Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Admit it, this all about you seeking some sort of glory and acclaim and not at all about errors in withdrawal rate studies or investing strategies.
I expect to be one of the richest people in the United States when this is over, Trebor. I also expect to be one of the most applauded. I have taken Buy-and-Hold and corrected the one big mistake in it to make it a workable strategy in the real world. That’s no small thing. That changes history. That helps millions of middle-class people.
It also helps all of my Buy-and-Hold friends. Bogle has shown on many occasions that he would like to come clean and begin posting honestly about stock investing once again. So has Bernstein. So has Burns. So has Swedroe. So has Pfau, So have lots of others. All of those people will see their dream come true when I win my battle to open the entire internet up to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.
It’s not just Wade Pfau who would like to be doing honest research today. Ravick Sethie at Columbia wants to do honest research. And I think it would be fair to say that there are thousands of others. I have e-mailed close to 30,000 academics about the threats made against Wade Pfau. I can count the number of negative responses I received on one hand. I received SCORES of positive responses. The fellow at George Washington University told me that he will be adding a discussion of Valuation-Informed Indexing to his course next year (giving me and Wade credit for the work we did developing the concept). I had a number of others tell me that they are anxiously awaiting the day when they will be able to come clean and feel safe publishing honest research once again.
The Buy-and-Hold Mafia has degraded a lot of good people with their intimidation tactics. All that comes to an end once we have one major site recognize the right of one person (me!) to post honestly on one subject (SWRs). We have seen going back to the first day of our discussions that there is a HUGE demand for honest work on investing now that Buy-and-Hold has caused a fourth economic crisis. The millions who want to learn the realities are going to see their dream come true in days to come.
And, yes, I will have been the person with primary responsibility for making that happen. Because I cared too much about my fellow community members to agree to post dishonestly re the numbers that they use to plan their retirements. I apologize for nothing (except perhaps for not working up the courage to speak up sooner). I am happy to accept all the glory and money that is coming my way. I earned it. And that’s how our system works. We give glory and money to people responsible for huge advances that benefit us all because we want to see more of those advances. It’s a win/win/win/win/win.
I have from the first day invited others to win their share of the glory and the money. I told Greaney that I would be happy to work with him to determine the true safe withdrawal rate. He would have the most popular investing site on the internet today if he had taken advantage of that kind offer rather than engaging in behavior that will be putting him and a good number of his pals in a prison cell for a long time to come following the next price crash. Did his jealousy pay off for him? It did not. It never does.
Bogle is in the same position. He will be ten times as popular as he has ever been when he comes clean and gets back to the business of helping middle-class investors instead of filling up their minds with the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage that he continues to promote so recklessly and so ruthlessly and so relentlessly to this day. And of course the same is true of all my blogger friends. Those who go honest will be the ones who will win all the applause following the next crash while those who continue pushing the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage will spend the rest of their days in courtrooms. What fun! Please count me out. No can do.
I want everyone who advocates Valuation-Informed Indexing to win mountains of glory and mountains of money. Why? Because people respond to incentives. We are in an economic crisis because the Buy-and-Hold Mafia has seen to it that the only people who can work in this field are those who are dishonest enough to pretend that the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research doesn’t exist.
It exists.
And there now exists a fellow who refuses to pretend that it doesn’t exist no matter how brutal the intimidation tactics of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia.
Hit me with you best shot, Trebor. I will win. The glory. The money. And the feeling of satisfaction that comes from knowing that I truly EARNED that glory and money, that I truly helped millions of middle-class investors rather than exploiting their weakness for the latest Get Rich Quick scheme to come down the pike.
Buy-and-Hold is the past. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future. The good guys win on the last page of this little saga. I know. I took a peak before I put up that fateful post of the morning of May 13, 2002.
My best and warmest wishes to you, my long-time Goon friend.
Your jealousy is eating you alive. Please fix.
Rob
Anonymous says
How will you be rich? You already told us that our significant net worth’s are all “cotton-candy nothingness” and that it will go away in the next crash. If your fantasy is correct, how will you collect money from anyone if they don’t have anything left?
Rob says
It is your goonishness that is causing all the problems you have understanding what the research says, Anonymous. You exaggerate all the time. You state things more strongly than I said them. You take things to extremes. Please try to calm down.
We are a very rich country. That’s actually a big part of the problem here. We have been following gravely flawed investing strategies going back to the beginning. Not because we are dumb. Because mankind was not put on Earth knowing everything and because we had not yet figured everything out. We have suffered because of this lack of knowledge in the past. But as we become richer, we have more wealth invested in stocks and the suffering grows ever greater. Fortunately, we now know what we need to know to stop the suffering. Unfortunately, we have not yet as a society worked up the courage to stand up to those who have refused for 33 years now to acknowledge that we had it wrong before.
We are heading to a stock crash of roughly 65 percent. Some of that is a real loss (the portion that gets us down to a fair-value P/E10 of 15) and some of it is the product of the irrational depression that follows whenever we realize our mistake in having pumped prices up so much (the portion that takes us from from 15 to 8).
We will perceive ourselves to be far less wealthy following the crash. Stock prices will no longer be pumped up, they will be pumped down. So the perception will be that things are very bad. But the perception will be an exaggeration (undervaluation is every bit as goonish and foolish and non-research-based as overvaluation). Things will look bad. There will be lots of scary articles in the newspapers. But the deep reality will remain that we are a rich people. It will be a struggle to get people to acknowledge that (just as it is a struggle today to get people to acknowledge that at times of insane overpricing their portfolio statements do not reflect their real wealth). But responsible people will do what they can to get the message heard and understood.
Now —
There IS a risk that the risk will cause a complete economic collapse. It happens. Since it happens, it is obviously theoretically possible that it could happen to us.
If we have a complete collapse, then what you are suggesting here is so. We will all go down together and I will NOT be a very rich man, I will be a very poor man. So will everyone else. That would break my heart, Anonymous. I don’t want to see it happen. I acknowledge that it is a possibility. I do not believe that it will happen. But I acknowledge that it is a possibility.
The other possibility is that the hearts of the Buy-and-Holders will melt and we will all move together to the far better world that awaits us on the other side of The Big Black Mountain. Shiller’s breakthrough is the biggest breakthrough in the history of economics. If we move forward, we are ALL going to be richer people. Even you will be richer. You will be in prison for a time. But prison sentences eventually come to an end. When you are released, you will be released into a country of even greater wealth than it possesses today. You will be part of that. Good for you.
This is a win/win/win/win/win, Anonymous. Everyone benefits. That’s what is so cool about it. This debate is not like the debate over the budget deficit, where going with what one side wants means taking something from the other side. This is a debate where everyone wins at the same time. Huge advances in understanding of important subjects are like that.
The problem we have today is that one side THINKS it loses if we permit discussion of the peer-reviewed research of the past 33 years. Some people have their egos tied up in Buy-and-Hold and they cannot bear the thought of acknowledging that they made a mistake. But that is foolishness. Time moves forward, humankind learns things that it did not know in the past, and we all end up better off. That is a core principle on which our nation was built.
By behaving in ways that land you in a prison cell, you are GIVING UP many of the benefits that you would otherwise obtain with the advance. That’s an amazingly stupid thing to do. But that’s the path you have chosen. You have let a phony pride count for more than your own desire to live a better and richer life. Yuck! You know? Yuck and Double Yuck!
I have played it the other way. I have generated hundreds of amazing insights into the realities of stock investing over the past 12 years. Those insights will make me one of the richest people in the United States following the crash. I don’t like all the nasty stuff I had to endure. I don’t like it one little bit that things played out that way. But I think it would be fair to say that it is largely because of the nasty stuff that I was able to do this. If things weren’t so nasty, there are thousands of smart and good people who would have developed these insights long before I came on the scene. Your nasty stuff cleared the field of competitors and left it to me to pick up all the prizes. Um — Thanks, man!
We will be a very rich people following the crash. There will be plenty of money remaining to make me a very, very wealthy man. If we mess up and we continue the Ban on Honest Posting following the crash, we will all go down together. It is my opinion that Jack Bogle’s heart will melt following the next crash and we will all achieve some wonderful advances together. My personal guess is that Jack will be the lead figure in seeing that the check for $500 million is promptly delivered to me. I will say “thanks, man” and tell everyone how I learned about the errors in Greaney’s study by reading Jack’s book and how there wouldn’t be any Valuation-Informed Indexing if not for the hugely important efforts of the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers. And we will all live happily ever after.
Until the next time the humans mess up and find themselves in a pot of burning troubles!
I hope that helps a bit, my old friend.
Rob
Anonymous says
Does Jack know that he will be handing you a check for $500 million? Will this be Jack’s money or will he get it from someone else?
x says
I expect to be one of the richest people in the United States
Linus expected the Great Pumpkin. But he eventually realized that this was a silly, unrealistic fantasy. So he moved on with his life. Linus was capable of assimilating new information. Took him less than 12 years, too.
Rob says
Linus expected the Great Pumpkin. But he eventually realized that this was a silly, unrealistic fantasy. So he moved on with his life. Linus was capable of assimilating new information. Took him less than 12 years, too.
And John Greaney got the numbers roughly right in the retirement study posted at his web site.
I forgot, X.
Take good care, man.
Rob
Rob says
Does Jack know that he will be handing you a check for $500 million? Will this be Jack’s money or will he get it from someone else?
Jack obviously knows that he faces liabilities. Otherwise he wouldn’t be associating with the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.
I presume that Jack will be collecting portions from all parties who are facing liabilities for playing a role in the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School retirement studies.
Jack and all the others have the right to go to court and end up paying a higher amount. It would be a stupid choice, but it is an option available to them.
I offered to settle for $500 million because doing that permits us all to put the ugly side of this behind us and move on to reaping the benefits of being stock investors at the time in history when we all discovered how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while achieving far higher returns, returns high enough to permit us to retire five to ten years sooner than we ever before imagined possible.
I hope that helps a bit, Anonymous.
Rob
Anonymous says
Rob, will you inform us promptly when the $500 million check arrives in the mail? I know reporting on some issues, like the Wade matter, has to be delayed until future years.
Rob says
I report on all important developments at this very spot, Anonymous.
Be sure to tune in tomorrow — Same Goon time, same Goon channel.
Rob
Interested Observer says
I am curious as to your reaction to Wade being named to Investment News’ 40 under 40 list? Among other things the state that “his Retirement Research blog (WPfau.blogspot.com), which he launched in 2010, became a big hit with advisers interested in retirement strategy.”
http://www.investmentnews.com/section/40-under-40/profile/26/Wade-Pfau
Sensible Investor says
Rob, the only economic crisis is in your household. You are trying to blame your own personal failures on the likes of John Greaney, who with all due respect isn’t of very much significance, and John Bogle, who in all likelihood has never heard of you.
Rob says
Everything that I know about Wade tells me that he deserves the honor, Interested.
Wade is smart, he is hard working, he is ambitious (I mean that 100 percent as a compliment — we need ambitious people to make good things happen in the world), and he is generous in giving compliments to those who help him out. He is a great guy all the way around. I am proud to be able to call me “friend.”
Now —
He is ALSO dishonest. Wade has played a big role in a huge act of financial fraud, the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. There is a good chance that he will be going to prison following the next price crash.
Does that cover it, Interested?
If you find that mix of views strange, then there’s a sense in which I am with you. I find it strange myself.
But you know what? If you read great novels, you won’t find it quite so strange after you take some time to reflect on what is going on here. When you hear that one of the greatest investment researchers alive today may be on his way to prison, your first reaction is to think: “How odd.” But when you reflect on how humans behave in the real world, you see that this is really not so strange as it seems on first impression.
Richard Nixon achieved amazing things with his life. He opened relations with China. He brought the war in Vietnam to an end (in a messy way, but still). He ended the gold standard. He greatly increased the size of the programs adopted by Johnson as part of the Great Society. He won one of the biggest landslide victories in U.S. election history. And on and on.
Richard Nixon would likely have landed in a prison cell had he not been pardoned by his successor. As it was, he resigned from office in disgrace.
Sound familiar?
Nixon ruined himself over a stupid pride thing. No one cared about the break-in. It was a political prank. The story would have been in the news two or three days had he simply come clean when it was discovered. He didn’t want bad press for two or three days. So he went in to cover-up mode. He committed crimes. Felonies. He ruined himself. He ruined lots of people associated with him. He messed up big time.
That’s what my good friend Jack Bogle has done. Jack is one of the giants in this field. I rank him second only to Robert Shiller and there are lots of others who would rank him first. He has changed the world of stock investing in hugely important and positive ways. The work he has done will be helping millions of middle-class investors for many decades to come (because Jack’s work is the foundation for Valuation-Informed Indexing, the investing model of the future).
And Jack too may be headed for a prison cell. Jack too has committed felonies (financial fraud is a felony). Mel Linduaer was using threats of physical violence to stop posters at the Bogleheads Forum from posting their honest views since long before I came on the scene. Bogle knew about it. And he turned his head. He pretended that he didn’t see. And things got more and more and more out of control over time. Now Buy-and-Hold has caused an economic crisis. Up ahead we have another price crash coming, one that may put us in the Second Great Depression. We are looking at one of the most destructive acts in the history of the United States.
And at a time when Bogle’s ideas (one of his most important ideas was the one arguing that we should all root our investment strategies in the findings of the peer-reviewed academic research) are bearing fruit more exciting than anything he ever dreamed of when he was a young man. Huh? Bogle’s ideas take us to places he never even imagined possible and Bogle then decides to turn on them, to reverse course? To join forces with the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney? Is he mad?
Yes, he is mad.
We ALL are to some extent. We are all humans. And all humans have a bit of madness within them.
Maybe Wade will be spared prison because his lawyers will cite his madness and a jury will let him off. Maybe the same will happen with Jack.
I don’t know. I cannot say.
My job is to tell the story. Straight. True. As it happened.
I love Wade Pfau. And so I am obviously going to say every positive thing I can think of to say about him.
I love Jack Bogle. So I am obviously going to say every positive thing I can thin of to say about him.
But I ALSO love the millions of middle-class investors whose lives have been destroyed by the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies. Those people need to know the truth about what has been done to them. They need to know who to sue to recover damages. They need to know who to send to prison so that they can make some peace with what has happened and feel that justice has been served at least to some extent. The lawyers who will bring their cases need evidence to present to the juries. My job as a journalist is to document what has gone down so that that evidence is available to them.
So I am not in a postion in which I can ignore the crimes in which my good friends Wade and Jack have participated. I need to tell the story HONESTY. Charitably too. To be sure. But honestly also. Both charity and honesty are called for here. There is no other way by which we can all get from the horrible place where we find ourselves today to the wonderful place where we all deep in our hearts hope to reside tomorrow.
I hope that helps a bit, Interested.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Anonymous says
Rob,
$500 million may be a big stretch for anyone. Perhaps you could settle for $100 million?
Rob says
Rob, the only economic crisis is in your household. You are trying to blame your own personal failures on the likes of John Greaney, who with all due respect isn’t of very much significance, and John Bogle, who in all likelihood has never heard of you.
You are wrong on both counts, Sensible.
There were hundreds of people who posted to the Motley Fool board on a daily basis. Greaney pushes his retirement study there relentlessly. He ruined those people’s lives. Those people thought he was honest. They planned their retirements thinking that his study was legitimate. Those people were friends of mine. I am proud that I did what I could to protect them from Greaney and from those who posted in “defense” of him.
Bogle has heard of me. Rob Arnott is a personal friend of Bogle’s. When I wrote Arnott about The Silencing of Wade Pfau, he came to my site, checked it out, and expressed the view that my investing ideas are “sound.” He copied Jack on his e-mail. Jack obviously saw the e-mail coming from a friend. Jack did nothing.
I am going to tell the millions of people destroyed by the next price crash what happened.
I am going to tell them that I love Jack Bogle and that I view him as a giant in this field. I am going to tell them that I learned about the errors in the Old School retirement studies by reading Jack’s book. I am going to tell them that there would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing today if it were not for Jack’s many huge contributions in earlier times.
And I am going to tell them that Jack did nothing when Mel Linduaer was terrorizing the Vanguard Diehards board and many community members wrote to him asking him to help out. And that Jack did nothing in response to my three e-mails to him. And that Jack did nothing when Linduaer attacked Wade Pfau during the days when Wade was posting honestly. And that Jack did nothing in response to learning about the threats that were made to get Wade fired from his job. And that Jack did nothing when the Wall Street Journal published its article reporting that I was right all along about the Old School retirement studies not containing a valuations adjustment.
I can do no more and I can do no less.
A jury will decide the matter, Sensible. That’s how our system works.
It is a very, very good system and I am confident that we will bring this all to a successful conclusion.
I hope that there will come a day when Jack and I will appear on the same stage and recognize each other’s accomplishments in a show of mutual respect and admiration. It it happens, wonderful. It it doesn’t happen, it sure won’t be because I didn’t do everything I could think of to make that dream a reality.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
Evidence Based Investing says
I expect to be one of the richest people in the United States when this is over, Trebor.
No you don’t.
You only make such comments because of the reaction that they get from the “goons”.
Your audience has dwindled to nothing. Your only regular interaction on this subject is with the “goons” and therefore a large percentage of your output is designed to provoke a reaction from the “goons”.
Rob says
$500 million may be a big stretch for anyone. Perhaps you could settle for $100 million?
If the work that I have done over the past 12 years is recognized (that is, if the internet is opened to honest posting on the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research following the next crash), there is not going to be one person alive on Planet Earth saying that I should accept less than $500 million, Anonymous. The research that I co-aurhored with Wade shows us all how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent.
If the Ban on Honest Posting remains in place, there won’t be too many saying that I should get even $100 million.
I see this as an all-or-nothing proposition. Either we all win big time or we all go down together. $500 million is a very small payment given what we have accomplished here.
Rob
x says
there is not going to be one person alive on Planet Earth saying that I should accept less than $500 million
Under no circumstances would I ever support you being handed $500 million. So you’re saying I won’t be alive. Death threat noted.
The Pink Unicorn says
If you can show us a paper That is authored by you and Wade (with your name mentioned as an author), I would be happy to make the first contribution to your $500 million campaign.
Rob says
Your only regular interaction on this subject is with the “goons” and therefore a large percentage of your output is designed to provoke a reaction from the “goons”.
You’re wrong, Evidence.
The stuff I write today is written to show millions of middle-class people how their financial futures were destroyed. We need as a society to make peace with what has happened. That’s the first step. All the other stuff (the substantive stuff) follows easily once we come to terms with the massive act of financial fraud.
People don’t like to talk about the financial fraud. We all have participated in it in at least some small way (for example, I was afraid to post about the errors in Greaney’s study for the first three years in which I posted at Motley Fool). We are ashamed of ourselves and of our institutions. So we try to pretend that Shiller’s research was never published or doesn’t matter or doesn’t say what it says or doesn’t imply what it implies or whatever.
I don’t even put the primary blame on you Goons. I obviously don’t approve of your behavior. But Goon posters are a common reality on the internet. The usual way to deal with them is to ban them. Had Motley Fool banned Greaney when he made his first death threat, none of us would have travelled this dark road. Motley Fool screwed up. Big time. Motley Fool does not employ Goons. But Motley Fool voted for Get Rich Quick when they failed to ban the fellow putting forward the death threats and instead banned the fellow who discovered the errors in the Old School retirement studies. The site administrator at Motley Fool is more to blame for what has happened than any of you Goons, in my assessment.
I have had people say to me: “Rob, every thing that you say about investing makes perfect sense. But I just cannot follow your advice because my retirement is important to me and what you say is the opposite of what the experts in this field say.” That’s a pretty darn sensible statement, is it not?
The problem here is not that there is anything that I am saying that is wrong or that anything that I am saying is not supported by 33 years of peer-reviewed research or that anything that I am saying is not easy to understand. The problem is that every expert in the field is not saying what I am saying. Shiller published his research in 1981. He won a Noble prize for it. What the heck is going on?
The problem is that this stuff is TOO important for people to feel good about saying something unless they are absolutely sure. Shiller’s stuff was such a breakthrough that people were properly skeptical about it. They held back, waiting for more information.
Then they started to feel funny about reporting on it because there had been such a long delay in discussing all the amazing implications of what Shiller found. In 2002, it had been 21 years since the peer-reviewed research has shown that there was zero chance that a retirement study containing no adjustment for valuations could get the numbers even remotely right. What are you going to say at that point? “Oopsi! Sorry we destroyed your hopes for a decent retirement by giving you wildly wrong numbers all these years!”
Everyone in the field wants to see the Ban on Honest Posting lifted. Bogle wants that or he wouldn’t have included the language in his book showing that the Old School studies get the numbers wildly wrong. Bernstein wants that or he wouldn’t have included Chapter Two in his book; Chapter Two is the best short description of Valuation-Informed Indexing that has been published. Larry Swedroe wants that or he wouldn’t have put forward the honest posts that got him banned at the Bogleheads Forum until he promised Linduaer that he would go back to posting dishonestly. Wade Pfau wants that or he wouldn’t have put so much effort into the research he co-authored with me in the days before he learned that his career would be destroyed if he dared to “cross” the Buy-and-Holders by posting honestly. And on and on and on and on.
The trouble is that lots of Buy-and-Holders will be going to prison if the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says gets out. And lots more will be getting sued by billions and billions and billions of dollars.
So the Buy-and-Holders stick together and respond in a ruthlessly abusive way when they find someone like me posting honestly about the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research.
If our economic system is going to survive, we are going to have to find some means of getting accurate and honest information about how stock investing works out to millions of middle-class people, Evidence. The posts that I put to this site are aimed at helping people come to terms with what we were up against all these years, with why it took so long to get these wonderful advances out to all the people who need to learn about them.
I am anti-Goon. Very, very, very much so.
But the deeper reality is that being anti-Goon shouldn’t cause me any problems. We ALL are anti-Goon. That’s why we have laws against financial fraud in the first place.
The question here is — Why as a society have we made an exception to our usual ant-Goon policies to permit the Buy-and-Holders to continue to shove their smelly Get Rich Quick garbage down our throats and cause us all even more economic ruin that we have already suffered?
When we answer that one, we are on our way to enjoying all the wonderful advances we have achieved in recent decades. The articles at this site aim to help us all come to understand the answer to that one.
Take care, man.
Rob
Rob says
Under no circumstances would I ever support you being handed $500 million. So you’re saying I won’t be alive. Death threat noted.
You’ll change your mind, X.
In days to come, the only thing you will be worried about will be getting your prison sentence shortened and in an effort to achieve that goal you will be saying that I was the best and kindest person who ever crossed your path.
And I will be asking that mercy be applied in the setting of your sentence.
And I think there will be some mercy applied. I don’t know how much.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, old friend.
Rob
Rob says
If you can show us a paper That is authored by you and Wade (with your name mentioned as an author), I would be happy to make the first contribution to your $500 million campaign.
I will present the e-mails that Wade and I exchanged during our 16 months of working together to the jury hearing your case and they will decide on the length of your prison sentence, Pink.
That’s how our system works.
My best wishes.
Rob
The Pink Unicorn says
Oh no, Rob. Please don’t make us go to prison. We are all scared. Can’t you tell?
Rob says
Yes, I can tell you are scared, Pink. You wouldn’t be posting here if you were not scared.
But I am not the one who will be sending you to prison. I will tell the truth about what you have done. I suppose that in that indirect way I am playing a role in getting you sent to prison. But it is the millions of middle-class people whose lives you have destroyed who will be making the call. It is when those people demand that prosecutors take action that the ball will get rolling. And then it is the members of your jury who make the final call.
That’s how it should be, you know? That’s a good system. Perhaps not perfect in every way. But I’d like to see someone come up with something better.
I am not going to be pushing for a long prison sentence. I am not going to be walking around town with a sign saying “The Goons Did the Crime. Now the Goons Must Serve Time!”.
My guess is that I will be arguing for a somewhat shorter sentence than most of the millions of people whose lives you have destroyed. I see it as my job to put things in perspective. I believe that you Goons follow the strategies you recommend for others. I think that counts in your favor. I believe that there are lots of people in positions of responsibility who have failed us and that you Goons would not have gone as far down the dark path as you have had those people behaved appropriately. I believe that cuts in your favor as well. And I think that it is important that as a society we do what we can to put the ugly side of this matter behind us and move on to the pressing business of rebuilding our broken economy and teaching everyone what they need to know to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while also earning returns sufficiently higher to enable them to retire five to ten years sooner than they ever dreamed possible during the Buy-and-Hold years.
So I think it would be fair to say that you and I are very much interested in achieving the same goals in some important respects and that we will likely come to deepen our friendship in coming days. I certainly hope that that turns out to be the case.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.
Hang in there, my old Goon friend.
Rob
Sensible Investor says
I am not scared, Rob.
Rob says
Okay, Sensible.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Anonymous says
Good news, Rob!!!!
Here is another opportunity to interact with Jack Bogle:
http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=137591&newpost=2102331
Maybe you should attend so that you can be on stage with Jack and convince him to give his “I was wrong” speech.
Rob says
Everyone attending should ask Jack to give an “I Was Wrong” speech, Anonymous.
He was wrong. He made a mistake. Shiller’s revolutionary research changed investing analysis in a fundamental way. Jack has not made one change in the investing advice he offers in the 33 years since. Everyone who loves the guy and respects the guy should be encouraging him to acknowledge his mistake and demanding that he do so by the close of business today.
Are you able to imagine any possible downside? I sure am not.
It’s this idea that Big Shots like Jack Bogle (and Mel Linduaer and John Greaney) cannot acknowledge mistakes that is the source of our economic problems.
ANYONE can make a mistake. That includes Jack.
Those who demand that he fix his mistakes as quickly as possible are his TRUE FRIENDS.
That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter, in any event.
I wish you well, Anonymous.
Rob