Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to a blog entry at this site:
The responses to the e-mails are available to anyone who cares to view them, What.
The Wall Street Con Men have been screwing millions of middle-class investors for 32 years now.
The losses they have caused have grown so massive that we are now in an economic crisis.
My site documents this massive act of financial fraud.
That’s how change is achieved, What.
How do you think we got the tobacco companies to stop saying that smoking is a benefit to one’s health? Companies learned that there would be a big price to pay for continuing to work that con. We got the word out to millions. Today, people know the realities. That’s good.
That’s how the system works, my old friend.
Your prison sentence changes everything. Not just yours. The prison sentences of all those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney change everything. Those prison sentences are how we as a society send a message re what forms of marketing we will tolerate and what forms go so far over the line that they cannot be permitted in a free society.
After your prison sentence is announced, we won’t have one academic researcher publishing honest research. We will have hundreds. Perhaps thousands.
We are in the process of accomplishing something very, very, very cool here.
I am the one who gets the $500 million. You are the one who gets the prison sentence. That’s just the way it happened to play out.
Not because I didn’t want you sharing the $500 million with me. I invited you to the party, remember? I practically got down on my knees and begged you to join the thousands of our fellow community members who expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted.
You chose the path you are on today, my old friend.
Please try not to be a crybaby about it now that you are getting a good sense of where it takes you.
Fair enough?
Rob the Big Fan of Crybaby Posts (Not!)
Rob,
Despite your continued lies and threats, no one is running off scared and they are not going to agree with you out of fear. Your dishonest scare tactics have never worked. That is because we already have the facts and they point out how you are wrong.
Deal with it and get a life.
Even I’m beginning to turn against me, Pink.
I hate it when that happens!
Rob
Aren’t you going to some sort of financial blogger convention soon? Will you be telling the Buy & Holders in attendance of this convention that they will be going to prison?
This is my third personal finance bloggers convention, Goon. I always talk to lots of bloggers. I always say the same things to them that I say in the articles that I post here at the site. What would you expect?
Yes, I talk about the criminal stuff. I say that that makes me sad. I say that I would like to see us all work together to stop it. That’s what I say here, isn’t it?
And I of course also talk about the positives, which are huge. I tell them about the peer-reviewed academic research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau that shows millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. I tell them about the amazing, unique calculators at my site. I tell them about the true cause of the economic crisis and how we can bring it to a quick end. I tell them about the thousands of our fellow community members who have expressed a desire that we open every board and blog on the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rate and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. I tell them about the gratitude we all should feel to the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers who made all this possible with their intelligence and courage and vision.
We are the luckiest generation of investors that ever walked Planet Earth and we all should be excited about our good fortune, Goon. I tell them that for sure! That’s the centerpiece to the entire pitch. I want to see people looking forward instead of backward. I want to see people looking up instead of down. I think that learning about what the peer-reviewed academic research really says is key to making all sorts of amazing things happen for all of us.
Take care, man.
Rob
So you are NOT going to tell them to their faces that they will be going to prison.
Got it.
I don’t see how you draw that conclusion from what I said, Slanegirl.
If I see Mike Piper at the conference and he asks me whether I think he is going to prison or not, I will say to his face just what I said here.
If I see Rick Ferri, I will say something a bit different because what I said here re Rick Ferri is a bit different. But what I say to Rick Ferri’s face will again be consistent with what I have said about Rick Ferri here.
If I see Jack Bogle, I will say to Jack words consistent with the words that I have said about Jack here. I have sent three e-mails to Jack re this matter. Did I hold back in those e-mails? I sent e-mails to Wade Pfau following his deal with you Goons. Did I not say in my e-mail to Wade the same thing that I say here? I wrote: “Think, man. This is insane!” Is that not strong enough language to get the point across?
You are accusing me of something that is not true. But you are touching on an important point.
All of us humans hate to make other people feel uncomfortable. That’s part of our nature. But in this particular case, this part of our nature is causing us to do harm to ourselves and others. A lot of people are thinking “Yeah, it’s obviously the case that those Old School safe withdrawal rate studies got the numbers wildly wrong — they wouldn’t write about it in the Wall Street Journal if there weren’t something to it. But I don’t want to point out that Rob Bennett has been saying this for 11 years now. Rob has been reporting the accurate numbers for many years and a lot of big names in this field have been participating in a cover-up. Those people may be going to prison. I don’t want to do something that is going to cause people to go to prison. I am going to keep my mouth shut.”
These people are trying not to cause trouble. That is generally a good impulse. But it is not at all a good impulse in this particular case. There are some circumstances in which you absolutely MUST cause some trouble because, if you do not, there’s going to be trouble ten times worse. When the house is on fire and there are people sleeping in it, you don’t keep it to yourself because you don’t want to trouble their sleep. You scream. You shake them. You pull them out of bed.
We have as a society been asleep re the safe withdrawal rate matter for 11 years now. Our collective attitude has been: “Oh, it will work itself out somehow, let’s not go there.” We need to go there. We need to examine the problem closely and we need to fix the problem. That means that, for starters, we need to start talking about the problem and what caused it and why it has remained unfixed for 11 years now and about how our knowledge that these mistakes were made changes what we have long believed about how stock investing works.
We need to do that for all sorts of reasons. One of those reasons is that more people will get sent to prison if we fail to talk about it and those who do get sent to prison will get sent there for a longer period of time if we fail to talk about it. I don’t tell people to their face that they may be going to prison and then laugh at their misfortune. I tell people to their face that they may be going to prison as part of an effort to insure that acts are taken that will help them to get their prison sentence REDUCED.
It is 100 percent crazy that people are going to prison over this. Our discovery of how stock investing really works is 100 percent good news. It’s a dream come true. It’s like discovering the Fountain of Youth. We need to stop fighting over it and start enjoying our good fortune. If we had only corrected the retirement studies within 24 hours of the time that the errors in them became public knowledge, no one would be going to prison. I of course said that we should correct the studies way back on the morning of May 13, 2002. And there were of course hundreds of community members who backed me up on that and who want to see this taken to a place where it is early retirements we are all talking about instead of prison sentences either long or short.
You have placed yourself in circumstances where you are going to be serving a long prison sentence a little bit down the road, Slanegirl. As your friend, I tell you to your face that you better do something about the situation now, when it is still possible for positive actions to be taken. Your idea of committing multiple felonies to insure that Greaney does not need to correct his study is not working out so hot. Yes, you are hurting me. And yes, you are hurting millions of middle-class investors. And, yes, you are hurting every expert in this field, including our mutual friend Jack Bogle. But that’s not the complete list of the humans you are hurting. You are hurting Slanegirl very, very, very much. Please stop doing that.
My warmest wishes to you and yours, my long-time abusive posting friend.
Please note that I said that last part to your face as well. And that my eyes let you know that I mean every word of it.
Rob the Tough-Love Dude
If I see Mike Piper at the conference and he asks me whether I think he is going to prison or not
Well isn’t that convenient. You’ll tell them they are going to prison, they just have to ask first. Personally I walk up to people I hardly know all the time and ask them if I’m going to prison. Luckily so far the answer has been No.
Please note that I said that last part to your face as well.
Since you seem confused, I will point out that a keyboard and monitor is not a face.
You keep getting these questions because your history at these conventions is to be a wallflower. If you tell any of those bloggers that he or she is going to prison, they undoubtedly will mention it on their blog. Hope you will share those links.
If I see Mike Piper at the conference and he asks me whether I think he is going to prison or not, I will say to his face just what I said here.
I suspect Mike Piper will not ask you that.
You keep getting these questions because your history at these conventions is to be a wallflower. If you tell any of those bloggers that he or she is going to prison, they undoubtedly will mention it on their blog.
At the first financial bloggers convention that I attended (FinCon11), there must have been 15 different bloggers who came up to me and said some version of: “Oh, so YOU’RE Rob Bennett! YOU’RE that guy!”
They all know me, X. They all know the basic story. Rob Bennett has pointed out that there is now 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage and not one of the big shot experts has been able to respond with an effective argument. They all know that everyone working in this field should be writing about this story, the most important economic and political story of any of our lifetimes.
None of them mention it on their blogs. They are all AFRAID to mention it on their blogs.
Tell the truth about Buy-and-Hold on your blog, and you are going to get the treatment that Rob Bennett got when he told the truth about Buy-and-Hold. Tell the truth about Buy-and-Hold and you are going to get the treatment that John Walter Russell got when he told the truth about Buy-and-Hold. Tell the truth about Buy-and-Hold and you are going to get the treatment that Wade Pfau got when he told the truth about Buy-and-Hold.
Everybody gets it, X.
The other side of the story is that, when 10 of us who want to tell the truth about Buy-and-Hold all agree to stick together and not let the Buy-and-Hold Mafia pick us off one by one, it is all over. Buy-and-Hold was a mistake. There has never been a single peer-reviewed study showing that an investor who refuses to consider price when setting his stock allocation can obtain good long-term results. Not one person in this field has ever supplied the URL of such a study because no such study exists. The entire thing was in its early days an innocent mistake and then over time was transformed into a marketing gimmick, The Marketing Gimmick that Destroyed the U.S. Economy.
After the next crash, people will be mad enough to demand honesty. And the Wall of Intimidation will come crashing down.
That’s when those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney will be sent off to serve long prison terms.
My job today is to do what I can to see that the number sent off to serve prison terms is as small as possible given the circumstances that apply and that the prison sentences assigned are as short as possible given the circumstances that apply.
I naturally wish you all the best things that this life has to offer someone on the road to being assigned a long prison sentence.
Rob
I suspect Mike Piper will not ask you that.
I wish he would, Evidence.
By coming clean today, Mike could reduce the odds that he will receive a prison sentence and reduce the length of any prison sentence that he does receive. That’s a win/win/win/win.
I know Mike is worried. We had a long conversation about these matters at FinCon11 and Mike told me that “there’s nothing I would like more” than to see this matter resolved.
Why do you think Mike said that?
It’s because when Mike first started writing about investing, he had good intentions. He wanted to help people, not get caught up in an 11-year cover-up of errors in studies that people use to plan their retirements.
What went wrong?
The Buy-and-Hold Mafia intimidated Mike (and many, many others, to be sure) into keeping quiet about a matter that we all know millions of middle-class investors very, very, very much need to know about.
I’m here to help my friend Mike Piper (and all the others). Continuation of the cover-up is not helping my friend Mike Piper (and all the others) even a tiny bit.
If Mike works up the courage to talk to me, I will do what I can to take things in a positive and constructive and life-affirming direction. I can do no more and I can do no less.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
“there’s nothing I would like more” than to see this matter resolved.
The way for this matter to be resolved is for you to start posting honestly and respect those you interact with on the internet.
I posted that the numbers were wrong in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies on the morning of May 13, 2002, Evidence.
In recent years, there have been articles in the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Smart Money, Financial Mentor, Reuters and many other big-name publications saying that I was right.
If I were to pretend today that I believe that those studies are NOT in error, I would be aiding the 11-year cover-up. I would be committing financial fraud. That’s a felony. That would mean prison time for me somewhere down the line.
Not interested.
Call me madcap.
Please try to find someone else.
No can do.
That sort of thing is not my particular cup of tea.
Please take good care, old friend.
Rob
and respect those you interact with on the internet.
I show respect to my Buy-and-Hold friends by holding them to standards that they would hold themselves to if they were thinking clearly, Evidence.
You are capable of better than what we have seen from you over the past 11 years. Much, much, much, much better.
So is my good friend Jack Bogle.
So is my friend Bill Bernstein.
So is my friend Scott Burns.
So is my friend Larry Swedroe.
So are all of my other Buy-and-Hold friends.
It is my job to bring the best of you out of the shadows and up to the center of the stage.
I’m working on it! I’m working on it!
Rob