Cantor is headed to Wall Street, which is now a one-way street. Cantor's one-way ticket to Wall St.?

NEW YORK — Eric Cantor made it clear to potential Wall Street employers that he wants to return to political life. But given where Wall Street currently stands in the regard of the American people, that may be an impossible fantasy, experts say.

The corridor between Wall Street and Washington once allowed bankers and politicians to move relatively easily back and forth, filling up on cash in the financial world then shuttling back to positions of power and influence. Now it is much more of a one-way street.


Leave for the lucrative world of investment banking and you may never be able to go home again. Just ask Mitt Romney, whose millions from Bain Capital helped derail what many viewed as a potentially winning presidential campaign against a vulnerable incumbent running in a very weak economy.

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The nation is very much in the grip of a populist, anti-Wall Street sentiment that runs deeply through both political parties — much the way it did after the crash of 1929. And it makes moving between the two worlds extremely difficult, if not impossible, historians say.

“In the 1920s, the House of Morgan had enormous influence in Washington and basically ran economic policy,” said Charles Geisst, a Wall Street historian at Manhattan College. “After the crash, you did not see that kind of influence again for at least 30 years. That is what is happening now. If you go and you take Wall Street money, that can be the end for you.”

Larry Summers found this out in a very painful way when his candidacy to lead the Federal Reserve fell victim to a campaign by liberal Democrats enraged by his work for and close ties to Wall Street. Among Hillary Clinton’s biggest headaches are her ties to New York financiers and the millions she has earned in speaking fees from the likes of Goldman Sachs and other big banks.

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Clinton keeps trying to come up with ways to talk about her wealth, and how she earned it, without turning people off. She has not found a way. And that may be because there isn’t one. Clinton supporters now say her best bet is to not talk about her money at all. And while Wall Street cash may not keep the former secretary of state out of the White House, it will make getting there much harder.

The difficulties extend from elective to appointed office.

When Tim Geithner left the Treasury Department to join private equity firm Warburg Pincus, he endured taunts that he was cashing in on his government experience and connections. Geithner, viewed as a potential future candidate for chairman of the Fed, felt compelled to say when he left government service that he had absolutely no plans to return.

Even current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a career government worker who spent a brief period in largely noncontroversial positions at Citigroup, found his Wall Street tenure a subject of intense derision during his confirmation process. And Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, one of the most respected central bankers in the world, came in for heavy criticism after his nomination last year over his tenure at Citigroup. Ruth Porat, the highly respected chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley and among the most powerful women on Wall Street, withdrew her name from consideration for the No. 2 job at Treasury when it became clear her confirmation process could turn into a nightmare.

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All this is the result of a financial crisis that wiped out trillions in wealth, drove unemployment up to 10 percent and crushed the value of Americans’ most prized possession: their homes.

Every crisis that comes out of the housing sector leaves much more lasting scars than other downturns, economic historians say. The big stock market crash of 1987 quickly vanished from memory because it did not deeply punish most Americans. That meant that in the 1990s, the likes of Goldman Sachs’ Robert Rubin could become stars of the Bill Clinton White House and part of Time magazine’s famous “Committee to Save the World” cover spread, along with Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers.

But the 2008 crisis struck much deeper. And the public lays blame right at the feet of Wall Street banks that packaged up piles of risky mortgages bought with borrowed money and sold in complex securities that failed with devastating impact.

Couple that with the lack of prosecution of any senior bankers and the general perception that Wall Street reform has done little to change the industry and you have a clear explanation for why having “banker” on your résumé right now can be a political career killer.

According to a Harris poll in 2012, four years after the crisis, 70 percent of Americans believed people on Wall Street would be “willing to break the law” if it meant they could make more money. More recent surveys have not shown much improvement in perceptions of Wall Street, according to Karlyn Bowman, who follows public opinion for the American Enterprise Institute. In an NBC News/Wall Street journal poll conducted in July and August of this year, 21 percent had a positive impression of Wall Street.

“The mood about Wall Street has not improved significantly even as optimism about the economy has increased,” Bowman said. “You rarely see the kind of fear we saw in public opinion in 2008 and 2009, and it takes the public a long time to recover from something like that — and people are still very sour toward Wall Street.”

But Cantor supporters argue that the former House majority leader is going to a different kind of bank in Moelis, a smallish boutique that focuses on advising companies or mergers and acquisitions and does not have the kind of high-flying trading desks or rely on borrowed money to fund operations in the ways that Wall Street reform aimed to fix. Moelis is hardly “too big to fail,” these people say.

And Ken Moelis hired Cantor, people close to the matter say, because of his ability to make complex deals — not because of any influence he could peddle with regulators or members of Congress.

It was something Cantor emphasized in his talks with Wall Street executives: He did not want to lobby on regulation or join the kind of bank that often finds itself as the punching bag of politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the left or Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on the right. And analysts say the former Hill power broker will certainly add some value.

“Washington is motivated by power. Wall Street by financial success. They don’t speak the same language. Cantor serves as the translator,” said Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Hintz added that “Cantor is being hired for the insights he can provide clients on the political landscape and its potential impact on their merger plans.”

And Cantor defenders say he is not exactly raking in massive cash.

The former congressman’s initial pay package, with a minimum value of around $4 million over two years, is indeed hardly mammoth by the inflated standards of Wall Street, where top executives and traders can make over $40 million a year and hedge fund titans sometimes top $1 billion annually.

And Cantor could wind up having a successful run at Moelis. There are plenty of examples of former politicians who made the move to Wall Street and found success as client ambassadors and executive operators rather than mere influence peddlers. Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm’s tenure at UBS fits this model as does Bill Daley’s at JPMorgan Chase and more recently Peter Orszag’s tenure at Citigroup.

But Daley’s latest attempt at a return to Washington, as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff in 2011, ended in disaster and resignation in just a year. Orszag takes constant criticism that his lucrative pay package is the result of his ties to the Obama administration, something he roundly rejects.

And Cantor’s hopes for a return to politics as soon as the 2017 Virginia governor’s race seem especially audacious.

While he likely won’t find himself trading mortgage-backed securities or pursuing leveraged buyouts, Cantor will almost inevitably find himself working on deals that wind up slicing some jobs while he earns the kind of pay that will make for easy attack ads in a primary or general election for governor even in a relatively conservative state like Virginia.

“I’d say he would still have a good shot in a state like Virginia,” Geisst said. “But you have conservatives there now who oppose the Export-Import Bank and anything like it, and they could wind up blocking him.” Cantor was once a key advocate for the Ex-Im bank.

And the voting public is not likely to make the kind of fine distinctions between what Moelis does and what other Wall Street banks do. “People are not going to think of it that way,” Bowman said. “They view all of Wall Street the same way.”

All of which means Cantor better enjoy his new career because he may be stuck with it.

Staff writer MJ Lee contributed to this report.