Wall Street Despised in Poll Showing Majority Want Regulation

March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Americans are leery about creating a new federal agency to make consumer-protection rules for mortgages and credit cards and would prefer to enhance the existing powers of banking regulators.

Most people interviewed in the Bloomberg National Poll say they don’t like Wall Street, banks or insurance companies and favor letting the government punish bankers who helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Almost seven out of 10 people surveyed support using current bank regulators for consumer protection, backing positions held by the financial industry and Republicans over President Barack Obama’s proposal to establish an independent agency.

“People are generally satisfied with the way consumer protection has worked with banks,” said Ernie Patrikis, a partner specializing in banking supervision at the White & Case LLP law firm in New York. “Most Americans could care less about redoing the financial regulatory structure.”

The poll’s findings come as the White House and congressional Democrats pivot to focus more election-year attention on an unpopular political target -- banks and Wall Street -- following this week’s victory on health-care legislation.

As the country struggles with a 9.7 percent unemployment rate while financial stocks surge, 57 percent of Americans have a mostly unfavorable or very unfavorable view of Wall Street, versus fewer than one-quarter who have a favorable opinion. Banks are viewed badly by 54 percent of poll respondents, and 60 percent have a negative opinion of insurance companies.

Disdain for Executives

The poll also shows most Americans don’t like the nation’s top corporate bosses. Almost two-thirds say they have an unfavorable opinion of business executives, a rating that rivals the public’s disdain for Congress, which was viewed with disfavor by 67 percent of respondents.

The poll of 1,002 U.S. adults was conducted March 19-22 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Low esteem for financial firms was reflected in resentment of big paychecks on Wall Street.

Fifty-six percent of those polled say they would support government action to limit compensation of those who helped cause the financial crisis, or to ban those people from working in the banking industry.

“The amount of money that people on Wall Street make seems to be really out of bounds,” said Laure Sinclair, 52, a part- time accountant who lives in Dallas. “But I don’t know that the government can regulate that because we want to be a capitalist society.”

Consumer Protection

Obama’s proposal for a stand-alone consumer agency has been a main sticking point in negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans on broader legislation to increase oversight of Wall Street.

The Senate Banking Committee on March 22 approved a bill by Senator Christopher Dodd, the panel’s chairman and a Connecticut Democrat, to set up a consumer-protection bureau at the Federal Reserve with the authority to write and enforce rules. Obama continues to make the agency a priority as part of what would be the biggest overhaul of the system policing Wall Street since the 1930s.

“By creating a new consumer agency, we will finally set and enforce clear rules of the road across the financial marketplace,” Obama said in a March 22 statement. “I will continue to fight to strengthen the bill and against attempts to undermine the independence of this agency.”

Populist Ire

As Democrats and Republicans seek to tap populist ire, the poll shows there may be political advantage in taking on big financial institutions such as Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp., and New York’s Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The majority of poll participants -- 56 percent -- say big financial companies are more interested in enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary people, while 40 percent say such firms play a vital role in enabling the economy to grow.

At the same time, Americans are divided over the scope of government regulation. More than 40 percent of Americans say the government has gone too far in measures to fix the financial industry; 37 percent say it hasn’t done enough. Almost six out of 10 people say Wall Street hasn’t gone far enough on its own to protect against future emergencies.

“Anything the government gets their fingers in, they mess it up,” said poll participant Norman White, 60, a community college electronics instructor who lives in Colfax, Louisiana. “I don’t have a very high opinion of the government running anything.”

Views of Fed

The Fed could use some marketing help, the poll shows. More than a quarter of participants don’t have an opinion about the central bank, while 42 percent have a favorable view and 31 percent hold an unfavorable view.

While gloomy about the nation’s economic outlook, most Americans believe there is little chance in the next few years of another financial upheaval like the 2008 crisis that caused a near collapse of the U.S. banking industry. While 42 percent say they think such a scenario is at least fairly likely, 57 percent say it is only somewhat likely or not likely at all.

To see methodology and exact question wording, click on the attachment tab at the top of the story.

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