But the things that make superheroes so great–their speed, strength and sometimes super powers–also make it difficult for filmmakers. How do you make a man look like he’s flying? Reeves used to jump onto a springboard for his takeoff. Then he was often filmed against footage shot from airplanes to make it appear as if he was airborne. The techniques were primitive, but audiences bought it.

We’ve always been willing to suspend disbelief to some degree for the sake of enjoying a movie. In 1978 when Christopher Reeve filled Superman’s red boots, technology had advanced to make Superman look a little more realistic.

Effects supervisors used wires to lift Reeve and suspend him in air. If they wanted to make Superman appear to be flying, they would film Reeve against blue screens and zoom the camera in and out around him to simulate the actor in motion. The effects seem almost hokey now, but at the time they were convincing enough. Audiences flocked to the movie. Superman earned $300 million at the worldwide box office and inspired three sequels.

When Warner Bros. decided to relaunch the franchise a few years ago, it turned to Sony’s ( SNE – news – people ) Imageworks to improve Superman’s flying technique. (Although Imageworks is based out of Sony, the digital effects house works with all the studios.)

“We had to do things that would put [actor Brandon Routh] in danger,” says John Monos, computer graphics supervisor at Imageworks. “What better way to do that then by coming up with a digital clone?”

In Pictures: Seven Keys To Picking A Bank

More From Ken Fisher

It’s report-card time–a FORBES-mandated retrospective on my 11 columns published in 2009. This year the assignment is easy. My picks did well. During 2009 I made 65 recommendations (including six repeats). If you had put an equal sum into each you would be up 44.4%. If you had put the same money on the same dates into the S&P 500 you would have gained only 20.9%. The FORBES statistics department, moreover, docked my picks a 1% trading cost but didn’t dock the index. Neither return figure includes dividends, which are about one percentage point higher on my stocks.

In the 14 years that we have been going through this exercise, I have lagged the S&P 500 only three times. My average gain over those 14 years has been 9.9% (and that’s in effect a partly invested return, since each calendar year’s buying is spread over 12 months); the corresponding market average has been 4.7%.

My best 2009 pick was Braskem (BAK, 17), Brazil’s petrochemical giant, up 216% from its first recommendation in the Apr. 27 column (released Apr. to a year-end price of $16.40. Hang on to it. My worst was Chinese solar cell maker Suntech (STP, 17) on July 13. It lost 9%. I still like it. You should keep these two, and I will carry them over as 2010 buys. My third carryover: Canada’s Magna International ( MGA – news – people ) (MGA, 50), the world’s third-largest and most product-diversified auto parts maker, up 57%. You shouldn’t necessarily unload the other 56 stocks (that depends on your tax situation), but I am not choosing to reenter them in the 2010 derby.

We’ve entered a period that I call the “pessimism of disbelief.” The public’s mood is to notice anything bad (like 10% unemployment) while dismissing anything good (like narrowing credit spreads) as not credible. Most investors, having failed to anticipate the recent bull market, now fear the risk of a big fall. It is presumed that monetary and fiscal stimulus will not work or will give rise to inflation, impossible debt burdens and socialism. Health care legislation is an Obamanation, and so on. This is the “wall of worry” bull markets love to climb. I think pessimism will decrease in 2010, helping stocks.

Despite all you may fear, today’s negatives are lesser ones than we’ve often faced. The history of second years after a big bear market that is followed by a positive year like 2009 is stunningly, consistently, overwhelmingly positive. Don’t succumb to the pessimism of disbelief. Buy stocks like these:

Vivo (VIV, 30) is Brazil’s largest cellular operator, with a third of the market–50 million subscribers, all using Vivo-branded wireless sets. This plays directly into the growth of Brazil’s emerging middle class. Vivo should keep growing materially faster than the industry, yet sells at 80% of 2010 revenue and 20 times the $600 million I think it will earn.

Ireland’s CRH (CRH, 26) is a diversified building-materials firm that amazingly remained profitable throughout 2008 and 2009, albeit with clipped earnings. This $26 billion (sales) firm operates in 35 nations, making concrete, cement, asphalt, flat glass, roofing supplies and more. Its sales base is diversified among residential, nonresidential and infrastructure markets. With a history of above-average growth and superior profit margins, CRH is well positioned as recovery extends overseas. Its price is low in relation to industry averages: You are buying at 55% of annual sales, five times cash flow and 12 times trailing earnings. The recent earnings are depressed. You are paying maybe nine times 2010 earnings.

Korea’s LG Display (LPL, 17) is the world’s second-largest manufacturer of liquid crystal displays, after Samsung. These lcds are used in televisions, computers and cell phones assembled and sold by other firms. LG Display (once wholly owned by LG Corp., the former Lucky Goldstar) was initially listed in 2004. It’s still 35% owned by LG, a conglomerate best known here as a maker of cell phones. LG Display sells for 80% of its $14 billion of revenue, 1.4 times book value, five times cash flow and ten times my estimate of 2010 earnings.

Lubrizol ( LZ – news – people ) (LZ, 77) of Wickliffe, Ohio makes a wide array of speciality chemicals used in engine oils, transmission fluids, compressor lubricants, coatings and inks. Most of its sales go to oil refineries and basic industry. I expect several years of 20% sales growth, which should make the stock, seemingly expensive at 55 times trailing earnings, reasonably priced at 12 times the earnings plausibly achievable in 2011.

America’s 10 Biggest Cities: A Debt Report Card

In Depth: States With The Most Debt Trouble

In Depth: The Countries With The Worst Debt

The city of Vallejo, Calif., located just north of San Francisco, filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Jefferson County, Ala., is on the brink of what would be the largest government bankruptcy in the history of the U.S.–surpassing the 1994 filing by Southern California’s Orange County. At least 39 states expect a budget shortfall in 2011 with the tab estimated at more than $180 billion.

America’s Biggest Cities: A Debt Report Card

In Depth: U.S. States With The Worst Debt Troubles

In Depth: The Countries With The Worst Debt

Free-spending America isn’t quite a banana republic yet. But in a Forbes ranking of sovereign debt the U.S. comes out No. 35, one rung below Estonia, on a global list of 85. Hard to believe that the U.S. would default on its debts based on its AAA bond rating, but based on credit default swap spreads there is a 3.1% chance of a U.S. default in the next five years, according to CMA, a London credit information specialist. Seven sovereigns have lower default probabilities, including France, Australia and Germany. Norway has the lowest default probability at 1.5%.

In Pictures: Best Banks

In Pictures: Worst Banks

Full List: America’s Best And Worst Banks

Busted banks are still keeping the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. busy. In the past two months, 41 went under, surpassing the total of 26 for all of 2008. What’s more, by some measures bank balance sheets are in worse shape today than they were at the height of the financial crisis. Nonperforming loans represented 3.4% of loans outstanding among big banks in the most recent quarter, compared with 1.5% a year earlier. Nonperforming assets were 2.4% in the latest quarter compared to 1.2% a year earlier.

When IndyMac Bancorp ( IDMCQ.PK – news – people ) went bust in July 2008 with $32 billion of assets, it was the fourth-largest bank failure ever. It reported capital ratios of 9% (Tier 1) and 10.3% (risk-based) in its most recent quarter before its demise. Its non-performing loans (NPLs) as a percentage of loans was 9.2% while non-performing assets (NPAs) made up 6.5% of total assets. There are big banks today with worse ratios than this.

To drill a little deeper into the health of the 100 largest banks and thrifts, Forbes turned to researchers at SNL Financial. The Charlottesville, Va.-based firm looked at eight financial measures including return on average equity, net interest margin, NPLs as a percentage of loans, NPAs as percentage of assets, reserves as a percentage of NPLs, two capital ratios (Tier 1 and risk-based) and leverage ratio. The size of the banks SNL looked at range from Harleysville National ( HNBC – news – people ), with assets of $5.2 billion, to behemoth Bank of America ( BAC – news – people ), with $2.3 trillion of assets.

We ranked the 100 banks on each metric and added up the individual ranks. Our top-ranked bank is Honolulu’s Bank of Hawaii ( BOH – news – people ) with assets of $12.2 billion. “Boring is good,” says its chief executive, Allan Landon.

Landon credits the bank’s strong performance to its starchy balance sheet and a focus on risk-adjusted performance. When the housing market heated up earlier this decade, Bank of Hawaii stayed very conservative in its underwriting strategy, which helped minimize its bad loans today. Non-performing loans were only 1.2% of total loans in the latest quarter, eighth best among the 100 largest banks. The bank scores third best in terms of reserves as a percentage of NPLs, with more than twice as many reserves as bad loans.

President Obama’s televised health care summit this Thursday has put Republicans in a tough spot. They can’t accept any part of his latest trillion-dollar, Big Government overhaul, but if they reject it as a whole, they risk coming across as partisan naysayers.

The way out for Republicans is to use the occasion to do some deft political jujitsu by extending to President Obama–on camera–an invitation for a follow-up summit of their own.

The stunning thing about the proposal President Obama released Monday–which is supposed to serve as the blueprint for his summit–is just how willfully deaf it is to the American people. At a time when the public is worried sick about federal spending and deficits, the price tag for the proposal is $75 billion more than that of the Senate bill. Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to a mandate requiring them to carry coverage on the threat of fines or jail. More than 30 states are working on so-called Health Care Freedom laws to protect their citizens from Uncle Sam’s mandate.

So what does President Obama propose? Increase the amount of income that the uninsured would be forced to cough up in fines. In addition, he wants to create a national board to keep insurance premiums in check, ignoring that one of the root causes of rising insurance costs is government mandates. Obama’s answer to worries about government spending, regulations and fines, then, is more government spending, regulations and fines. This is not compromise–this is a royal snub to the American people.

A Republican conference could call the bluff on the president’s phony bipartisanship. Its sole objective should be to identify patient-powered, market-based alternatives to Big Government approaches that are consistent with both parties’ core principles and concerns. Here are five Republican and five Democratic measures that reasonable people on both sides could use as a launching pad:

With all the wrangling over health care policy this year, Americans are craving evidence that it’s possible to make the system more accessible and affordable. A new survey demonstrates that such evidence does, in fact, exist–in the form of a Medicare prescription drug program known as Medicare Part D.

The poll, commissioned by the nonpartisan Medicare Today coalition, surveyed seniors who participate in Medicare Part D. And the results show overwhelming approval.

The landmark legislation that created Part D was passed by Congress in 2003 with bipartisan support. It was the first major overhaul of Medicare in 35 years, and it offered a much-needed benefit to seniors struggling to pay for their prescriptions.

Six years later, the program is a resounding success. In the Medicare Today survey, 88% of seniors with a prescription drug plan report being satisfied with their coverage. The numbers are especially favorable in states with large concentrations of seniors: 93% of seniors in Florida and 89% in New York express approval.

Similarly high numbers–in excess of 80%–say that their premiums and co-pays are affordable and that their plans represent a good value. This is a crucial point. At the time the bill was enacted, opponents argued that Medicare Part D would do little to make medicines more affordable to seniors. Not only have program costs to taxpayers been well below original projections, the new survey underscores Part D’s affordability for individual beneficiaries.

In reality, the program has worked as its designers hoped. Medicare Part D is an effective partnership between the federal government, private insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies, giving seniors access to a variety of plans and subsidizing payments for those with low incomes.