At 10am on Friday, September 19th, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson publicly announced the government’s latest plan to tackle the financial crisis. This new plan is the most substantial of all the actions taken by policy makers so far, and represents what investors hope will be a “safety-net” that will allow the financial system in the U.S. to continue to function. With this plan, the U.S. government has become the buyer of last resort, promising to step in when other investors will not. While this move will likely quell near-term investor fears, it will not solve the vast array of problems that continue to plague the U.S. economy. Thus far, the U.S. has been able to skirt a formal recession, but the impending slow down in growth is, in our view, inevitable. As growth slows, corporate earnings will falter, defaults will increase, lending activity will remain below historical levels, and stocks, both in and out of the financial sector, will remain under pressure. In this environment, it pays to insulate decision making from short-term market fluctuations, to maintain a long-term perspective, and to always search for investment opportunities created by market conditions.