Raging Bulls

During his time in Buenos Aires Jason met only one local drug dealer. His name is Marcello. "There are more gringos in my city every day," says Marcello in a brief interview in Palermo Soho. He has a shaved head and a sleeve of tattoos on his left arm. He speaks from the saddle of his motorcycle. "I don't particularly deal with them every day, but I have told my employees to target them in the clubs. As far as bankers go I have been to many parties where American bankers have been. They all buy coke from me and blow it immediately. That's the American way—consume, consume. They don't respect the drug the way Argentines do. We use it when we are tired and want to keep dancing. These guys do a gram in an hour, and it's not even12 a.m. yet. For me it's good because I always have more to sell to them."

Marcello says his guys find most of their gringos at Crobar, Pacha and Jet on the weekends. "Expats are always at tables and spend a lot of money on drinks and are bad dancers and always too drunk. So it is easy for my guys to find them. They just go up to the tables, find the biggest gringo and ask him if he wants ecstasy, coke, MDA or ketamine." Gringos are mostly into coke, with ecstasy a distant second, Marcello says. He sells his goods by the gram: 50 pesos for local customers and up to 120 pesos for gringos.

"The gringos all ask me if I am a real drug dealer," he says. "I don't tell them, but I ask them what they do. They say they are some big banker from London or New York, and I tell them that I am too. They like me better, and then I sell them more coke."

In early December, at a holiday party at his friend Nell Hutchins's place, Jason was forced to confront the extreme bias he had developed against his fellow ex-bankers. Nell, a 27-year-old New Yorker, said that in her nine months in B.A. four of the seven guys she went on dates with turned out to be bankers. Half the guests at the party seemed to be unemployed finance guys. Until then Jason had avoided any serious conversation with other bankers he'd encountered because he associated them with the system that had chewed him up and spit him out. But at this intimate gathering conversation could not be avoided. He was surprised at how comforting it was to talk to people who were going through the same career and identity crises. The industry they had all fought so hard to be a part of, that had in a way defined their generation and that they'd assumed would fund their futures lavishly, was simply gone. What next? More than ever Jason appreciated the sharp intellect and aggressive attitudes of his counterparts, in particular a guy named Mat Levine. Mat also wore white loafers.

Like so many young bucks in the finance world, Mat, 27, is big, brash and physically fit—he was the leading scorer three years running on the Emory University soccer team. He is a fiend for action. When the credit markets first began to freeze up, in December 2007, he grew dissatisfied with the returns he was getting on his 12-hour days at a Park Avenue hedge fund. He found himself sitting on his hands with a six-figure savings account smoldering under his Herman Miller office chair.

After a full year of traveling the world he arrived in Buenos Aires earlier that month and rented an apartment in Palermo Hollywood. It had a doorman, a beautiful pool, a double balcony, a massive bedroom with views of the city, a huge open kitchen, a huge living room and three flat-screen TVs. He says it was the sort of place that would have cost $10,000 a month in Manhattan; it cost $1,800 a month in Buenos Aires.

For Mat, there would be no afternoons spent lounging in the Plaza de Mayo, gazing up at Casa Rosada, where Eva Perón rallied the masses, no lazy Sundays perusing the many booths at the antiques market in San Telmo, no midnight gawking at the milongas, the outdoor neighborhood parties where locals dance the tango. ¡Que auténtico! Screw that shit.

Here's how Mat describes his life in Argentina: "My average day was waking up at, let's say two—maybe three but let's say two—and going to lunch, which consisted of going to a nice restaurant and having a big steak. Then I would get back to my place at, say, four, 4:30 and spend the afternoon at the pool. I would maybe go for a short walk or most likely have some friend over to the pool.

And then I would meet up with friends at, like, 10ish to go to dinner, and you go to another one of the top restaurants. Dinner ends at midnight or one. Then you go to a bar for an hour, maybe two. Then you go to a nightclub. Usually the clubs start to empty out around six or seven in the morning."

Jason fell into the routine. He found himself dining at one of the most expensive Argentine steakhouses, even though he couldn't afford it, and then hitting the clubs. Suddenly his cell phone was crammed with the numbers of expats. He was going out five nights a week. He differentiated himself from the posse by venturing out from the VIP section to join the masses in back-and-forth hip-swivel dancing, which expats commonly refer to as the washing machine. Also, his banker gear was long gone, save for the white Ferragamos. The new uniform was tight Rock & Republic jeans and colorful long-sleeve T-shirts of local design, topped with floppy, flaxen locks. He did, however, take up the banker-mentality competition for who could consistently bring home the hottest babes. At last count Jason was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 girls.

Mat and his crew—which included two Aussie i-bankers, Duncan and Dan—took the games to a new level with the "­Olympics," which involved various Herculean feats with girls at bars: remove an item of her clothing in a bar; make out with a girl without uttering a word, in a bar. Others, who shall remain nameless, assumed superhero identities: Batman would point a flashlight at a lucky lady, illuminating her shadow against the wall before the romance ensued; Spider-Man would jerk off in his hand and cast out his progeny in a fashion similar to the way his namesake unleashes his web.

All through spring and summer more expats arrived. Jason spent Christmas day alone in his apartment. Now six months in Buenos Aires, he was feeling the hangover. For the first time in his life his parents wanted to get off the phone with him. He said he had never felt so alone and helpless. He contemplated his options: return to New York, which was experiencing one of its coldest winters and where he would blow through his savings in two months while job hunting in the worst employment market since the 1930s.

"I decided I would hang myself if I went back there," he says. He resolved to make the most of the next two months. "I sort of took refuge in the banker community."

On New Year's Eve Jordan hosted a traditional asado, an all-day barbecue around a charcoal grill, on his rooftop. He estimates that about half the 20 people who came were from the finance world. One attendee, David, a 26-year-old J.P. Morgan casualty, sent an e-mail home describing the events of the night.

"At about 1:30 a.m. we all left to go to the nightclub. One of the most unforgettable experiences of my life," read the missive. "I have partied in many cities, from Tel Aviv to Rome to Los Angeles, and nothing would prepare me for what was about to come. Pacha nightclub is a monstrous three-story building set just on the edge of Buenos Aires, with two huge dance floors, including an outdoor patio and balcony with complete views of the ocean. The club was amazing. We got in at two a.m. and the music was already bumping. At one point I was dancing on a balcony overlooking the ocean and staring down at a sea of people jumping up and down to electronica as the sun began to rise behind them. I have never seen anything like it."

"In New York people leave before the music stops. In Buenos Aires the music stops at eight a.m., and then everyone leaves with their sunglasses on. Some decide to finish their night in the morning and others continue to an ­after-hours club, which opens at eight a.m. and closes at three p.m....Such a drug culture here. Getting a drink is a pain. You need to first put in your order and pay at the register. Next they give you a ticket to wait in another line so you can give the ticket to the bartender to fill the order. It's a huge pain in the ass, so everyone says fuck it and does lines and rolls ecstasy. But you don't need to be on something to have fun, as the adrenaline rushing through your system from the thousands of people dancing around you is enough to get you high. I met this Brazilian girl from São Paulo who was visiting, and we hit it off immediately. Dancing to techno all night and grinding hard.... Smoking hotttyyyy making out and touchy-feely all night.…"