It'a not as if we weren't warned. Last November, professor of entrepreneurship and finance Luigi Zingales explained
As a businessman Mr. Trump has a longstanding habit of using his money and power aggressively to obtain special deals from the government. For example, his Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan was built with the benefit of a decades-long tax abatement obtained through government connections.
In 1985, Mr. Trump circumvented New York State campaign-finance laws by making a $30,000 donation, through several Trump companies, to Andrew Stein, the Manhattan borough president who was running for president of the City Council. Mr. Stein was also a member of the New York City Board of Estimate, the body then responsible for land-use decisions in New York.
Finally, Mr. Trump has a long history of promoting eminent-domain abuses to expropriate private land he wanted.
He is, in short, the essence of that commingling of big business and government that goes under the name of crony capitalism.
In short, in long, and in every way. Yet, in her primary race against Bernie Sanders and even in the general election struggle against Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton was dogged by an alleged attachment to the fiancial industry. One year ago, those concerns were cleverly crystallized by an uncommitted superdelegate from Florida who remarked "My parents had a saying in Spanish- 'Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres'- which means 'Tell me who you're hanging with and I'll tell you who you are.'"
If the saying is widely applicable, the media should begin speculating about what that tells us about Donald Trump, due to become in two months arguably the most powerful person in that same financial industry. Ben White in Politico magazien reports that the Trump era already is starting to represent
a restoration of Wall Street power — and a potential flip in the way the industry is regulated — perhaps unparalleled in American history.
“You would have to go back to the 1920s to see so much Wall Street influence coming to Washington,” said Charles Geisst, a Wall Street historian at Manhattan College. “It’s the most dramatic turn-around one could imagine. That’s the truly astonishing part.”
Evidence of Wall Street’s improved prospects is everywhere.
The Dodd-Frank financial reform law that bedeviled the industry for years and cost banks untold billions could soon get burned to the ground. Bank stocks are soaring. Trump is going around Manhattan promising to lower rich people’s taxes. And industry critics led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — long in ascendance — are seeing their populist power deflate.
The anti-banker culture of Washington has been turned on its head in an instant. And the industry can barely believe its good fortune. “Those of us who have been around D.C. for a long time, are we relieved that we are not going to be subpoenaed every week? Of course we are,” said Richard Hunt, head of the Consumer Bankers Association.
The smart guys and gals of Wall Street know who represents their interests as
Bank stocks are up by around 10 percent since Trump’s win, according to the KBW Bank Index, as investors contemplate an agenda tailor-made for the industry including deregulation and potentially higher interest rates sparked by significant deficit spending. Bankers themselves also stand to make a killing. Massive tax cuts including an elimination of the estate tax and big reductions for top earners seem like slam dunks in Trump’s Washington.
They can barely contain their glee now that the Democratic nominee has gone down swinging:
Wall Street bankers and their Washington lobbyists are quietly celebrating. They went from expecting fresh crackdowns from a Hillary Clinton administration with Warren wielding heavy influence to the cusp of a deregulatory bonanza with Republicans in complete control of Washington.
They may as well be laughing at those blue-collar, working-class Trump voters as
“There is a joke going around here that if I’d have known how good Trump was going to be for Wall Street, I’d have campaigned for him,” said one Goldman Sachs executive who declined to be identified by name speaking about the incoming president. “What people are reacting to is this incredible cultural shift. People thought it might be 10 or 15 years until regulators stopped demanding heads and now all of a sudden you can envision it happening overnight.
Wall Street bankers and their Washington lobbyists are quietly celebrating. They went from expecting fresh crackdowns from a Hillary Clinton administration with Warren wielding heavy influence to the cusp of a deregulatory bonanza with Republicans in complete control of Washington
They may as well be laughing at those blue-collar, working-class Trump voters as
“There is a joke going around here that if I’d have known how good Trump was going to be for Wall Street, I’d have campaigned for him,” said one Goldman Sachs executive who declined to be identified by name speaking about the incoming president. “What people are reacting to is this incredible cultural shift. People thought it might be 10 or 15 years until regulators stopped demanding heads and now all of a sudden you can envision it happening overnight.
A CEO of a financial reform group notes "candidate Trump understood the American people's disgust with Washington's bipartisan business-as-usual corruption where the biggest corporations nd Wall Street's too-big-to-fail banks in particular buy access and influence to promote their special interests."
Surely, Candidate Trump understood it. President-elect Trump is just fine with it.
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