This is t he argument that Republicans need to explain to voters in their campaigns going forward.
Democrats will talk about "oligarchs", billionaires and now trillionaires, as if they're all the same. In fact, there is a difference.
There are industrialists and financialists.
Financialists are the banks and hedge funds that make a profit from monetizing hard assets. These are the people whose wealth comes from interest, dividends, derivatives, swaps, spreads, foreign currency carry trades, insurance, etc. This is Wall Street.
Industrialists are the companies that produce actual goods and services and employ main street workers in their production. This is Main Street.
Of course both are needed to have a thriving economy, but the real question is whose interests should be prioritized when crafting economic policy and direction for the country as a whole?
The Trump administration's argument, as articulated best by Scott Bessent, is that for the last 50 years, Wall Street's interests have been prioritized and this has led to bank bailouts, fiscal policies meant to support financialist interests, at the expense of Main Street.
The administration policies are shifting the policy priorities from Wall Street, to focus on Main Street.
Wall Street will continue to be crucial to the economy and they will continue to profit, but that profit should not come as a result of devising new exotic financial instruments that only exist on a balance sheet, but from helping Main Street thrive and grow the real physical economy, which is what distributes wealth to middle and working class Americans.
"Money doesn't have power in & of itself. People get confused sometimes they think an economy is money. Money is a database for exchange of goods & services. The actual economy is goods & services"
一 Elon Musk