What Farming and Banking Have in Common

Goldman Sachs (GS Quote) is the third largest donor to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) over the course of his career, while giant agricultural conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland (ADM Quote) is number six, according to OpenSecrets.org.

This fact might seem odd to lay folk, but the agriculture committees in the Senate and the House of Representatives actually matter a lot to Wall Street banks like Goldman, Morgan Stanley (MS Quote) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM Quote) that have large derivatives trading operations.

That is because the agriculture committees oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures markets like CME Group (CME Quote) and IntercontinentalExchange (ICE Quote). ...