With his firm challenging Fidelity for the lead in mutual funds, Bogle could afford to be charitable to the many active fund managers he has left in the dust. Instead he takes the opportunity to call for their sacking. The mutual fund is rife with 'taxation without representation' in the form of the high fees charged by fund managers, facilitated by boards of directors that acquiesce to counter-productive management policies and excessive fees, with inadequate consideration of their powerful negative impact on the returns earned by fund shareholders. Fund shareholders, like the citizens of the American colonies, should be responsible for their own governance. But the avid Bogle reader will find brand new topics and older arguments are recast in compelling ways, and the writing is carefully crafted and filled with insightful charts and data.
Time removes much and eventually most risk, a common sense and powerful concept that many overlook.
It made the point adequately but was crude by comparison with Bogle's new book. In a time when Internet stocks seem to have dishonored the art of bottom-up valuation, Common Sense is refreshing in its emphasis on the close correlation between stock returns and underlying profits of the companies in question. And Common Sense is good sporting fun if only because of its disdain for Wall Street's whipping boys, highly paid active fund managers. Nearly every chapter has a graph or study on the poor performance of this hapless lot, followed by the inevitable well-deserved barb. Bogle refrains from tooting his own firm's horn excessively.