I’ve been e-mail numerous people to let them know about my article reporting on The Silencing of Academic Researcher Wade Pfau by The Buy-and-Hold Mafia.
Yesterday’s blog entry reported on my correspondence with Joachim Klement, Chief Investment Officer at Wellershoff & Partners, Ltd. Set forth below is Joachim’s response to the e-mail of mine described in the earlier blog entry:
Joachim:
Evidence Based Investing says
Rob
Have you approached the Journal of Financial Planning yet?
Rob says
I have not, Evidence.
My focus today is on the political side of the story.
It is of course good to have articles published in the Journal of Financial Planning and in similar places. But you know what? People have been publishing such articles for 30 years now. It hasn’t changed anything.
Our economic problem is not an intellectual problem. It is a POLITICAL problem. There is huge money to be made pushing Buy-and-Hold strategies. Investors LOVE Get Rich Quick. The people making all this money don’t want those who follow research-based strategies intruding on their turf. That’s the story. That’s the deal.
We need articles in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal talking about the death threats and the board bannings and the tens of thousands of acts of defamation and the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. That’s how we get people sent to prison. It’s the announcement of the prison sentences that is going to change everything.
Once prison sentences are announced, the Buy-and-Holders will understand that there are consequences attached to pushing GRQ schemes and saying that they are supported by “studies.”
The other stuff doesn’t matter so long as the Buy-and-Holders are employing such ruthless intimidation tactics. We have to solve the political problem first. A very interesting national debate will follow in which I have no doubt the Buy-and-Holders will make many good points. But we cannot have the national debate until the prison terms are announced because civil and reasonable people are not willing to give voice to their honest views so long as the sorts of internet sewer rats who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney are in the room.
My best wishes to you, my old Goon friend.
Rob, the Fellow Focused on the Political Side of The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate
Evidence Based Investing says
People have been publishing such articles for 30 years now. It hasn’t changed anything.
30 years?
So there are people who have been on this story much longer than you?
Rob says
Of course.
Shiller published his research showing that valuations affect long-term returns in 1981.
Rob, the Fellow Who Dared to Examine the Implications of Shiller’s Research Findings and to Post Honestly About Them on Internet Discussion Boards