Despite the recent sell off from equity funds around the world, the place investors have kept their money this year has been the emerging markets.

FORBES: Emerging Market Equity Flows Remain Positive, Despite Sell Trend

An unorthodox, but potentially rewarding, place to look for a fresh perspective on these questions is to ask, what do poets, those unelected legislators of the world, think about private equity and hedge funds?

FORBES: The Pointy End of Capitalism

The many companies that these mega-funds buy and sell every year has meant that growing numbers of men and women in the US, the UK, across Europe and around the world now work for companies owned by private equity funds.

FORBES: Who's Afraid of Private Equity?

China seems to be coming out of its economic slump, and visions of that country once again providing fast growth in a plodding world have fueled a bit of a rush on Chinese equity funds.

FORBES: Connect

Many funds continue to venture ever further into unregulated assets classes, such as private equity and hedge funds, even as the regulated world unravels.

FORBES: International Campaign to Eliminate Pension Consultant Abuses (November 2, 2004 )

The declines, which were minor, follow a period of strength for the world markets, propelled in part by a flood of money from private equity funds into takeovers.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Perhaps no single building in the world is as much a monument to the rise of private equity and hedge funds as 9 West 57th Street in New York.

FORBES: Looking Inside Private Equity and Hedge Funds

Google 's splashy stock debut of 2004 and the frenzied activity of private equity and buyout funds last year weren't enough to stoke initial public offering activity in the world of lesser-known startup tech firms.

FORBES: Magazine Article