NEW YORK — Christmas has arrived early for Wall Street in the early days of the Donald Trump era.

A populist candidate who railed against shady financial interests on the campaign trail is now putting together an administration that looks like an investment banker’s dream.


Former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin has been seen at Trump Tower amid rumors that he’s the leading candidate for Treasury secretary. Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross appears headed to the Commerce Department. Steve Bannon, another Goldman alum, will work steps from the Oval Office. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon remains a possibility as Treasury secretary and will serve as an outside adviser if he doesn't get the job.

It’s a restoration of Wall Street power — and a potential flip in the way the industry is regulated — perhaps unparalleled in American history.

“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.”

Evidence of Wall Street’s improved prospects is everywhere.

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. And industry critics led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — long in ascendance — are seeing their populist power deflate.

The anti-banker culture of Washington has been turned on its head in an instant. And the industry can barely believe its good fortune. “Those of us who have been around D.C. for a long time, are we relieved that we are not going to be subpoenaed every week? Of course we are,” said Richard Hunt, head of the Consumer Bankers Association.

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. Bankers themselves also stand to make a killing. Massive tax cuts, including an elimination of the estate tax and big reductions for top earners seem like slam dunks in Trump’s Washington.

Wall Street bankers and their Washington lobbyists are quietly celebrating. They went from expecting fresh crackdowns from a Hillary Clinton administration with Warren wielding heavy influence to the cusp of a deregulatory bonanza with Republicans in complete control of Washington.

“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.”

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein last week spoke of Trump as great for the stock market.

“His policies are market-supportive,” he said at a New York Times conference. "I'm not saying it's good or bad. Just as far as asset prices in the market are concerned, how could they not be supportive?"

All this has left Wall Street reformers led by Warren in close to flat-out panic over what Trump and the GOP Congress could do to the Dodd-Frank law and how Trump could reshape financial regulatory agencies. 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.

“If you really want to reduce bank regulation you have to change the nature of the Fed so it really has the desire to start easing off,” said Dick Bove, banking analyst at Rafferty Capital Markets. “And I think it will be pretty easy for Trump to do that. You have two board seats empty and there is a good chance he can push out Yellen and Fischer and that would give him four out of seven, and five if [Daniel] Tarullo becomes isolated and resigns.”

In the House, Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), also mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary along with Moelis & Co. banker and former GOP Rep. Eric Cantor, has a pile of bills ready to slice and dice Dodd-Frank out of existence. Senate Democrats have promised to resist whole-scale changes to the financial reform law, especially efforts to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But many industry analysts believe it will ultimately be a losing battle.

“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.”

Warren, meanwhile, no longer has any real power beyond her ability to rhetorically rally the left and try to turn populists — who have no love for Wall Street — against the incoming president. And that’s exactly what she’s attempting to do.

“Based on public reports, your transition team and your potential cabinet include over twenty Wall Street elites, industry insiders, and lobbyists,” Warren wrote in a public letter to Trump on Tuesday, demanding that he drop lobbyists and Wall Street executives from his transition team and administration. “Should you refuse, I will oppose you, every step of the way, for the next four years. I will champion the millions of Americans you will fail to protect.”

Trump is not likely to heed any of Warren’s warnings, people close to the president-elect say. He derisively referred to the Massachusetts senator as “Pocahontas” and “goofy Elizabeth” on the campaign trail. And bankers believe Warren will be quickly sidelined. “You now have a president-elect who will absolutely delight in steamrolling her,” one Wall Street banker said this week.

There remains at least some hope among financial reformers that Trump will rediscover some of his anti-Wall Street zeal once he takes office. The GOP nominee intermittently criticized the banking industry during his campaign and spoke of a desire to reinstate the Glass-Steagall law separating retail and investment banking. And Bannon, despite making a fortune at Goldman, has spoken in the past about punishing bad banker behavior and simplifying the industry.

It’s a thin reed of hope for the left, given Trump’s early personnel moves, but progressives are clinging to it. “Candidate Trump understood the American people’s disgust with Washington’s bipartisan business-as-usual corruption, where the biggest corporations and Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail banks in particular buy access and influence to promote their special interests,” said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, a financial reform group. “That is the fetid swamp he was elected to drain.”

The left is also hoping that the U.S. can simply avoid another financial crisis before a less-Wall Street friendly administration wins the White House. “I think praying there is no financial meltdown before pro-regulatory forces return to power may be the least implausible path forward,” said Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project.