Last year was not a great year for investing. But if you had invested in the most basic Couch Potato portfolio, a 50/50 mix of the Vanguard (or equivalent) Total Stock Market Index Fund and the
Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities Fund, your return for the year would have been 7.18 per- cent. Domestic stocks didn't do much for us, but, thanks to our worrisome friends in Washington, inflation-protected securities rocked, returning 13.24 percent for the year.
