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August 27th 2009

To our friends,
 
Over the past several months we have all been steadily pulling back from the brink of a near collapse of the global capital market infrastructure. As your investment managers, we have been in the process of, and will continue to work at, rebuilding investment capital. Please review the attached reports and contact your relationship manager with questions.
Going Forward
We believe there is a good deal of liquidity in the global economy which will facilitate economic expansion and continue to support stock prices, sourced by:
- The sizable build up of cash in short term U.S.Treasury securities - at  quite low return on capital -due to earlier panic selling as investors sought safety.
- The G20 nations use of stimulus packages, seeking to jumpstart their economies to escape the global recession.
- The Fed. Open Market Committee under Chairman Bernankie has kept interest rates low to stimulate economic growth.
- Oil prices, one of the biggest tax on constituents, has been cut in half over the past year.
While there are still significant economic risks and uncertainties given the sizable job losses, depressed real estate values, and stretched consumer credit conditions, we believe that we are at the beginning of a significant economic recovery. This revived economic expansion we believe will be fueled by the above described liquidity, increased efficiency in business management, better health care and banking regulations and more reliance on the use of alternative energy. There should be increased entrepreneurship and start up businesses due to technological advances, coupled with displaced or under employed intellectual capital.
We believe growth and total return, along with seeking value, is the best way to capitalize on the economic recovery. We also recognize that the capital markets have been significantly changed due to ease of access and readily accessible global information as well the sheer size of available liquidity for investment. These changes, we believe, will result in more frequent wide swings in the market - we have seen two such in the past ten years. To better manage and to help mitigate these unexpected wide swings, we are instituting a process aimed at preserving capital, which includes building capital through the use of fixed income at one or more of our custodians. More on this at a later date.
 
Thank you,
 
Norval E Thompson