News & Insights
Commentary
These topical posts take over from Stuart Fowler’s blog at nomonkeybusiness.org. He first started blogging in 2005, as a logical direction for the educational website that accompanied his book when it was published in 2002. All of the archived blog items have migrated to this site. Please add your own comments to new posts.
The blog, like the book, aimed both to provoke and help consumers (at all levels of income) to protect themselves better. It did this by
- highlighting the monkey tricks of a conflicted industry
- knocking off their pedastals the many peddlers of phoney theories and flawed products
- explaining essential truths of personal finance
- trying to influence public policy.
The worst excesses of monkey business have happily been cleaned up a lot since 2002. But what remains is in many ways subtler and more pervasive and so (on both accounts) harder to deal with. There is still a need for wake-up calls.
The means for individual investors to roll their sleeves up and get into financial DIY have vastly increased since 2002, as the book predicted. But their appreciation of essential principles has not necessarily increased, so it is the trivial pursuits that get all their attention. We will continue to post comments that aim to ‘correct’ their focus.
