I note an interesting trend in the March 5 Business section of blaming investors for not being sufficiently cautious, as though our recent huge losses are entirely self-inflicted (Andrew Leckey’s “Investors need to focus on research skills”; Humberto Cruz’s “Investors can’t be shortsighted”).
Ordinary investors cannot devote their lives to researching stocks.
They have little choice but to put their trust in the hands of professional stock analysts who manage mutual funds.
The majority of managed funds underperform stock indexes.
So evidently even the professionals have no clue.
When corporate CEOs are corrupt, laundering their profits in sham entities to evade taxes; when MBAs run shoddy operations like Enron, which produce nothing and exist only to shuffle funds around and glean profits; when corrupt corporations like Enron are in bed with corrupt politicians; and when respected accounting firms like Arthur Andersen deceive investors, how is this the fault of investors?
