Wall Street and Main Street: In the Same Boat and Sinking Together

Once upon a time, what happened on Wall Street didn't matter much to the folks on Main Street, and vice versa. But those days are long gone, as I discuss in the accompanying video with Dennis Berman, The WSJ's Global Deals Editor.

This decade, particularly, the U.S. economy has been driven largely by debt financing. As a result, the Wall Street event known as the "credit crunch" has had a definitive impact on U.S. consumers. In turn, the constrained consumer is going to keep the downward pressure on Wall Street firms, whose profitability is tied to the securitization of loans, be they for homes, autos, boats, education, etc.

In other words, we're all in this together, and a long way from the bottom.

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