Main Street may have to decouple from Wall Street.

I think we need to ask ourselves if this has been a mutually beneficial relationship.

Can we have an economy that runs more efficiently without so much emphasis placed on short term profits for shareholders and executives?

Would we be better off encouraging investment into research and development rather than rewarding speculation in financial instruments?

Going forward, it would be good to have this debate. How much of Wall Street do we want to rescue? Can we fix this mess and create a working economic model that allows us to compete in the global marketplace without completely sacrificing the standard of living to which we have become accustomed?

Which is why it won't happen.

The common argument is that without the capital provided by Wall St., businesses couldn't function. That's starting to fall flat, however- increasingly the Fed is providing the loans, so why not allow businesses to borrow from the source?

useful and positive. A way to get idle money out of the hands of investors and put it into the hands of producers and inventors.

Ultimately, the system grew too top heavy, and rather than letting money trickle back down through wage hikes (an idea they almost universally loathe), the wealthy decided to create newer and crazier ways to make more for themselves. That's why we saw all of these stupid bubbles and the even stupider derivatives market. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that entering into insurance contracts with potentially insolvent and unregulated insurance companies is a bad idea, but wealth creates insular thinking.

for an investigation...is it because Congress's approval rating is at 10% and there's an election on and if we knew the truth, a bunch of critters would lose their seat? A plane crashes, a levee breaks, a tanker runs aground, and some yahoo in Congress is hollering for an investigation. And yet we don't hear that now. What we hear time and again is 'now is not the time to fix blame'...you'd think some candidate would look at those numbers, that 90% that believes Congress isn't doing its job, and say something, do something...and yet we don't even hear a campaign promise, not even a token gesture. Looking back, it's difficult to imagine a people upset about a stamp act...what we got, a ten trillion dollar debt, another trillion piled on top of that, and no one wants to blame anyone.

That's the strong place of the future.