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President Obama didn't exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. "Well, I appreciate you guys calling in," he began the meeting at the White House with Wall Street's top brass on Monday.
He was, of course, referring to the three conspicuously absent attendees who were being piped in by telephone: Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs; John J. Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley; and Richard D. Parsons, chairman of Citigroup.
Their excuse? "Inclement weather," according to the White House. More precisely, fog delayed flights into Reagan National Airport. (In the "no good deed goes unpunished" category, the absent bankers were at least self-aware enough to try to fly commercial.)
That awkward moment on speakerphone in the White House, for better or worse, spoke volumes about how the balance of power between Wall Street and Washington has shifted again, back in Wall Street's favor.
Now that Citigroup has given back its bailout money -- and Wells Fargo announced late on Monday that it would, too -- whatever leverage Washington had over the financial services industry seems to be quickly eroding.
Executive compensation, leverage limits and lending standards were all issues that Washington said it planned to change -- and when the taxpayers were the shareholders of these firms, it probably could have done so. But now the White House has been left in the position of extending invitations, rather than exercising its clout. And in the figurative and literal sense, it is getting stood up.
Those who attended the meeting -- Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan flew down on a private jet and didn't take any heat for it -- seemed to talk a good game, but even President Obama acknowledged they might have been just toying with him.
"The problem is there's a big gap between what I'm hearing here in the White House and the activities of lobbyists on behalf of these institutions or associations of which they're a member up on Capitol Hill," he said after the discussion.
Are we making too much of this meeting and its grounded attendees?
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