President Barack Obama’s speech at the Cooper Union in New York in late April – where he asked the banking community to work with his administration to bring in financial reform – was attended by many of the leading bankers on Wall Street.
The Cooper Union’s location – in New York’s East Village – is not one that many Wall Street titans frequent. The site has, however, been popular with many US presidents seeking to stand on the platform on which Abraham Lincoln gave one of his most famous speeches on the issue of slavery in 1860, before he was elected president.
"There is no dividing line between Wall Street and Main Street," the president told an audience that included many luminaries from the banking industry.
There was, seemingly, a clear divide between those who chose to wait in line to enter the building and those who jumped the queue.
One prominent banker who did queue – he was quick to mention the fact that he was standing with two of Obama’s senior advisers while doing so – remarked to Euromoney on the fact that other Wall Street titans were jumping out of their limousines surrounded by their entourages and barging straight into the building.
This prompted one of Obama’s advisers to lament: "Will these people never learn?"
No, they probably won’t.