People have short memories, though. McCain was one of the Keating Five, yeah, but he was also a candidate for President of the United States of America. As you say, there's no reason to think that the key figures in the Great Recession will endure any lasting stigma either. American capitalism admires grand failure; this is a blessing and a curse.

I'd say the people who admire grand failure only admire it when they're not negatively impacted by it. For example, tech startups vs Wall Street. There's a difference between grand failure in fields where the expected payoff is asymmetrically positive, like the former, and asymmetrically negative, like the latter.

Failures in the former may cost their investors their investment, but it won't cost them more money than they've ever made, or put them into the red so deep as to destroy their whole industry, or bring down the global financial system. While both sides play the odds and spread their bets, the nature of risk and payoff is very different.

Also, startups represent an attempt at creating real wealth where none was before - combining labor, capital, innovation, and raw materials to make products that can be sold for more than the sum of their inputs, or services that save time. Alot of what caused the financial crisis was more akin to gambling, despite protestations of 'financial innovation' to the contrary. Failure in the former is admirable, the latter not so much.

That link won't take you to the talk itself (the linked pages within say "this video is hidden" at Blip tv). This link, which I found from a Facebook link, might work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odbul86485w

but it wanted me to sign in, and I wouldn't. (I don't have a youtube account and didn't want to use my goog)

Thanks, I added the direct link.

Minor nit: I could be reading this wrong, but you seem to be using an a definition of 'moral hazard' which is backwards to the usual one.

Yeah, I suppose I should have said moral hazard is rampant, instead of nonexistent. Hope that didn't obscure my point too badly though.