I feel a little dirty.....

I was just looking at the Business Section of the newspaper.....I think I need a shower now.

I came across an article warning investors to pay attention to the fees associated with investing in mutual funds. It got me thinking - Mutual funds are really investment instruments that ostensibly shield the investor from the 'personal responsibility' of owning the various companies held by the mutual fund.

Okay - let me explain this synaptic misfire.....this morning, when I was on the phone with Dolly (see my prior post "Brief Healthcare Rant") I was recanting a 'news story' from Weekend Update last night, where Tina Fey was making fun of the fact that Halliburton had fleeced the U.S. gov't for a couple billion dollars. Anyway she brought up that her step-father owned Halliburton stock and that it had done well. After hyperventilating for a good 45 seconds - I asked how he could possibly sleep at night, knowing that he supported such a dastardly company.....she responded "Oh, he doesn't own it outright - it's part of a mutual fund" - This is kind of fucked up.

Of course, it's not like my social outrage is representative of the nation, but still I don't think that people should be able to hide behind their investment choices - look the bottom line is that there are corporations that do horrendous things in this world - such that nobody should be willing to give them a dollar of investment - and at the very least if people are going to become part-owners of these fascist endeavors - they should have to stand up and say "Yes XYZ Corp. is fascist, but I don't care because they pay good dividends."

It seems to me that Mutual Funds legitimize willful blindness on the part of the investor - Just make me money, I don't care how. One of the tenets of the free market system is that people are to make informed choices - it seems to me that Mutual Funds reduce the amount of information that goes into the choice - perhaps leading to bad outcomes.


Not that I'm part of the investor-class - but if I were - I wouldn't be able to stomach the thought of owning horrible companies like Halliburton, Wal-Mart or ExxonMobil.