Yesterday’s blog entry reported on an e-mail that I sent to Academic Researcher Wade Pfau on April 5. 2011. I sent Wade an e-mail on April 18, 2011, reporting that The Returns Sequence Reality Checker had been released.
Wade said that the calculator looked great. He asked: “Have you been following the Trinity study thread at Bogleheads? DRiP Guy had a bit of a temper tantrum over the weekend” I responded that: “Things move forward at an exceedingly slow pace. But I did detect forward motion” in that thread.
Wade was during this time-period posting occasionally at my blog. A number of articles were published in this time-period acknowledging ten years later that I was right in my May 13, 2002, post, that the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies really do get all the numbers wildly wrong because they do not include an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. I wrote in a blog entry that the Old School studies should be corrected. I explained that financial planners had been using the infamous “4 Percent Rule” for years and that millions of middle-class investors will be experiencing failed retirements in days to come and that we should all do everything possible to get the word out and help as many people as we can. Wade at first expressed reluctance to acknowledge the obvious merit of this idea. But, after some discussion, he agreed that the Old School studies should be corrected. He said that he would write an e-mail to the authors of the Trinity Study seeking a correction.
The Greaney Goons responded by putting forward posts at a thread at the Goon Central board threatening to get Wade fired from his job by sending defamatory comments to his employer. Wade sent me the following e-mail on May 1, 2011:
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the comments on my blog, and also your new article about the Fisher and Statman study is very nice.
I think I should stay publicly quiet for a while, as I really don’t want anyone sending messages about any topics to officials at my university. They will not care about who is right or wrong, especially as they will not care about US retirement planning issues anyway, but they just don’t like any topic of controversy or problems. Hopefully this stuff will blow over soon and those guys will forget about it and move on to the next thing before any further escalation occurs.
But would you mind, at least for the next week or so, to not mention my name anymore on your blog, and to also completely ignore the “Wade Pfau Contacts Trinity Authors” thread at the Hocomania site. I hope that thread can quickly move down the list into the archives. At the same time, please do not delete it either, as that would surely be noticed by someone.
By the way, please do not mention this publicly, but just to let you know, I haven’t heard back from any of the Trinity authors yet.
Best wishes, Wade
W says
Rob,
After months of trying to prop yourself up at my expense, and showing such utter lack of personal integrity in posting the contents of my private emails when I explicitly asked you not to, you’ve finally gotten to your big payoff: the “proof that I’ve been threatened into silence.”
Let’s back up:
-As this whole email history reminds, I was always somewhat confused about your position. I now realize you believe that market valuations can be used to better identify a “safe withdrawal rate.” But I don’t think so. The U.S. experience has been rather unique, and the relationship between past market valuations and withdrawal rates in the U.S. is not necessarily indicative about future withdrawal rates. There is even less historical data to link valuations to safe withdrawal rates than there this is to simply look at what withdrawal rates worked in the past.
-The Trinity study came about as an offshoot of research by financial planners. But financial economists had long known there is no such thing as a safe withdrawal rate from a portfolio of volatile assets, well before the Trinity study was ever written. This means that you didn’t discover anything that wasn’t known before. It is dishonest for you to pull out all these 1.5 year old quotes from me and ignore what I’ve learned and said since then.
-Your blog post today refers to a heated exchange that DRiP Guy and I had at Bogleheads in April 2011. And do you recall what the outcome of that exchange was? That is when I realized that he was right about this whole matter. And so I did not write to the Trinity authors to ask for a correction, I wrote to apologize to them for being too publicly critical of their study, but to also point out some reasons why the limited U.S. historical data may not really be sufficient to have a clear idea about the safe withdrawal rate. I told you that before.
-I’ve said the Trinity study is not helpful for new retirees. You’ve said that this doesn’t go far enough because the study needs to be corrected. But what you really mean is: you want to become rich and famous and you think this will happen if there is a formal process to republish old studies acknowledging you for “discovering” an “error” in them and providing your proposed “correction.” Since you are wrong about the “error” and the “discovery” and the “correction,” I’m not sure how successful you are going to be with this plan.
-Now about this job threat business. You’ve accused DRiP Guy of calling my employer and all sorts of other oddities, but why don’t you just provide a link so that people can judge the accusation for themselves:
http://boards.fool.com/hocus-gets-college-prof-to-question-swr-studies-29265775.aspx?sort=whole
This was still a period of uncertainty about what would happen in Japan after the Great Kanto earthquake the month before, and a new president had also just been installed at my university indicating a shift in power away from the group that had hired me. So you have here what looks like your big triumph… proof I’ve been silenced. However, I quickly recovered from my initial concern and realized that the whole thing was ridiculous. Anyway, there is no threat there. intercst knows how to push your buttons. That’s all. I wouldn’t lose my job even if people did complain about me, and as far as I know, no one ever did email or call my employer. My research has not been impacted by any alleged threats, and it is really insulting and disgusting all of the times you’ve suggested otherwise. And I was still peeved that you misrepresented why I emailed the Trinity authors, which is what caused the whole issue in the first place.
-You owe Mr. Bengen an apology, because it does look like the 2000 retirees are going to be okay after all with 4%. We are getting far enough along in their retirements to see this. While that doesn’t mean that 4% was safe ex ante, it does mean that he did not cause millions of failed retirements, as you’ve explicitly suggested before.
-Finally, you shouldn’t have posted my private emails. That is so unethical. And it really doesn’t help to build you up. Posting my outdated private emails will only give second thoughts to anyone in the future who might have been willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
I’m not going to get into a back and forth with you about this. I already know your response. You will be outraged. You will suggest that I’ve turned my back on average Americans and sold out to Wall Street. You will remind us all that you’ve been a victim of death threats. You will say that we could have discussions about all of these diverse viewpoints if only some internet discussion boards would be opened to honest posting. You will say that you discovered errors in the 4% rule and that those with a vested interest in preserving 4% have terrorized you for trying to get past studies corrected. As such, you will ignore everything I wrote above. You will just spin my comment as proof that I’m really afraid to speak truthfully. You will do this all in a very long series of comments which may approach 10,000 words in total. But it’s all so tiring and implausible. Please don’t spend your day doing this. Go play with your kids. It’s time to move on.
Rob says
I hope things have been going well for you, Wade. I miss talking things over with you!
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us here. Your words add some much needed balance to the thread.
I will post your comment as a separate blog entry this afternoon.
Please take good care.
Rob
what says
I didn’t notice any threat to contact Wade’s employer in the thread he linked. It just seems to me that he was being warned that you are a nut job and it probably would not be good for his career to be getting ideas from a crazy person.
Rob says
Good point, What.
Rob