“Yes, the investor is often his own worst enemy. Yes, the marketing colossus known as the mutual fund industry provides the weaponry which enables investors’ to indulge their suicidal instincts. No, the fund industry was hardly an innocent bystander in the market boom and the subsequent carnage. "We have met the enemy and he is us"… all of us.”

—  John Bogle

Speech to Financial Analysts of Philadelphia, February 15, 2001 ( http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20010215.html)

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1929–2019

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“The investor has the benefit of the stock market's daily and changing appraisal of his holdings, for whatever that appraisal may be worth, and, second, that the investor is able to increase or decrease his investment at the market's daily figure—if he chooses. Thus the existence of a quoted market gives the investor certain options which he does not have if his security is unquoted. But it does not impose the current quotation on an investor who prefers to take his idea of value from some other source.”

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“Full service brokers, in this day and age of low cost mutual funds and discount brokers, are really nothing more than machines for ripping off retail investors.”

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“Rich guys used to be able to manipulate the stock market and make huge profits at the expense of smaller investors. It was big news when the small investors discovered they'd been screwed. Now there are many safeguards against the small investor ever finding out how much he's getting screwed.”

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“…there won’t be one, single global market. But there will be global investors.”

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“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Walt Kelly Pogo

This is derived from the famous statement of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry on the "War of 1812": "We have met the enemy and they are ours". It appeared in a "modern day" poster for the first Earth Day in April 1970, and next in the comic strip itself in August 1970 in Porky Pine's mouth, and was re-used by Kelly in a subsequent Earth Day poster (1971), and further strips and in the title of the book Pogo : We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us (1972).
A similar statement was actually used by Kelly many years earlier in his introduction http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm to The Pogo Papers (1953) which he closes with these comments:
:Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.
There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.
:::Forward!
Pogo comic strip (1948 - 1975), Pogo

“Wealthy investors should realize that they are the cash cows of the investment industry, and that most of the exclusive investment vehicles available to them - separate accounts, hedge funds, limited partnerships, and the like - are designed to bleed them with commissions, transactional costs, and other fees.”

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“The brokerage and mutual fund business form a financial colossus that bestrides modern financial, and increasingly, social and political life.”

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