In “The Retirement Gamble” PBS reveals its bias…..again

PBS recently aired a special Frontline program called “The Retirement Gamble.” The basic thrust of the special was that financial 401k managers are robbing you blind and that everyone should invest in index funds, mostly because John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Funds and evangelist for index funds believes no managers can beat index funds and, therefore, they are robbing the investor. Bogle may be right if you only look at averages but there are certainly individual managers who can and do beat the index funds, albeit not forever. It should be up to the investor to decide whether it is wise to pay the extra fees in the hope of beating the index funds at any given point in time.

In another glaring example of PBS dishonesty and bias, they never once suggested that investors compare the amount of fees they are paying with the performance of their investment. It should be obvious (even to the corporation haters at PBS) that, if the investments are making more than the sum of the index fund returns and the fees, the idea of paying the extra fees may be sound.

Other than those two glaring examples of bias, the PBS special was very well done.