Street girds for role as White House battleground

Published Wed, Mar 2 201612:19 PM EST

Breakingviews

Gina Chon

Wall Street is girding for its role as the White House battleground. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have emerged from the 12-state-wide primary elections on so-called Super Tuesday as their parties' likely presidential candidates. Both have ties to high finance that leave them vulnerable. That will be fodder for heated attacks and even wayward campaign promises. Clinton's rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, has already harangued her for giving paid speeches for Goldman Sachs and other banks – asserting it shows she would be soft on Wall Street if she won the Oval Office. Her awkward attempts to explain receiving $225,000 for just one gig did not help. Trump is likely to be much more vicious about it – just as he hammered his Republican rival, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for borrowing up to $1 million from Goldman Sachs and Citi for his 2012 Senate campaign. There's more than enough ammo for Clinton to fire back. After all, Trump has relied on Wall Street for most of his business career – including for funds each of the four times his businesses went bankrupt. Deutsche Bank has lent $170 million for his latest project – a luxury hotel in Washington, D.C.. More from Breakingviews : JD tests limits of Amazon's "jam tomorrow" model The chances are this will spill over into bashing the business of finance itself. Both Trump and Clinton have already taken aim at Wall Street. The billionaire has focused on one-liners rather than policy specifics, whereas Clinton has said no finance executive should be too big to jail and aims to curb shadow banks that fall through the regulators' cracks. Bankers, of course, have become resigned to being the whipping boys for politicians of both parties over the past few years – though the prospect that even more new rules may be floated purely for electoral expediency will worry them. The uncertainty, though, is precisely what markets hate. The prospect of Trump becoming a viable candidate may have already contributed to the recent market slump, according to Reuters. There may be more trouble ahead. For more independent commentary and analysis from Reuters Breakingviews, visit breakingviews.com .

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