Campaign cash from the banking and hedge fund majordomos has rained down on Romney since the primary days. He is their candidate in every particular.
Money buys access in politics. The K-Street lobbyists bundle donations to get a seat at the table on drafting legislation. I've had political aides stop me mid-sentence, look directly at me, and ask "Do I know you?". This is a political code phrase for, "Did you make a donation?"
Part of the "bandwagon" psychology of making Romney the inevitable candidate has been the planted stories about the wholesale defection of Banking dollars from Obama to Romney, such as a Feburary Huff Post piece or a May Love Letter at CNN.
Today, Wall Street Journal's Market Watch is running a piece on the frantic scramble by Wall Street to cover their wrong way bet. His only "fact" in the post is repeating street chatter, but the Wall Street Journal is in a position to know.
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Huff Post's Mark Gongloff started this counter-trend reporting on Sept 14 with a piece entitled, "Wall Street May Hate Obama, But It's Betting On His Victory" He wrote:
Traders are increasingly betting on industries that thrive under Democratic leaders and against those companies that might do better in a country run by Mitt Romney and Republicans, according to a new Wall Street Election Poll Index created by Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial, a Boston brokerage.
One of the oxymorons of finance is Hedge Funds follow hedging strategies. A subset do follow a "total return" discipline, but the vast bulk of this massive lapping pool of cash chases fads and "sure things". They no more hedge than they mow their own lawns on their palatial estates.
Chasing the sure thing, the finance wizards made a one-way bet on Romney in the spring. They believed the conventional whisper that the coronation/election of the Equity Guy was a sure thing. They rubbed salt in the wounds of the Obama campaign, extracting a petty revenge because the president had once called their porcine frames "fat cats" instead of the taxonomically correct Sus scrofa domestica
I am certain these Lords of Finance are racing to correct their oversight, checkbooks wide open. There are some that will be left behind, and when they come knocking at the door for "access" on the industry re-regulation, some junior staffer with obvious glee will be able to stare them down, asking deftly, "Do I know you?"
A more serious question would be just how far has the rejectionism of Wall Street encouraged a second term Obama to seek a harder line on the financial pirates. He doesn't owe them a single thing at this point, they were the ones that broke the engagement. And, he's not raising cash for a third term. I relish the thought that these robber barons might have hideously miscalculated.