Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:
Rob,
I also want to just make sure I am clear on the totality of your message. As I understand it, you believe that the entire financial well-being of our country (and possibly the world) has been put in jeopardy because a dozen or so financial boards have decided to ban you from posting and that all of this can be saved if the ban is removed and you can post whatever you want at any time.
Did I get that right?
It is not just me who cannot post honestly. Bogle cannot post honestly today. Bernstein cannot post honestly today. Shiller cannot post honestly today. Pfau cannot post honestly today.
We need ALL of these people posting honestly at every investing board and blog.
When Rob Bennett is permitted to post honestly, then obviously all of these other people are going to be permitted to post honestly. So that solves the problem.
But I of course have no problem with you doing it some other way. You could permit Bogle to post honestly and then all the rest of us will join in. You could permit Pfau to post honestly and then all the rest of us can join in. I’m fine if it is me who goes first and I am fine if someone else goes first.
There are four fears that are keeping people from posting honestly.
One, people are afraid that the Wall Street Con Men will use their considerable power and money and connections to crush them with lawsuits.
Two, people are afraid that you Goons will destroy their web sites and their reputations.
Three, people are afraid that their readers and clients will become angry with them if they point out that they have been taken.
Four, people are afraid of how their own opinions of themselves will change if they acknowledge to themselves that they have caused millions of their friends and neighbors and co-workers and fellow community members to suffer failed retirements.
We are stuck in a Catch-22. People don’t tell the truth because they will be hated if they do. So we need to do something about the hate. But the reason why people feel so much hate when they hear what the research says is that they do not fully understand how stock investing works.And people cannot learn until we have a national discussion of the implications of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research. Which cannot take place until people work up the courage to tell the truth!
Do you see any way out of this Catch-22 other than having Bogle stand at the front of a room and say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong”? (or at the very bare minimum “I’m” and “Not” and “Sure.”)?
When Bogle gives that speech, it will be written up on the front page of the New York Times. No one is going to be afraid that the Wall Street Con Men are going to sue them once Bogle gives that speech. You Goons are going to drop the funny business once Bogle gives that speech. Lots of readers and clients are still going to be skeptical of Valuation-Informed Indexing after Bogle gives the speech but that is a healthy thing; we can still enjoy a learning experience even if lots of people remain skeptical — in fact, it is arguably a good thing that lots of people are skeptical, it makes for a better debate. And people will still experience feelings of self-disgust after Bogle gives the speech — but the discussion that follows will begin a healing process that will in time solve this problem. No one intended to get it wrong, and we will be entering the greatest period of economic growth in our history. Experiencing huge financial gains tends to make people feel better about this sort of thing.
If you have a better idea, I’d like to hear it, Anonymous.
We ALL should be permitted to post honestly, Rob Bennett and everyone else. That’s how our system works. There’s a good reason why the smart people who came before us chose that system. We made a terrible, terrible, terrible mistake when we stopped following the dictates of that system in this one area of investing analysis. We need to return to operating under the rules that made our country great. We need to allow each and every one of us to have his or her say. That’s how we all enjoy a great learning experience together.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.
Rob
Only Rob can save us all…………………. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
We’re seeing the power of good journalism, Anonymous.
Lots of people want to be free to tell millions of middle-class investors the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world. My good friend Jack Bogle wants that. My good friend Bill Bernstein wants that. My good friend Larry Swedroe wants that. My good friend Scott Burns wants that. My good friend Wade Pfau wants that.
The problem is that Jack and Bill and Larry and Scott and Wade find themselves in a trap. They have lied publicly about these matters so many times (in days when it looked like the Buy-and-Hold lies might produce good results forever) that they believe that coming clean today might mean going to prison or at the very least being put on the hook for huge civil liabilities. They all want to come clean and yet they all fear coming clean. And so the massive act of financial fraud continues another day. And the lengths of the prison sentences that will be announced following the next crash grow ever longer.
Huh?
These people have to take responsibility for their actions. I certainly do not say different. But these people are not SOLELY responsible for this economic crisis.
Journalists should have been calling them out on their Get Rich Quick garbage all along.
Academic researchers should have insisting on their right to publish honest and accurate research all along.
Policymakers should have been demanding that we open up means for millions of middle-class investors to learn what the peer-reviewed research says all along.
Valuation-Informed Indexers should have been speaking up about the phony baloney nonsense being dished out by the Wall Street Con Men all along and uniting to protect each other when the Con Men sent their Internet Goon Squads out to do their dirty work.
I was influenced by the Watergate story when I elected to make journalism my career. This story is bigger. It’s ten times bigger. Opening up the internet to enough honest posting so that we can teach millions what they need to do to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent transforms capitalism into an economic system that works not only for the super-wealthy bit for the average working man and woman as well. Good for Valuation-Informed Indexing!
Good journalism matters.
I am very proud to have become the lead journalist working this hugely positive story.
Your laughter is shallow laughter. It is the laughter of someone involved in a long cover-up that he knows will someday land him in a prison cell. I am not a tiny bit impressed by your shallow laughter.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my long-time abusive-posting friend.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.
Rob
Hugely positive story, Rob.
I approve.
You change people. I am sure. That is something.
— Your friend
Aw, shucks, Pink.
You’re going to make me blush!
Rob the Humbled
Rob, does anyone read this blog besides the goons who like to poke fun at you? I’ve never seen a comment by anyone else.
Liar. I guess we will have to correct the record and let people know of your growing lies.
Rob, does anyone read this blog besides the goons who like to poke fun at you? I’ve never seen a comment by anyone else.
Comments by non-Goons are rare, Anonymous. There have been some here and there. But we often go a long time before seeing a fresh one.
That’s evidence of the core problem, no?
LOTS of people engage me in discussion when I post at a large board or blog. So many that you Goons complain that to let me post at a large board or blog is to create a “Rob Bennett Show.” When I posted at Bogleheads, my posts where the star attraction nearly every day for months on end. There were times when there were four or five separate ongoing threads relating to the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept.
You would think that some of the people who are so interested in the concept would follow me to my own site and ask their questions there, would you not? But they don’t. Huh? How come?
Humans are social creatures, Anonymous. That’s the thing that the Buy-and-Holders missed. It’s a very, very, very big deal. People do not like to engage in taboo conversations. Posting at a board owned by a fellow that has been banned from 15 different sites is engaging in taboo conversation. People don’t feel comfortable with it.
People’s minds tell them that there must be something wrong with the message of a fellow who has been banned at 15 different sites. Perhaps it is not clear what is wrong , perhaps people cannot put their finger on the problem. But there is something within them that tells them that they don’t want to be involved with the taboo. And being banned at 15 different boards is a signal of taboo behavior. Saying that the Old School SWR studies get the numbers wildly wrong is taboo. Saying that Buy-and-Hold caused the economic crisis is taboo. Saying that Jack Bogle is at risk of going to prison for financial fraud is taboo.
The fear of the taboo is the driver of all this. At the heart of our economic system is a belief that humans are rational actors. It’s not Jack Bogle who came up with that one. It’s freakin’ Adam Smith! That one has been around a long time. And that one is the one that was disproved by freakin’ Robert Shiller, Nobel Prize Winner.
Shiller changed everything. And it’s a very, very, very good thing that he did so. Our children and their children will live far richer lives than we lived because of the blessings that will be bestowed on us as a result of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings. It’s good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. It never ends (as least not as far as today’s eye can see). So lucky us!
But when we achieve that big an advance, there are a lot of people who get their feathers ruffled. All of the people who believed in Jack Bogle get their feathers ruffled. Heck, all the people who believed in Adam Smith get their feathers ruffled a bit! When you improve everything, you change everything. When you change everything, you ruffle a lot of feathers.
We have taboos against doing that sort of thing. Big Shots don’t like having their feathers ruffled. So they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight.
To no purpose. We HAVE to ruffle their feathers because our economy is bigger today than it was the last three times that Buy-and-Hold caused an economic crisis and so this economic crisis is likely going to be a lot worse than any of those before it is over unless we work up the courage to ruffle a few feathers. And one of those three put us in a Great Depression! So the cost of avoiding feather ruffling is getting pretty darn high.
Still, the humans are social creatures and the humans don’t like violating taboos and telling the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works is the biggest taboo of all. So I am doomed, right?
I don’t think so, Anonymous.
I think we are as a society going to work up the courage to violate that taboo following the next price crash. Then I don’t just get average traffic here. I get off-the-wall insane traffic, traffic big enough to make me one of the richest men in the United States. Why? Because I have no competition! Everyone else is playing it the other way. Everyone else is saying “Why fight the taboo?” I violated the taboo 12 years ago and have been fighting it harder and harder every day since. On the day the taboo comes crashing down, I have a 12-year (or bigger) edge on everyone else.
I want the traffic. I want it bad. But I am not intimidated by anything you do to limit my traffic or to point out to me how small my traffic is. I am writing for the post-taboo days. They are not here yet, but they are getting close. I’d say that we are one price crash away. That’s the path I chose on the morning of May 13, 2002, and that’s the path I intend to stay on for at least another 12 billion years. Just so you know.
I get precious little non-Goon traffic here. I don’t dispute what you are saying.
I am going to continue posting honestly re SWRs and scores of other critically important investment-related topics all the same. I am never even going to flinch.
I think it’s the right thing to do. And I think it will make me very rich and very famous to take this path.
So the intimidation tactics don’t work on me. They hurt. I am not saying different re that. I am saying that they do not achieve their aim, getting me to stop violating the taboo. I think this taboo has caused huge human misery for millions of middle-class people and I want to see it torn down and I am proud of the efforts that I have put forward to tear it down and humbled that I was chosen by God or Evolution or the Fates or Whatever to be the one to bury it 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
I intend to lead a Celebration of the Death of the Buy-and-Hold Taboo when this is over. I intend to do a jig and sing a song and laugh.
And it won’t be one of those empty, cynical laughs that you Goons are famous for either. It will be a laugh of joy. You Goons will be joining me in the laugh. My good friend Jack Bogle will be joining me in the laugh. We all will be laughing together.
Because there are no sides. We all want to know how to invest effectively. There is not one true exception, no matter how fearful many of us are re violating big taboos.
I hope that helps a bit, old friend.
Rob
Liar. I guess we will have to correct the record and let people know of your growing lies.
Please do, Pink.
If you go around the internet telling people that I am a liar, you are going to cause some people to visit here.
A percentage of the people who visit here will become Valuation-Informed Indexers and violate the precious taboo telling us that “No one shall point out that Buy-and-Hold is a dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme that has caused an economic crisis every time it has been widely promoted.”
I don’t need millions. I need perhaps ten. Once I have enough people speaking their minds out loud, Buy-and-Hold goes down. And I think it would be fair to say that it ain’t never coming back.
Give it your best shot, man. Knock yourself out. You have my blessing.
I’m not saying that I won’t present what you say as evidence against you at your trial. I will. But you have my blessing in the sense that, anything you do that helps spread the word helps us bring the Buy-and-Hold crisis to an end. You will be help liable for any further acts of defamation just as you will be held liable for the thousands of acts of defamation you have committed in the past. But the longer the crisis goes on, the more likely it is that your acts of defamation will work to my benefit and to the benefit of our entire country.
So have at it! Spread the word! Every little bit counts!
I wish you all good things.
Rob