The Lehman Brothers building is pictured in New York
The Lehman Brothers building is pictured in New York (Joshua Lott Reuters, / September 15, 2008)
     
    Michael ErmanReuters
    6:07 a.m. CDT, September 15, 2013

    NEW YORK (Reuters) - A few years ago, Larry Summers, then the director of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council, held a private meeting with some of Wall Street's top bankers and executives.

    Although the worst of the financial crisis was over by then, Summers - now seen as a candidate to be the next chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve - chastised bankers for being out of touch, saying they didn't understand how angry average Americans were with them, according to a participant in the meeting.

    A spokeswoman for Summers said it sounded like something he might have said, though she did not provide more specific confirmation.

    Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and two years after the start of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Wall Street has drastically changed under an onslaught of new regulations and by some accounts become more conscious of its image on Main Street.

    Still, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Main Street animus against bankers and their role in the financial crisis persists. (Click on http://link.reuters.com/sud23v for the results)

    The anti-Wall Street sentiment bodes ill for the sector: It serves to pressure lawmakers and regulators into further restraining perceived excesses on Wall Street, threatening the long-term profitability of the industry.

    'NOTHING'S REALLY CHANGED'

    The poll of more than 1,400 adults, representing a cross-section of the U.S. population, shows that half of the respondents believe there has not been enough reform to prevent a future crisis.

    As many as 44 percent of those polled believe the government should not have bailed out financial institutions, while only 22 percent thought it was the right move. Fifty-three percent think not enough was done to prosecute bankers; 15 percent were satisfied with the effort.

    Henry Paulson, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary who was the architect of the bailouts in 2008, said he believes the government botched its chance to portray them as a necessity for the financial stability of all Americans.

    "I never was able to convince the average American that what we did with these rescues wasn't for Wall Street but it was for them," Paulson said in an interview.

    "To understand the financial system, it's a little like plumbing in your house - you don't know where the pipes are and you just realize it when the pipes get clogged and everything grinds to a halt."

    Among those polled, the concerns go deeper.

    "I can't see any reforms they've done. Nothing's really changed," said Judith Klatt, 67, a retiree from Wisconsin who responded to the survey. "I'm angry at the government and Wall Street. I think they've both, in plain language, screwed the public and are still doing so."

    A WORSE CRISIS FORESTALLED

    Many financial experts believe bailouts of financial institutions after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and subsequent actions by the U.S. government to prop up the economy helped stop the country's spiral into what could have been a crisis even as dire as the Great Depression. New regulations, including the Dodd-Frank finance reform law and Basel III capital rules, have also forced Wall Street to rein in risky behavior.

    And while Wall Street gets poor scores on many questions, the results of the poll are not as damning as some polls about attitudes to Wall Street taken soon after the financial crisis.

    Lindsay Owens, a Stanford University doctoral student who has tracked American attitudes toward Wall Street, said animosity toward the financial sector reached its highest level in 40 years in 2010. When it declined slightly in 2012, the level was still higher than it had been in that period before the crisis, she said. (There is no direct previous comparison to the Reuters/Ipsos poll.)

    The cost of the crisis has been severe. A paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimated that the financial crisis and the recession cost the U.S. economy as much as $14 trillion, or about $120,000 for every household.