that the housing mark wouet wou collapse in 2007. they could have made that prediction just as easily in 05 or 06 and bet on it and lost lots of money as many firms did. what jpmorgan, goldman sachs and others that weathered the financial crisis did was to carefully manage their risk, preparing themselves for sharp shifts in the market. so i hope that at the highest levels of the u.s. government, they are playing out crisis scenarios in saudi arabia right now. of all the possible events in the middle east, the most complex, by far, would be syria s protests in saudi arabia. if you think gas prices are high now, imagine oil at $200 a barrel. the other way to be prepared for these kind of crises is to have some surplus power. so to have the firepower to deal with the kricrisis when it happ. the analogy with the private sector. the banks that did well had some