[brewer12345]

I like Vanguard because the are cheap and the firm is a mutual (owned by its customers), which tends to remove the profit motive and entrench the idea of serving customers.

Having said that, you have to look very carefully at any investment product, no matter how plain vanilla. A few years ago, I read through the annual list of holdings in my iShares EAFE index ETF. Imagine my surprise to see credit default swaps written on single junk rated names. I'm pretty sure that's not part of the index, but I bet I am .0001% of owners of that fund that read that and understoos what it meant.