In April, U.S. Trust Company released its Survey of Affluent Americans XXVI. (For you plebeians, that means this is the 26th annual edition; don’t think these guys take themselves and their survey just a tad too seriously, do we?)

(On one of the MFS conference calls – but not on the other two, because of time constraints – I mentioned this technique as part of the arsenal of practice management ideas that can be taken down off the shelf and used in any major market decline.

In January, my Financial Advisor magazine column – titled "It's Yesterday Once More" – chronicled the almost eerie parallels between the current housing debacle and its forerunner in 1990-91, even down to the recapitalization of the banks in the wake of housing-related writedowns. Every catastrophist scenario from that earlier time – when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was well below 3,000 – is being recycled today, at 12,000, and nobody seems to see how utterly ridiculous that is.

I write on the night of St. Patrick's Day - a day that saw the ignominious demise of the fifth largest investment bank in the United States, Bear Stearns & Company, where I worked for the eight years through 1992.

One of the sillier fictions energizing our compliance departments in recent years has been the notion that our clients have an objectively knowable – and fixed – tolerance for "risk." You can fill out a form, and know your "risk tolerance"…and there it will stay.