Some have speculated that the Senate’s renewed taste for bipartisan talks is driven by a dilemma. On the one hand, both sides want to show voters they are “tough on Wall Street.” On the other, both are competing for the lucrative political beneficence of the financial sector, which gave more heavily to Democrats in 2008, but which is seen as now being up for grabs.

President Obama received over $1 million inflation-adjusted dollars in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs, but has grown increasingly critical of the industry that helped vault him to the presidency.

Similarly, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who has a long and well-documented history of working closely with (and benefiting financially from) the financial industry, is now representing himself as a reformer. Schumer’s about face led New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, an unapologetic defender of the financial sector on which his city so critically relies for economic growth and tax revenue, to say the Senator had gone “AWOL” on the issue.