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One senior banker, who has long supported Mrs. Clinton, said: "The reality is that she might have to tack left a little for the party. What I don't know is whether she will stay there or double back."

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Another banker said of her comment: "I doubt she meant that."

Ari Fleischer, a press secretary for President George W. Bush, took to Twitter: "Sometimes you have to wonder if Hillary really believes in anything, except appealing to whatever is current. Iraq war? Yes. Business? No."

While Mrs. Clinton has yet to declare that she is running for president in 2016, she is widely seen as the presumptive Democratic nominee, and an army of Wall Street bankers has been angling for roles in her campaign in hopes of clinching spots in her administration. (Another set of bankers is cozying up to Jeb Bush in hopes that he runs on the Republican ticket.)

A series of right-leaning blogs trumpeted Mrs. Clinton's comments over the weekend, seemingly as a way of highlighting the inconsistency in some of her positions.

What Mrs. Clinton's supporters within the business world want to know is whether she plans to govern the way her husband did as a moderate, center-left president or whether she will be pressed to take more so-called progressive stancescode for anti-business within the business worldas the Democratic Party, in the wake of the financial crisis, appears to have shifted leftward since Mr. Clinton left office.

Mr. Clinton, whose Clinton Global Initiative and other ties to business have made him appear friendlier to the financial world, found himself offending some of the Democratic base when he appeared to sympathize with corporations seeking to reincorporate overseas to lower their tax rates in so-called inversion deals. "Like it or not, this inversion, this is their money," he said.

On Monday at a campaign rally in New York, Mrs. Clinton said she had misspoken.

"I shorthanded this point the other day, so let me be absolutely clear about what I've been saying for a couple of decades," Mrs. Clinton said.

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Hillary Clinton, Street friend or foe?