Read Fixers for Free Online Page B

thought she’s supposed to be the Street’s bitch. Weren’t you at that big fundraiser a couple of weeks ago?”
    “I was. Strictly to have a look. I kicked in my statutory $3,800 just to stay in the hand. But the closer I listened, the more I had second thoughts. There’s something about her I just don’t trust. She’s almost
too
political.”
    I knew what he meant. This is a woman known for, shall we say, a certain moral flexibility. The country’s still trying to figure out where she stands on the mess in Iraq. And like most really ambitious politicians, she has a long memory. A very long memory. No slight, whether intended or unintended, goes unremembered.
    What Mankoff’s heard is that she secretly hates Wall Street for persuading her husband to dump her elaborate health-care scheme on the grounds that it would be a budget-killer, an episode that left her looking like a complete fool. On top of that, there’s the obscene wealth garnered by the Street in the wake of the deregulatory bill of goods pushed on her husband by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his principal stooges, Harley Winters, the big-shot economist, and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. With the rich getting richer while the middle-class goes nowhere (just check out the wage statistics), there’s a political opportunity too juicy to pass up. If there’s a crisis for which Wall Street can be blamed, she’ll blame Wall Street and call out the tumbrels of reregulation. That the bulk of the deregulation occurred on her husband’s watch and with his support won’t affect her campaign rhetoric. Politicians like her live strictly in and of the moment. They put aside their deepest long-range yearnings—with the Clintons that’s obviously money—for near-term tactical advantage.
    Right now, she’s making nice with the Street, and the Street’s making nice back, but what bothers Mankoff is that her inner circle—the Wall Streeters closest to her, people like Roger Altman, Alan Patricof, and Steven Rattner—aren’t really Wall Street souls. They make it plain that they consider themselves to be of a higher order of moral and intellectual being. They’re the sort “who pound the pulpit with the same hand they use to endorse the check,” as a friend of mine puts it.
    Mankoff then got to the crux of the matter. If a crisis comes, Mankoff told me, it’s likely to be so big that only Uncle Sam will have pockets deep enough to stave off total calamity. The Street’s going to want—it’s going to need—a big dollop of the people’s full faith and credit to bail itself out, a process unlikely to win the approval of an electorate howling for Wall Street blood. And there’ll be Mrs. Clinton: Joan of Arc in a pantsuit instead of chain mail.
    So Hillary Clinton has got to be headed off. Capitol Hill is pretty well bought and paid for, no worries there, but wherever one turns one sees what some call “regulatory capture,” which is Stockholm Syndrome in reverse—in this case, the captors submit to their victims. The SEC and public-private finance schemes like Fannie Mae and its siblings are run by people who’ve stood by and let Wall Street have its way while they polish their CVs in anticipation of lucrative private-sector employment. Still, the picture isn’t complete without the White House.
    Now, you and I might, out of innocence or resignation, argue that those who caused the damage should pay for at least a significant part of it, but that’s not the way the Street thinks. This may not sound fair, but “fair” is one of those words—like “right,” “wrong,” and “conscience”—that are not to be found in the Official Wall Street Lexicon. Say any of those words to your average “big-swinging-dick” trader and they look at you like you’re speaking Swahili. The same goes for certain phrases that were integralto the moral vocabulary of my father’s generation—notions like “civic responsibility” and