The early voting is in, and Wall Street loves what it sees and hears from its anointed 2016 front-runners — Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Jeb Bush (with Chris Christie as a fallback).
The big-bank honchos feel they’re sitting pretty because, as one private-equity exec put it, “We’re in a no-lose situation” if the above are the real field. In fact, to the extent that Wall Street loves these three, they’re in trouble with the rest of the country.
The bankers are right on one thing: For all their philosophical differences, both parties’ front-runners are tied tight to the Wall Street establishment.
But if history’s any guide, that will be a bright red warning sign for voters in both parties who believe much of the economy needs fundamental change — and fast.
For all Hillary’s lefty posturing of late (“Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs”), she counts Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein and Blackrock head Larry Fink among her top backers.
Jeb is known for education and other reforms as Florida’s governor, but he’s spent much of his time since working with the money men — first as a Lehman Bros. special adviser, then jumping ship to Barclays Capital until he began exploring a presidential run.
And Christie has some pretty close friends among the banking glitterati himself — from hedge-fund honcho Steve Cohen, whose firm was indicted in 2013 over insider-trading allegations, to . . . Mrs. Christie, a bond-market executive for a hedge fund.
OK, there’s nothing necessarily bad about having friends in finance. Yet the bank lobby ranks among the country’s most self-absorbed, and at times nefarious, interest groups.
This is the bunch, after all, that got Washington to drop the Glass-Steagall law and other rules that kept US banks smaller, more manageable and less risky — but also less profitable.
That is, the banks got so much rope that they nearly hanged themselves in 2008.
These are also the geniuses who plowed big bucks into the coffers of the “moderate” Barack Obama in the ’08 race — giving the country the least moderate president in modern history, particularly on the economy.
On the other hand, while Obama’s taxing, spending and regulations continue to hamper job growth for average Americans, the Dow and the super-rich bankers are doing great.
And the Wall Street crowd cares much less about the long-term health of the economy than it does about its cherished bottom line.
So if the bankers are right, whichever of the “top three” wins will end up focusing on small-fry issues once in the White House, rather than taking on such big-ticket items as real banking reform or overhauling the whole tax code.
Yes, people like Fink at Blackrock talk up the need to lower the US corporate tax rate (now among the world’s highest) to save American jobs. But I can’t recall the last time old Larry (pay last year: over $22 million) came out swinging to lower taxes for, say, the guy running the corner deli, or the Westchester family of four that loses more than half its income to taxes by various layers of government.
The reason, I can only suspect, is that lowering individual income-tax rates would hurt BlackRock’s business of selling tax-exempt municipal bonds to everyone trying to escape punitive taxes.
The Wall Street crowd also hates pesky regulations like the Dodd-Frank law, which prevents the likes of Goldman Sachs from trading its way back to massive profitability.
But while the bankers want Dodd-Frank tweaks, they have zero interest in wholesale reform that ends the practice of bailing out banks every time they screw up, aka Too Big To Fail.
After all, that taxpayer backing (which Dodd-Frank enshrines) guarantees that the great and powerful will survive the next collapse with new taxpayer bailouts.
I’m told the bank honchos believe neither Clinton nor Bush nor Christie has the stomach for a fundamental restructuring of banks that would make them smaller — and leave more room for banks to lend to small businesses, because they’d have to hold less in capital as a cushion against ’08-style losses.
As for tax reform: When was the last time you heard any of the Big Three discuss a large-scale overhaul of the way the government confiscates what Americans earn?
The funny thing is, Wall Street could get its “pawn” and find it elected a pit bull. (I can’t tell you how many times Fink called Obama “a moderate” back in ’08.)
Or maybe a populist (Liz Warren or Rand Paul), or a no-bull guy like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, will hang Wall Street around the front-runners’ necks, changing the debate and the race.
The main thing is: Whenever Wall Street sees a “no-lose situation,” the rest of America is looking at a no-win one.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.
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