Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter for Politico.

On a recent afternoon, executives at Goldman Sachs invited a few hundred major investors to the Conrad Hotel in lower Manhattan. The bankers and their guests filed into a large room and turned their eyes to Hillary Clinton.

Ordinarily these masters of the universe might have groaned at the idea of a politician taking the microphone. In the contentious years since the crash of 2008, they’ve grown wearily accustomed to being called names—labeled “ fat cats" by President Obama and worse by those on the left—and gotten used to being largely shunned by Tea Party Republicans for their association with the Washington establishment. And of course there are all those infuriating new rules and regulations, culminating this week with the imposition of the so-called Volcker Rule to make risky trades by big banks illegal.


But Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish. Striking a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy—it needs to stop. And indeed Goldman’s Tim O’Neill, who heads the bank’s asset management business, introduced Clinton by saying how courageous she was for speaking at the bank. (Brave, perhaps, but also well-compensated: Clinton’s minimum fee for paid remarks is $200,000).

Certainly, Clinton offered the money men—and, yes, they are mostly men—at Goldman’s HQ a bit of a morale boost. “It was like, ‘Here’s someone who doesn’t want to vilify us but wants to get business back in the game,’” said an attendee. “Like, maybe here’s someone who can lead us out of the wilderness.”

Clinton’s remarks were hardly a sweeping absolution for the sins of Wall Street, whose leaders she courted assiduously for financial support over a decade, as a senator and a presidential candidate in 2008. But they did register as a repudiation of some of the angry anti-Wall Street rhetoric emanating from liberals rallying behind the likes of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). And perhaps even more than that, Clinton’s presence offered a glimpse to a future in which Wall Street might repair its frayed political relationships.

At both ends of the political spectrum, the titans of American finance today find themselves alienated from politics to a surprising degree. On the left, the rift has been precipitated by populist outrage and a damaged, difficult relationship with the White House. The discord and disappointment has simmered for years and is now boiling toward the surface on both sides, particularly for donors who felt burned and spurned by a White House they helped to elect. To understand just how far apart the president and the barons of Wall Street have drifted, consider that as a young senator in his first run for the presidency, Barack Obama took in $16 million from Wall Street donors, while last year, as the incumbent president, he was able to muster only $6 million.

The Money Men to Watch The fundraisers who are starting to circle their preferred 2016 presidential hopefuls are doing so tentatively—just beginning the ritual dance between candidate and benefactor that will shape the financial race for the White House. With presidential contenders looking to collect north of a billion dollars, here are check-writers on the Republican side that could soon matter most. (See the next page for their Democratic counterparts.) REPUBLICANS Cliff Asness

Co-founder, AQR Capital

Asness was strongly behind Obama in 2008 but split with the president early in 2009 over a dispute related to the auto industry bailout. He backed Mitt Romney in 2012 and, as someone who's given to Democrats in the past, will be a bellwether for Democrats' abilities to win back Wall Street in 2016. Henry Kravis

Co-founder, Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts & Co.

The private equity titan founded (along with Lewis Eisenberg) the Republican Leadership Council in 1997 and has been a major GOP bundler for decades. An elder statesman in finance and among the Republican donor class, he is always a sign of where Wall Street is placing its political bets. Patrick Durkin

Managing director, Barclays Capital

Durkin was among the well-heeled attendees at a Republican National Committee cattle call with potential candidates at Jets owner Woody Johnson's home in September. His name often appears as a co-host on major donor events in New York City. And he'll send an early establishment signal when he settles on his candidate for 2016. Doug Korn

Senior managing director, Irving Place Capital

Korn hosted an event for Rudy Giuliani at his Connecticut home in 2007, and he played a major role for Romney last cycle. He'll remain in the Republican lane next time around, but whom he backs is still an open question. Ken Langone

Co-founder, Home Depot

A member of the business-minded club that backed Giuliani in 2008, Langone was slow to back Romney in 2012. He tried repeatedly to get Chris Christie to run instead, and he is already firmly behind the New Jersey governor if he runs in 2016. Lew Eisenberg

Senior adviser, Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts & Co.

A veteran of the George W. Bush fundraising network, Eisenberg supported John McCain in 2008 and then Mitt Romney early in 2012. He’s also been among the Republicans who’ve been involved in efforts to change his party’s views on gay marriage. Cliff Sobel

Managing partner, Valor Capital Group

The former ambassador to Brazil under Bush has deep experience as a major check-raker for the GOP. He was a key asset to Romney in 2012 and is already cozying up to Christie for 2016, hosting an event for the governor in the Hamptons. Paul Singer

CEO, Elliott Associates

Singer has risen quickly to prominence in GOP circles in the last several years. He backed Giuliani in 2008 but departed the campaign when it became clear the former New York City mayor was a weak investment. Singer was among the last major names to join Romney. And he's among the most-watched GOP bundlers in the New York donor class.

Meanwhile, on the right, the estrangement owes to the failures of GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign—a loss that has prompted Wall Street donors to sit on their cash and question the return that their investments in Republican politics can generate, especially with the GOP’s post-defeat lurch toward the Tea Party populists and outsider activists. “The ground is shifting beneath their feet,” says one top Republican donor—even if not all the Wall Streeters have come to terms with a world where their money might matter less than the deep pockets and cause-driven giving by Republican benefactors like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has proved willing to write checks north of $100 million.

This is not the first time Wall Street has found itself at odds with one of the political parties in Washington. But it may be the first time since the Great Depression that the New York banker class has been this disconnected from both parties simultaneously. The pervasive dismay, alienation and hopelessness comes through in recent conversations with CEOs, hedge fund managers and private equity officials—all of them major Wall Street donors who’ve seen their influence in Washington tested and who are now uncertain whether and how to re-engage. “Like the rest of America, Wall Street is looking at Washington and saying whether we agree or disagree, they’re looking at both parties with complete revulsion,” one private equity executive told us.

The strained relations come at a consequential moment for the financial industry, which has rebounded from the 2008 financial crash faster and with bigger gains than the rest of the country, but is now facing the ire of newly emboldened and decidedly anti-Wall Street populists in both political parties. And yet the 2014 and 2016 election cycles will help determine whether banks, already restrained by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, will face new regulatory restrictions, further rounds of legal action and higher tax rates. “Traditionally, Wall Street plays both sides of the fence on its political donations,” says Charles Geisst, a financial historian and professor at Manhattan College. “What's happening now is neither side is coming through with the things Wall Street feels it is entitled to, and so everybody just wants to give up. But they can’t, because they are going to continue to be in the limelight whether they like it or not.”

***

To say Wall Street’s initial rosy expectations for its relationship with Barack Obama were dashed would be an understatement. Finance executives—a donor demographic traditionally loaded with Republicans who factored heavily in propelling George W. Bush into the White House—gave Obama twice as much financial support in 2008 as they did his opponent, GOP Sen. John McCain. Obama established his prowess as a Wall Street fundraiser early in his battle for the Democratic nomination against the well-connected Clinton by cementing a relationship with Blair Effron, a young banker who bundled more than $200,000 for Obama. Effron was first invited into the Obama donor fold by the legendary investor and Democratic philanthropist George Soros in December 2006, when then-Senator Obama was on the verge of launching a presidential campaign.

Obama also secured help from investment executives who had not previously been a part of the Democratic money world—supporters like Mark Gallogly, the founder of the private equity firm Centerbridge Partners who inspired a slew of other new donors (“They all saw themselves in [Gallogly],” recalls a Democratic source involved in Obama’s fundraising efforts). Other backers had tough choices to make. For instance, Orin Kramer, the hedge fund manager and head of Boston Providence, had long-established ties to the Clintons. But he went with Obama instead.

In many ways, Obama’s fundraising team was helped by the fact that Clinton already had such a full roster of powerful backers. “In 2007, the Clinton table was set and full. So there were a lot of guys who’d made money between 2000 and 2007 who wanted to play [in politics], and there was no room for them,” says one Democratic source who was involved in Obama’s 2008 fundraising. “We offered this very sexy, very cool alternative for people to have a seat at the table.”

When financial markets crashed just prior to his election, Obama’s cadre of Wall Street supporters expected their donations had earned for them a measure of understanding from the White House. And in keeping with the practice of both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush years, the finance executives also felt entitled to at least a couple of significant administration jobs going to one of their own—not to mention fairly regular access to the president, either via White House visits or get-togethers in New York. After all, they had important policy recommendations to make on everything from financial reform to deficit reduction to trade policy and immigration; previous administrations had a record of being very interested in their views. But under Obama, very little of this happened. “It’s not that there weren’t any meetings. It’s just that nothing ever happened after the meetings, and people fell out of love,” said one senior Wall Street banker who gave to the Obama campaign in 2008 and attended many of the early confabs.

Disillusionment set in quickly as Obama’s disdain for extensive relationships with the Wall Street wealthy became clear. He had no use for the niceties and glad-handing that Bill Clinton elevated to an art form, aided by a Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, who came straight to the job from Goldman Sachs and his role as Clinton’s top Wall Street rainmaker. One senior Wall Street executive says his realization that the financial industry under Obama would instead become a regular punching bag dates to a meeting in early 2009 with then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. According to this executive, Emanuel told an assembled group of financiers that the administration did not plan to “waste” the financial crisis—a common refrain of his in public and private—and would push for the strongest Wall Street reform measures possible, including having the White House respond swiftly and brutally to any industry efforts to water down the final product.

“I knew right at that moment, standing in Rahm’s office, that they did not really have any interest in understanding Wall Street or working with us in any significant way,” says the executive, who, like most interviewed for this article, spoke on condition that they not be identified by name or by firm to avoid possible political retribution.

Despite Emanuel’s own foray in banking (he earned more than $18 million in a two-and-a-half year stint as a managing director in the investment firm Wasserstein Perella) there was a prevailing sense among these Wall Street Democrats that nobody in the White House understood the industry. Bankers could certainly present their arguments to first-term Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whom many knew from Geithner’s tenure as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but they believed that was as much of a hearing as they would get. “Tim was someone everyone knew and could talk to, but beyond him it’s fair to say the business community was uniquely without influence,” one senior Wall Street executive says of the early days of the Obama administration. And besides, while Geithner had deep relationships on Wall Street and pushed Obama hard to follow through on the Bush-initiated Wall Street bailout, he also worked hard to push tough financial reform and was not inclined to be seen as going soft on banks receiving those huge federal checks.

The Money Men to Watch The fundraisers who are starting to circle their preferred 2016 presidential hopefuls are doing so tentatively—just beginning the ritual dance between candidate and benefactor that will shape the financial race for the White House. With presidential contenders looking to collect north of a billion dollars, here are check-writers on the Democratic side that could soon matter most. (See the previous page for their Republican counterparts.) DEMOCRATS Blair Effron

Co-founder, Centerview Partners

A former UBS banker who now operates his own firm, Effron was a key backer of John Kerry in 2004 and helped attract a younger crowd of financiers to Barack Obama in 2008. He is among those heavily wooed by both Obama and Hillary Clinton early in the last primary and will likely be crucial again in advance of 2016. Michael Kempner

Founder and CEO, MWW Group

Kempner, a top Democratic bundler who runs a major public relations firm, was national finance co-chair for Clinton in 2008 and later deputy finance director of the Obama campaign in 2012. He’s poised to play a key role marshaling other donors. Orin Kramer

General Partner, Boston Provident

The hedge fund manager has held regular fundraising events for Obama and before that served in several advisory roles in government under President Bill Clinton, whom he also supported financially . Jon Stryker

Heir to the Stryker Corporation fortune

The grandson of a medical device magnate, the billionaire was the fifth biggest Obama donor in 2012, according to the Associated Press. He hosted a small event in New York for Terry McAuliffe—the longtime Clinton fundraiser and confidant just elected governor of Virginia—earlier this year that the former president headlined. Ron Perelman

Owner, MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc.

The billionaire leveraged buyout titan and Revlon chairman joined many in the Hamptons set who ditched Obama for Romney in 2012. Speculation is that he’ll return to the Democratic fold in 2016 if Clinton, his old friend, runs. Marc Lasry

CEO, Avenue Capital Group

The hedge fund billionaire is close to the Obamas and is said to want now to take a top role in fundraising efforts for a Hillary Clinton run. Once considered to be named ambassador to France by the Obama White House, he spent the last year raising heavily for McAuliffe. Bernard Schwartz

Former CEO, Loral Space & Communications

Among the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, Schwartz celebrated his 71 st birthday with the Clintons in the White House in 1996. Alan Patricof

Founder and managing director, Greycroft, LLC

A pioneer in the private equity industry, Patricof has been a prominent Clinton backer for years and sat out the 2012 presidential race. He’s made clear to allies he will support her strongly if she runs.

Elsewhere in the New York investment community, private equity and hedge fund officials who had backed Obama quickly and publicly turned on him over White House attempts to raise the tax rates on their investment returns and their profits from sales on investment management partnerships. They argued they were being targeted unfairly.

Instead of turning to an insider like Bill Clinton had with Rubin, Obama put his close friend and senior advisor Valerie Jarrett in charge of managing relationships with Wall Street and corporate America more broadly. From the start, the feeling across the financial industry was that while Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman and attorney, was smart and friendly and for the most part accessible. But she knew almost nothing about how the banking and finance industry worked and was interested only in pushing the administration’s agenda, rather than engaging in any kind of dialogue about how to foster better economic growth in the wake of the financial crisis.

“Valerie immediately designated herself as business liaison in the White House, and there is no one I know who respects her as a businessperson or thinks she knows anything about business,” said one prominent Democrat on Wall Street who is otherwise very sympathetic to the Obama administration. “You would have these meetings with her, and then absolutely nothing would happen. So people just stopped having them.”

Jarrett and other White House officials roundly reject this criticism, noting that she had been CEO of large real estate company in Chicago. They say it’s hardly surprising that bankers who wanted to block Wall Street reform measures like the Dodd-Frank law would complain when Jarrett, who had no role in crafting the measure, could not give them what they wanted. Even some in the financial industry call complaints about Jarrett mostly sour grapes. “There is a real misperception here,” the CEO of one large financial company told us. “The White House has given plenty of access to people. That’s not the same thing as giving those people everything they want, nor should it be.”

In an interview in her spacious office on the second floor of the West Wing, Jarrett acknowledged that the administration’s first-term response to the financial crisis has left some bruised feelings. “We took some bold and important actions to right the ship, and those changes understandably caused some friction,” Jarrett told us. “We went through a very rough patch. We came into office and made the best decisions we could for the economy.”

But the president’s Wall Street donor class felt stung again in September 2010, when Obama appeared on 60 Minutes and doubled down on his disdain for the rich guys, saying he “did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” Obama said “nothing had been more frustrating to him” than to “salvage a financial system at great expense to taxpayers” from a calamity “that was caused in part by completely irresponsible actions on Wall Street.” What’s more, he thundered, “People on Wall Street still don’t get it.”

Many in the financial sector saw the interview as the end of their relationship with the Obama administration. “The ‘fat cat’ and ‘throw everyone in jail’ stuff pretty much did it,” says one executive who later supported Mitt Romney. The White House was never inclined to apologize. “Sure, the rhetoric got hot,” one administration official who worked with the financial industry told us. “We were trying to pass financial reform, and they didn’t want it.”

The disappointment in the White House wasn’t just politics; it was personal, adds one senior Wall Street banker who had supported Obama: “A lot of people began to feel attacked and singled out in inappropriate ways they did not feel were fair.” The sour feelings festered through the 2012 campaign, when Wall Street all but abandoned Obama, pouring more than $20 million into Romney’s failed effort, compared with the $6 million the president got.

Shortly after the election, in a bid for rapprochement, the hedge fund executive Marc Lasry—a major party donor—tried to stage an intervention. In November, after Jarrett showed interest in trying to reboot relations, he led a mission of Wall Street executives to Washington, where they met with her and other senior White House economic advisers in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. In addition to Lasry, the meeting included Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, Fortress Investment Group co-chairman Wes Edens and Morgan Stanley President Gary Fleming, among others. In a conversation that was described as cordial, the two sides batted around ideas on reaching a budget deal. “The tone from them was, ‘Let’s hear what you guys have to say. Let’s get your views and start a dialogue,’” says one Wall Street attendee at the meeting.

Reports on the meeting’s outcome are mixed. Some attendees told us the bankers came away convinced that nothing would change. Others believed the conference marked a change in White House tone, at least. “I think it is substantially better. What’s really happening is they are getting more people involved,” Lasry says, adding that he and his colleagues have recently been given a heads-up on administration plans during fiscal fights with Congress and consulted on issues such as immigration and tax reform. “I’ve been on calls with [Treasury Secretary] Jack Lew and Valerie where they will explain what’s really going on. I think they have gone out of their way to be more forthcoming.”

Still, some bad feelings have clearly lingered. One source familiar with the post-election meeting explained to us an effort begun afterward to create a “work-around” wherein Wall Streeters could circumvent Jarrett by dealing with other West Wing staffers. It didn’t work. “We were told that everyone works for Valerie, and nothing could be done,” the source told us. (Lasry, whose son used to work for Jarrett, said he had no knowledge of the back-channel plan).

The failed gambit reflects an important fact about the disillusioned money men: These Wall Street types prize personal relationships and ego stroking as much as they do any laundry list of policy initiatives. When we sought answers about the rift with the White House, many New York sources circled back to this; leaders in the finance industry, as in so many others, want to know they have friends and influence in high places—a feeling that’s not been forthcoming from the Obama administration. Lasry says Wall Street executives want both to schmooze with Obama—something the president doesn’t view as a smart use of his time—and to have the president act quickly on suggestions they make. “I always find it amazing that people on my side say they are going to go to the White House and tell the president what to do and he will listen and it will go into law the next week,” he says.

Robert Wolf, former president and chief operating officer of UBS Investment Bank, is one of the few finance types with whom Obama socializes. He’s a regular golfing and basketball buddy of the president’s and finds the schism between the New York financial industry and the White House difficult to blame on Obama or his aides. “He continually has lunches and does outreach. What happens is he looks at the business community across 50 states, not just [New York],” Wolf says of the president. “The finance guys are just one sector.”

For her part, Jarrett told us the White House has repeatedly engaged with business leaders to boost trade, speed up patent applications and push immigration and tax reform. And she said they worked closely with CEOs from finance and other industries to drum up opposition to the kind of government by crisis that led to October’s shutdown. “Business stepped up in a big ways during the fiscal fights,” she says, adding that relations with Wall Street have continued to improve in the second term with the addition as commerce secretary of Penny Pritzker, a real estate executive and billionaire heiress to the Hyatt hotel chain fortune who has relationships with many in the financial industry.

Regardless, others told us it’s now clear that after five years of starts and fits, the Wall Streeters have largely given up on striking a better relationship with the White House. “There isn’t open loathing of the administration as much anymore,” one senior financial services industry executive says. “It’s just fatigue with the way they do business.”

Ordinarily such dissatisfaction with one political party would redound to the benefit of the other. But Wall Street donors have been equally turned off by the GOP for much of 2013. Even when Romney, a corporate executive like them, ran for president in 2012, he failed to earn the adoration of the donors who twice had helped propel Bush to the White House. Romney was, in the words of one former Bush campaign bundler, “the worst messenger in the world. … I can’t believe the shit that comes out of his mouth.”

Even before he’d lost the 2012 presidential election (indeed, even before he’d won his party’s nomination), Romney was thought of as a bad bet by some on Wall Street, who were instead falling fast for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie—the candidate with the best chances at winning the support of bankers in the next presidential election. In July 2011, Christie ventured across the Hudson to the exclusive Racquet and Tennis Club on Park Avenue in Manhattan, where he found roughly 40 of New York’s wealthiest men waiting for him.

The meeting, called by club member and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, was held in a private wood-paneled dining room and stuffed with eager business leaders urging Christie to jump into the 2012 race. The disembodied voice of David Koch, the co-owner of Koch Industries and a major GOP benefactor, was piped into the room by conference call, as was that of hedge funder Paul Singer, the CEO of Elliott Management, an attendee told Politico Magazine. Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, stood and pleaded with the governor to enter the presidential race for the good of his country. Christie would, of course, resist their pleas, becoming perhaps even more alluring to those on Wall Street as a prospect for 2016.

“I like him. I do. I think he’s authentic, and I think he is a good manager and a good leader,” Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein said of Christie at a recent Wall Street industry event, where he also praised Hillary Clinton. “It doesn’t feel like he’s pandering to a particular view. I think it’s a real challenge for anybody who hasn’t been tested on the national political scene to go out and do it, but guess what—everybody has to start. So I hope he keeps on going.”

No small measure of Christie’s popularity owes to his proximity: Many of the bankers he counts as supporters live in New Jersey and are familiar with him from his two campaigns for governor. But all that familiarity could be at least a technical problem. When the Dodd-Frank reform measures passed three years ago, campaign finance laws were broadened to prohibit employees at investment firms from supporting candidates with whom their firms might do business. Christie allies told us this can be avoided by creating a super PAC that will be the repository for Wall Street money; campaign finance lawyers aren’t so sure.

At the same time, there are a handful of other Republicans looking to the 2016 money chase who are positioning themselves, so far with limited success, to receive Wall Street’s affections. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made an early play to attract big business donors, but they watched, disappointed, as he neither embraced nor totally shunned the “Gang of Eight” immigration reform process. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has received a small measure of positive notice, and may gain more for just brokering a budget deal in Washington that was long desired by Wall Street. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who currently directs fundraising at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has spent a year on a hat-in-hand apology tour, visiting investors to ask for absolution from the sins of the poorly run campaigns of 2012, and while raising money for the party, he’s also raised his profile. The person who could shuffle the field and attract the Wall Street donor class instantly is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but his interest in a 2016 run is perhaps overstated.

What the donors receiving visits from Portman and his colleagues realize is that no serious candidate has ever become the Republican nominee without their help—and they are eager to reassert their historic prerogatives. Even a Tea Party favorite like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the man blamed within the financial sector for this fall’s government shutdown, recently jetted into New York City for a fundraiser that was hosted by lawyer Bob Giuffra and the pollster Kellyanne Conway and designed to give Cruz entrée to the New York opinion-making class. He was well received by a crowd that included former Carlyle Group executive Ken Abramowitz and Rebekah Mercer, daughter of hedge fund executive Robert Mercer. Instead of a torrent of tough queries about the shutdown, an attendee told us, Cruz fielded questions on Obamacare, NSA surveillance and the long-term plan for a federal budget.

"And if the banking class is delighted with Clinton lately, the feeling appears mutual," write Haberman and White. (Above, Clinton mingles with guest at a Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala.) | Jason DeCrow/AP Photo

But a shift back to Wall Street’s historic Republican roots is by no means a given, especially if the Democratic nominee is local favorite Hillary Clinton—and the former New York senator has been shrewdly tending to would-be donors for much of the last year, whether in the form of speaking engagements like the one at Goldman this fall, or by glad-handing as she helps to raise $250 million for her family’s foundation. Lasry, fresh off a fundraising tour of duty on the Terry McAuliffe campaign for governor in Virginia, figures to be a critical component of an expected Clinton run; he is described as a likely contender to fill the role of Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman, McAuliffe’s post in her 2008 bid.

The worry on Wall Street is about how far to the left Clinton might have to drift to appease what’s been proclaimed the “Warren wing of the Democratic Party”—the vocal populists buoyed by Elizabeth Warren’s tough critiques of Wall Street greed, as well as by the recent election of liberal Mayor Bill de Blasio on their New York home turf. According to people in Clinton’s extended circle, John Podesta—the former White House chief of staff under her husband who this week joined the Obama White House for a year-long stint—was poised to work with Hillary Clinton on her messaging on income inequality, a role he seems less likely to fill while he's in government. Still, some say fears that Clinton will end up alienating financial sector donors the way Obama has, even if she tacks left, are overblown. “Wall Street folks are so happy about [having Clinton run] that they won’t care what she says,” says one well-placed Democrat.

And if the banking class is delighted with Clinton lately, the feeling appears mutual. In Manhattan last week, Clinton sat down with the Carlyle Group’s David Rubenstein for their second question-and-answer session in the last two months. Unlike the first one, held for his private equity firm’s investor conference, this was a more public appearance, part of a program honoring the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Clinton easily regaled the well-heeled crowd with stories from her past before Rubenstein ended their half-hour chat with a joke about her future: Would she be interested in joining a private equity firm?

“Is that an offer?” Clinton asked, laughing as the audience knowingly joined in. She may soon need many things from the titans of finance, but a job is probably not one of them.

Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter and Ben White is chief economic correspondent for POLITICO.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misidentified the head of asset management at Goldman Sachs, who is Tim O’Neill, not Jim O’Neill. Also, the location of a Goldman Sachs event with Hillary Clinton was misstated. The event took place at the Conrad Hotel, not the Goldman Sachs headquarters