"What we call business today is largely about finance," he writes, charging that too many business leaders care more about investment returns than about creating value for customers, shareholders, and employees. What's "enough," essentially, is that which enables you to do "your best to join the battle to build anew ourselves, our communities, our nation, and our world."
These universal truths were worth hearing even before the economy's plunge. But enough with the big ideas, let's talk about me. Vanguard Group Inc., the Pennsylvania firm that Bogle founded and ran for years, and where he still keeps an office, manages the 401(k) plan here at the Boston Globe. The last I checked, my holdings had lost more than 30 percent for the year ended Nov. 30, paralleling a steep bear market. Who is Bogle to preach such lofty principles?
It's a question many investors will be asking of companies managing retirement accounts. The conventional response is to be patient and to wait for the markets to recover.
The elderly Bogle provides something more like an answer: He's been after the industry and rival fund firms for years to change their ways, such as to become more actively involved in the governance of companies, to do away with certain fees, and to give the boards that oversee funds more independence.
Certainly Bogle's non-financial ideas are his least controversial. He stresses the value of family and community and praises the enlightened values of the 18th century, such as Benjamin Franklin's decision not to patent his invention, the lightning rod.
To some observers, Bogle's own story is as influential as Franklin's in the annals of American thrift. After working many part-time jobs in his youth, Bogle happened upon a Fortune magazine article in 1949 called "Big Money in Boston," about the rise of mutual funds, made up of money from individuals pooled to be managed by professionals. Inspired to write a thesis at Princeton on the young industry, he parlayed the document into a job with Philadelphia's Wellington Management Co. and by the mid-1960s was the firm's leader.
