At the beginning of the year I had a rosy view of how 2015 would play out:

1. The United States economy would grow close to 3 percent and the unemployment rate would drop below 5 percent.

2. The Standard & Poor’s 500 would rise more than 10 percent by Christmas.

3. With some monetary and fiscal help, Europe and Japan would grow more than 1 percent.

4. After turbulent negotiations, Greece would stay in the European Union and maintain the euro as its currency.

5. There would be a deal with Iran on its nuclear development program that would be both credible and enforceable but nobody would like it.

6. The Chinese economy would slow and the stock market there would be dangerously overvalued, but while China would not be the engine of growth it had been for the past decade, its reduced pace would not destabilize the world economies.

Then, as we entered the second half of the year, each aspect of this outlook began to run into trouble