Bankers celebrate dawn of Trump era
A populist candidate who railed against shady financial interests on the trail is putting together an administration that looks like an investment banker's dream.
A populist candidate who railed against shady financial interests on the trail is putting together an administration that looks like an investment banker's dream.
“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 turnaround one could imagine. That’s the truly astonishing part.”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.Bank stocks are up by around 10 percent since Trump’s win, according to the KBW Bank Index, as investors contemplate an agenda tailormade for the industry including deregulation and potentially higher interest rates sparked by significant deficit spending.“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.”“I do think that Republicans will pick at it piece by piece and by the time they are done it will be largely weakened,” said Ian Katz, director at Capital Alpha Partners. “It may take a while, you can’t just flip a switch and do all this stuff. But eventually they can do it.”He will now be able to install a new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as senior leadership positions at the Federal Reserve, possibly including the head of supervision.
Changes at the Fed, including the possible exit of Chair Janet Yellen and Vice Chair Stanley Fischer in a year, could wind up being the biggest boon to Wall Street if Trump can fill their slots with candidates less inclined to hold banks to high capital requirements and otherwise rein in their activities.