Institutional Investor used to run an article every few years monitoring the traffic between Washington and Wall Street. Texans always bulked large in the piece. Joe Conason had a piece in Harpers around election time that connected a lot of intra-Texas dots. Texas private equity/investment partnership types differ from New York mafiosi only in preference in footwear and choice of conveyance - they're all dragging each other in on their respective rackets, make sure to kick some money upstairs.
Check out the Top 10 career patrons of Bush and Bill Bradley. Bradley got money from the usual suspects: Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Disney, etc. The chief backer in Bush's Larouche-like perma-fund-raising effort is Enron, followed by nine companies unknown to most people, almost all of which are based in Texas or have serious interests there. You've got securities law and energy deregulation specialists Arter & Hadden; the Wyly, Sanchez, and Bass families; and several investment banks and buyout firms, most notable Hicks Muse Tate, whose head, Tom Hicks, also spews University of Texas pension money in the direction of any Bush supporter with a quarter-assed investment scheme. It's all very incestuous, very questionable, and very much worse than elsewhere.
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