Rohit's Updates

"Has there ever been a book with a more apt title? Honestly, I couldn't count the number of times during listening to this audiobook when I thought to myself, ENOUGH, PLEASE GOD ENOUGH!

In the end I listened to the whole damn thing, but mostly out of the perverse curiosity that wonders if it is possible for this guy to bring in homily after homily and self-aggrandisement after self-aggrandisement and sustain it for an entire book. Naturally, he had no trouble. Where this book is particularly interesting is that it harks back to a world that no longer exists and isn't going to be returning any day soon. In many ways I even agree with this guy - the greed that has been allowed to destroy our financial systems and has made risible any notion of 'societal service' linked to financial institutions really do need to be overcome. His solutions, based on developing the character of those working in the corporate world and for them to realise they have a debt and a burden they owe to society - something most of them don't even believe exists - would be very funny if it decidedly wasn't at all funny.

If you make the mistake of reading this book, my suggestion would be to stop after the first fifty pages or so. This bit is actually ok. The message here was incredibly simple - and could be summed up in one paragraph:

There are people who apply their labour to nature to transform it into something worthwhile for humanity. There are those who buy and sell the products of the labour of these people and effectively live off that labour and there are a third group who provide finance to others to allow them to either use their labour more effectively or to distribute good and services more effectively. These final people are essential, but also an extravagance and the more they cost the more they hinder social growth. At the moment financial capitalism has become insanely complicated and equally insanely expensive. And it has forgotten that you can't beat the market - he quotes someone who says the market looks like a voting machine, but actually it is a weighing machine. We need to move from speculation to investing and move towards an economy that is less finance focused and more production focused. All interesting advice, even if none of it will ever be taken by virtually anybody while we have socialised risk and privatised profit.

Now, all of this sounds great - he spends the last half of the book talking about how great the US is and how he is still steeped in 18th Century values, which isn't just a yawn, but suffers from the standard problem of these things, a guy in his 90s not realising the world has changed or that it won't change back just through some well chosen (or not so well chosen) epigraphs. Particularly now that the nation state is virtually dead (something worth thinking over the next time you are saluting the flag at the Olympics, say) and now the focus of capital has gone back to its historic mission of providing the total impoverishment of the working classes - or do you need more Greeks shooting themselves outside parliament before you feel that is true?

This book was inspired by this poem:

Joe Heller

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!

-- Kurt Vonnegut

My other favourite part of it is where he quotes the wise words of Polonius in his farewelling of his son, Laertes, the bit about 'to your own self be true'. The problem is that this guy didn't quite understand that Shakespeare's point is that a father who is only able to give his son pathetic generalities as a parting 'gift' is actually no kind of father at all. At least half of this book - actually, perhaps two-thirds - suffers from precisely the kind of bollocks passing for wisdom that Shakespeare makes clear Polonius suffers from - AND if anyone ever needed to be told brevity is the soul of wit...

If you are inspired by this kind of crap I can only feel sorry for you. That this guy was listed as one of Time Magazine's top 100 inspiring figures of our age was only made comprehensible when I learnt Bozo from U2 also made the list. (No, I did spell that right)

But Bogle has spent a lifetime working in finance and building a mutual fund with many billions of dollars behind it. If he wasn't as boring as bat shit it is very likely none of that would ever have been possible.

You've been warned. "