If there was ever any doubt about who Wall Street wants in the White House, a cursory glance at the top contributors to the campaigns of president Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney clears that up in a hurry. It might even make the president regret being quite so harsh on a group who backed him pretty heavily (for a Democrat) when he was first elected president after a campaign during which he is thought to have broken the world record for saying: "Yes we can".
While Obama’s top-five campaign donors are an eclectic bunch comprising employees at seats of learning, including his alma mater Harvard and the University of California, tech giants Google and Microsoft and his very own US government, Romney’s could be mistaken for a league table of quarterly investment banking revenue (apart from the relatively small amounts).
Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse have given Romney’s campaign what he might refer to as a "binder" full of cash. The money comes from the organizations’ political action committees, as well as employees and their families.
The election is too close to call, even after Obama mauled the Republican candidate in the last televised debate, responding to criticism from Romney by saying that although the US military admittedly has fewer ships than it used to, it also has fewer horses and bayonets.
Romney will be hoping that the president’s unpopularity on Wall Street and the piles of cash donated by its denizens will give him a boost as he traverses the swing states hugging babies and throwing thumbs up, sparkly smiles and waves in the general direction of people who might not even be looking at him.