The Wall Street Journal wonders whether [1] Wall Street denizens are upset that all their campaign contributions to Congress through the years, and their recent generosity to Sens. McCain and Obama haven't yet bought them their bailout. Congress is still bickering over the $700 billion check they're about to write, and the financial services industry is left wondering just how much it takes to buy a favor around here.

Wall Street has seen no small return on its campaign cash through the years but perhaps the favors do not flow forth from the spigot with the same speed they used to:

Financiers have donated millions of dollars for Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, let alone the funds given to various House and Senate candidates. And sophisticated Wall Streeters surely know that when they make campaign contributions, they aren’t paying for specific policies as much as access.


What Wall Street didn’t want was to be the campaign season’s favorite political pinata. If the finance industry was largely ignored by the two candidates in their public speeches before, it now is getting only unwanted attention.

[. . .]


Neither Obama nor McCain have had much public influence on the Congressional bailout. Still, if Wall Street was hoping to influence the passage of the $700 billion Paulson plan, it will be tough sledding. The plan appears set to go through with two provisions that would be decidedly unfriendly to any financial institution that takes the government’s money: a limit on executive pay and mechanisms allowing the government to profit on its investments in financial institutions.

Note to investment banker types: next time spend that money on a basic accounting class.