"I don't know the severity or which tendon," said Carlyle. "But he did suffer a cut into that area."

That was on December 28, over a week ago; as I say, if the numbers do arrive I'll happily publish them, but I'm not going to wait indefinitely for numbers which might never come.

While the number of independent firms that produce this type of research grew moderately from the 1970's, growth in this segment has accelerated by almost 160% since 2000.

The opening session was a rapid-fire salvo of quick three-minute Big Ideas, ranging from the striking to the silly. I had favorites, of course. Salman Khan, of the Khan Academy, talked about how it might be possible to set up a credentialing system so that if you've become as knowledgeable and adept as a Harvard graduate, Harvard or some institution like it could certify you as such - even if you didn't go to an expensive formal college. It's one of the few ideas which could really make a dent in academic cost inflation, and maybe even drive it down.

So will hedge funds find themselves managing $5 trillion by 2016? No. But will they be managing more money than they are today? Yes, I think they will. And the increase won't just come from internal returns. It will come from substantial capital inflows, too.Last week, the Economist's Ryan Avent sparked a storm in a Twitter teacup with this tweet: