Wall Street Loves Obama

Wall Street is coming on strong for Barack Obama in this year's presidential campaign donation race. Big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan favor Obama over John McCain by margins of roughly four or five to one.

So states a recent report by Chief Executive magazine which examined campaign contribution reports surveyed by the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.

Overall, Goldman Sachs has favored Democrats this time by 71 percent and J.P. Morgan by 66 pecent. Citigroup likes the Donkey Clan by 63 percent. Goldman, for instance has given Obama's campaign $605,980 compared to $146,520 for McCain. UBS donated $370,130 to Obama compared to a mere $89,265 for McCain.

Obama love doesn't carry over into all business sectors, however. As might be expected, Big Oil favors the GOP with 72 percent of its donations compared to only 28 percent for Democrats. No big whoop there considering that both President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have very tight ties to the oil patch.

That some sectors of corporate America don't exactly favor the GOP is no big surprise to me. Despite what populists might have you believe, CEOs of large businesses have always held Bush in fairly low regard because he seemed out to lunch on trade issues and didn't quite understand the importance of maintaining research and development support which has slipped dramatically during his tenure.

A few years ago, in fact, I wrote a cover story for Chief Executive in which we surveyed C-level executives on the subscription list. Overall, the Bushies got a "C-minus." The mainstream media tends to paint Bush as being the man of big business, but it isn't necessarily so.

(Image courtesy BarackObama.com)