The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism | 
 enlarge | Author: John C. Bogle
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 30822
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0300119712
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.1220973
EAN: 9780300119718
ASIN: 0300119712
Publication Date: November 27, 2006
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Condition: Superb, crisp, clean, unread, & unmarked paperback with light shelfwear to the covers - GREAT!
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Product Description
An astute, longtime observer of the business world, the founder and former CEO of Vanguard mutual funds explains the failures of the American financial system and the abuses that have plagued it in recent years. More important, John C. Bogle offers a host of practical reforms to restore integrity to corporate and investment America and to protect small investors' interests.
"If you read no other book the rest of the year, you must read The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism."—Mike Clowes, Investment News
"When the writer is John C. Bogle, ignore the bombast and pay attention. . . . Emboldened by the flood of scandals since the bubble burst, Bogle has written his broadest broadside yet."—Peter Lattman, Forbes
"Mr. Bogle tells it like it is, like it was and, most important, tells what needs to be done to restore the values of faith, integrity, and trust that were once hallmarks of corporate America and the financial sectors."—Wall Street Journal (Recommended Reading)
"John Bogle has been making Wall Street a better place for decades. His book is yet another important contribution in an illustrious career."—Jeff Madrick, New York Times Book Review
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Exellent, details and outlines the problem with the stock market. September 22, 2008
Douglas D. Loewen (Canton, Kansas)
This book should be taught in a college class. This details exactly what has happened and what needs to be done to correct what has happened the last 20 years.
 Very academic, excellent but suited for investment amateurs July 8, 2008
Jack Dharma (Long Beach, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Loved the feel of this book and there is tons of great information here about the inner workings of investments, funds and financial shenanigans. Some of the info was over my head but where I could digest it, it was great.
He's got it right April 3, 2008
Lavon C. Hall (South Dakota)
Today's financial situation is the result of the battle the suthor so clearly describes. Why can't we listen?
About What We Investors Don't Know December 23, 2007
James T. Charnock
The first half of Bogle's volume gives a detailed explanation of the problems with our stock market; the second half gives his solution proposals. And if John Bogle doesn't know what is going on both openly and behind closed doors (read his qualifications), then no one does.
This book describes how stock (mutual fund and corporate) managers are not "honest, competent and fair-minded...[or] doing the right thing." (p. 89) And just how the "managers' interest [are placed] ahead of the owners' interest." (p. 90) The recurrent theme is that corporate America has moved from owners' capitalism to managers' capitalism.
Bogle describes "the pervasive...'happy conspiracy' among corporate managers, CEOs, CFOs, directors, auditors, lawyers, Wall Street investment brokers, sell-side security analysts, buy-side portfolio managers, and indeed investors themselves--individual and institutional alike." (p. 98)
"More than one-fifth of...growth returns...during the past two decades has been siphoned off by fund managers.... More than three-fourths of the cumulative financial wealth produced...over an investment lifetime will be consumed by fund managers, leaving less than 25 percent for the investors. Yet it is the [95 million] investors ['individuals of modest means--often via retirement plans'] who put up 100 percent of the capital and assume 100 percent of the risk." (p.xxii)
Not only does the author write about the "Captains of Industry" (or robber barons)--Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Carnegie--he deals with the current "casino mentality of so many institutional investors..." (p. 98) Yes, you will read of "the conspiracy between corporate money managers and institutional money managers. [We have] a gambler's market instead of an investor's market," declares Bogle. (p. 118)
Bogle explains why "institutional investors [should] move away from their present obsession with short-term earnings of dubious validity and towards a new obsession focused on the creation of intrinsic value over the long term." (p. 114)
Finally, Bogle does not let we individual investors off easy, either, by explaining "the failure of investment America to exercise its ownership rights over corporate America.
As stated earlier, Bogle has solutions which you will read about in the second half of the book.
Nobel Prize Material--Final Review December 14, 2007
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a work of genius and integrity, with the potential to catalyze Wall Street into fulfilling the promise of moral capitalism and community ownership.
Here are some highlights from my flyleaf notes:
+ America is no longer an ownership society--financial intermediaries "own" everyting and the individual owners are passive
+ We can find the wisdom and will to restore moral capitalism
+ Earnings have been manipulated and misrepresented.
+ Executive compensation plus lax accounting and the fiction of quarterly earnings versus actual cash flow have hollowed industry out.
+ Profound conflict of interest exist across all fronts
+ Fund managers have siphoned off one fifth of the gross value of the funds.
+ Our business world chose the wrong bottom line, and ignored the importance of sustaining human, social, and community capital
+ Stock options aqre out of control.
Seven specific Conference Board suggestions:
1) Corporate citizenship
2) Separate ownership from management
3) Fix the stock option mess
4) Pay on performance not peers
5) Return to long-term focus
6) Let sunlight shine on accounting
7) New mindset for Board (aggresive stewardship)
Page 103: "Investment America went wrong, then, because in the contagious enthusiasm of the day, financial engineering and manufactured earnings became the coin of the valuation realm, accepted by corporate managers and investment managers alike. What is more, the emphasis on short-term price came to overwhelm the reality of long-term value, as investors failed to honor the distinction between investment and speculation drawn by John Maynard Keynes six decades earlier."
In my view, this book, and three others, should comprise the Christmas reading list for all adults:
Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
I am personally committed to the non-violent legal ethical overthrow of the existing pathologically inept federal government and its politcal leaders in both Congress and the Executive who lack morality, intelligence, integrity, or conscience. Dick Cheney, not George Bush (a village idiot) is their poster child. I find it truly gratifying that a man of such financial stature as John Bogle now articulates and inspires the remorse that Wall Street must feel for running the Earth into the ground.
Below are other books I recommend as a reading list toward November, five about the bad, five about the promise:
The Bad (see my reviews):
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The Good (see my reviews):
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
God Bless America. We can unite and fix this. Check out Reuniting America (Unity 08 is a fraud, the last gasp of the spoils system).
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