Here's an excerpt:

BILL MOYERS: What is the job of capitalism?

JOHN BOGLE: Well, ultimately, the job of capitalism is to serve the consumer. Serve the citizenry. You're allowed to make a profit for that. But, you've got to provide good products and services at fair prices. And that's the long term, that's what businesses do in the long term. The businesses that have endured in America have done that and done that successfully.

But, in the short term, there's all these financial machinations in which people can get very rich in a very short period of time by creating highly complex financial instruments, providing services that can be cut back easily as in the hospital article, not measuring up to basically their duty.

We all know that in professions, the idea has been service to the client before service to self. That's what a profession is. That's what medicine was. That's what accountancy was. That's what attorneys used to be. That's what trusteeship used to be inside the mutual fund industry. But, we've moved from that to a big capital accumulation — self interest — creating wealth for the providers of these services when the providers of these services are in fact subtracting value from society. So, it doesn't work.

BILL MOYERS: So, the private equity nursing homes have added to their wealth. But, they've subtracted from society the care for people who need it.

JOHN BOGLE: That is exactly correct. Not good.

BILL MOYERS: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL editorial page celebrates what it called the animal spirits of business. And as if that's the heart of capitalism. What do you think about that?

JOHN BOGLE: Well, I like the animal spirits of business. I mean Lord Keynes told us about animal spirits. And it comes out of a part of his work that says, "You know, all the precise numbers and the perspectives mean nothing. What determines the future of a business is its animal spirits." You know, the desire for progress, the desire to create something new. That's all good. But, it's gotten misshapen. Badly--

BILL MOYERS: How so?

JOHN BOGLE: --misshapen.

BILL MOYERS: How so?

JOHN BOGLE: Well, it's gotten misshapen because the financial side of the economy is dominating the productive side of the economy

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

JOHN BOGLE: Well, let me say it very simply. The rewards of the growth in our economy comes from corporate, largely - from corporations who are a very important measure, from corporations that are providing goods and services at a fair price innovating and bringing in new technology — providing a higher quality of life for our society and they make money doing it. I mean, and the returns in business in the long run are 100 percent the dividends a corporation pays and the rate at which its earnings grow.

That still exists. But, it's been overwhelmed by a financial economy. The financial economy, which is the way you package all these ways of financing corporations, more and more complex, more and more expensive. The financial sector of our economy is the largest profit-making sector in America. Our financial services companies make more money than our energy companies — no mean profitable business in this day and age. Plus, our healthcare companies. They make almost twice as much as our technology companies, twice as much as our manufacturing companies. We've become a financial economy which has overwhelmed the productive economy to the detriment of investors and the detriment ultimately of our society.

BILL MOYERS: By the financial sector, you mean?

JOHN BOGLE: Banks, money managers, insurance companies, certainly annuity providers. They're all subtracting value from the economy. They have to subtract. To be clear on this now — I don't want to overstate it. To be clear on this, they have to subtract some value. But, the question is--

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean they subtract some value?

JOHN BOGLE: In other words, — you've go to pay somebody something to provide a service. It's just gotten totally out of hand. My estimate is that the financial sector takes $560 billion a year out of society. Five hundred and sixty billion.

BILL MOYERS: Where does it go?

JOHN BOGLE: It goes into the pockets of hedge fund managers, mutual fund managers, bankers, insurance companies. Let me give you this just one little example. If you didn't make a $129 million last year — I'm presuming that you didn't. You don't rank among the highest paid 25 hedge fund managers. A $129 million doesn't get you into the upper echelon.

BILL MOYERS: And on the way here this morning, I saw a story that now a $1 billion will not get you in the FORTUNE 400. A $1 billion!

JOHN BOGLE: Well, I spend a lot of time thinking about that. I mean, you kind of asked the question, which I've asked in some of my work. What is enough here? And the society is out of control. I mean, in THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM, I talk about the frightening similarities between the American economy in America, our nation, at the beginning of the 21st century and Rome all those centuries ago around the 4th century.

BILL MOYERS: What are the comparisons?

JOHN BOGLE: We have an idea that we are the world's value creator and leader. And I'm talking not just about economic value, but, we like to think of America as having the best values of integrity and citizenship in the world. We're getting a little bit too much self interested. We have our own bread and circuses. And they're a little different than the bread and circuses they had in Rome. But, we surely have our circuses whether it's sports teams or casino gambling or the lottery in the states. And we see this not just in our economy, in our financial system. This very short-term focus on everything. You see it, sadly, in our government.

Everybody knows social security is going to run into crisis. We can't run these federal deficits forever. But, everybody looks out two years and says, "Will I be elected two years from now or a year and a half from now?" And, the short term focus ultimately betrays the very values that we have come to be used to in this great nation of ours.