helped cushion portfolio returns when markets declined. We won’t know until the data comes in, but we expect the same to happen this time. [5] The “Eye on the Market” has endlessly chronicled this year the fissures which are now affecting financial markets: European sovereign risk and inadequate bank capitalization; weak labor compensation as an Achilles heel of the US profits recovery, given its negative impact on spending; the political divide in Congress over how to deal with falling government revenue and rising entitlement spending; inflation risks in Asia and Latin America and the resulting need for more policy tightening; and the mixed track record of low interest rates to sustainability solve structural problems. The cover of the 2011 Outlook (a printing press, out of control) expressed our concern regarding a recovery built upon a stimulus machine. I would contrast this with the cover of a competitor’s 2011 publication, which had a picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware, with the caption “America’s structural resilience, fortitude and ingenuity will carry the economy and financial markets in 2011 — and beyond”. Our job is not to point to where we would like the financial markets to go, but rather to point to where they might end up. It’s like the scene in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, when Nixon looks up at a portrait of JFK and says, “When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.” Our job is to see financial markets for what they are. [6] All that said, we have lessons to learn here. Too many of our investment discussions this year focused on the negative real return characteristics of cash, and why to reduce it. Ina world of deflation risk on financial assets (rather than of goods and services), cash retains substantial option value at times like these. We could have connected the dots more aggressively on our views on weak growth and easy monetary policy, and owned more gold. Wh