FORTUNE — Wall Street and Obama are not quite ready to kiss and make up. But they’re trying, sort of.
On Thursday, Valerie Jarrett, a top advisor to President Obama, appeared at the SALT conference, the hedge-fund confab being held this week in Las Vegas. The conference, which is one of Wall Street’s most prominent get-togethers, has hosted George W. Bush in the past and is a regular stop for political operative Karl Rove.
The president is apparently trying to win over this particular crowd. Jarrett is the first member of the Obama Administration to attend the conference, which launched in 2009. Jarrett told the audience that she believes Wall Street and President Obama are on the same page.
Needless to say, this is not Obama’s — or Jarrett’s — home turf. Back in 2009, Jarrett pushed President Obama to meet with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, eventually leading to his eponymous rule that is just about universally hated on Wall Street. In 2011, Jarrett was the focus of a Politico attack piece based on dozens of unnamed Wall Street sources who claimed that Jarrett was clueless when it came to business matters.
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At the conference, Jarrett said that an infrastructure bank to create jobs, corporate tax changes, new patent laws, and immigration reform were on the top of the president’s to-do list. And she said the administration has been reaching out to investors around the world to draw more money into U.S. markets.
Jarrett got a polite, if not enthusiastic, response from the crowd. An explanation of why the U.S. needs to raise the federal minimum wage, something the president has been focused on recently, got a smattering of applause around the room.
Besides a spot on centerstage at the event, Anthony Scaramucci, the host of the conference, invited Jarrett to a small private dinner on Wednesday night. At the dinner were top hedge fund managers including David Tepper, as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and General David Petraeus, who were all speaking at the conference, along with a dozen others or so. Scaramucci says Jarrett got a welcome reception. Scaramucci told the attendees at the dinner that, while there have been some bumps in the road, Washington and Wall Street have never been more aligned.
On Thursday, working the conference, Scaramucci told me he had come to that conclusion by taking a “barometer” of SALT attendees. “It’s not like with Ronald Reagan, but there is more kumbaya than before,” says Scaramucci, who, like many on Wall Street, has long admired Reagan.
A few minutes later, Karl Rove stopped by to shake Scaramucci’s hand. Rove said he didn’t see any common ground between Wall Street and Washington. “Alright, I disagree with him,” says Scaramucci. “That’s his opinion.”
Other Wall Streeters at the conference seemed to agree with Rove. John Burbank, who runs Passport Capital and successfully bet against banks during the financial crisis, said that he spent a lot of time trying to understand Washington in 2009 and making donations. But now, he says he has basically given up on D.C. “If anything, Washington and Wall Street are farther apart,” says Burbank. “Obama doesn’t understand how the economy works.”
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A number of other people at the conference called Jarrett’s talk political rhetoric aimed at helping Democrats in the next election. Hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman, who attended the dinner with Jarrett on Wednesday night, says he doesn’t get the sense of newfound cooperation between the government and the finance industry. “I don’t see any evidence of it,” says Cooperman.
Recently, Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine reported that the top 25 hedge fund managers made a little over $21 billion last year. Vox.com’s Matt Ygleseias quipped that that was more than double the combined salary of all kindergarten teachers in the U.S. On Thursday, Jarrett said, “Everyone in this room has been successful, but there are a lot of people who have been left behind. That’s what keeps the president up at night.”
The day before, James Dinan, who manages the $22 billion hedge fund York Capital, was on the same stage. “I sleep pretty well,” he said.
