Latest John C. Bogle Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• We live in a very risky world and investors should not get "carried away" with excessive allocations to equities, or for that matter, real estate. As always asset allocation and low cost and broad diversification will be essential in earning one's fair share of whatever returns our financial markets are generous enough to bestow upon us.

  John C. Bogle

  Real, World, Financial

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Believe, Not Good Enough, Leader

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• We need to reorganize our entire system of retirement plan investing and to develop federal standards of fiduciary duty for pension trustees and fund managers. These require "top down" intervention. But we also need investors to look after their own economic interests, a bottom up approach to our problems that is well within our individual power to undertake.

  John C. Bogle

  Retirement, Problem, Economic

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Technology, Mutual Fund, Promotion

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I'd be the first to agree that capitalism bestows its blessings unevenly. But that wouldn't persuade me to think it was a good idea to do away with those blessings in their entirety. That said, there is lots of work to be done to make capitalism work better, and to broaden its blessings far more widely not only in America, but all over the globe.

  John C. Bogle

  Blessing, Thinking, Done

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Spiritual, Blessed, Soul

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I think it's fairly easy to provide a moral defense of capitalism. It has been - over the last 200 years - the underlying basis for enormous increases in productivity and human welfare and rising living standards, particularly in the United States, and in the industrialized nations but in fact, in most parts of the world.

  John C. Bogle

  Thinking, World, Moral

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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."

  John C. Bogle

  Priorities, Soul, Battle

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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!

  John C. Bogle

  Thinking, Painting, Be Careful

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I'm not an expert on Islam, but I think there are lots of noble religions whose basic principles could stand considerably more observation in the world of business.

  John C. Bogle

  Thinking, Islam, World

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I believe that the mutual fund industry's biggest shortcoming is too much focus on the momentary price of a stock - an illusion - and too little focus on the intrinsic value of the corporation - the ultimate reality. I'm comforted by the fact that Warren Buffett feels the same way.

  John C. Bogle

  Believe, Reality, Focus

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Disappointment, Focus, Mutual Fund

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Responsibility, Thinking, Long

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Ceo

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Problem, Mutual Fund, Investment

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I believe that the behavior of too many of our corporations investment bankers and fund managers has jeopardized some of the trust that investors have had. It's not the economic engine that we need to focus on, but the need to make sure that our investors receive their fair share of the returns that that great economic system produces.

  John C. Bogle

  Believe, Focus, Investment

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Cheating, Integrity, Long

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Book, Grandchildren, House

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I believe - deeply and profoundly - that speculation is a loser's game.

  John C. Bogle

  Believe, I Believe, Speculation

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• Our capitalistic scheme in the latter years of the 20th century seems to have lost its way. We've had a "pathalogical change" from traditional owners capitalism where most of the rewards have gone to those who make the investments and assume the risks to a new and deeply flawed system of managers capitalism where the managers of our corporations our investment system, and our mutual funds are simply take too large a share of the returns generated by our corporations and mutual funds leaving the last line investors - pension beneficiaries and mutual fund owners at the bottom of the food chain.

  John C. Bogle

  Leaving, Risk, Assuming

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• Capitalism is not a Ponzi scheme. Capitalism is a scheme of free markets.

  John C. Bogle

  Free Market, Capitalism

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• It's very difficult for any particular segment of the stock market to sustain superior performance. The watch word for our financial markets is, "reversion to the mean" i.e. what goes up must come down, and it's true more often than you can imagine.

  John C. Bogle

  Mean, Financial, Imagine

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Real, Moving, Literature

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I believe Washington should be a more active participant focusing on the issue of why corporate shareholders and mutual fund shareholders are not given fair treatment by corporate management and mutual fund management. We need to develop a national standard of fiduciary duty to ensure that these agents, if you will, are adequately representing the principles - pension beneficiaries and mutual fund shareholders - whom they are duty bound to serve.

  John C. Bogle

  Believe, Management, Mutual Fund

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  John C. Bogle

  Believe, Long, Study

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com