The Wallets of Wall Street Are With Biden, if Not the Hearts
The New York Times
•August 10, 2020
NEW YORK — As Wall Street donors arrived at a fundraiser for Joe Biden at a midtown Manhattan restaurant earlier this year, campaign staff members asked if they wanted to sign up for pictures with the candidate. More than a few of the bankers and private-equity investors politely declined, opting to mingle over glasses of wine instead.
It was Feb. 13, and Biden had just been thrashed in the New Hampshire primary after finishing poorly in the Iowa caucuses a week earlier. He was in desperate need of both momentum and money. Still, as Biden confided to the private-equity executive who co-hosted the event that night: Win or lose, he planned to “play my heart out to the very end,” the executive, Jon Gray, later recalled.
And finance executives have played a critical role in helping him do it. As Biden survived a turbulent winter to become the presumptive Democratic nominee running against President Donald Trump, the millions of dollars Wall Street denizens donated to Biden and outside groups supporting his candidacy have helped him build a strong lead in national polls.
Wall Street has fared extraordinarily well under Trump: deep cuts to taxes, slashed regulations and, until the pandemic hit, record stock prices.
But in recent months, dozens of bankers, traders and investors said in interviews, a sense of outrage and exhaustion over Trump’s chaotic style of governance — accelerated by his poor coronavirus response — had markedly shifted the economic and political calculus in their industry.
More and more finance professionals, they say, appear to be sidelining their concerns about Biden’s age — 77 — and his style. They are surprisingly unperturbed at the likelihood of his raising their taxes and stiffening oversight of their industry. In return, they welcome the more seasoned and methodical presidency they believe he could bring.
They may not exactly be falling in love with Biden. But they are falling in line.
“I’ve seen meaningful numbers of people put aside what would appear to be their short-term economic interest because they value being citizens in a democracy,” said Seth Klarman, founder of the hedge fund Baupost.
A longtime independent, Klarman was at one point New England’s biggest giver to the Republican Party. But in this cycle, he has given $3 million to groups supporting Biden.
Or as James Attwood, a managing director at the Carlyle Group and a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, put it,
“For people who are in the business of hiring and firing CEOs, Donald Trump should have been fired a while ago.” (Attwood contributed $200,000 in June to the Biden Action Fund, a joint committee with the Democratic National Committee.)
https://news.yahoo.com/wallets-wall-street-biden-not-185648790.html
Sorry Trump supporters, the Tide has turned. Powerful people want Trump out.