Remember the "vanguard of the proletariat" - that Marxist/Leninist menace. It turns out that the vanguard part is alive, well and very successfully managing about $550 billion in mutual fund assets from a suburb of Philadelphia. The Vanguard Group is America's second largest mutual fund complex. Almost half of its assets are in various index funds.
John Bogle, Vanguard's retired, but not retiring, founder and chairman, is not shy about speaking his mind. The US mutual fund industry is fat, dumb and not particularly happy, to sum up his views.
The man has been a thorn in the industry's side for years. And that has made for some very savvy marketing - a word ironically that Bogle detests.The typical stock fund, says Bogle, paid investors 12% on average over the past 15 years, while the S&P 500 yielded about 18%. That's quite a gap, but Bogle thinks it's a big...
