Larry Summers and Tim Geithner never worked at Goldman Sachs, although many people are under the impression that they did. In any case, even if their policies were supposedly friendly to Goldman Sachs, the employees there do not see it that way.
Employees of Goldman Sachs, who in the 2008 campaign gave Mr. Obama over $1 million — more than donors from any other private employer in the country — have given him about $45,000 this year. Mr. Romney has raised about $350,000 from the firm’s employees.
It’s a phenomenon that is by no means limited to Goldman Sachs. Wall Street has had a change of heart about the president. And they are slowly throwing in with Mitt Romney. That could be a problem for Romney.
But anger at big banks — manifested by the growing Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere — is palpable enough that Mr. Romney must avoid being seen as a friend of an industry that many Americans blame for onerous bank fees and underwater mortgages.
Among the other candidates, only Rick Perry and Ron Paul have raised a truly significant amount of cash. Perry actually raised $3 million more than Romney in the last quarter, mostly from his Texas network.
What’s ironic is that the people who work on Wall Street seem to be angry with the president less for anything he’s actually done than for some rather mild criticisms he’s leveled in their direction. It’s true that the Dodd-Frank reforms limited what the banksters can do, but most people realize that some reforms were necessary. And, honestly, the reforms were only as strong as Sens. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Scott Brown would tolerate. The reforms passed in the Senate with the new minimum of 60 votes, and only three Republicans supported them in the House. You’d think that voting against regulating Wall Street after they ruined the economy would be political suicide, but the Republicans didn’t see it that way and they certainly weren’t punished at the ballot box in 2010.
That only encouraged them to become more intransigent in defense of Wall Street and the nation’s top-earners. This proves that the Tea Party is the ultimate fleece. Supposedly, the Tea Party arose in reaction to the mere prospect of giving loan forgiveness to people whose mortgages had gone bad. In reality, it arose to support the banks keeping every dime owed to them. By exploiting the resentment of people who managed to pay their mortgage bill on time against those who borrowed more than they could afford, the banks (through the Tea Party Movement) made it too politically toxic to for the administration to carry out an effective anti-foreclosure program.
The end result is a more genuine resentment, seen now with the Occupy Wall Street movement. And Wall Street has convinced itself that Obama gave them a bad deal and a bad rap. In reality, he saved their asses, put the financial industry back on its feet, and merely asked them to pay back the favor by lending money and creating jobs. That’s why people are yelling that Obama bailed out the banks and left everyone else holding the bag. And they’re yelling at the banks because they haven’t kept their end of the deal. Instead, they’ve thrown in with the political opposition that opposes raising any revenues from the richest Americans to pay for the carnage they created.
So, Wall Street can keep their money, or send it to the Republicans where it belongs. The president is doing just fine raising money without Wall Street’s lucre.
