The Cult of Passive Investing: How Wall Street Engineered a $10 Trillion Mirage

There’s an old economic adage that bureaucrats and Wall Street suits desperately wish you’d forget: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. They call it Goodhart’s Law, and it should be carved into the granite above every investment firm’s headquarters. It’s the single most damning indictment of the cult of passive investing—this mindless march of trillions into index funds, ETFs, and so-called “retirement solutions” that promise safety while hollowing out the market’s integrity. Because here’s the ugly secret they won’t print in the glossy Vanguard brochures: The index is no longer a measure of American prosperity. It’s a target—a giant, lumbering target for money flows too big to question themselves. And like all targets,…