The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation Hardcover - 2012 - 1st Edition

From the jacket flap

During the course of his sixty-one year career, mutual fund pioneer and Vanguard Group founder John C. Bogle has seen enormous expansion and remarkable change in the financial sector of the U.S. economy. In his tenth book, The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation, he brings his considerable wisdom and experience to bear on the most troubling developments of the recent era--the crowding out of long-term investment by short-term speculation.

During Bogle's career in the investment profession, he's witnessed a change in the very nature of our financial system, and not for the better. Our aggressive culture of destructive and costly speculation has come to dominate the earlier prudent culture of investment. To the detriment of our society, the idea of stewardship has gotten lost in the shuffle, replaced by salesmanship and innovations that have ill-served investors.

Far more than being a mere eyewitness to the last six decades of financial history, Bogle has been one of its most active participants. The many first-hand experiences he recounts include the creation of the first index fund and the creation of the first exchange-traded fund; and his critical role in the rise, the fall, and the renaissance of Wellington Fund, a real-world case study of the clash between investment and speculation. He sheds new light on the dramatic change in the culture of the mutual fund industry, the multiple ways in which speculation has invaded our retirement system, and the need for a federal standard of fiduciary duty.

Insightful and instructive, the book paints an alarming picture of how the financial world has moved away from a culture focused on value-adding long-term investment towards a value-destroying culture of rampant speculation--and the inevitable clash of these two cultures brought about by this transformation. Bogle concludes his book by outlining ten simple investment rules to help investors avoid the many hazards of investing and, by focusing on simplicity and economy, to meet their investment goals.

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• Choice, 02/01/2013, Page 0