Don't Expect Wall St. Reform From 2012 Field

Wall Street doesn’t have much to worry about in 2012: President Obama, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney all have the big banks’ backs. Obama “may call them ‘fat cat’ bankers, but he's been something of a kitten when dealing with financiers: There have been fewer prosecutions during his term than in the previous 25 years, notes Joel Kotkin at Politico. Indeed, Obama has received more Wall Street donations “than all the GOP candidates combined,” and he’s gotten more from Bain Capital—which Romney co-founded—than anyone else.

Romney, of course, has friends in finance as well. He’s “to the manor born and is expected to view things as the ultra-rich prefer,” Kotkin notes. Romney is pro-TARP and anti-Occupy. Gingrich, with his decades in Washington, “symbolizes, as much as anyone, the interplay of the financial elite, Washington lobbying, and politics.” He also backed TARP, despite first calling it “socialism,” and he has supported extensive deregulation. If we want Wall Street reform, we’ll have to find it in public consensus, concludes Kotkin—not in the next election. (More Mitt Romney stories.)