Wall Street and Main Street are metaphors now in common use to distinguish between two sharply contrasting economic models with sharply contrasting priorities, values, institutions, and interests.

Main Street refers to local economies comprised of entrepreneurial local businesses and working people engaged in producing real goods and services to provide a livelihood for themselves, their families, and communities. Much like the diverse species of a healthy ecosystem, Main Street enterprises vary in their priorities and values. Their legal forms range from sole proprietorships and family businesses to cooperatives, worker and community owned corporations, and nonprofits. Generally, however, they share in common a commitment to creating meaningful livelihoods and contributing to the well-being of the community in which they are located. Profit is more a means more than end.

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.