2016 Election: Do These Presidential Candidates Have Ties to Wall Street?

Wall Street ties to our nation's capital are more prevalent than ever as the 2016 election approaches.

Sure, the "Washington-Wall Street Corruption Corridor" was exposed for what it is when the financial crisis came to a head in 2009, but only one Wall Street exec was ever actually convicted. (Credit Suisse Group AG's former global head of structured credit, Kareem Serageldin, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Nov. 22, 2013 for his role in a scheme to artificially inflate subprime mortgage bond prices.)

Most of them are still in the game - the same politicians and policymakers; the same bankers and CEOs.

Does this 2016 Presidential Candidate Have Ties to Wall Street?

2016 Election Candidate Hillary ClintonWe had to shake our heads when we saw the tactic the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign decided to run with the week following her bid announcement on April 12.

She would attempt to be cast as "Hillary Clinton, the Populist."

In a New York Times profile published April 21, Sen. Clinton called for a "toppling" of the 1%. Here's an excerpt from that piece:

"In a meeting with economists this year, Mrs. Clinton intensely studied a chart that showed income inequality in the United States. The graph charted how real wages, adjusted for inflation, had increased exponentially for the wealthiest Americans, making the bar so steep it hardly fit on the chart.

Mrs. Clinton pointed at the top category and said the economy required a "toppling" of the wealthiest 1 percent, according to several people who were briefed on her policy discussions but could not discuss private conversations for attribution."

But as The Anti-Media founder Nick Bernabe was quick to point out in an April 21 op-ed, toppling the 1% would not be in the best interest of the people who've bankrolled Sen. Clinton's rise toward the nation's top position.

Just look at the weighty names on this list of Hillary Clinton's biggest campaign contributors over her career since 1989:

Hillary Clinton 2016 Election Top Contributors

There's a reason Clinton's wealthy, 1%-category donors won't be pulling their contributions out of fear of toppling. They see no bite behind her bark, according to a recent Politicoarticle.

"But back in Manhattan, the hedge fund managers who've long been part of her political and fundraising networks aren't sweating the putdown and aren't worrying about their take-home pay just yet," Politico reported on April 15. "It's 'just politics,' said one major Democratic donor on Wall Street, explaining that some of Clinton's Wall Street supporters doubt she would push hard for closing the carried-interest loophole as president, a policy she promoted when she last ran in 2008."

Projections have the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign raising roughly $2 billion.

Wall Street ties will fuel most of it - the big banks and hedge funds, and their lobbyists.

Martin O'Malley's Ties to Wall Street

O'Malley is quick to point out Jeb Bush and Clinton's Wall Street ties - and the campaign contributions do bring validity to these criticisms - but he wasn't afraid to take these same banks' money when he was chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Martin O'Malley 2016 Election"He obviously didn't have a problem with them when it came to raising money for the Democratic Governors Association," Marta Mossburg, a visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, told Money Morning. "Being chair for two years gave him great access to very large donors, including financial services firms."

From December 2010 to December 2012, under O'Malley's tutelage, the DGA raised $334,350 from a long list of "Wall Street bullies" that includes Citigroup, Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), JPMorgan, Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), and the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. (NYSE: RBS), according to OpenSecrets.org.

Interestingly enough, Goldman Sachs - the investment bank he highlighted in his speech - was not on that list.

But one name absent from O'Malley's speech was Wells Fargo & Co., which donated $20,000 to the DGA during his chairmanship.

Wells Fargo is a name that should resonate well with the citizens of Baltimore, where O'Malley was mayor from 1999 to 2007.

In 2012 the commercial banking giant had to settle a nationwide $175 million lawsuit on charges that its mortgage lenders engaged in discriminatory lending practices.

Of that settlement, $7.5 million went to settling claims in Baltimore that alleged Wells Fargo gave unfavorable rates to minority borrowers and steered them into subprime home loans.

Wells Fargo admitted no fault. They merely were "settling this matter ... to avoid a long and costly legal fight and to instead devote our resources to continuing to contribute to the country's housing recovery," according to the Baltimore Sun.

O'Malley wrote in a Des Moines Register op-ed in March that the United States should "force the banks who break the law to admit their actions and face consequences."

In 2012 he had that opportunity with Wells Fargo.

Instead, when given the bully pulpit - in Baltimore, nonetheless - he chose to point the finger at Goldman Sachs, one of Clinton's biggest donors.

And it begs the question, is he really going to go after Wall Street, or just his opponents' paymasters?