NEW YORK CITY-You can pretty much dismiss the ranting going on in Washington, DC. Unless politicos totally meltdown and throw a major monkey wrench into the recovery, you can expect a continuation of the slow, steady growth we saw in 2012. That was the clear message shared at Prudential Financial Inc.'s fifth annual Global Economic and Retirement Outlook briefing, held at the Millennium Hotel here.

The key of course is to measure the recovery in inches rather than miles. “The macro environment is a little more stable than this time last year,” said Edward F. Keon, managing director and portfolio manager of Quantitative Management Associates. “A European collapse is a little less likely, and in the US, there's a little less uncertainty.

“There's still plenty that could go wrong,” he continued. Things, he said, like DC ceasing up again. “But the healing process is under way.”

One of the overarching advancements we've made, Keon noted, was the acceptance of risk as a part of investment life. “We've gone from being very risk-averse to a much more rational acceptance of risk.”

Globally, John Praveen, chief investment strategist for Pru's International Investment Advisers, explained that “equity markets are likely to post further gains in 2013, driven by central bank liquidity and low interest rates, further rate cuts and expansion of quantitative easing, along with continued stabilization in the Eurozone.”

In all, you can expect more of the same, with global growth “modest in 2013, but we believe the expansion is durable and growth could strengthen on the margin.”

Or, as Keon put it, “despite the turbulence, we're in a bull market, and we are taking a bullish tilt to our portfolio.”