27th January 2012

Photo

Elite Wall Street Donations Jumped 700% in the Last 20 Years

By Derek Thompson

Banks “frankly own the place,” Sen. Dick Durbin famously said of Washington during the debate over financial regulation in 2010. And when it comes to total contributions for big donors, you can see what he’s talking about (FIRE = the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector):
Most of the FIRE growth is coming from the securities and investment sector, followed by real estate, Lee Drutman writes at the Sunlight Foundation, elaborating here:

In 1990, 412 of the 1,091 elite donors from the finance industry came from the securities and investment industry, followed by 328 from real estate; by 2010, it was 2,178 from securities and investments, followed by 1,468 from real estate. In 1990, elite donors from securities and investments contributed $6.1 million and elite donors from real estate contributed $4.6 million. In 2010 elite donors from securities and investments contributed $84.0 million, while real estate donors contributed $44.5 million.”

So, in a 20-year period when the financial sector’s share of the economy expanded by a third, from 6% to 8.4% of GDP, donations from this particular group increased by 700%.

Source: The Atlantic