Seven years after setting the world into crisis, the people who brought us the Great Recession appear to have regained their suzerainty over the nation’s political parties. Rather than being sent to the woodshed, or even to prison, the financial nabobs of high finance are now being wooed actively by most Republican candidates and by the singular serious Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton.

Before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, we have the Wall Street race, in which candidates go to the financial elite to plead for support. Right now this matters most to the Republicans, whose field is varied and wide, and for many who consider obsequious pandering to the ultra-rich to be second nature. As things stand now, the likely winner of this primary will be Jeb Bush, who offers a continuation of mainstream, big business-oriented Republicanism identified mostly with his father, but also, to a lesser extent, his sometimes less predictable brother, George W. Bush.

In 2008, people knew something was radically wrong with how the hegemons were steering the economy, and nominated both a relative outsider, Barack Obama, and a sometimes unpredictable John McCain, never Wall Street’s favorite. In that election, in fact, Obama out-raised McCain on Wall Street, leading one New York Times reporter to annoint him as primary beneficiary of “the hedge fund factor.” The fact that Obama was likely to win the election, and was brilliantly vague about his plans, made him ever more attractive.

Obama and the Populist Threat

In his first six years in office, President Obama has performed well for those who wrote those checks. He brought in Wall Street insiders such as Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers to concoct his economic policy, which brought a recovery to the financial plutocracy before virtually anyone else. Wall Street was back by 2009; the rest of us have had to wait for 2015.

Obama and the Democrats in Congress also handed the big banks a nice gift in the form of the Dodd-Frank Bill which helped them achieve that “too big to fail” status and has accelerated the growing consolidation of the American financial system. Indeed, since Dodd-Frank was passed smaller banks’ share of banking assets has dropped twice as quickly as before, notes a recent Harvard Kennedy School of Government study. Smaller and community banks – historically more likely to loan to small businesses – have seen a 50 percent drop in their share of lending while the the five largest banks now control over 40 percent of lending, twice their share 20 years ago.

The big banks were saved as well by Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision not to engage in tough prosecutions of Wall Street’s biggest malefactors, in part, he explained, due to their enormous size.

Essentially, he has argued the giant banks, nurtured by the government, are too big to not only fail but see their executives placed in the docket.

To be sure, President Obama’s occasional populist rhetoric did offend many on Wall Street, which in 2012 shifted much of its support to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who, after all, was one of their own. Obama still did fairly well on Wall Street. In his two campaigns he ended up raising almost twice as much from Wall Street as his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Now that there are no new campaigns to fund, Holder is beginning to discuss prosecutions of grandees again, no doubt unsettling some on Wall Street and its associated hangers-on. But, even so, Treasury remains under the thumb of yet another insider, former Citibank executive Jacob Lew.

In effect, Obama’s embrace of a populist and left-leaning economic agenda, which pleases many party activists, is coming when there’s little he can do to impose it. But the party as a whole is moving left. The grassroots face of the Democratic Party is less that of corporate pragmatists in the mold of Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, who is detested by the Left and failed last week to gain a majority for his re-election bid, to progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

From their bastions, from Seattle and Los Angeles to New York, big city Democrats have started imposing a classic left-wing program of higher minimum wages, more support for public employees, limits on police and Draconian “green” policies, notably favoring expensive renewable fuels and forced densification. This program may not help or appeal much to the middle or working class Democrats who historically supported the party but it fits in well with its current base of the dependent poor, government workers, socially liberal professionals and rent-seeking businessmen, for whom such things as “green” energy and high-density development often represent opportunities for plundering the public.

Hillary to the rescue

This big city-led conflagration potentially could threaten corporate domination of the Democratic Party. But Hillary Clinton could save their day and preserve their bacon. Wall Street, and large corporations, seemed thrilled with the rise of the former secretary of state and senator as the de facto Democratic standard-bearer. Like Obama, Clinton may keep emotional links to the progressive left, but her long career – particularly as senator from New York – has also turned her into a reliable ally of Wall Street. She can count upon support from such figures as Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein and Blackrock head Larry Fink, notes the New York Post.

This corporate influence is palpable in the workings of the Clinton Foundation, which has evolved into a parallel “government in waiting” preparing Hillary’s ascension. The Foundation tackles many of the important issues, such as climate change, health and education, but none that represents a major threat to the financial community. But it has allowed Bill to keep his profile – no doubt a mixed blessing for Hillary – high and his global status intact.

Over the last decade or so, the foundation has raised most of its $2 billion from powerful financial interests who have emerged as the largest source of funds. They also have raised money from such powerful firms as General Electric, Exxon Mobil Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co. Not satisfied with just domestic grandees, the Foundation, where Hillary is officially based, has also solicited one-third of its funds from major foreign interests, including foreign governments such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline.

The triumph of crony capitalism

A majority of Americans now believe that government primarily serves the interests of the well-connected and the rich. This perception holds even more when asked about Republicans. Despite populist talk, largely from the Tea Party wing, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner raise money in much the same way as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi – from powerful, connected interests who want to steer government in directions favorable to them. They simply raise their funds from different industries – entertainment, tech and law firms for the Democrats; fossil fuel oil, insurance and home building for the Republicans.

The ascension of Jeb Bush as the GOP standard bearer would solidify the triumph of the crony capitalists. Bush himself has close ties to Wall Street, having worked as a Lehman Brothers special adviser and later with Barclays Capital. He won’t rock the crony boat in a way that right-wing fire-eaters like Utah’s Mike Lee or old-style Main Street Republicans like Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley would.

Instead, we are likely to see a race where, once again, Wall Street funds both sides, knowing full well that neither potential winner will push a thorough reform of the financial system that would promote competition or slow mega-banks’ absorption of smaller firms.

That’s why when high-level progressives talk higher taxes on the “rich,” it usually turns out to be not directed at the financial aristocracy, but the upper-middle-class kulaks, who are poorly organized and not predisposed to populist solutions themselves.

As uninspiring as a choice between retreads might disappoint many Americans, it warms the backsides of the financial oligarchy. It’s an extension of their “get out of jail free” card – even for the worst transgressions. Given the improving economy, the forces of the status quo in each party will get stronger, focusing on issues like gay rights, abortion and the environment that do not threaten the vital interests of the hegemons.

Bush-Clinton constitutes a supreme win-win for Wall Street. Unlike Obama, who occasionally would at least snarl at them, they can look forward, under either Bush or Clinton, to a continuation of policies that allow the financial elites to dominate the economy, albeit often to the detriment of the vast majority. The era of radical agitation on both the Left and the Tea Party Right may fade, while the empire, most triumphantly, strikes back.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange and the executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org). His most recent book is “The New Class Conflict” (Telos Publishing: 2014).