Wall Street is abandoning President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party:

Daniel S. Loeb, the hedge fund manager, was one of Barack Obama’s biggest backers in the 2008 presidential campaign.

A registered Democrat, Mr. Loeb has given and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democrats. Less than a year ago, he was considered to be among the Wall Street elite still close enough to the White House to be invited to a speech in Lower Manhattan, where President Obama outlined the need for a financial regulatory overhaul.

So it came as quite a surprise on Friday, when Mr. Loeb sent a letter to his investors that sounded as if he were preparing to join Glenn Beck in Washington over the weekend...

Over the weekend, the letter, with quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan and President Obama, was forwarded around the circles of the moneyed elite, from the Hamptons to Silicon Valley. Mr. Loeb’s jeremiad illustrates how some of the president’s former friends on Wall Street and in business now feel about Washington.

Mr. Loeb isn’t the first Wall Streeter to turn on the president. Steven A. Cohen, founder of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors and a supporter of the Obama campaign, recently held a meeting with Republican candidates in his home in Greenwich, Conn., to strategize about the midterm elections, according to Absolute Return magazine.

These banksters are turning their backs on President Obama and the Democratic Party because they're not carrying their water. Instead, the President and the Democratic Congress are standing up to Wall Street and holding them accountable.

Feeling burned by Obama, the Wall Street banksters turning to the Republicans and filling their campaign coffers because today's Republican Party is the party of Wall Street.

Reuters describes Elizabeth Warren as Wall Street's worst nightmare:

Elizabeth Warren is folksy and plain-spoken and favors cardigans over Washington power suits. Many on Wall Street view her as their worst nightmare but she is a hero to liberal activists and consumer groups...

On Wall Street, "there is very strong dislike of her and what she might do," said Bert Ely, a banking consultant in Alexandria, Virginia.

The banksters are against Elizabeth Warren because they know she'll stand up to their excesses and hold them accountable. Even the conservative, Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post concedes that Warren is the one for the job:

So far, Warren's detractors are finding it difficult to identify anyone more viable than the 61-year-old scholar. She is chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel -- a five-member Washington agency charged with reviewing how effectively the US Treasury and other government agencies allocated the taxpayer-funded rescue packages.

Where do you stand? Do you stand with the banksters? Or, do you want a powerful watchdog looking out for our interests at the CFPA?

Wall Street is pouring money into the campaign coffers of the Republican Party. The Republicans stood up for Wall Street on Capitol Hill, and, Wall Street is paying them back:

Financial firms and the people who work for them are increasingly donating their political cash to Republicans, according to a preliminary Center for Responsive Politics analysis of second-quarter federal campaign finance data.

The Center's preliminary study indicates that political action committees and individuals associated with the broad finance, insurance and real estate sector have given more money to federal-level Republican interests during every month since December. The gap continued to grow during that time, reaching its widest point in June...

Contribution trends toward Republicans is particularly pronounced in the securities and investment industry, the Center finds...

The Republicans stand up for Wall Street. So, Wall Street is standing up for the Republicans.

...that's how much Wall Street spent trying to defeat and water down real reform.

The financial industry has spent $251 million on lobbying so far this year as lawmakers hammered out new rules of the road for Wall Street, according to the latest lobbying reports compiled by a watchdog group.

The financial sector spent more than any other special interest group from April through the end of June -- a whopping $126 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' latest estimates. Wall Street banks, as well as insurance and real estate firms, hiked the amount they spent on lobbying by 12% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.

"Financial reform certainly drove Wall Street lobbying efforts," said Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. "Even as the economy remains beaten and bruised, with some financial institutions continuing to struggle, most banks and securities houses found it in their budgets to hire lobbyists - and lots of them."

The usual suspects spent the most:

In the first half of 2010, Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) spent $2.7 million, just $100,000 shy of the total the firm spent on lobbying in all of 2009. The firm's reports to the federal government said it lobbied Treasury, White House and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as well as Congress.

Other banks also flexed their muscle on Capitol Hill this year. Citigroup Inc. (C, Fortune 500) spent $3 million and Bank of America Corp. (BAC, Fortune 500) spent $2.1 million on lobbying during the first half of this year, the Center for Responsive Politics reports.

Banking and financial lobbying groups are among the heavy hitters so far in 2010. The American Bankers Association (ABA) has spent $4.5 million and the Financial Services Roundtable has spent $4.2 million on lobbying so far this year, while the Securities Industry & Financial Market Association (SIFMA) has spent $2.8 million.

They tried their hardest, but, in the end, the power of people defeated Wall Street's millions.

Good:

With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners. Now, the federal authority on banker pay says that nearly 80 percent of that sum was unmerited.

In a report to be released on Friday, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master for executive compensation, is expected to name 17 financial companies that made questionable payouts totaling $1.58 billion immediately after accepting billions of dollars of taxpayer aid, according to two government officials with knowledge of his findings who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the report.

The group includes Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs [GS 147.66 1.11 (+0.76%) ], JPMorgan Chase [JPM 39.76 0.41 (+1.04%) ] and the American International Group [AIG 36.8693 0.3793 (+1.04%) ] as well as small lenders like Boston Private Financial Holdings [BPFH 7.00 0.15 (+2.19%) ]. Mr. Feinberg’s report points to companies that he says paid eye-popping amounts or used haphazard criteria for awarding bonuses, the people with knowledge of his findings said, and he has singled out Citigroup [C 4.03 -0.06 (-1.47%) ] as the biggest offender.

Millions of Americans suffered because of the financial games the banks played. We bailed them out. And, now, they're laughing all the way to the bank. These banksters need to be held accountable. We must continue to push for reform.