Yes, the investor is often his own worst enemy. Yes, the marketing colossus known as the mutual fund industry provides the weaponry which enables investors to indulge their suicidal instincts. No, the fund industry was hardly an innocent bystander in the market boom and the subsequent carnage. "We have met the enemy and he is us"... all of us.

The transfer of Wall Street from private ownership to public ownership has been a big step backward.

On balance, the financial system subracts value from society

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

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.

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.

The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don't get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don't pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything.