For the past few weeks it’s been frustrating to hear politicians and opinionators (TV, radio, print, Web) make the rhetorical link between “Wall Street” and “Main Street.”  The implicit message is that Wall Street is “them,” the greedy bad guys who are responsible for all the poor decisions that bring on economic anxiety. Main Street, of course, is “us,” the good, hardworking people who haven’t done anything to deserve all this anxiety.

First of all, anyone who thinks “Wall Street” is the New York Stock Exchange is wrong. It isn’t even the frenetic scene of equity trading we can watch on cable TV.  It is the vast fourth dimension of finance that underlies most of modern civilization. Yes, it’s that enormous.  Wall Street is anywhere a financial arrangement exists.

It is embodied in stock markets, to be sure, but it’s also alive in debts and mortgages, and contracts covering employment and service, and in wills and insurance policies. To be a bit rhetorical, it is “all the money in the world.”

There are some pitiable places where it doesn’t exist (Darfur) and some places where it manifests itself in hideous ways (Waziristan); in other places, authorities are trying to control it (Russia, China) or worse, to own it (Venezuela), for their own purposes.

“Main Street” isn’t a quiet, safe, ordinary place in some idyllic American town. Even if that were the meaning, what once happened on “Main Street” is now happening at a strip mall or highway exit outside of town. It’s happening at Home Depot and Wal-Mart — two places that opinionators frequently scourge when their moral compasses aren’t spinning about Wall Street.

Main Street is any financial activity that passes money from one party to another. It’s household purchases (food, clothing, goods) and its housing purchases (real estate.) It is paychecks, personal checks, ATM activity, sales taxes, and tips. Some of it is illegal: undocumented workers, for example, or dealing in narcotics.

The point that politicians and others fail to acknowledge is that Main Street needs Wall Street. We have to have cash (or cash equivalents) in order to proceed with our lives and to make our innumerable choices and transactions. Those choices are the ways we define our liberties, but if we don’t have businesses to employ us, to stock our retail operations, to provide regular services, who will do these things?

By supplying the structure and directing the capital, Wall Street makes Main Street work. There is a difference between Wall Street and Main Street, but it’s a matter or function, not value.  What’s more significant is the continuity the two. The interaction of Wall Street and Main Street is what makes us free individuals.

We should expect public officials and commentators to be smart enough to understand this, and not to make simplistic equations about who's right, or wrong, or good, or bad. But if they’re not that smart they don’t deserve our attention. Moreover, they should be smart enough to know that their listeners know the difference between Wall Street and Main Street, but if they think we’re not that smart, they aren’t to be trusted.