Pleasing Wall Street
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")
Today brings more news that Mitt Romney is raking in the bucks from Wall Street, particularly from donors that used to support Barack Obama:
Mitt Romney has raised far more money than Mr. Obama this year from the firms that have been among Wall Street’s top sources of donations for the two candidates.
That gap underscores the growing alienation from Mr. Obama among many rank-and-file financial professionals and Mr. Romney’s aggressive and successful efforts to woo them.
The imbalance exists at large investment banks and hedge funds, private equity firms and commercial banks, according to a New York Times analysis of the firms that accounted for the most campaign contributions from the industry to Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama in 2008, based on data from the Federal Election Commission and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
This is a good thing. The Obama campaign had more money than it even knew how to spend in 2008. The Obama Administration needs an anti-Wall Street message right now far more than it needs Wall Street cash. Nothing could be better than to portray vulture capitalist Mitt Romney as the tool of Wall Street he is.
Still, it does lead one to wonder what the Obama Administration was thinking in being so cozy with the "financial community." If the point of doing so was to make friends and secure support in exchange for campaign cash, the Administration obviously underestimated the thin-skinned narcissism of the Masters of the Universe. Nothing short of a full giveaway of the entire nation's wealth will please them, and even one cross word about "fat cats" will send them running into the arms of the opposition.
If the point of being really nice to Wall Street was actually policy related in the sense that the Administration felt that a strong and confident financial sector would be the key to economic recovery, well, that clearly hasn't worked out so well, either.
So either way, the the decision to be super friendly with the Wall Street crew was deeply misguided. But it's never too late for the Administration to realize their error and work to correct the mistake.
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