast that I would could be an alumni of that Borat guy when I grew up driving farm equipment through lightning storms and I watch alot of movies, don’t worry. I’ve gotta be blacklisted there after three phone screens. There’s also the whole reduced liquidity in the credit markets crisis thing going on right now, and there has to be a some Bear Stearns guys that have more right to work there than I do.

I am a programmer with experience in Sybase, C++, and I have a degree with a really neat name — “Bachelor of Computer Science First Class Honors (Co-op option)”. It’s from a small university, but still, it’s a lot of impressive words crammed up together. I think I deserve a few hours of some GS executive’s time. I worked hard for that degree. For my last exam, we were allowed to take two pages for a cheat sheet into the exam for my networking class. This was the only time in my university career that this was allowed, so I took full advantage of it. I felt like the protagonist in Se7en during the opening credits while I was writing these.

I also worked in Omaha! That’s gotta account for something, no?

Now, why would anyone like Goldman Sachs prescreens? Why would I like them after I’ve been rejected? I should be angry, I should dig out my Canadian Communist Party membership card and start a blog about the cabalistic sect of bankers who parasitically eat uncooked hamburger meat in Lyon; meat bought by the hard work of EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO PRODUCES TANGIBLE PHYSICAL OBJECTS THAT CAN BE SOLD. THE MEAT IS BLOODY THEY ARE EATING YOUR BLOO…

No, no. Steak Tartare is good, and so are those who make capital more flexible. The raison d’etre of such organizations is to allocate resources to the those deemed most efficient, and to remove said capital from those enterprises deemed unworthy. If you want to bet that Kodak will still be able to sell photo paper 20 years from now, go ahead, give them your money. If you want to take over the company, you can, but it costs a lot less now than it did 10 years ago. To make money, they utilize acquired capital for other means, become market makers and take a small percentage of the transactions of each exchange of money for stock, or invest in the market themselves. The way to make money through arbitrage, or knowing more than everyone else. Expending this arbitrage by executing orders is noticed by others, and soon the information is well known. The price of a stock will reflect the real worth of an enterprise once all of these small accountings are tallied.

For example, take the example of a importer / exporter. They are taking advantage of information not known to everyone. They hunt out factories where things can be made cheaply. They find markets for what the factories produce. Once they find and utilize an opportunity, it will be reflected in the final price. Other importer / exporters must meet the new lower price. All of those who fail to take advantage of this new information will be out of business. The world becomes more efficient.

I really appreciated this concept when I was taking a tour in Amsterdam where the scheme for priming ocean trading voyages without the resources of a king or queen was proposed. Everyone bought shares by giving money to provide startup capital to these voyages; shares voyages deemed to be potentially more successful would be priced accordingly. Without the market, voyages would be decided on the whims of a few people. Now, everyone with capital has a say in what should be done with a working person’s labor and the resources of the world. We can use a wider set of opinions and viewpoints of the world, without hindrance of familial relations, malformed opinions, or incomplete information. No one is going to be searching for marble to make monuments; they’re going to fill the hulls with exotic spices or bananas. That is more efficient.

Keep in mind this is a simplistic argument and I’m not saying that large banks are faithful to the people they are serving. I am saying that we’re better off with them than without them.

Ok, now, why did I like these interviews? I loved the way the people who interviewed me talked. It was a pleasure talking to them. It was over the phone, so I wasn’t influenced by the cut of the clothes or subtle physical displays of authority. It was phone and the only way to convey information was through words. Everything they said was concise, to the point, and immediately understandable. There was no messing around; everything was about the work to be done. I got the impression that if you’re deemed worthy (which I wasn’t) and you did good work, good things would happen. Work was the measure of things there, one person couldn’t hold power for their own good against the interests of the company. If you’re good, that’s good. I’m not dismissing the importance of political maneuverings at large banks. I’m sure that those who relay information the quickest are rewarded well. My proposed roles would be very small part of the end goal, but they wanted someone who would be quick to respond to any problems that may arise. It was great to believe that there’s a world like that out there.

The reality would have been different, most likely. I would have crying next to that bull sculpture after some stressed up trader just spent 20 minutes yelling at me because I used an OUTER JOIN instead of an INNER JOIN. The interviewers probably sensed that. Those phone screens were awesome.