I’ve posted a Guest Blog Entry at the Hope to Prosper site titled The Economic Crisis Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us.
Juicy Excerpt #1: there is today a mismatch between how we think stocks work and how stocks really do work that must be addressed and that the mismatch has been ignored for so long that a point was reached at which an economic crisis was the only way to force a change.
Juicy Excerpt #2: Things change. There have never before been millions of middle-class people invested in stocks to finance their retirements. What worked in earlier days does not work in a day in which a stock crash causes millions to become afraid to spend money and thereby craters the entire economy. The stock market and the economy are now connected. We are going to have to start giving better investing advice if we are to realistically expect our economy someday to become a fully functioning one once again.
Arty says
Hi, Rob,
Been awhile. Sorry to hear about your friend, John. I know you were close.
Speaking of how the economic crisis was the best thing…thought you might get a kick out of the Permanent Portfolio thread that has finally been locked on the Bogleheads board, you having been involved in a number of contrarian, locked threads years ago.
Not surprisingly, the closing of the PP thread has made it garner even more attention via other related threads, which themselves will undoubtedly get locked.
http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61824&mrr=1287756130
To no surprise to anyone who actually examines how investing works, the original thread was by far the most popular one on the Bogleheads board (to the anger of the fundamentalists), and was locked after Rick Ferri (a nice guy, quasi-fundamentalist, but a bit short on big-picture knowledge and scholarship) took another (polite) thrashing by informed investors and contributors, here:
http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61663
The original—legendary thread (now locked)—was here:
http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15434
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Arty
Rob says
Been awhile.
It’s always good to hear from you, Arty.
Sorry to hear about your friend, John. I know you were close.
John’s death is a continuing shock to me. There are still days when something comes up and I think “I need to run this part John.” And then of course it hits me that there is no John for any of us to run things past anymore. You don’t know what you got until it’s gone in this life, that’s for true.
Rob
Rob says
you having been involved in a number of contrarian, locked threads years ago.
Um — That would indeed be fair to say.
the original thread was by far the most popular one on the Bogleheads board (to the anger of the fundamentalists)
We ban what we fear. That’s the way I like to put it.
I fear the angry, nasty stuff that drives good and smart people away. So I ban the truly ugly stuff.
Buy-and-Holders fear accurate reports of what the historical data says. That’s what they see as the biggest threat to the continued popularity of their “strategy.”
Rob
Rob says
If you like Permanent Portfolio stuff, you might want to check out the Early Retirement Extreme Forum, Arty. I post there occasionally and I know that there are at least a few there who like the PP concept.
http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/
Rob