When the farmer throws out the corn, the pigs run to the trough. That's what's happening in American politics today. Wall Street is throwing out the coin and the politicians are scurrying to grab it up.

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have sensed an opportunity. By staking out pro-Wall Street and anti-Main Street positions against financial regulatory reform, they know they have positioned themselves in the right place to maximize their ability to grab up that Wall Street coin. The WSJ observes:

Republicans are stepping up their campaign to win donations from Wall Street, trying to capitalize on an increasing sense of regret among executives at big financial institutions for backing Democrats in 2008.

In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks' best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.

GOP strategists hope to benefit from the reaction to the White House's populist rhetoric and proposals, which range from sharp critiques of bonuses to a tax on big Wall Street banks, caps on executive pay and curbs on business practices deemed too risky.

Wall Street knows where their bread is buttered. Many of them are against real reform because they know their profits are at stake. So, they're investing in the Republican Party to stop real reform. Read the story and find out where Wall Street is investing to scuttle reform.

Heather Booth from Americans for Financial Reform gives us the State of the Financial Reform Movement and lists ways you can get involved.

SEIU makes it easy for you to contact the FCIC and ask why, when families are being forced into the street by foreclosures, are big banks giving employees the same old big bonuses?

Taxpayers in Iowa delivered a clear message to the big banks during a showdown at the statehouse: give up your bonuses to help meet our budget budget crisis. Isn't Iowa too big to fail?

Americans United for Change is petitioning Congress to support President Obama's financial reform package and put an end to Bush-style economic policies that endanger our pensions, retirement funds, and college savings.

-The news this week has been pretty grim, but we all know when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. Here are a few ways you can get going in the tough fight for financial reform:

- Welcome to the inaugural "In Case You Missed It", our weekly look around for interesting happenings in the fight for financial reform. This week we mostly focus on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's first hearings:

Want to feel like you were you in the hearing room? Catch up with liveblogs from Campaign for America's Future and SEIU.

Mary Bottari at Bankster.com reminds us accountability, and an active Department of Justice, was a key component to our coming to grips with the Keating 5 and Savings & Loan scandals of the 1980s. Too big to fail doesn't mean too big for jail.

New Deal 2.0 has a great collection of posts from the FCIC hearings. They seem to think the Bankers gave flimsy excuses for their sociopathic nature (could there possibly be a good excuse?).

Public Campaign and Common Cause joined forces to give us some raw numbers about the four Wall Street CEOs that testified before the FCIC: their employees & PACS gave more than $43 million to federal candidates since 2000, and the four companies spent an astounding $109 million to lobby Congress during the same period.

Do you have a question for the fat cats that testified before the panel? Huffington Post is collecting questions from their readers and promises to deliver them to the Commission.

Lastly, this one isn't related to the FCIC, but it's nice to take a break and recognize the US Chamber of Commerce had a pretty bad 2009, and 2010 isn't really looking much better for their PR department.

Last night's election results should send a shiver up Wall Street's spine. Harold Meyerson explains:

The two aging financial whiz kids on tonight’s ballots -- former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine and Bloomberg’s Michael Bloomberg -- seriously underperformed.

Corzine was unseated in his bid for re-election as New Jersey’s governor by Republican Chris Christie. Across the river in New York, Bloomberg eked out a much- closer-than-anyone-expected 51 percent to 46 percent victory over city Comptroller William Thompson, whom he outspent by no less than 14-to-1, to win a third term as mayor.

Wall Street's man in the Adirondacks, Doug Hoffman, also went down to defeat. Hoffman was the darling of the Club for Growth, the right-wing group funded by some of Wall Street's biggest fat cats. Meyerson continues:

Both Corzine and Bloomberg have always been self-funding candidates, with Corzine setting records for most money spent on a state gubernatorial election and Bloomberg setting records for most money spent on any sub-national contest on planet earth. Writing in Tuesday’s New York Times, Joyce Purnick noted that Bloomberg’s expenditures in this year’s mayoral contest already surpassed the $85 million he spent on his re-election effort four years ago, and could reach $100 million when all the spending is tallied. By the middle of last month, the total that Bloomberg had spent on his three mayoral runs was a tidy $245 million.

Bloomberg’s underperformance looks like a clear case of voter resentment of hizzzoner’s hubris. The guy runs the city well, most New Yorkers seem to believe, but he also got the city council to scrap the city’s term-limits law this time around so he could run again. The richest guy in town -- and New York’s got a lot of rich guys -- gets the law changed just so he can keep the job? In a world nearly undone by the arrogance of Wall Street, Bloomberg displayed just enough of that arrogance to threaten his re-election. Unlike his fellow Wall Street gazillionaires, however, and more than Corzine over in Jersey, he had a record he could defend, which is what -- narrowly -- saved him...

Will 2010 turn out to be as deflating for CEO candidates as 2009 did? Stay tuned.

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, Americans have wised to the ways of Wall Street and they don't like what they're seeing. It's not just Wall Street's arrogance that has people on both sides of the political spectrum enraged, it's the fear that a rising plutocracy is undermining our democratic institutions.

On Main Street, Americans are continuing to feel the pain and pay the price for Wall Street's financial crisis. That's why, in yesterday's elections, Americans on both sides of the political divide sent Wall Street a message by voting no on their candidates. Those advocating for real reforms designed to protect middle class and working families in our financial regulatory environment rightly feel emboldened by yesterday's results.