Wall Streets history begins, not surprisingly with a wall. This wasn't like the walls in your house holding the ceiling safely above your head, it was one of thousands of colonial fortress structures separating people from people, resources, and territory. Like the great wall of China, the Berlin wall, and even the separation wall in occupied Palestine, this fortress wall was designed for domination and acquisition of territory. And like other walls it violated basic human rights and enabled enormous crimes of displacement and genocidal violence. In most cases the justification is security, as protection from savages. But the well documented treatment of "friendly" natives and the obvious motive of land theft more than justifies those indigenous people who would give their lives to resist invasion and occupation of their homelands.
When the wall was no more and the street became significant to the newly established nation, wealthy property owners gathered there to trade amongst themselves. Formalizing under a document called the Buttonwoon Agreement, they created an exclusive club designed to keep out unwanted traders and retain the wealth within their domains. What is now the New York Stock Exchange is a colonial era device for extracting wealth from those who actually work lands, mine resources, or produce commodities. It's sole purpose is to preserve the power structure of old money families and power elites, and it can never operate as anything but an obstacle to a democracy. Wall Street is the great wall of America, and the rest of the world is divided up and traded by its' power brokers.
The current financial crisis is not about bailing out Wall Street instead of Main Street, it's about the effects of Wall Street on those small businesses that used to thrive on Main Street. Wall Streets' corporate model has made it possible to eliminate thousands of jobs with the stroke of a pen, and shuffle them around the world shopping for the cheapest labor and worst human rights record. And they do this to squeeze more from the poor working class and turn it into their (anything but hard earned) profit. Capitalism can still exist without Wall Street sucking the capital from the have nots to the have everythings. In fact, it may not be able to continue with these bail out bank heists and government subsidy give aways for much longer as is. What's the point of giving all of our tax money to the ownership class and then not charging them their due taxes, could it be anymore obvious that we the people are being robbed through the clearing house of the IRS?
I know the current dominant view is that wealthy people trading property is the measure of a truly free society, but I would suggest that every billionaire represents a million people who can't afford their next meal. The success of the wealthy is the bleak and dismal failure of the poor, and of the people charged with providing an even playing field to each and every person. The rights of inhuman corporations have far too long trumped the rights of living breathing humans and animals everywhere. No one has demonstrated to the common man the true value of corporations, nor have they (or can they) justify the far reaching "rights" of corporations. What we affectionately refer to as "Wall Street" is a system of parasitic institutions that must be eliminated for true progress to occur in the field of democracy. 
But the ownership class and the ruling class are always one in the same, and our current president is harboring many of the financial elites who continue to profit from their holdings. That well-to-do crowd that George Bush ironically referred to as his "base", has also paid in full for our current commander in chief, and it's sadly improbable that he will do anything that could upset his next round of fundraising in 2012. And of course it's not likely he'll do anything after that if he wins a second term. With any luck, and a lot of that year old hope, Obama can be a mildly effective ex-president like Jimmy Carter, someday, when he's very old. Or perhaps he has what it takes as president to stand up to Americas' owners, many of whom still hold land and wealth accumulated through the legacy of slavery. I might suggest it's his only "hope" to win a second term, but he should do it for the right reasons, because it's "right" and well within "reason."
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