What Wall Street is unwilling to do is to

[Skidmore]

come to Main Street for solutions. For all the talk the finance and investment sectors make about creating jobs, they really are scrambling to find a way to maintain the status quo for their own comfort. Moving the chairs around on the deck of a sinking ship is not only an exercise in poor judgment but in a lack of vision. We here at DU over the past 8 years have repeatedly learned of innovators on the cutting edge of green technology who have been working in their communities on shoestring budgets and doing excellent community work on Main Street. For Wall Street to bring investment to these Main Street concerns means that they would have to really let the "free market" work and allow some of the gigantic brands to fail rather than keep sucking resources and air out of the economy. Main Street has been sending up a huge shout for a while now and it has fallen on the deaf ears of the protectors of "because that is how it has always been." Sacrifice, as defined by Wall Street, is for the little guy--you know, the ones for whom taxes are mandatory and breaks are called "welfare." To redeem and renew itself, Wall Street must come to Main Street for a new source of ideas and to relearn the morality of responsibility. This is not to say that Main Street does not have its own responsibility but its denizens are more likely to understand sacrifice, community, and innovative spirit when times are hard, something yet to be demonstrated by denizens of Wall Street.

[baldguy]

1. Wall Street is the side show act; Main street is in the center ring.

America's economic problems won't be addressed until we acknowledge this simple fact.

[Warpy]

2. Wall Street has been playing a numbers game

that has had no relation to Main Street for the last 28 years, so they're to be excused for not recognizing the extreme importance of Main Street. There has been no reason for them to bother with the little people, the ones who look like ants from the corner office windows.

However, they're about to be taught a very harsh lesson they should have learned for the last time 78 years ago: you can't run an economy on debt, you can't starve Main Street and hope to prosper, you can't beggar your customer base and hope to survive in business.

They've missed the point that we're all connected and that if only one part of the economy is coddled, the rest of it will shrivel and die and take the coddled part with it.

That's just about what's going to happen. A lot of people who thought they were set for a life of luxury are going to find out it was all smoke and mirrors.