Long-Term Capital Management [1] was run by PHDs and Nobel laureates. And as far I understood you basically need to be at least at the PhD level in order to be a quaint on Wall Street, and for better or for worse Wall Street runs West's very financialized economy, it's not the politicians (see for example how a recent British prime-minister who had to back up and then quickly resign when her decisions were not viewed under a good light by said financial markets)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management
They were always run by politicians, oligarchs, capitalists and interest groups.