Politicians Protect Their Big Business Donors From Competition Through Regulations That Create Barriers To Entry Under The Guise Of Protecting The Public

From The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, "Hillary’s Wall Street Reckoning: Clinton struggles to explain why Goldman paid her $675,000:"

The long-standing arrangement between Democrats and financial giants like Goldman is that the politicians collect money and get to pose as populists by publicly attacking the big banks, and in return the big banks enjoy high regulatory barriers that prevent smaller firms from competing with them. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has perfected this bargain, which may have reached its zenith with the Dodd-Frank law of 2010, which brought Wall Street giants and Washington into a historically intimate embrace.

Yes, Wall Streeters love to complain about Dodd-Frank, but they also know it virtually ensures that no upstart finance company in the Midwest is going to challenge Goldman’s position in global finance. "More intense regulatory and technology requirements have raised the barriers to entry higher than at any other time in modern history," said Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein last year. "This is an expensive business to be in, if you don’t have the market share in scale."
***But according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which maintains a searchable database of contributions reported to the Federal Election Commission, the securities and investment industry is Mrs. Clinton’s single greatest source of support. Financiers have given her campaign and other pro-Clinton political operations more than $17 million, compared with a little less than $78,000 for Mr. Sanders.