The failure of several financial titans to appear at the White House to meet with President Obama yesterday is being played by some as a sign that the balance of power between the banks and the federal government has shifted back to the big banks now that they've repaid their bailout money.

Earlier Tuesday Huffington Post, for instance, went with the big banner headline "Bankers Put Obama On Hold."

Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, John Mack of Morgan Stanley and Richard Parsons of Citigroup were no-shows because fog delayed their departure from New York. They did phone in.

As Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in the New York Times:

President Obama didn't exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. "Well, I appreciate you guys calling in," he began the meeting at the White House with Wall Street's top brass on Monday...

... But inevitably public perception will issue its harsh ruling, and it goes something like this: If the meeting were really that important to Mr. Blankfein, Mr. Mack and Mr. Parsons, they would have found a way to get there.

 

They would have left the night before, or they would have flown out at the crack of dawn, or better yet, taken Amtrak (I called customer service, and the Acela was running only a couple of minutes late).

In fairness, there is little question that they wanted to be there and seemed genuinely disappointed they couldn't make it. (You could hear it in Mr. Mack and Mr. Blankfein's voice when they got on the call. "Mr. President, we're upset we're not able to be there, but we're on line with you now," Mr. Mack said. "It's certainly not for a lack of effort," Mr. Blankfein quickly followed up.)

But this missed meeting clearly didn't help their case.

It does seem like if you run one of the nation's biggest banks, you should be able to figure out how to get the 205 miles as the crow flies from New York to the nation's capital to meet with the president of the U.S. They literally phoned it in.

It's hard to believe that if the three of them had been competing against each other to acquire a coveted bank that they would have let fog get in the way of completing the mission.

So they probably didn't try as hard as they could've since few people ever really go out of their way to face the music. Or for a photo op, if they're the not the ones benefiting from same.

If nothing else, maybe their failure to get to Washington will make them more understanding the next time one of their senior executives can't make it to an important meeting with a client because of weather and the business goes elsewhere. But I kind of doubt it.

In terns of the balance of power shifting to Wall Street from Washington, was there ever any doubt that was going to happen? Tom Wolfe didn't call these guys masters of the universe for nothing.

And it was James Carville, talking generally of the money men, who famously said:

"I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."