Your normal Wall Street big-swinging Richard has enough of a lingering moral compass to at least tell himself that his wizardry benefits somebody or something besides himself. You know, his cleverness makes capital markets more efficient. It provides credit to productive enterprise. Whatever.

Everywhere you look, there's a hunger to put the ethos by which Wall Street thrives on trial.

Captain Richard Phillips of the good ship Maersk Alabama - and Sully Sullenberger splashing down his crippled airliner in the Hudson River - broke through the poisonous smog of economic depression and Wall Street skullduggery with a reminder that pure individual heroism is a daily occurrence if we know where to look for it.

A nation cannot be truly great without a moral compass.

Much of the world's moral compass is broken. The moral north reads south and the moral south reads north.

My moral compass swings far to the left, but when it comes to gratuitous violence, I have trouble.