Mutual Funds for the Utterly Confused: Oliver Goldsmith
He was an Irish poet, perhaps best known for his work “The Deserted Village”. Written in 1770, he worried that the folks who were shedding the country way of life in the hopes of riches in the cities would not come to good.
He wrote:
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.
The quest for luxury items were leaving the poor in rural parts of the community to become even more destitute and he was concerned that his fellow poets were not comprehending the severity of the situation.
Ironically, another Oliver Goldsmith, this time his grand-nephew wrote a poem called the Rising Village, suggesting that even as the poor grew poorer, their futures could be vastly improved by visiting the New World, where villages were young and prosperous and everything seemed the complete opposite.
I mention Mr. Goldsmith because of the quote from him that appears in the book. When dealing with bonds, you are essentially loaning money to a total stranger in the hopes of profiting from the use of that money. Mr. Goldsmith offers the bond investor this advice: “Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will”. Keep that in mind.
