The Indomitable Investor: Why a Few Succeed in the Stock Market When Everyone Else Fails

Revolving Doors

Government attacks corporations and banks by passing laws that limit their operations. Corporate America uses lobbyists and strategic campaign contributions to weaken those laws. The most helpful congressmen and senators are richly rewarded. Consider Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator. He led efforts to deregulate the banking industry. He was instrumental in abolishing the 1933 law that prohibited commercial banks from owning investment banks, which helped create the “too big to fail” syndrome that now defines Wall Street and hangs over the global market. Gramm opposed efforts to regulate derivatives that figured so prominently in the 2007 credit crisis. When Gramm left Washington, he joined UBS, a major Swiss bank formed in 1998 by the merger of Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation.

Steve Bartlett, a former Texas congressman who helped deregulate Wall Street in the 1980s, is the head of the Financial Services Roundtable. The group represents 100 of the nation’s largest financial institutions, including Blackrock, Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments, Ford Motor Credit Company, General Electric, and NASDAQ OMX, the exchange company. Bartlett reportedly earns about $2 million annually, far more than the approximately $174,000 salary of the average congressmen, to lead a group that often fights against regulation. Few people fare as well as politicians who were germane to Wall Street. The less-exalted citizenry is left in the same position after ...