It's that time of year again, when harried finance editors ask reporters to call investment professionals and cobble together top predictions for the coming year. These are fun to write. But for readers, they're more entertaining a year later.

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Last year the focus of global financial markets was firmly fixed on the American economy.  Recent economic data suggests that the underlying American economy is now actually in reasonably good shape, with unemployment starting to fall, an expanding manufacturing sector, home sales growth and anecdotal evidence pointing to a strong start to holiday shopping.

The global problem child has now become Europe.  And unlike most economies in the world, the layers of bureaucracy that lace the European Union (EU) makes the process of agreeing and implementing sound action plans more difficult.

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He is no longer with us, and the world is poorer for it.

A restless college dropout, he founded a wildly successful company whose innovative products touched millions of lives. He was a brilliant, dictatorial, and cantankerous leader, relentlessly pushing his staff to solve one impossible problem after another. He had no use for conventional market research, and trusted his own vision to create products with little detectable demand that flew off the shelves upon introduction.

He zealously guarded his personal privacy but reveled in his role as a master magician on stage when introducing his firm’s latest innovations to eager crowds of industry followers. Stockholders wore big smiles as the shares vaulted to one new high after another.

In many ways, he was the antithesis of the conventional corporate chieftain, and despite his demanding persona, he was revered by employees, customers, and even competitors to a greater extent than almost any other chief executive in recent memory.

A tribute to the late Steve Jobs?  No—to Edwin Land of Polaroid.

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