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.

On balance, the financial system subracts value from society

Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy.

Surprise! The returns reported by mutual funds aren't actually earned by mutual fund investors.

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!

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.

You know the rule of 72, divide the number into 72, any number you want, and that's how long it will take your money to double.