Behind the Bar

By Ramesh Akkineni
from a speech by John Bogle
Here's how I describe it in my new book: "Observing this change in 1967, economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson sized it up pungently: 'There was only one place to make money in the mutual fund business—as there is only one place for a temperate man in a saloon—behind the bar and not in front of it . . . so I invested in a management company.' When he realized that public ownership of management companies would not only be a boon for the managers who worked behind the bar, as it were, but be a bane for the fund owners who enjoyed their libations in the front of the bar, he was wiser then he could have imagined."

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