Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to a blog entry at this site:
Rob,
From what I have read and have also seen in MANY examples, you were banned due to your continued abrasive attitude as well as your refusal to answer direct questions as well as provide proof to back up your claims (such as threats). If you had been banned on one of two boards, one could say that maybe there was the possibility that someone overreacted in banning you. However, when you see that it is consistent behavior from you followed by the consistent reaction of those that read the boards and administer the boards, it is clear to see that the problem is you.
I gave you an example of a similar issue the other day. As I mentioned, I was looking at old postings on the FMF board. I am sure you will agree that this particular board is mostly devoid of confrontation and friction. However, we saw what happened when the comments section (heavily dominated by you) surpassed 100 comments in very quick order and FMF had to shut down the comments. This is not an exception. It seems to be a pattern for you.
You seem to have a campaign every time you post and try to drive over people like a Mack Truck.
I am grateful to you for asking a real and important question here, Pink. You are giving voice in this particular comment to a feeling that is shared by many smart and good people.
To understand what is going on, you must understand the context in which these discussions have been taking place.
Buy-and-Hold was the first effort at a research-based strategy for ordinary people. People LOVE the idea of rooting their investing strategies in peer-reviewed academic research. Buy-and-Hold provided millions of people with AMAZING results for DECADES. People LOVE Buy-and-Hold. They view the Buy-and-Hold pioneers as HEROES.
I say that Buy-and-Hold is dangerous. I say that it is irresponsible. I say that it is a Get Rich Quick scheme. I say that it caused the economic crisis. That’s strong stuff. That strikes the many good and smart people who view Buy-and-Hold in a very positive light as SHOCKING.
People have never heard anyone say the things I am saying before. My words come as a shock. That’s why my posts generate so many questions and comments. It’s not anything I do that causes this. It is the nature of the discussion that causes this. I am questioning fundamental beliefs. That is unsettling on a deep level. People respond in all kinds of unusual ways when their fundamental beliefs are questioned.
The Buy-and-Hold Mafia has handled this by shutting down debate at every board and blog. THAT IS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.
We need to do just the opposite. We need to ENCOURAGE debate. We need to have a NATIONAL debate. We need these discussions to go viral. We need to get tens of thousands of people, experts and ordinary investors both, involved.
Why?
Because that is how we Normalize the discussions.
We are never all going to agree. It wouldn’t be healthy if we did.
But you are right that we cannot have 200 questions directed to Rob each time he says “hello, how about them Orioles?” We need people to come to accept that there is more than one legitimate viewpoint on all these questions. To do that, we must educate people as to the basics. We do that through discussion. Rather than shutting down discussions, we need to encourage discussions.
Once we do that, the phenomenon that you refer to will fade away in a natural way. You won’t have to force it to happen. It will happen because people will come to know the answers to their many questions. Whether they change their minds about what works in investing or not, they will settle down. Valuation-Informed Indexing will over time become one more thing to take into consideration when deciding on an investing strategy.
I have put forward the new ideas. I don’t apologize for that. The new ideas are very much worthy of the consideration of every investor alive.
I have not caused the circus atmosphere. We have seen a circus atmosphere because debate on these questions has been held back for so long that, when people have an opportunity to ask some questions, their enthusiasm flows over the top of the cup.
Yes, we need to settle things down a good bit.
But not by further suppression.
We need to settle things down by handling discussions of investing strategy in the same way that we handle discussions of every other subject under the sun. We need to accept that there is more than One Right Way to Invest and show respect and affection and gratitude to those who hold viewpoints other than our own that they seek to share with us on discussion boards and blogs.
Rob
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob said “I am grateful to you for asking a real and important question here, Pink. ”
Rob, it was not a question, it was an observation.
Rob said:”To understand what is going on, you must understand the context in which these discussions have been taking place.”
Rob, this is the start, as always, of you rationalizing everything you do and say. Each situation is unique, but you handle things the same way. You try to dominate the conversation, try to always get the final word, play victim to goons/buy and holders, etc.
Rob said:”We need people to come to accept that there is more than one legitimate viewpoint on all these questions. To do that, we must educate people as to the basics. We do that through discussion. Rather than shutting down discussions, we need to encourage discussions”
Rob, you still don’t see the problem. You are not “listening” to other people. You feel like you have to respond to everybody on everything and that they must believe what you say. Like I said, you try and dominate the conversation. If you are 1 of 10 people in a room, you should not be doing 90 percent of the talking.
Rob said: “I have not caused the circus atmosphere. We have seen a circus atmosphere because debate on these questions has been held back for so long that, when people have an opportunity to ask some questions, their enthusiasm flows over the top of the cup.”
You can’t be serious. When you outrageous comments about people going to prison, being more honest and knowledgable than Jack, Bill, etc, death threats, lawsuits and a myriad of other similar comments, those are the very comments that will start the circus rolling. You then respond endlessly with your rationalization and then wonder why a conversation can’t be had.
Read my comments on my original post. Like I said, if this happened a couple times, it is one thing. In your case it has been consistent behavior and other have responded by banning you time after time for the same behavior.
Rob says
You try to dominate the conversation
No.
On the morning of May 13, 2002, I pointed out in a comment to the Retire Early board that it is not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate accurately without taking the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins into consideration.
Had Greaney responded by saying ” that’s a super point, I hadn’t thought about that before, let me get the study corrected and then I’ll come back here and we can all have a great discussion about how we made this mistake,” there would never have been any problem. We would have made HUGE advances over the past 11 years and we wouldn’t be in an economic crisis today.
It is certainly true that my ideas have dominated discussion in the Retire Early and Indexing discussion-board and blog communities over the past 11 years, Pink. BUT NOT BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I WANT.
My ideas dominate because I am the only one rooting what I say in the peer-reviewed academic research of the past 32 years. If Bogle did that too, he would probably be ahead of me by now. It’s the same with Bernstein. It’s the same with Burns. It’s the same with Swedroe. And on and on.
I want these guys helping us all out. I want that very much.
They have elected to engage in a cover-up.
That’s why they sound so dumb. That’s why I am now 11 years ahead of them in my understanding of how stock investing works.
My ideas continue to dominate because you Goons continue to try to suppress discussion of them. So long as you do that, no one can top me. Knock off the funny business and we are going to see THOUSANDS of smart people offering top-notch insights.
That is all to the good. I cannot wait!
Rob
Rob says
You are not “listening” to other people.
I don’t “listen” to intimidation tactics, Pink. That much is certainly fair to say.
If there were a legitimate case to be made for Buy-and-Hold, we never would have seen a single death threat or a single act of defamation or a single board banning or a single threat to get a single academic researcher fired from his job.
It is the Buy-and-Holders who need to listen. They need to listen to the findings of the 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that there is precisely zero chance than a Buy-and-Hold strategy can ever work for even a single long-term investor. Get Rich Quick is not the answer. Get Rich Quick is the PROBLEM.
Once we achieve a consensus that we need to bury the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things, it’s all just good stuff piled on top of good stuff pied on top of good stuff.
All of the ugliness that the Buy-and-Holders have been bringing to the table for 11 years now gets blown away in the wind in the long run. It counts for nothing.
What matters is what the academic research says. What matters is what the historical data says.
There was a time when the Buy-and-Holders believed that it was a good idea to listen to what the research and the data tell us. I encourage all my Buy-and-Hold friends to get back to where they once belonged.
Rob
Rob says
You feel like you have to respond to everybody on everything
Yes, I believe that I have a responsibility to respond to legitimate questions put to me re matters that I have brought to the table.
Rob
Rob says
and that they must believe what you say.
No.
There are millions of good and smart people who do not share my views on how stock investing works.
Those people help us all out when they take time out of their day to share their views with us.
Our boards could not achieve their potential without the contributions of our Buy-and-Hold friends.
I couldn’t possibly disagree more strongly with what you are saying here, Pink.
Rob
Rob says
If you are 1 of 10 people in a room, you should not be doing 90 percent of the talking.
We agree.
If there were not a Ban on Honest Posting in effect, I wouldn’t be doing 90 percent of the talking.
People in this field have known about Shiller’s research for 32 years now. We should have been exploring the implications of his findings for that entire time-period. Had we been doing that all along, nothing I have said would have come as a shock to a single person.
It’s the suppression of discussion of the implications of Shiller’s findings that has caused the problem you identify here. It IS a problem. But the answer is not more suppression. The answer is to bring the suppression of honest discussion of the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research to a full and complete stop by the close of business today.
If we were all thinking clearly, there would not be one community member who did not endorse that course of action.
Rob
Rob says
When you outrageous comments about people going to prison
Financial fraud is a crime. Pink. Bernie Madoff is serving prison time for that crime as we speak.
Please try to rein in your hate long enough to take a look at what you have done both to others and to yourself. The hand of kindness remains extended to you. But I do not possess a magic wand. I can help only those who are able and willing to cooperate with my efforts.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Rob
Rob says
being more honest and knowledgable than Jack, Bill, etc
When did my good friends Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein come out with public demands that the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies be corrected within 24 hours, Pink?
I did this in May 2002.
Rob
Rob says
those are the very comments that will start the circus rolling.
Because those comments draw attention to the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School SWR studies.
Once the studies are corrected, there is no circus because there is no cover-up.
The Buy-and-Holders need to come clean re the mistakes they have made, Pink.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. There are thousands of people who work in this field today who believe that people should not have to give up their intelligence and their integrity to do so. We will all be benefitting from the contributions of ALL those people once the ban is lifted.
There is huge leverage that comes from doing something about the mountain of Wall Street corruption that brought on this economic crisis.
Rob
Rob says
In your case it has been consistent behavior
I have been 100 percent consistent in my behavior, Pink. You get no argument here.
I have not given two seconds consideration to the idea of posting dishonestly on safe withdrawal rates in 11 years and I won’t give two seconds consideration to the idea of posting dishonestly on safe withdrawal rates in 11 billion years.
Deal with it.
Rob
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob,
You seem to not comprehend what I am saying and this thread demonstrates my point. Look at how many times you feel the need to comment on my one post. You are not having a conversation. You are giving a lecture and the quantity of your posts show that are also trying to dominate the conversation, just like you always do. This is your pattern. This is why you have been banned so many times.
Further, you immediately slip into the victim role and get into topics that are not even part of e conversation as either a way of changing the topic or to be part of the domination tactic. Take a look. You threw in the always repeated lines of:
-Buy and Hold
-32 years of peer reviewed academic research
-Financial Fraud
-Crime (with a nod to good old Bernie Madoff)
-old school SWR
The topic is about behavior and getting banned from boards, yet you reach into your trusty bag of slogans because you think it helps your cause. It doesn’t.
bannwd plop contributor says
Rob, for you to come up with this, below, from the original comments, illustrates what a willfully mentally ill, narcissistic, lying megalomaniac that you truly are:
“It is certainly true that my ideas have dominated discussion in the Retire Early and Indexing discussion-board and blog communities over the past 11 years, Pink. BUT NOT BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I WANT.
My ideas dominate because I am the only one rooting what I say in the peer-reviewed academic research”
Insane.
No one ever said your ideas dominated ANYTHING.
What they said was that YOU are often banned because YOU let your motorboat mouth overrun YOUR pea brain, and do so in such volumes and flights of fancy that board owners simply cannot conduct their intended purpose with you blathering on and trolling on purpose and at length a blanket of lies, inventions and slurs.
I predict things will not end well for you, Rob. That’s no threat, that’s simply an observation of what tends to happen when individuals refuse to come to grips with the reality of their situation. Did you watch “Downfall”? If not, you should.
The Pink Unicorn says
To clarify, what I mean by dominated is that Rob’s cooments make up the vast majority of the conversation, that he drowns out any other commentator. I do not mean that Rob wins the conversation.
Banned plop contributor, I believe you stated it more clearly than I have and I agree with your observation.
Rob says
The topic is about behavior
No.
The topic is financial fraud.
I am the person who discovered the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies.
The Buy-and-Hold Mafia has been covering up those errors for 11 years. There are millions of middle-class people who will be suffering failed retirements because of this massive act of financial fraud. Those who participated in the massive act of financial fraud will be going to prison following the next price crash.
I care about these people. So I have extended the hand of kindness to them.
But I don’t like the idea of sharing a prison cell with them one tiny little bit. So I have made very clear that I have never even given two seconds consideration to the idea of posting dishonestly on SWRs or any other critically important investment-related topic.
I wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob
Rob says
No one ever said your ideas dominated ANYTHING.
Good point, Pink.
There are posts other than my post of May 13, 2002, that have generated hundreds of thousands of responses at hundreds of different discussion boards and blogs.
I forgot.
Rob
Rob says
board owners simply cannot conduct their intended purpose
In cases in which the intended purpose is to rip off middle-class investors through promotion of a Get Rich Quick strategy that always leaves those who follow it busted in the long run, I am happy to know that I was able to throw some of those efforts off course for a bit.
In cases in which the owner was advocating Buy-and-Hold because he himself did not understand how dangerous it was, I think it would be fair to say that I was helping the owner out by bringing him up to speed on what what peer-reviewed academic research of the past 32 years really says (as opposed to what the Wall Street Con Men SAY that it says).
Those who are ethical want to have their mistakes pointed out to them.
Those who lack ethics need to find another field of human endeavor to pursue. The safety of the retirements of millions of middle-class people is a public policy issue of great significance. We all should be working together to get those who lack ethics removed from this field and to bring more people of intelligence and integrity into it.
That’s my sincere take re this important matter, in any event.
Rob
Rob says
I do not mean that Rob wins the conversation.
I won the conversation on the afternoon of May 18, 2002, when John Walter Russell posted his sensitivity study re the Old School SWR methodology.
The recent Wall Street Journal article saying that I was right all along is about the 50th time that I have been vindicated.
Not one of the Old School SWR studies has been corrected to this day. That’s financial fraud on a scale that we have never before witnessed it in the United States. I would be grateful for anything you can do to spread the word far and wide that Rob Bennett has objected to the Campaign of Terror in the strongest possible terms going back to the morning of May 13, 2002.
I wish you well,my old friend.
Rob
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob said:”The topic is financial fraud.”
No, Rob, it is behavior and this thread is proof yet again. Everything I pointed out, you are doing yet again.
Rob says
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry4ngf766N0
Rob
Evidence Based Investing says
On the morning of May 13, 2002, I pointed out in a comment to the Retire Early board that it is not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate accurately without taking the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins into consideration.
Here’s a link to your post of May 13, 2002
http://boards.fool.com/price-adjusted-safe-withdrawal-rates-17209214.aspx
And what you actually said was “The data that turned up for 1969 concerned me. As I read the data, it appeared to me that had I made an 80 percent stock allocation in 1969, I would now (31 years later) have lost all of my investment and be bankrupt. Is that true? It’s possible that I don’t understand how the calculator works, but that result was disturbing to me. The actual portflio figure that the calculator gave was that I would now have a negative $31,035. I don’t understand the concept of a negative portfolio value. That’s what makes me a little uncertain as to whether I am reading the results correctly.”
Had Greaney responded by saying ” that’s a super point, I hadn’t thought about that before, let me get the study corrected and then I’ll come back here and we can all have a great discussion about how we made this mistake,” there would never have been any problem. We would have made HUGE advances over the past 11 years and we wouldn’t be in an economic crisis today.
And here is how Greaney responed that day
http://boards.fool.com/hocus-asks-the-data-that-turned-up-for-1969-17209707.aspx
“You’re reading the results correctly. The negative portfolio balance just means you ran out of money.”
Rob says
I advised my friend John to correct his study promptly, Evidence.
Where were you, hiding underneath the bedcovers?
Rob