Donald Trump may not have done much yet for the coal miners and factory workers he pledged to champion, but he has made shareholders of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. richer by $25-billion (U.S.).
That is the amount by which the collective value of the bank's stock has soared in the three months since the U.S. election.
To be fair, Goldman is not unique in this regard. Like other U.S. banks, its shares have rocketed because investors expect the new administration to rip up regulations put in place after the financial crisis to limit lenders' riskier adventures.
But what makes Goldman stand out is that it's Goldman alumni who are spearheading the deregulation.
Gary Cohn, former Goldman president, is now the President's chief economic adviser, while ex-Goldman partner Steve Mnuchin has been picked to head the Treasury Department and former Goldman investment banker Steve Bannon serves as Mr. Trump's chief strategist.
That's a hefty level of representation even for an enterprise sometimes known as Government Sachs because of its penchant for sending people into public service.
The sheer number of former Goldmanites in the White House reinforces the impression that the new administration will display an ingrained tendency to conclude that what is good for Goldman is good for the country.
Investors, no matter what their political opinions, should be asking whether the bank that increasingly seems to be running the United States government is well positioned for even more gains ahead.
Half the 30 analysts who follow Goldman think so. They rate the stock as a "buy," according to Bloomberg. Only two call it a "sell," while the rest consider it a "hold."
The bulls' case makes some sense. Despite a nearly 30-per-cent jump in the share price since election day, Goldman still trades for only 1.3 times book value, less than half what it did in the palmy pre-crisis days.
Many of the investors who have driven up Goldman's share price appear to be counting on a return to those good old days. More specifically, they're counting on Mr. Cohn and his colleagues to demolish the Dodd-Frank law, which was passed after the housing crash as a way to restrict banks' activities and monitor lenders more closely.
If all the rules governing financial institutions were to revert to pre-crisis standards, Goldman's profit would nearly certainly jump and shares would surge in tandem.
But here's where investors may be getting ahead of themselves.
While the new administration can take aim at Dodd-Frank, it's by no means clear that Goldman or other banks will benefit as much as some people think.
For starters, any effort to repeal Dodd-Frank will face stiff opposition in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass. Republicans hold only 52 seats.
Even if Dodd-Frank were to be repealed, banks might not love its replacement. The Republicans' leading alternative is called the Financial Choice Act. It involves an interesting tradeoff for financial institutions.
"The core of the Choice Act offers a clever carrot: Much less regulation in return for much more capital," says John Cochrane, a finance professor at the University of Chicago.
Banks usually hate the idea of being forced to hold more equity capital – that is, money from shareholders – because financial institutions depend on using large amounts of borrowed money to amplify returns to shareholders. The more equity capital a bank must hold, the less it can benefit from borrowed money, and the lower its returns on equity.
This is a sore point, especially for Goldman. Its returns on equity have faded in recent years, languishing at or just above single-digit levels, a far cry from the 20 per cent or higher returns that it used to consider common.
Replacing Dodd-Frank with the Financial Choice Act is far from being a clear-cut winner for Goldman or other banks. And it still leaves them susceptible to international regulation, in the form of so-called Basel agreements, which are pushing banks worldwide to hold more equity capital.
It takes a brave investor to bet on precisely how this regulatory spaghetti will eventually be untangled.
For now, most of us may want to take our cue from bankers themselves.
The Wall Street Journal reported in late January that executives at some of the biggest Wall Street banks have sold nearly $100-million worth of stock since the election.
They appear to be betting that the sector's epic postelection run is largely over.