Even Goldman Sachs Has Bailed on Bush

Jeb Bush turned out to be such a bad investment for bankers at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that the hundreds of thousands of dollars they threw at him has become a company joke. At least one senior person at the firm likes to remind his colleagues that their donations to his White House race haven’t worked out so well.

Following that misfire, along with a beating the Wall Street bank has taken from both sides in this year’s presidential race, contributions from employees of one of the most politically connected companies in the U.S. have plummeted. After donating almost $900,000 in the first half of 2015 to four favorite candidates and their fundraising committees, the firm’s bankers gave about $243,000 in the second half, Federal Election Commission filings released Sunday show.

Marco Rubio took over from Bush as the preferred candidate of Goldman Sachs donors, who gave the Florida senator about $118,000 in the second half of 2015, almost twice what he got in the first six months. Even so, the sum wasn’t close to the more than $700,000 that bankers at the firm gave Bush and his fundraising groups in the first half of the year. Their contributions plunged in the second half to about $47,000.

“It’s like buying a stock and watching it fall,” said Steven Shafran, a former Goldman Sachs partner who contributed to Bush’s super PAC and was a senior adviser at the Treasury Department to Hank Paulson, once the head of the bank. “Putting good money after bad? He certainly has enough for now. I think people are waiting to see if there’s someone they can support and who has a chance to win. If Jeb has a good New Hampshire, my guess is Goldman guys will pile back in again.”




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http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-01/goldman-sachs-wallets-closing-after-bankers-bets-on-bush-sour