Wall Street - Main Street and you.

'Main Street'

A colloquial term used to refer to individual investors, employees and the overall economy. "Main Street" is typically contrasted with "Wall Street." The latter refers to the financial markets, major financial institutions and big corporations, as well as the high-level employees, managers and executives of those firms. You'll often hear about Main Street vs. Wall Street in rhetoric about the differing goals, knowledge levels, interests and political power of these two groups. Some people think that what's good for one group is bad for the other. For example, high executive pay is seen to conflict with ordinary workers' pay and job security.

Wall street world financial center

"Wall Street"

The Wall Street capitalist economy is comprised of the institutions of big finance and the captive corporations that serve them. It is a world of pure finance and maximizing financial return is the name of the game. They may or may not contribute to the creation of useful goods and services, but these are more in the nature of incidental byproducts of their profit seeking.

The Wall Street economy, which is centrally planned and managed by a global syndicate of global corporations that hold a collective monopoly over the world's money, markets, and technology for the exclusive benefit of their managers and financiers, persistently violates market rules. It bears substantial resemblance to the central planning model of Soviet communism. By contrast, Main Street economies, are decentralized, self-organizing, and far more likely to function by market rules. Defining differences between Wall Street and Main Street are summarized in this table.