Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently advanced to another blog entry at this site:
Rob,
Your entire post is laughable. Let’s just look at your damage claim. To have damages you have to show and quantify a loss. That loss has to tie to the level of the claim. We have yet to see any proof that you had a business that could be valued at $500 million. In simpler terms, the earnings that were earned, prior to the time of the supposed “damage”, would have resulted in a business valuation of $500 million if the “damage never occured. Value is oftened assigned on a multiple of EBITDA or on a projected discounted cash flow.
Care to provide the numbers generated by your “business” prior to your claim of damage?
There are many different ways in which we can show that I am entitled to damages FAR in excess of $500 million,Anonymous. The $500 million is a lowball number. The intent there is to provide the Wall Street Con Men with an INCENTIVE to settle things before too much more financial damage is done to millions of people. I obviously could not provide an incentive by asking for full damages. That number applies only if a settlement is accepted PRIOR to the onset of the next price crash.
Look at how much we spent on the economic crisis. That number is in the TRILLIONS. Every economic crisis we have had for 140 years was caused by the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies. So there will in all likelihood not be another economic crisis once we open the internet up to honest posting. Bringing the economic crisis to an end and protecting us all from future economic crises wouldn’t have brought me profits well in excess of $500 million? Yeah, right.
Or look at the situation of people who have trained to be academic researchers in this field and who today are not permitted to do honest work. Wade Pfau was jumping around like a kid in a candy store when he learned how stock investing really works. He saw that he was going to be published in the top journal in the field. He saw that the work he was doing was worthy of a Nobel prize. Do you think that Wade is the only researcher in the field who wants to be able to do honest work?
They ALL want to be free to do honest work, Anonymous. Wade would obviously be willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to do honest work. He spent years of his life training to do the work he does — Why wouldn’t he want very much to be able to do it honestly? And there are obviously thousands and thousands of people in similar circumstances. Multiply hundreds of thousands of dollars by a number in the thousands or the tens of thousands and you end up with a very big number. I’m no math wiz, but I can just tell, you know?
The full truth here is that I am not even going to need to file papers to obtain the $500 million. My good friend Jack Bogle would like to be free to provide honest investing advice. So would my good friend Bill Bernstein. So would my good friend Larry Swedroe. So would my good friend Scott Burns. When all of those people — and tens of thousands of others — are free to do honest work in this field because of the efforts of their good friend Rob Bennett, I have a funny feeling that I will soon be seeing a bag with $500 million landing on my front porch steps with a nice note attached.
Just another one of those crazy hunches that I have been known to experience from time to time.
My best and warmest wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob
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