Definitely ! If there were multiple brokerage platforms that I could purchase Vanguard Funds ntf, I would have closed my Vanguard account years ago. E-Trade and Chase You Invest are the only non-Vanguard platforms that I can purchase VWINX without a transaction fee,and I don't trust either one to keep Vanguard Funds ntf. If Schwab would offer Vanguard Funds ntf, that would be a game changer for me !

It's not quite clear what you mean by "traditional passive investing firm dependent on very low management fees". Vanguard's Primecap funds come with lower management fees than Primecap Odyssey funds, yet they are managed similarly (after allowing for the fact that the Vanguard funds are larger). Lower fees does not mean less active management.
Regarding Vanguard's bond funds, I would agree that Vanguard tends to manage its funds more conservatively (even VWEHX, though that is outsourced to Wellington). Here, Vanguard relies, or if you prefer, "depends" upon its lower fees to compensate for sometimes less than inspired management.
To be clear, its actively managed bond funds are not managed by its quant or index teams. All twelve of its index bond funds are managed by Joshua C. Barrickman, who has no hand in Vanguard's actively managed funds.
Most of the active taxable, non-government (i.e. not Treasury, TIPS, etc.) funds (VGCAX, VCOBX, VIITX, VFICX, VFSTX, VUSFX, VWESX) are managed at least in part by Samuel C. Martinez, Daniel Shaykevich and Arvind Narayanan, a completely different team.
Two of these managers, Shaykevich (foreign debt) and Narayanan (IG corporate) are managing the new funds. Shaykevich is also the lead manager on VEMBX. A few years ago Chang came over from Goldman Sachs where he ran a HY fund.
To some extent I agree with what I think you may be saying. Cost is almost everything in IG bond funds, passive or active. As one moves down the credit scale or otherwise into less "conventional" arenas, bonds tend to correlate more with equities. Cost is still important, but as with equities, investment approaches and skills play a bigger role. That doesn't seem to be Vanguard's strength; it could have outsourced these funds as it did with VWEHX.

The top 10 holdings of Wellington has changed from value oriented to more like a blended. It now holds more growth names like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple other than the traditional value stocks. This change was noted in one of @msf posting earlier.
Wellington lagged other growth balanced funds for awhile as the growth stocks outperformed the values for the last 10 years. Investing more of the growth names would help to improve its performance. Don’t recall when the last time Wellington has the FAANG stocks on its top holdings.

Yeah, I spent many years of my tech writing career doing DoD proposals and came to see full well how robust offerings come to be as pricy as they are. It was fascinating to see how the military puts such intense pressure on costs / cost-cutting and yet demands that things be fully hardened, as the phrase goes. This article covers the other aspects.

When Krugman wrote nine years ago that all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base, he was talking about solvency. That's also the subject of this thread - raising the debt ceiling so the government doesn't default.
Nothing about inflation (increasing money supply), nothing about whether it's the Fed financing the deficit. So the conclusion that "Fed purchases of bonds and rising M2" aren't affecting inflation says nothing about how fiscal policy is putting solvency at risk.
In short, for the most part, references to inflation are red herrings.
As a reminder, Krugman wrote: what matters for government solvency isn’t the absolute level of debt but its level relative to the tax base.
As I already noted, and also as Krugman wrote: "the dollar value of G.D.P. normally grows over time, due to both growth and inflation." That's the only place where inflation enters into the equation, i.e. into the debt-to-GDP ratio.
If that ratio continues to increase, as it has for the past half century, then it doesn't matter what inflation is, or whether interest payments are negative in real terms. They're already incorporated into that ratio.
Blanchard argues that with low interest rates, the cost of servicing the debt is low. True enough as far as it goes. But if the debt is increasing faster than revenue because "deficits are too large", then ultimately the debt becomes unserviceable regardless of how low the nominal interest rate is.
The tired old WW2 debt warhorse aside, debt-to-GDP has been increasing pretty steadily over the past half century. With projected $1T+ deficits as far as the eye can see, do you see that trend reversing? (Hint: your budget projection link shows debt-to-GDP rising to 140.3% in 2025 and 140.5% in 2026 before receding, but that assumes that the 2017 tax cuts will expire on schedule after 2025.)
How much debt is too much? When the government cannot service its debt. That is, at the point of catastrophic failure. Of course it would likely be too late politically to reverse course well before that point.
What do I advocate? The immediate question and the start of this thread is whether to raise the debt ceiling. I'll give a Republican quote from the original piece: "My personal opinion is that once we have acquired the debt, we are responsible for the debt and you need to address the debt."

Wrongingstar Mourningstar Sad but trus
VMMXX still has share price of zero although VMFXX and VMSXX fine at $1
They have been cutting services, functions and support to retail users for several years. They do seem to be pumping resources into generic advice ( Bucket lists, "elite small cap funds on sale" etc) aimed I guess at people who are novices and dont use analytical tools that they used to have available.
The only thing that still works sorta is portfolio manger, but who knows how accurate some of their numbers are.
If it was any more expensive I would drop it. It doesn't help to complain to them as they don't want to hear what we want and need

The Krug quote was from 9y ago, as noted, just making the general point, and over long spans. ...
Agreed. Blips over short periods, say one year or even five years, can be the result of so many one-off events that they should generally be disregarded.
click the 5y and 1y graphs to see the decline and leveling from a year ago.
Uh huh.
more-recent thinking is here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/opinion/money-federal-reserve-deficit.html
That's a piece about monetary policy; this thread is about fiscal policy. While they're not unrelated, it would help if you could explain what in the piece you found relevant to budget deficits.
What I read is an argument that if the Fed increases the money supply, that doesn't necessarily cause inflation because agents "stash[] away huge amounts of currency — probably mostly $100 bills" rather than put them into circulation.
[A minor observation: while Krugman says it is mostly about the Benjamins, he writes about "green pieces of paper bearing portraits of dead presidents"]
If Fed borrowing doesn't necessarily cause inflation, then we can dismiss one of the ways I'd mentioned for debt to grow more slowly than gdp - inflation.
Since the Fed was brought into the conversation, we can consider this quote from Powell:
“The idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that can borrow in their own currency I think is just wrong.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/26/fed-chief-says-economic-theory-of-unlimited-borrowing-supported-by-ocasio-cortez-is-just-wrong.html
Which gets us back to the basic point that debt growing faster than gdp, i.e. the debt:gdp ratio increasing, is unsustainable. And that is what Krugman effectively reiterated in 2019 when he wrote: "But what matters for government solvency isn’t the absolute level of debt but its level relative to the tax base, which in turn basically corresponds to the size of the economy."
He goes on to state:

And the dollar value of G.D.P. normally grows over time, due to both growth and inflation. Other things equal, this gradually melts the [debt] snowball: even if debt is rising in dollar terms, it will shrink as a percentage of G.D.P. if deficits aren’t too large.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/opinion/melting-snowballs-and-the-winter-of-debt.html
"Other things being equal" seems like little more than wishful thinking by Krugman if we look over long spans. Debt as a fraction of GDP has grown from 40% in 1966 to well over 100% now.
It's really hard to see how the US is meeting Krugman's assumption that deficits aren't too large. Here are debt:gdp projections from March (i.e. before the latest proposed expenditures are included)

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/new-budget-projections-show-record-deficits-and-debt

That's a great idea, Informal Economist. Thanks! It has worked entered as a fund for years. But if they can't fix it I'll follow your example. It's sensible and quick.
No carew388, you are not being too harsh. You are being objective. I'm starting to think of them as "Wrongingstar".

Other metrics now in MultiSearch Results table:
Tax Cost Ratios, both Pre and Post Liquidation, 1, 5, 10 years.
Fee Waivers, Waiver Type, Waiver Date, Waiver Limit.
30 Day SEC Yields, with and without subsidy.
Adviser and Subadviser fees.
Definitions page updated as well, which now includes all the new preset screens.

The portfolio tool at Morningstar (aka M*) is malfunctioning again. Yesterday I had a look at a watchlist I have been using there for years and I couldn't work out at first how I could have lost a large amount overnight. I quickly found the problem. A Vanguard Money Market fund was being shown as having a share price of zero and therefore a monetary value of zero. I checked at Vanguard. No problem with the fund. (It's the former Prime MM Fund, now VMMXX whose unwieldy name is Vanguard Cash Reserve Federal Money Market Fund ). The money is all there. I sent an email to M* and got a surprisingly quick email response from someone with a weak command of English and no idea how to begin or end a sentence. He asked me for a screen capture so he could see the problem. I sent him a partial one including the fund with zero value. Now I wish I hadn't. None of his business what I've got invested. I suggested he create a test portfolio or watchlist with that fund entered. I was amazed and disappointed he hadn't thought of that. I sent some update emails. I heard nothing back so this afternoon I phoned tech support. I got someone in Mumbai. Uh oh. I said thanks and hung up. Morningstar is outsourcing to Asia. In my experience it means washing one's hands of responsibility for giving competent help. Please no admonitions about racism or xenophobia. I am not racist. I am bandit-ist. I am incompetent-is. I am We'll Keep You On The Phone for 30 minutes and Spout Nonsense and Never Fix It -phobic.
OK. Rant now finished.

I have been following the various discussions about OSTIX on various investment forums (MFO, Armchair, Big Bang). I have done some additional due diligence on this fund recently, just to see if I have some renewed interest in possibly owning it. I have concluded that I am not interested in purchasing this fund. I simply can find better alternatives, that offers similar total return, with lower risk metrics. Just owning it because if offers "dedicated HY Bond" exposure, is not enough of a reason to own it for me. I own several bond oefs from the multisector and nontraditional bond categories, that offers significant exposure to HY bonds, and find no compelling reason to own it, just because it is a dedicated sector HY bond fund. So, I will pass on it.

Not sure, but your last comment appears to be in reference to fred495 who on Monday on armchairinvesting stated,
https://armchairinvesting.freeforums.net/thread/616/bond-oefs-2021?page=20
"As I said, I was drawn to OSTIX because of its consistent total return performance of between 5 and 6% over the past 3, 5, 10 and 15 years and its low duration. Additionally, I had no dedicated corporate HY bond exposure in my portfolio."
So fred's primary reason for owning is "its consistent total return performance" with his need/desire for HYB exposure as a secondary reason.

It is amazing that these FAANG stocks have been dominating the broader US stock index for the last 10 years. Few mutual funds managed to be competitive without holding one or more of the FAANG stocks. They are not consider bad but only from the sake of diversification perspective. Value and smaller cap stock funds have fewer exposure to FAANG stocks. BTW, is BRKB is Value stock ever though it holds 40% Apple stock?
M*'s X-ray tool reveals stock overlaps between funds and their percentages. I have not able to do that on M* site directly as in that past.

EDUCATION BURDEN
Goldman Sachs said in a research note its one year price targets on the listed tutoring stocks would be cut by 78% on average. The impact, the note said, would be mostly due to the ban on weekend and winter and summer holiday tutoring, which brought in up to 80% of the firms' revenue.
China's for-profit education sector has been under scrutiny as part of Beijing's push to ease pressure on school children and reduce a cost burden on parents that has contributed to a drop in birth rates.
More than 75% of students aged from around 6 to 18 in China attended after-school tutoring classes in 2016, according to the most recent figures from the Chinese Society of Education, and anecdotal evidence suggests that percentage has risen over recent years.
"In the long run, it is definitely good news for the children as they don’t have to immerse themselves in endless homework," said Zhu Li, a Chinese parent in Haidian District in Beijing.
"But on the other hand, it might not be so good if they fail to enter a good university."

https://reuters.com/world/china/chinas-tal-education-expects-hit-new-private-tutoring-rules-2021-07-25/

You might also look at MIOPX's sibling fund, MFAPX, also managed by Kristian Heugh. A very similar fund though with some differences. I'm inclined to agree with @stillers that Morgan Stanley looks like it has some of the most complementary funds for PRWAX. That's under the assumption that you're looking for an all cap international growth fund to pair with an all cap domestic growth fund. (Lipper classifies both the MS funds as all cap.)
MFAPX has a somewhat less emphatic growth orientation (74% in growth stocks vs. 88% for MIOPX). Perhaps commensurate with that, it is less volatile (3 year std deviation of 14.84 vs. 19.65) and has a smaller max drawdown (17.26% vs. 23.43% June-Sept 2011).
OTOH, that lower volatility also translates into less upside capture (99% vs 119% average over the past three years).
Over the 10+ year lifetime of MFAPX (the shorter-lived fund), the two have reached nearly the same point with cumulative returns of 296.82% for MFAPX and 308.70% for MIOPX. MFAPX held a slight, fairly consistent edge until 2020. MIOPX has done significantly better recently (and significantly worse in March 2020), again consistent with its somewhat more growthy nature.
Lots of overlap. What works better in the pairing depends on what you're looking for.
Note that both these funds sport very compact portfolios, holding 31 and 37 stocks. In contrast, PRWAX holds 82.

I'm puzzled by the question. I mean, we do our best to do our homework, due diligence, to find the mutual funds which have great track records, are suited to our goals and risk tolerance. I confess I'm not an expert, so I trust the Fund Managers to deploy my money, and everyone else's who invest in the fund, with knowledgable deftness regarding issues like inflation, political risks, dollar strength and weakness, and whether to play defense or go on offense and be aggressive, when circumstances warrant it. I just think it's almost impossible to be reacting in a meaningful way to global macro headlines. Buy low, sell high. If inflation takes hold--- or God forbid--- STAGFLATION---- the cycle will have to play out. Hopefully, we're paying attention and can make our own individual informed decisions as to whether we want to hide in Treasuries or... whatever. I do believe it is wisest to be moderate, not trying to shoot out the lights in the arena, or "shoot the moon." Cover as many bases as you can. Do not expect skyrocketing profits--- as long as you're being PRUDENT. Is your time-horizon short? Then priorities and strategies will be different than a lot of us.
I'm retired but have my eye on the future, for my heirs. So I'm less conservative than I'd be, otherwise. Still, I own more BONDS than I did just 4 or 5 years ago. Yes, bonds have almost become "return-free risk." Giggle. They pay very little these days, with the global ZIRP being embraced by governments around the world. But the ballast in my boat feels comfortable. And I am still exposed to stocks: 42%. So I'm still grabbing SOME of the stock run-up. At this moment, Morningstar X-Ray tells me my profit will match the SP500 going out 5 years from now, in terms of projected earnings per share growth. And my projected YIELD over the same period, looking ahead five years, = 58% better than the SP500. I'm pleased. I keep in mind the words from the Springsteen song, "Badlands."
"Poor man wanna be rich,
Rich man wanna be king,
And the King ain't satisfied till he rules everything."
....Ya, that's NOT me. And that's OK. All there is left to do is to be thankful. If things go South, then I'm screwed. But there are some things I can do to mitigate that. Worrying about my portfolio vis-a-vis inflation is not a thing I can control very well. Although I recognize that inflated prices probably will show up in the share prices in the funds I own. :)

OSTIX started August 30, 2002. So it's been around for about 19 years. It was classified as a multisector fund for just over 11 of those years, and as a high yield fund for nearly the past 8 years. You describe the 11 years (or less) when you owned it (during which time M* classified it as multisector) as "many many years". While the 8 years since M* reclassified the fund are described as just "a few years".
As I said, people's perception of time is often nonlinear. Perceptions don't matter, though. What matters are the actual numbers. Nearly 8 years since reclassification. Long enough that it would be inappropriate to compare OSTIX with multisector funds even based on historical performance.
The fund's portfolio for many years did, as you said, strongly resemble its current portfolio. However, its earlier portfolios did not. In its early years, OSTIX was significantly more diversified.
As M* described the fund its Dec 2011 analysis, "The managers can and have bought convertible bonds, preferred stock, and floating-rate notes in the past, but currently--and for much of the past few years--the portfolio has focused on shorter-term high-yield corporate bonds."
Multisector funds typically are more diversified than high yield funds. As OSTIX became less diversified, it more closely resembled high yield funds. Hence the reclassification in 2013, albeit with a substantial lag.

One type of Chinese tech stock got really killed yesterday, the companies offering after-school tutoring, the biggest of which is TAL. Declines of 65% were seen after the Party announced it might move to regulate or curtail such academic instruction. Korea went through the same type of educational reform quite a number of years ago. Wealthy families were paying exorbitant fees to tutors to help their kids get into college. In Japan and Korea, and possibly China, entrance to a university is the greatest hurdle. It is widely recognized that the quality of education in universities leaves something to be desired and that once admitted, students don’t have to work very hard to get a degree. The CCP can appear to be limiting elitism while at the same time taking control of companies that might not hew the Party line. Government intervention is mentioned as a risk factor in the prospective of EM funds, but this example is striking. I was expecting the Kristian Heugh managed funds, that have been big holders of the tutoring companies, to take a nosedive yesterday, but only MSAUX had an outsized loss of +4%.

I did not go back and see how long ago it was the OSTIX classification changed from the M* Multisector Bond category, to the M* High Yield Bond category. Instead of using the phrase "a couple of years ago", I should have used the phrase "a few years ago". I have not followed OSTIX since I sold it, but when I looked at it recently, because a poster friend purchased it, it strongly resembled what I use to own when it was classified as a Multisector Bond Oef.

Setting aside the question of whether the OP is asking a question worthy of our consideration, I get the sense that the person is tired of making decisions about his family’s finances. If so, I think the whole enchilada ought to be turned over to a financial advisor who could propose a hands-off portfolio, akin to a blind trust, taking the worry and decision making out of the hands of a person who wants to relax in the twilight years. I would not want to do that myself, but I have thought it would be the best arrangement for my wife if I go first, and I have told our advisor that.

I don't understand why this is considered a "silly question, silly answer". It's a question that I've asked myself many, many times over the last couple of years as I've watched the equity market continually rack up gains.

OJ,
You have seriously asked if you should bail 100%? Okay.
Are you in their circumstance?
In any case, their not-question was even worse.
retired ... pension .., house paid off ... income greatly exceeds ... expenses.
... gotten to a point [where] we want to be done with stock market investing altogether. ... don't want bonds ... annuities ... just want to be done. Are we being foolish?
There is only one answer then, and we should take them at their word and assume they are serious, and have the mattress ready. (The first answer before this is to the only posed question, which is yes, but they have already said they are clear about that, meaning they do wish to be foolish.)
The answer is to do something asap with all these unwanted moneys, meaning give them away. Charity, kids, gov entity local or elsewhere,
Imagine being in this predicament and writing into a site or authority or newspaper.
A nonserious question and a nonserious answer.