This weekend Charles Jaffe, a syndicated columnist, wrote an outstanding article about how the management of Putnam Voyager made a change without doing anything to tell investors. This kind of attitude is way too prevalent in the mutual fund business. I have an idea why. First, at most newspapers and magazines, mutual funds are not important. That's crazy on the face of it.
Mutual funds are the repositories of our savings.
Second, nobody likes to criticize the mutual funds. They are giant advertisers. All of them. Third, even the top editors know that going after these funds is a losing proposition. If you hit them too hard, they simply stop returning your calls and they pull their advertising.