New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued Friday that despite Hillary Clinton's ostensibly cozy relationship with Wall Street -- especially when compared to fellow contender Bernie Sanders -- actual Wall Street donors are convinced that the election of any Democrat would be a veritable apocalypse.
According to Krugman, Wall Street was amenable to working with Democrats before the financial crisis of 2008, and though most Americans believe the Obama administration let financial institutions off the hook, those institutions themselves are locked in a struggle with "Obama rage."
It's not, Krugman argued, that Obama treated them harshly so much as he didn't show them the "obsequious deference" they feel entitled to as titans of non-industries. And this, he wrote,
is good news for taxpayers and the economy, financiers bitterly resent any constraints on their ability to gamble with other people’s money, and they are voting with their checkbooks. Financial tycoons loom large among the tiny group of wealthy families that is dominating campaign finance this election cycle — a group that overwhelmingly supports Republicans. Hedge funds used to give the majority of their contributions to Democrats, but since 2010 they have flipped almost totally to the G.O.P.
As I said, this lopsided giving is an indication that Wall Street insiders take Democratic pledges to crack down on bankers’ excesses seriously. And it also means that a victorious Democrat wouldn’t owe much to the financial industry...
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