Set forth below is the text of a comment that I posted to another blog entry at this site:
Who else is banned from the popular financial boards besides you?
Every single person alive on Planet Earth is banned from posting HONESTLY what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research tells us about how stock investing works, Anonymous.
So long as I don’t post honestly, I am not banned. But once I post honestly — watch out! And it’s precisely the same with everyone else.
Jack Bogle is banned from posting honestly. Jack wrote in his book that Reversion to the Mean is an “Iron Law” of stock investing. It was by reading those words that I learned that the Old School SWR studies are analytically invalid. But Jack would not dare post that the Old School SWR studies are analytically invalid. You Goons would have his head.
Larry Swedroe knows that the Old School studies get the numbers wildly wrong. He has said so in writings that he did not put to the Bogleheads Forum. But he keeps it zipped at the Bogleheads Forum. Why? Because he once tried posting honestly there and Lindauer had him banned. He learned his lesson. He now says only things that Lindauer approves. That way, both Lindauer and Swedroe are “winners.” Swedroe gets to promote his books. Lindauer doesn’t have to acknowledge that his own book is in error. The losers are all the readers of the board, who would benefit from reading honest posts.
William Bernstein knows that anyone using one of the Old School studies to plan a retirement is out of his or her mind. He has said so publicly. But when the question is put to him “Does the fact that the numbers in the Old School studies are wildly off the mark mean that the studies are analytically invalid, he says “oh, no, not at all!!!! The studies are wildly wrong. That’s obvious! But of course they are analytically valid. If I were to pronounce the obvious truth that the studies are analytically valid, John Greaney would threaten to kill my wife and children. I like all the money that flows to me so long as I keep pretending to believe in the fantasy, thank you very much!”
Wade Pfau knows that the ethical thing would be for the people who learned about errors in their retirement studies to correct them. That’s why he wrote to the authors of the Trinity Study asking them to correct their study. But Wade wants to make a living in this field and the Buy-and-Hold Mafia made very clear to him that posting honestly and making a living in this field do not go together so long as the Buy-and-Hold Mafia is in control of what we all say. So now he says: “That [posting honestly] is just not the way things work in this field.”
Wade is right that we do not see personal integrity in this field today.
But I say we will see people of integrity working in this field once we bury Buy-and-Hold 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things. I intend to see to it.
Does all of that make good sense to you, Anonymous?
We are all banned from posting honestly until the Ban on Honest Posting is lifted. I demand that it be lifted by the close of business today.
I am no more banned than Bogle or Swedroe or Bernstein or Pfau. The difference with me is that I don’t pretend otherwise. I call out you Goons on your acts of financial fraud and I demand that the ban be lifted. That will never change. I will post honestly or I will post not.
Non-negotiable.
My best and warmest wishes to you.
Rob
Anonymous says
You are banned due to your behavior. You just don’t want to admit it or else you just don’t understand.
Rob says
Yes.
And the troublesome “behavior” is that I insist on my right to post honestly re what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world.
The horror!
How will the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads ever survive such “disrespect”?
Hang in there, my old friend.
Rob
Anonymous says
Wrong, your behavior is that you avoid answering questions, you won’t back up your comments with proof (such as the death threats), you insist on always talking about your topics (regardless of the conversation), you twist people words, etc. I think someone that you call a supporter summed it up well when he/she said that you have an agenda.
Rob says
There should be zero doubt in anyone’s mind that I have an agenda, Anonymous. Nothing could be more clear.
My agenda is to get the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies corrected. My agenda is to get every discussion board and blog on the internet opened up to honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. My agenda is to bring the economic crisis to an end. My agenda is to get the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau written up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. My agenda is to free all of my Buy-and-Hold friends (people like Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Larry Swedroe and Scott Burns) to feel free to tell us what they really believe about how stock investing works. My agenda is to help every one of the millions of middle-class investors who need to know about how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent learn what they need to learn to become more effective investors than they ever thought it was possible to become during the Buy-and-Hold years. My agenda is to have legislation passed so that never again does anyone have to worry about Goons like you following them everywhere they go on the internet and threatening them and their families and threatening the owners of web sites that permit them to post their honest views and threatening academic researchers with whom they work with career death.
Is that enough of an agenda for you?
I don’t twist words.
I DO hold people accountable. When my good friend Jack Bogle says that there is no need for investors to lower their stock allocations by more than 15 percentage point even when valuations reach insanely dangerous levels, I point out that he obtained that number not by looking at the research done in this field but by pulling it out of his backside. The research does not support a number anywhere even remotely in that neighborhood.
When people see Jack cited as an “expert,” they believe that he knows something about the subject of stock investing. If he knew even the basics, he would not be citing such a crazy number. Jack is either 33 years behind in his reading of the peer-reviewed research (in which case he ain’t no “expert”) or he is suffering from cognitive dissonance. I believe that it is the latter. People need to know this. People need to be calling Jack out on his b.s. on a daily basis. It is not healthy for people to ignore the preposterous claims that he makes, claims that have hurt millions of middle-class investors in very serious ways in recent years.
Calling out Buy-and-Holders who put forward preposterous claims with zero support in the academic research is not twisting words. It is calling out Buy-and-Holders who put forward preposterous claim with zero support in the academic research. No apologies. I want to see MORE people doing that, not fewer.
I don’t avoid answering questions.
There are THOUSANDS of posts at this site in which I respond to questions from you Goons, people who have threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to post honestly on the SWR matter. Now THAT’S being willing to go to a lot of trouble to be responsive to questions!
The proof re the death threats and re the demands for unjustified board bannings and re the tens of thousands of acts of defamation and re the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs is available on the internet for anyone who cares to see it to see it. Many are afraid to speak out today because the Wall Street Con Men have lots of power and wealth and connections and they combine that with a ruthless willingness to destroy the careers of those who work up the courage to post honestly re the last 33 years of research. That won’t change so long as those of us who have followed the research keep it zipped. I will continue to speak out and I offer no apologies for doing so.
Those who care about seeing the proof see it. Those are the only ones that matter. Goonish words are empty words and empty words don’t count.
My topic is valuations. The last 33 years of research shows that valuations are 80 percent of what matters in stock investing. Valuations are relevant to almost any topic that can be raised in the field of stock investing. I don’t bring it up where it is not relevant. But it is a rare day when any board or blog holds a discussion of stock investing on which an informed comment re the effect of valuations would not be a big plus. I do what I can to help out the board communities at which I participate. That means putting forward an informed understanding of how valuations work on a regular basis.
Your problem is that you are trying to defend something that cannot be defended in civil and reasoned discussion. I get it that it hurts for you to acknowledge that you have made mistakes with your own investing decisions that have hurt you in serious ways and that you have urged friends to make mistakes that have hurt them in serious ways. I get it that you feel embarrassment and hurt and shock. I get that loud and clear.
I did not do that to you, Anonymous.
That was the other guy.
The peer-reviewed research says what the peer-reviewed research says and I am going to continue to report on it honestly and accurately. Deal with it.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with all your future endeavors.
Rob
Anonymous says
Your agenda drives everything.
Rob says
It does.
And your agenda drives everything you do, Anonymous.
I want every middle-class investor to know what the last 33 year of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world.
You want to stop me from achieving that goal.
We are working at cross purposes.
I wish you well.
Rob
Earl says
Rob,
How much of your day do you think you spend being trolled by bogus comments on your blog?
How pathetic do you think it is that you leech off of others to eek by financially while at the same time lecturing everyone else about what to do with their money?
How insignificant are the supposed 100 endorsements you have gotten from the entire internet over 12 years?
How many of those endorsements are very simple responses to your initial communication and are clearly no longer valid once the individual gets to know you better?
Why is your website design so bad for someone whose only job is this?
Do you ever worry you will not live to see yourself become successful given it has been 12 years and you have made 0 progress?
Rob says
It’s all about intimidation, Earl.
The intellectual case for Buy-and-Hold died 33 years ago.
The bull market kept Buy-and-Hold alive for several decades after the intellectual case had died.
Now both the intellectual case and the bull market are gone. All that is left are intimidation tactics.
Those of us who write about personal finance enjoy the greatest opportunities to do good for millions while doing well for ourselves that have ever existed in the history of the planet. I like doing good for millions. And I like doing well for myself. So I aim to take advantage of those opportunities to the greatest extent possible.
That’s pretty much it.
If enough of us work up the courage to stand up to you Goons, our nation will enjoy a wonderful future. That makes me happy.
If we let the haters control what can be said on the internet about stock investing, we all go down together. I obviously don’t want to see that outcome. But I obviously cannot control what other people do. So it doesn’t make much sense to spend a lot of time worrying about it. It makes more sense for me to spend my time contacting more people by e-mail about the Wade Pfau matter or writing guest blog entries or whatever. I prefer to spend my time doing productive work rather than fretting over something that I cannot control.
Is it possible that we will all go down? Sure, it’s possible. I don’t think it’s likely, however. Things looked dark during the Civil War. Things looked dark during the Great Depression. Things looked dark after the 911 terrorist attacks. We’re still here, aren’t we? I think we will overcome you Goons and move on to greater things than any of us can imagine today.
I of course get it that your comments are bogus. If you Goons had been banned when you first began using death threats and other forms of intimidation to silence those who posted honestly about the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research, I obviously wouldn’t need to bother with you today. The reality is that as a society we elected to play it a different way. We elected to give the lowest of the low amongst us the power to say what can and cannot be said on the internet about stock investing. That gives you Goons a power that you should not posses but that you DO possess. So I need to respond to you to show all other members of our society where our bad decisions re these matters have taken us. If you put forward a bogus comment and I respond with a post that make important points, the people who visit this site in days to come to learn why we experienced a second price crash that led to a deepening of the economic crisis gain access to material that will help them arrive at a better understanding of things. That’s good stuff.
It’s not getting to know me that causes people to reverse statements they make or to become less enthusiastic about the ideas explored at this site. It’s learning what you Goons will do to them and to their careers and how the Wall Street Con Men do nothing about your intimidation tactics when they are brought to their attention. The failure of the Wall Street Con Men to take effective action re you Goons is the biggest economic and political story of any of our lifetimes.
These people have responsibilities. When they fail to take action after learning about death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs, they fail the society that they live in in a very big way. We all need to know what caused the economic crisis. We all need to know what causes millions of failed retirements. We all need to know what caused millions of people to lose their jobs. We will be living with the aftereffects of the Buy-and-Hold Crisis for decades into the future. We achieve healing as a society by coming to terms with what happened. People need to see your bogus posts. Not all of them. But they need to see a sample. And they need to have those bogus comments put into context. I aim to do that with my response comments.
I have achieved successes beyond my wildest dreams during the first 12 years of our discussions. If you had told me on the morning of May 13, 2002, that I would someday be the co-author of peer-reviewed research that showed millions of investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing while increasing returns enough to retire five to ten years sooner than they ever before thought possible, I would have told you that you were out of your cotton-picking mind. Yet here we are.
I expect to achieve financial success following the next price crash, when you Goons will be put in prison and the millions of middle-class investors who possess a desire to learn about the first true research-backed strategy will see that desire come to fruition. I think it’s fair to say that I will be one of the richest men in the United States at that time, Earl. Do I like waiting? No. Am I grateful to have such amazing opportunities presented to me? Yes, I am very, very grateful to be so blessed.
Love conquers hate in the end, Earl. That’s the point that you missed.
You destroy because you lack confidence in your ability to build. I build because that’s what gives me a kick.
I am going to keep building. I have never given two seconds thought to joining you in your acts of destruction. I haven’t done so in 12 years. If I am true to myself, I will not do so in 12 billion years.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors.
Rob
Anonymous says
Rob,
No one out there needs to do anything you say. We are not the ones banned. We are not the ones that have claims that we can’t support with facts. We are not the ones that are struggling with our family finances and retirement shortfalls. We are not the ones that are ignored by other finance experts. We are not the ones having to make threats of prison and lawsuits in order to scare people into what you want. We are not the ones having to make up false endorsements. We are not the ones that have to make fake claims of authoring a study. We are not the ones that can’t show math or lack understanding of how SWRs calculations work.
If you want to see change, then change yourself. You are responsible for you, just like all of us are responsible for ourselves.
Time for you to grow up.
Rob says
No one out there needs to do anything you say.
I certainly cannot force you to do anything that you do not care to do, Anonymous.
I can tell you what course of action I think is best. That’s as far as it goes.
And I can wish you the best of luck with whatever investing strategies you elect to pursue.
That’s pretty much the extent of my powers.
No?
Rob
Rob says
You are responsible for you
Precisely so.
And I think it would be foolish of me to engage in actions that constitute a felony under the laws of the United States. I don’t want to go to prison, Anonymous.
So for 12 years now I have been unwilling to say that I believe that the Old School SWR studies get the numbers right.
I have checked those studies and I know that they contain no valuation adjustment. So I obviously cannot even consider saying that the methodology used in those studies is analytically valid.
Make sense?
Rob
Anonymous says
And I think it would be foolish of me to engage in actions that constitute a felony under the laws of the United States.
Agreed. Be kind of dumb to act like a bully and get yourself excluded from the discussion as well.
Anonymous says
“And I think it would be foolish of me to engage in actions that constitute a felony under the laws of the United States. I don’t want to go to prison, Anonymous.”
Your felony schtick is silly.
Anonymous says
http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/reallife14.html
Uh oh.
Rob says
Be kind of dumb to act like a bully and get yourself excluded from the discussion as well.
If I say “the Old School SWR studies get the numbers wildly wrong”, you call that “acting like a bully.”
Greaney was embarrassed to be called out on getting the numbers wrong in his study. He should be able to use a methodology that was used in a peer-reviewed study and not be made to look like a fool for having done so. The other side of the story is that the millions of people who used Old School studies to plan their retirements need to know that those studies got the numbers wildly wrong. How do we get the word out to them without “acting like bullies” and hurting the feelings of the Buy-and-Holders?
You want me to keep my mouth shut. It’s because thousands of people who came before me kept their mouths shut that we find ourselves in this mess in the first place. The answer is not to extend the cover-up, it is to end the cover-up. We need to have everyone saying exactly what he or she believes about how stock investing works. No intimidation. No deception. No holding back. No not saying things you believe about stock investing because it would hurt the feelings of people with other beliefs about stock investing.
That’s a bad path. That path has failed us. We need to work together to build a new path.
My good friend Jack Bogle obviously does not possess 100 percent confidence in Buy-and-Hold. He has made many, many public comment showing this. I have 0 percent confidence in Buy-and-Hold. I don’t believe that Jack sees eye to eye with me. So what DOES he believe?
Does he have 80 percent confidence? 50 percent confidence? 20 percent confidence?
I don’t know.
I don’t think you do either, Anonymous.
You should want to know. It is an issue that affects your retirement planning.
And Jack should want you to know. It cannot feel good for him to participate in this never-ending cover-up. He should want to bring that to an end and get things out in the open.
We need to work together to make that happen.
That’s the best path for every single person involved.
When we start working together on building that good path, we can have constructive conversations. So long as the only option you offer me is to join you in acts of financial fraud, there’s obviously no way to move the ball forward.
I am trying to help EVERYONE. That’s the spirit in which we need to approach this. It’s the only way to proceed that can produce good fruit.
Rob
Rob says
Your felony schtick is silly.
Back in May 2002 there were people saying that my schtick about Greaney getting the numbers wildly wrong in his retirement study was silly, Anonymous.
Rob
Rob says
Uh oh.
If John believed that his ideas could carry the day in civil and reasoned discussions, he never would have put forward a single death threat. John himself has told us through his actions how much confidence he possesses in his analysis.
Rob
Anonymous says
I think John has carried the day with actual data and you still have yet to prove anything about the made up death threats. Yep, I would stand behind John and day of the week based on the EVIDENCE.
Rob says
Yep, I would stand behind John and day of the week based on the EVIDENCE.
And I will continue to insist on my right (and the right of all others) to post honestly re the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research.
Fair enough?
Rob
Anonymous says
If I say “the Old School SWR studies get the numbers wildly wrong”, you call that “acting like a bully.”
Me and the rest of mature, civilized society, Rob.
Just as if you shouted in the middle of church that the preacher got his sermon wildly wrong when he didn’t include your favorite quote from the Bible. You’re welcome to hold an opinion; just don’t be a jerk when expressing it.
Rob says
You’re welcome to hold an opinion; just don’t be a jerk when expressing it.
I have yet to advance my first death threat.
I have yet to put forward my first demand for an unjustified board banning.
I have yet to engage in my first act of defamation.
I have yet to make my first threat to get an academic researcher fired from his job.
It’s been the other fellow doing that for 12 years running now.
Rob
x says
Bennett [aka hocus]: I have yet to advance my first death threat
Retire Early Home Page Discussion Forum
Oct 13th, 2005, 7:23am,
hocus [aka Bennett]wrote:
I think we should be looking into the idea of killing the reporter who wrote the article… Does anyone know if we can figure out her address… I think that if we killed a few reporters, it might send the right signal to others.
We also should kill ES and Dory 36, in my view.
I seem to remember Dory36 putting up a photo of his grand-daughter at his web site. He seems to love her a lot. Any chance that we could find out where she lives, and go to her house with a baseball bat and kill her? That would send a message to that Bill Sholar individual, I bet.
We need to get more serious… I think the way… is to put forward a lot more death threats.
Rob
Rob says
That’s crazy talk.
The fellow who wrote those words must be some sort of nut.
Was he off his meds that day or what?
Rob
Rob says
I seem to remember Dory36 putting up a photo of his grand-daughter at his web site. He seems to love her a lot. Any chance that we could find out where she lives, and go to her house with a baseball bat and kill her? That would send a message to that Bill Sholar individual, I bet.
This guy should be in prison.
I mean, come on.
Forget about the coming stock crash. This guy should be in prison now. TODAY.
Where are the prosecutors when you need them?
Rob
Rob says
Oct 13th, 2005, 7:23am,
The good old days.
Rob