The multiple failings of our flawed financial sector are jeopardizing, not only the retirement security of our nation's savers but the economy in which our entire society participates.Collection: Retirement
Thomas Aquinas defined the human soul as the core of our being, and the power that brings our characteristics into unity so the soul of capitalism - in its own temporal world as contrasted to the spiritual world of human beings - is what defines the core of the system and the factors that unify to produce the wonderful world that we are blessed to live in.Collection: Spiritual
But whatever the consensus on the EMH, I know of no serious academic, professional money manager, trained security analyst, or intelligent individual investor who would disagree with the thrust of EMH: The stock market itself is a demanding taskmaster. It sets a high hurdle that few investors can leap.Collection: Intelligent
The business has some problems, substantial problems. You go fix it, you young people. That's what you're there for. Don't believe what the old generation tells you. We don't know a damn thing, including Bogle.Collection: Believe
Yes, the investor is often his own worst enemy. Yes, the marketing colossus known as the mutual fund industry provides the weaponry which enables investors to indulge their suicidal instincts. No, the fund industry was hardly an innocent bystander in the market boom and the subsequent carnage. "We have met the enemy and he is us"... all of us.Collection: Suicidal
We need a federal government commission to study the way our financial services system is working - I believe it is working badly - and we also need more educated investors. There are good long term low-priced mutual funds - my favorite is a total stock market index fund - and bad short term highly priced mutual funds. If investors would get themselves educated, and invest in the former - taking their money out of the latter - we would see some automatic improvements in the system, and see them fairly quickly.Collection: Believe
It's 1450 out of 1500 ETF funds that I just wouldn't touch because they're not diversified enough. Or they have some huge speculative twist to them that if you can guess the markets right you will do very well for a day or two but who can do that? Nobody.Collection: Two
While the apostles of the new so-called "behavioral" theory present ample evidence of how often human beings make irrational financial decisions, it remains to be seen whether these decisions lead to predictable errors that create systematic mispricings upon which rational investors can readily and economically capitalize.Collection: Errors
We are facing incredible challenges in the economy of the U.S. and the economy of the globe, but the stock market, we never know whether it's over-discounted or under-discounted or got exactly right its anticipation.Collection: Challenges
I was born in an earlier generation and, as a group, my classmates at Blair Academy and Princeton University were as ethical, straightforward, and integrity laden as you could possibly imagine - perhaps not a 100% - but the overwhelming majority. I've been in business a long, long time and I simply cannot imagine seeking out cheating, greedy people.Collection: Cheating
So the misplaced assumption is that we have this whole new institutional element where these [financial] institutions are looking after their own financial interests before the financial interests of the principals, princi-pals whose interests they are really bound to observe first.Collection: Pals
The relationship between executive CEO pay, stock performance is tenuous and not easily unscrambled, just one of myriad factors that affect the price of a stock.Collection: Ceo
Sure there are some companies at the margins of our society that probably do that and I think we all have the responsibility as consumers and as investors to avoid them like the plague. If we do, they won't last very long. Doing what's right is the only possible formula for long-term - I emphasize long term - business success.Collection: Responsibility
The fund scandals shined the spotlight on the fact that mutual fund managers were putting their interests ahead of the fund shareholders who trusted them, which had much more substantial consequences in the form of excessive fees and the promotion - as the market moved into the stratosphere - of technology funds and new economy funds which were soon to collapse.Collection: Technology
Corporate leaders surely have their problems, I believe that most CEOs are doing their best to hew to the ethical line. The problem is that that line has gotten blurred and that our moral standard seems to be "if everybody else is doing it, it's okay". That's not good enough for me.Collection: Believe
I'm not currently into economic textbooks, but my grandchildren tell me that the book by Gregory Mankiw, former head of the white house council of economic advisers is a model of intelligence and clarity. Why not try that one.Collection: Book
Among my greatest disappointments about the mutual fund industry - in addition to excessive costs and excessive focus on the short-term - is that fund managers have been passive participants in corporate governance.Collection: Disappointment
The returns we read about in the industry sales literature vastly diminish when we move from the theoretical world of market indexes to the real world of actually investing.Collection: Real
Capitalism is not a Ponzi scheme. Capitalism is a scheme of free markets.Collection: Free Market
While I haven't read economist Robin Hahnel's work, replacing capitalism would be at the very bottom of my list of priorities - to be considered only after everything else had been tried. Improving our capitalistic system however, is at the top of my list and is of course the major theme of "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism."Collection: Priorities
Without getting into brothels, there are ethical capitalists the problem is that there aren't enough of them. It is not "just a few bad apples" that have been evident in our corporations, our investment bankers and our mutual funds, but so many that one has to concede that the barrel itself needs some work.Collection: Problem
I think we all ought to be careful about too much generalization on this issue, even as I confess to painting with a pretty broad brush myself!Collection: Thinking