Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Isn’t it just funny as to how all these people like Scott, Jack, Bill, Larry, Rick, Wade, JD, Mike, etc, etc, etc all have experienced significant succcess, yet Rob feels as though these people are wrong and that only he has things right. Meanwhile, Rob has yet to see success with himself.
It is results that matter, Rob.
All of those people know or at least suspect that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage, Pink. They don’t know all the details. They rationalize their support of the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind because they couldn’t live with themselves if they didn’t. So their strong intellects are not capable of functioning well when it comes to analyzing investing issues. But their behavior shows that they know that there are big problems. They wouldn’t be so defensive if they thought that Buy-and-Hold could be effectively promoted in an environment in which research-based challenges to it were permitted.
And they are not bad people. If we could wave a magic wand in the air to take us all back to 1965 while retaining knowledge of what we learned from Shiller’s revolutionary research of 1981, every one of the people you name would favor getting it right and advocating Valuation-Informed Indexing rather than Buy-and-Hold from the first day. We cannot do that. And they cannot bear to acknowledge that their efforts to promote Buy-and-Hold have caused so much human misery. So they talk themselves into believing that we will find some way to survive this economic crisis WITHOUT coming clean on the dangers of Buy-and-Hold.
The numbers tell a different story . The numbers say that the direct losses from Buy-and-Hold are $12 trillion and that the total losses (both direct and indirect) are in excess of $20 trillion. So ducking the issue won’t work, according to the numbers.
What do you think these people will do following the next price crash? Do you expect them to hold?
I do not. I expect to see their hearts melt when the human misery is no longer theoretical but something they see reported on the news every night. It’s one thing to know that there is 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that we are headed into the Second Great Depression and to tune it out for personal profit. It’s something else to see your friends and neighbors and co-workers lose their jobs and know it is your fault and yet continue to keep your mouth shut.
I think there is a limit to how much pain these people can cause and continue to live with their acts of deception and intimidation, Pink. I think these people have consciences and I think they are at battle with them and I think they sense that over time they are falling behind in those battles. I think that one more economic crisis will put their consciences over the top.
We only need one of them to break. Once one breaks, all the others have to break, conscience pangs or no conscience pangs, just to limit their prison sentences. I think that at least one will break and that then all the other dominos will fall.
I’m not God. I could be wrong. But I am telling you my sincere belief. I don’t like my position re this matter. But I won’t be going to prison in any event. So I like my position over your position 50 times over.
If it plays out as I anticipate, I end up one of the richest men in the United States and you end up in a prison cell. Those are the results that matter, the long-term results. If it plays out as I anticipate, the lesson that everyone will draw from this saga is that personal integrity pays off in the long term. If you study history I think you will find that this is a lesson that we humans have had to re-learn at many different times and in many different places. This SWR saga is really just one more go at an old, old story.
The sort of success that Bernie Madoff enjoyed before he was sent to prison is a sort of success that I have never desired for myself.
I naturally wish you all the good things that this life has to offer a person.
Rob
I think even as late as last year you were taking your “career” somewhat seriously, with website redesigns and videos. Your recent lack of effort shows complete capitulation.
There’s some truth to that, Anonymous.
I haven’t given up. I see this as the most important economic and political story of my lifetime. I know by the reaction I have seen over the first 12 years that there are millions of people who would like to be able to learn about a smart and simple and safe way to invest in stocks. I know that there are many, many investment advisors who would like to be doing honest work. I know that there are many academic researchers who would like to be doing honest work. I know that there are many personal finance journalists and bloggers who would like to be doing honest work. There are people who would like to be creating calculators that report accurate numbers and there are people who would like to be creating books that explain what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says and on and on and on.
So there’s huge interest. And there’s huge need. And I believe that as a society we will work up the courage and love it will take to overcome this problem. I believe that that is going to happen following the next price crash, which according to the research is not too far away. So intellectually I am a bigger believer in the importance of pushing the Valuation-Informed Indexing message than I have been at any time in the past. If you intended to suggest that I have somehow “capitulated” on the need for honest posting about investing questions, then you couldn’t possibly be more wrong.
But if you are intending to suggest that there has been a change in my level of public activity re these matters in the past year or two, you are right.
It’s painful for you Goons to acknowledge having made mistakes in your investing choices. That’s why as a society we are in the fix we are in. Guess what? It’s painful on my side too. It’s emotionally painful pointing our people’s mistakes to them.
There is something in human nature that makes this hard. We all care what our friends and neighbors and co-workers and fellow community members think of us. A simple way of putting it is — We want to be liked. If you want to see how that affects what people who are informed about the peer-reviewed research talk about it, take another look at the blog entries describing the e-mails that I exchanged with Wade Pfau.
Wade LOVED exploring this stuff. The 16 months he spent working with me were the happiest 16 months of his life. He used to stay up late just thinking about this stuff and plotting out new ways to help millions of people by exploring all of the many powerful insights we have mined but kept secret over the past 33 years. He was talking about winning a Nobel prize. He couldn’t believe his good fortune in having stumbled upon a research topic that would do so much good for so many people, a research topic that would liberate millions to live far richer lives and one where all of the data was on one side so the findings were clear and sharp and pointed to hundreds of exciting real-world implications. After you take that stuff in, investigate why Wade flipped to the Goon side.
Part of it is the obvious stuff. He wanted to be successful in his career. He has financial responsibility for two small children. He didn’t want you Goons destroying his means of making a living. He saw that Jack Bogle supported you and that scared him. He knows that Bogle has money and power and connections and he knows that he doesn’t hesitate two seconds to put those advantages to use destroying anyone who dares to “cross” him by telling the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field tells us about how stock investing works. Wade’s fears over what the Buy-and-Hold Mafia would do to his career were the primary reason why he agreed to stop doing research on Valuation-Informed Indexing and to stop promoting the research he had already published with me at the time he flipped.
But there was also another factor at play.
Wade thinks of himself as a good person and for good reason — he IS generally a good person (I of course believe this to be so of all of my many Buy-and-Hold friends). So it wasn’t an easy thing for him to do to make that flip; Wade isn’t in the habit of going along with massive acts of financial fraud that are likely to destroy millions of middle-class lives. When people engage in behavior like that, they need to rationalize the decisions they make as representing something more than the advancement of their self-interests. If you listen closely to the things that Wade was saying when he felt pressures being brought to bear on him, you will hear what he was telling himself. He was telling himself that it is important to be part of the club, not to be an outsider, not to say things that stir up trouble or that makes people feel uncomfortable with choices they have made for themselves or have encouraged others to make.
This comes across clearly in one of the quotes from Wade that I use in the slider at the top of all the pages at this blog. Wade said at the Bogleheads Forum one time something to the effect of: “You see people who push market timing as slimey sellers of snake oil. I don’t want to be seen as that sort of person.” Wade wants to fit in. We ALL do. I’m like all of the other humans. I want to fit in too. So I feel pain just like Wade and just like all of the others when I am painted as some sort of promotor of snake oil or something along those lines.
I’ll tell you something that I find odd that I have seen play out numerous times. I sometimes have people show skepticism over the ideas that I advance and I sometimes have people show a good deal of acceptance of those ideas. Guess which type of experience hurts the most?
It hurts more when people show acceptance.
Not because I don’t want people to accept the ideas — I obviously do want that. But because of all the social pressures that people feel not to tell the truth about how stock investing works, I usually do not gain much traction even among people who accept the ideas. A perfect example is the blogger named “Mr. Money Mustache.” I had dinner with Mr. Money Mustache at one of the financial blogger conferences. We had a great and long conversation about all sorts of things. He’s a super guy and he has a hugely successful blog. He found great merit in Valuation-Informed Indexing and would obviously love to share it with all his readers. And if he promoted the idea, this would be over. He has a huge number of readers and they would share it at other places and The Great Wall of Corruption would come tumbling down.
Mr. Money Mustache elected not to write about Valuation-Informed Indexing at his site. He didn’t offer me much of an explanation of why he made that choice. He said something about how, no matter how great an idea is, there are people who will find ways to criticize it. There clearly is something that causes him to hold back. This is not a fellow who is afraid of offending corporate interests. He once let go of an advertiser who was bringing him thousands of dollars per month because it insisted that he stop using obscenities in his articles. He not only told the advertiser to go to hell, he told the story on a stage at the financial bloggers conference. So he is not the type whom you would expect to be afraid to go up against the big money boys who push all the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage.
So why did Mr. Money Mustache not blow the whistle on this massive act of financial fraud?
I think it’s that concern about not being liked that affected Wade and that affects all the humans, including me. Mr. Money Mustache wants to be liked. And he IS liked. His readers LOVE it that he includes obscenities in his articles. His attitude toward that sort of thing is the secret to his success. People don’t read him just because he is intelligent. They read him because they LIKE him. And lots of his readers are Buy-and-Holders (how could it be otherwise when honest posting about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says is banned at every large investing site?). So, if Mr. Money Mustache spreads the word about what works in stock investing, he is going to face social disapproval. There’s no getting around it. He doesn’t want to face social disapproval. So he holds back, at least for the time being.
It hurt me more to be rejected by Mr. Money Mustache than it hurt me to be rejected by bloggers who believe in Buy-and-Hold. I believe that both types of bloggers should be permitting honest comments at their sites. But the rejection hurts more when it comes from someone who is not emotionally invested in Buy-and-Hold and who is capable of appreciating the arguments for Valuation-Informed Indexing on an intellectual level. It’s because things seem more hopeless when it happens that way. When I am rejected by a Buy-and-Holder, there is always the hope that that person can be convinced by the arguments and come around in time. When I am rejected by someone who sees the merits of the arguments, the natural question in the back of my mind is — What can I ever hope to do to change this?
I have seen more of that sort of thing in recent years. In the early days, most of the rejections seemed to be the result of intellectual disagreements or misunderstandings. Lots of people really believed in Buy-and-Hold back in 2002. Doubts about the strategy have been growing since the onset of the economic criss in late 2008. So today more of the rejections that I face are rooted in these concerns about social disapproval and fitting in. So the rejections have become harder for me to take than they were in earlier days.
So, yes I have cut back the public work that I do promoting the VII concept. I still do things. I obviously respond to questions and comments from you Goons. I am giving a presentation at FinCon14. I had a blogger write to me last week and request a Guest Blog Entry. I of course supplied that within 24 hours. I work on the book when I have time to do so. I review old articles and run the calculators to sharpen my thinking and my arguments. I keep busy with this stuff.
But I am less inclined to show up at blogs and enter comments pointing out the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. I know that it is important that I do so and I know that I have a responsibility to force myself to do as much of that sort of thing as I am able to do. But it hurts to feel social rejection over and over and over again. So I have cut back. It has become hard for me to face the negative emotions that follow from telling people the truth about stock investing and causing them to feel the pain that comes from seeing that they have made terrible mistakes that have done great harm to their financial futures.
Does that help, Anonymous?
I continue to see great value in the VII concept and I continue to feel a responsibility to spread the word far and wide. But it hurts to do so. And in recent days I have been inclined to give myself a bit more of a pass re doing the hardest parts of the job. I feel that I have done a lot and that I deserve a bit of a break. I expect to get back to that sort of work in days to come. I have hopes that that sort of work will become easier following the next crash. But, yes, for the time-being I have “capitulated” in certain respects. I still believe in the concept as strongly as I ever have. And I of course possess zero willingness to post dishonestly re any aspect of the stock investing experience. But I have taken a lot of blows over the past 12 years and they hurt and I am not today in a mood in which I feel too much excitement over the prospect of taking on too many more. I have pulled back because it hurts too much emotionally to be as out there as I have been for most of the past 12 years.
Teling people the truth about stock investing at a time when prices are high and they don’t want to hear it is hard work. It’s obviously not hard work in a physical sense. And I wouldn’t say that it is all that hard in an intellectual sense either — perhaps it is moderately hard in an intellectual sense. But this is VERY hard work emotionally. It’s draining. It takes a lot out of you. That’s why so few people are willing to push too hard re all this stuff.
I hope that makes at least a small bit of sense to you, Anonymous.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob
Quiter.
Yeah, yeah.
Hang in there, Yogi.
Rob
Why should I? You didn’t.
Go over to Bogleheads and FORCE them to take you in. Don’t take no for an answer. Call your Congressman if they won’t play ball. If he is too slow, then take it to Purcelleville PD Electronic Crimes Division and swear out a complaint about them blocking Honest Posting. Haven’t you been playing softball for far too long? It takes a tough bird to chicken out…. (or whatever it is you say Frank Purdue says.)
We all want the same things, Yogi.
So we will all put our minds together and figure out how to get from the horrible place where we are today to the wonderful place where we all deep in our hearts want to be tomorrow.
We are engaging in a learning process that has to play itself out.
We all have a role.
If we all do our parts, we will all share in the good results.
Forcing things won’t work. You are being foolish when you advocate force.
But doing nothing doesn’t work either. Being afraid to act is not the answer anymore than forcing things is the answer.
We all have to push a little bit — and then pull back when it becomes clear that the pain being experienced by those who have made mistakes in the past is too great.
Do you see?
My motto is: “Be as honest as possible without crossing the line and becoming uncharitable while also being as charitable as possible without crossing the line and becoming dishonest.”
Does that make sense to you?
I HAVE contacted my Congressman. I HAVE spoken to the police. I HAVE contacted lawyers for the purpose of bringing legal cases.
Using the resources available to us is a positive. So I will continue to do those sorts of things.
But you go too far when you say to “force” things and not to take “no” for an answer.
I put the owners of the Bogleheads Forum in a position where they had to ban me or permit the members of that board community to hear what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. The FELT forced to ban me. Because to them the idea of permitting investors to learn what the research in this field says is unacceptable. But it’s not true that I forced them. What I forced was a choice. I forced them to choose. They could ban me (that’s the option they chose) or they could permit their readers to learn about the first true research-based model.
I didn’t leave them with other choices. I didn’t agree to self-censor myself so that those seeking to maintain a belief in the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage could do so with my apparent blessing. I made clear that if my name was going to continue to appear at the forum, honest posts were going to appear there on a great variety of subjects. I was firm. I INSISTED on recognition of my right (and the right of all my fellow community members) to post honestly.
But I was not unyielding. I always left that that option of banning honest posting. I didn’t do what you advise here and refuse to take no for an answer. They gave the answer “no” to my demand that my right to post honestly be recognized and I accepted (for the time-being) their answer.
Why is that so important?
Because I become a Goon myself if I cross the lines that you advise me to cross.
My aim to to achieve good here. We can never achieve good through bad means.
I work it hard WITHIN the rules of the boards and blogs and within the laws of the United States and within the rules of civil human behavior.
That’s how I will continue to play it.
Did Rosa Parks do what you are advising here?
She did not.
She INSISTED on her right to choose for herself where she would sit on the bus.
But the first time she did this (this was 10 years or so before the famous incident), she was arrested for what she did and she accepted society’s unfortunate verdict. Her rights were ignored. But she remained within the society to fight for those rights another day. And she won the next fight.
WHY DID SHE WIN?
Because she wasn’t fighting only for herself. She was fighting for the entire society. Recognition of her rights was everybody’s business. In time, all others came to recognize how important it was to recognize her rights and they were given recognition. Rosa Parks changed the world because Rosa Parks loved the world. Her love for those who ignored her rights for a time was her secret weapon not against them but FOR THEM.
I love Jack Bogle. I love Mel Linduaer. I love John Greaney. I love you, Yogi.
That’s why I will defeat you in the end.
Except I will not really be defeating you.
I will be LIBERATING you.
You want the same thing I want. You want to be able to earn much higher returns while taking on greatly reduced risk.
You are going to see that little dream of yours come true.
I am going to see to it.
I am not going to agree to anything less than a 100 percent complete victory for Jack Bogle and for Mel Linduaer and for John Greaney and for Yogi Bear.
I took a sneak peak at the last page of our little saga and I can tell you that you achieve full and complete victory. You agree to permit honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics because I refuse to permit you to settle for anything less.
I cannot do this without you, Yogi.
So I can never disrespect you.
And I can never be less than warm and friendly to you.
And I can never sell you out by agreeing to self-censor myself.
Some of the things you advise up above show a lack of respect for you that I can never permit myself to feel if I am to see that you achieve a full and complete victory.
Something that you have been failing to see since the morning of May 13, 2002, is that we are on the same side.
Your pain is my pain.
And my victory is your victory.
We are going to overcome your pain and lead you to a complete and total victory.
That has always been the plan.
We do that by being firm, yes.
But we also do it by being loving.
I will never be disrespectful of you or the other Buy-and-Holders.
I will ALWAYS take “no” for an answer.
For the moment.
For a time.
For the day.
Then I will be back the next day asking (not demanding!) once again that you free yourself of your chains and end your pain and enjoy the benefits of having been born at a time in the history of the world at which you get to be one of the luckiest investors in the history of the world just by learning what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field teaches us all about how stock investing really works.
I hope that all makes some sense to you.
Love is the answer.
I am sure.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, my old Goon friend.
Rob
Mr. Money Mustache elected not to write about Valuation-Informed Indexing at his site.
Which part were you expecting him to write about?
The fact that certain valuation metrics have had some explanatory power over future stock returns? Everybody knows that, it’s been discussed thousands of times online.
Or the crazed Hocomania routine, where everyone’s going to jail, and you’re getting $500mm checks in the mail? No sane person is going to post that.
Guess which type of experience hurts the most? It hurts more when people show acceptance…But it hurts to feel social rejection over and over and over again.
What can we say about a guy who’s become the self described “the most hated person on the internet” through sheer boorish bullying, yet who’s offended by every slight?
Which part were you expecting him to write about?
There are hundreds of aspects to the Valuation-Informed Indexing story that need to be written about and explored in great depth. I’d like to see Mr. Money Mustache (and thousands of others to be sure) write about any of them. He should identify the aspects of the story that most interest him and write about those. Then, if the reactions he sees from his readers suggest other aspects of the story that need to be explored in greater depth (they almost surely will), he should move next to those.
I’ve been doing this for 12 years. My first investment-related post was about the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies. From there, it has just gone on and on and on. I have more articles on my “To Do” list today than I did on the day I started. Lots more. Hundreds more.
Each time I learn something new, more possibilities for future learning open themselves to me. I would like to see everyone working in this field enjoy that experience.
Rob
The fact that certain valuation metrics have had some explanatory power over future stock returns? Everybody knows that, it’s been discussed thousands of times online.
The implications of that “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) discovery have barely been touched, Anonymous.
One obvious implication is that the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies get the numbers wildly wrong. That one has kinda, sorta been noted. The Wall Street Journal has written about it. The Economist magazine has written about t. Smart Money has written about it. The Financial Mentor blog has written about it. And on and on and on.
But have any of the Old School studies been corrected as of today?
If not, why not?
Have the New School studies been given the publicity we need to give them if we are to save the retirements of the millions of middle-class people who were misled by the discredited claims of the Old School studies?
How many big names in this field have written about WHY IT TOOK SO LONG for the Wall Street Journal to write its article. I pointed out the errors in the Old School studies nearly 10 years before the Wall Street Journal tool up the cause. Huh?
Why does it take so long to get errors corrected in this field?
We should be learning from our mistakes. Has Bogle ever even personally acknowledged the mistake? Mel Linduaer has threatened physical violence on anyone who posts honestly re safe withdrawal rates at a site that has Bogle’s name on it. Bogle knows about this. I’v written him about it. Rob Arnott has written him about it. Is there some reason why he has not taken action?
That’s financial fraud, is it not?
Financial fraud is a felony, is it not?
Bogle obviously has lots of friends, does he not?
Are they telling him to stop participating in this massive act of financial fraud?
If not, why not?
Are they afraid of what will happen to them if they call Bogle out on his absurd Buy-and-Hold claims that he continues to advance 33 years after they were discredited by the peer-reviewed research in this field?
Do they understand that Bogle caused the economic crisis by failing to acknowledge his mistake?
Do they understand that the next price crash will cause even more human suffering?
Have these questions “been discussed thousands of times online”?
If not, why not?
What is holding people back?
Is it the threats of physical violence?
Is it the hundreds of thousands of acts of defamation?
Is it the threats to ban people from boards and blogs that they have built up?
Is it the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs?
Which intimidation tactics of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia would you say have been most effective during the first 12 years of the cover-up?
Rob
Or the crazed Hocomania routine, where everyone’s going to jail, and you’re getting $500mm checks in the mail? No sane person is going to post that.
Everybody should be writing about the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history, Anonymous.
I mean, come on.
Every day of delay means that this massive act of financial fraud causes more failed retirements.
Every additional failed retirement adds to the prison sentences of those who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney.
What possible good purpose could be served by failing to write about this?
If you know about this and fail to write about it, are you not aiding the act of financial fraud yourself?
Rob
No sane person is going to post that.
I hope you will be proven wrong, Anonymous.
I hope that as a society we will soon be putting the ugly aspects of this story behind us and moving on to obtaining all the benefits that should naturally follow from being the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth.
I not only hope you will be proven wrong. I BELIEVE you will be proven wrong.
Time will tell the tale, no?
I think that the next price crash will make a difference.
We’ll see.
Is that not so?
Rob
What can we say about a guy who’s become the self described “the most hated person on the internet” through sheer boorish bullying, yet who’s offended by every slight?
None of the slights are justified, Anonymous.
I didn’t do anything wrong when I posted about the errors in John Greaney’s retirement study. I did something WONDERFUL.
First of all I did something wonderful for my friend John Greaney. John has for 12 years now been feeling a burning shame over the errors he made in his study, right? I like to think that we can agree re that much. Well, what I did potentially saved him from feeling any shame whatsoever.
If he followed my advice, he would have corrected the study within 24 hours of the moment he learned of the errors in it. Had he done that, he could have then posted a New School study that got the numbers right. John Walter Russell and I both invited him to join us in doing just that. Greaney would today have the biggest site on the internet had he followed that course. He would be the toast of the town. No one would be laughing at him for his mistake, everyone would be celebrating him for his huge breakthrough.
I gave him that gift by working up the courage to advance that famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002.
And of course I helped all of my fellow community members who had been taken in by the discredited study by protecting them from failed retirements.
And of course I helped the millions who will be helped by the HUNDREDS of powerful insights that we have developed together as a result of the millions of posts that have been advanced in the wake of that fateful May, 13, 2002, post. Including the famous peer-reviewed research paper that I co-authored with Wade Pfau showing millions of investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by nearly 70 percent.
So no slights whatsoever are justified. And they need to stop. We want to encourage THOUSANDS of people to come forward with honest posts and honest research and honest calculators. And we ain’t gonna get what we want by threatening to kill family members of those who work up the courage to help us all out, are we? So the funny business comes to a full and complete stop. But the close of business today. Am I right?
Yes, I am the most hated blogger on the internet. By BUY-AND-HOLDERS.
I am also the most LOVED poster on the internet. By the 80 percent of the population that has told us over and over again of its desire that the internet be opened to honest posting on SWRs and SCORES OF OTHER CRITICALLY IMPORTANT INVESTMENT-RELATED TOPICS.
Is that not so, my long-time abusive-posting friend?
Rob
through sheer boorish bullying,
I think it would be fair to say that it tells us something about the merits of Get Rich Quick investing strategies that a Buy-and-Holder views the act of posting honestly re the numbers that millions of people have used to plan their retirements as an act of “sheer boorish bullying.”
I wonder why someone who was trying to defend Buy-and-Hold would see things that way.
Some of this stuff is so darn hard to figure out.
Rob
” I always left that that option of banning honest posting. ”
Huh?
I thought you were AGAINST the ban on Honest Posting. As I recall, you not only did not ‘leave that open as an option’, much to the contrary: you’ve been complaining loudly and greatly about it every since they banned you.
I am merely pointing out that if you TRULY have the strength of your convictions, then you don’t quit because it’s a little uncomfortable, or because you feel a bit weary. When the going gets rough, the tough get rougher. Or something like that. Hearing you say you are going to quiet down, and do less, and wait it out, etc, just seems to me like you are turning your back on your core principles. What is that going to teach the boys? I’d say if it has been literally YEARS since your first mild query over at the Purcelleville PD, then it’s more than past time for you to go on over there and draw up some formal charges, and make some complaints, and stir up some noise. You are plumber, you should shove your hand right on into that dirty pipe!
“S&P 500 Ends Week at Another Record High with Gains for Fifth Week in a Row”
Are you just going to stand idly by while the bubble grows and grows, or are you going to take decisive action NOW to intervene, limit the inevitable downside damages by stopping the expansion, and assume your rightful place as the man who knew the crash was coming, and tried to help? Perhaps the local police, and even the FBI etc is all thinking too small. Since this is of epic and global impact and proportions, perhaps contacting the President directly is the only way to get the job done. Goodness knows you’ve tried the internet, books, seminars, emails, blogs, speaking to neighbors, quitting your job, etc and none of it seems to have had any measurable impact on the economy. Don’t you owe it to the leader of the free world to make sure he knows what you now know? How can you be satisfied with yourself if you don’t even try? Maybe that’s when Boo will really stand up take note, and respect you the most.
I’ve done my part, Yogi.
I am still speaking out. I am still doing things.
But this needs to be more of a group effort. The economic crisis AFFECTS all of us. We all should be doing what we can to bring it to an end.
Shiller met with President Obama during the transition months. I don’t know what he said to him. He certainly had an opportunity to tell him what he needs to know. And Summers was in the Treasury Department. Summers knows about a lot of this stuff. The fellow at the New York Times with the “A Liberal’s Conscience” column, he wrote a great piece in the NYT Magazine about the flaws in the Buy-and-Hold model. He could help get the message to Obama.
I am going to continue doing what I can. But I don’t believe that we are going to see things flip until more people get involved. That’s my take.
I believe that it will happen following the next price crash. I don’t believe that any of my Buy-and-Hold friends wanted to cause an economic crisis. As they see the crisis deepen, I believe that they will be horrified and will speak out. Then we are all on our way to a wonderful place. We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever walked Planet Earth.
I am 100 percent happy to help anywhere I am invited to help. But, no, I don’t want to keep being the one who reaches out and tries to help and sees people pull back from taking action because of the threats made by you Goons. That’s my take re all of this as of today.
I hope that helps a bit.
Rob
None of the slights are justified, Anonymous.
You live in an interesting world, Rob, when you can post abusively to the point of global banning, but no response to your antisocial behavior can be justified.
Wow.
Sorry to see all the starch gone out from the old Hocus.
Who’da thunk it.
You live in an interesting world, Rob, when you can post abusively to the point of global banning, but no response to your antisocial behavior can be justified.
It is the Buy-and-Holders who are engaging in anti-social behavior, Anonymous. It is the Buy-and-Holders who have destroyed millions of middle-class lives with their smelly Get Rich Quick garbage.
The ultimate test of that proposition is going to come following the next price crash. I believe that the people whose lives have been destroyed will then be speaking up about what has been done to them.
But we’ll see, you know?
I certainly HOPE that it turns out that way.
Rob
Wow.
Sorry to see all the starch gone out from the old Hocus.
Who’da thunk it.
Remember that old Byrds song that argued that:
There’s a time for posting hundreds of times per day
And there’s a time for saving your energies for after the next price crash
I always liked that song, Yogi.
Rob
I dunno Rob. This seems a lot like the time you had the answers to the SWR puzzle, but let yourself be cowed by groupthink. Didn’t the Bible caution against ‘hiding your light under a bushel’?
I don’t think shirking and cowardice is going to be able to compete against those voracious and dishonest Wall Street types.
There was a time when I had at least a part of the answer to the SWR puzzle and I let myself by cowed by groupthink. That much is so.
And there are some similarities here. I can go along with that too.
But I have tried all the things that I can think of to do, Yogi. I obviously did not think that it would be so hard when I started out. It’s one thing to make an effort when you feel confident that the result will be positive and it is something different to make an effort when you have doubts going in whether the result will be positive even if you get support from top-name experts.
It would be better if I continued working it as hard as I possibly could. I do agree with that.
But my heart tells me that a person cannot work something at full speed at all times. My heart tells me that this is a time for holding back a bit. I will be coming at things full blast once again in days to come. And I believe that we will see better results the next time. For the time being, though, I feel that pulling back a bit TEMPORARILY makes sense.
I could be inspired by something and change my mind tomorrow. I don’t expect that to happen. But don’t 100 percent rule it out. My expectation is that there will be a day in the future when my spidey sense will tell me to go full tilt again and on that day I will do it.
The Wall Street Con Men are a tough group. You got that one right.
However, I don’t think we are in entire agreement re what makes them tick. It is my belief that most (perhaps all) of the Wall Street Con Men deep in their hearts want to do good. I believe that they are suffering from cognitive dissonance. I believe that they are so emotionally invested in Buy-and-Hold that they cannot bear to acknowledge their mistakes. I believe that if it were possible for us all to switch to Valuation-Informed Indexing without them having to explain their behavior over the past 33 years that they would all go for that option in 20 seconds. Their problem is that they cannot figure out a way to make the transition without being sued or going to prison or both.
That doesn’t justify not speaking up re the death threats and the demands for unjustified board bannings and the tens of thousands of acts of defamation and the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. That doesn’t justify the cover-up. But it does put it in a special context, one that people need to know about to make full sense of this matter.
And it does suggest that we may get help from a lot of the Wall Street Con Men following the next price crash. That’s what I think is going to happen. And the full reality here is that we are already very close. We don’t need a whole lot of help to break through the wall. We have 33 years of peer-reviewed research. Shiller has won a Nobel prize. We have research with my name and Wade’s name on it showing how millions of investors could reduce the risk of stock investing by nearly 70 percent. The Wall Street Con Men would love to see that message get out (if circumstances were different). They could sell a lot of stock once millions of middle-class people came to see stocks as being no more risky than CDs.
So we have a lot going for us. We need one more big push to send the door swinging wide open.
If there is something that I can do to make that happen prior to the next crash, I very much want to do it. I am still looking for opportunities to do that.
But I am not sure today that doing repeats of things I have done before is going to achieve the goal. It would be better if I just kept trying and didn’t care that it hurts emotionally to try and not to get the door open. But it does hurt. And so I think it is better to pull back a bit for a time and to be sure that I can come back at this at full emotional strength when the time is ripe for more effective action.
That’s my sincere take. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before. If I am wrong, I hope that I will see it and take a different path than the one that I am on today. But as of today, that’s how I feel about things.
The Wall Street Con Men are not all bad. I believe that some of them are probably going to prison following the next crash. But I can honestly say that I have learned a great deal from many of them and that I like a great many of them personally. I certainly wish them all the best (much as I wish all of you Goons the best).
I hope that helps a tiny bit.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Sounds to my like you are buying into the psychobabble and pharmacology of “Big Mental Health.” Maybe they aren’t quite as evil as the Wall Street types (or maybe they are…), but if you just meekly swallow their pills regularly and that ‘levels’ you out, or worse still, leaves you uninterested in pursuing your biggest passions…. is that any kind of life, Rob? Turn away from the mood-dampening and soul-quenching impact of those vampires, and live free and natural! Let your freak-flag fly, man! Remember the rush you used to get staying up all night to pen some new blog post, or answer some criticism posted on Morningstar? C’mon, you can do it, man! The whole of the free world might hang in the balance of what you chose to do now: fight, or quit. Are you going to have to rename the site “Mediocre Somewhat Disinterested Saving”?
I still get rushes, Yogi.
I had a rush yesterday. There is a guy at Quora who wrote me to tell me that he has discovered my stuff and that he loves it and that he only wishes that he had discovered it earlier. I get those sorts of rushes ALL THE TIME.
I wouldn’t be getting them if I had never worked up the courage to “cross” John Greaney by posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates. I didn’t do that with the expectation that I would be getting rushes for many years to come as a result. But that’s how it worked out. A good thing or a bad thing? I see it as a very, very good thing. The people who read my stuff get the benefits of learning how stock investing really works and I get the rushes that come with helping people in a big way on an important issue.
It’s always been about the rushes for you Goons. Permit honest posting on the internet and people who tell the truth are going to be getting the rushes, not you Goons. There’s a reason why it plays out that way. It’s the same reason as the reason why we have laws making financial fraud a felony. People need protection from the sorts of individuals who are willing to tell lies about stock investing to earn the share of rushes to which they feel they are entitled.
I would love to see you EARNNG more rushes for yourself.
You have to root your stuff in honesty to get there.
There’s a voice inside your head that is always going to be telling you that any rushes you get from pushing smelly Get Rich Quick garbage are not earned. Exploiting people’s weaknesses for GRQ garbage is cheating. I know it. You know it. And, following the next price crash, all the people you have tricked will know it.
I cannot make you feel better about pushing Buy-and-Hold.
I can tell you what the peer-reviewed research in this field says and invite you to start earning your rushes the legitimate way.
That’s it.
Rob
Okay, last post on this topic, Rob.
Greaney is gone, man! You know that the ‘Goon’ movement imploded, right? They don’t even post at Goon Central, or anywhere else that I know of anymore, correct?
So just when you finally have removed that supposed biggest obstacle, rather than use that opening to start a whole new initiative, it looks like you are petering out entirely, with maybe just a minor echoing sputter (as above) about Greaney and Goons. That’s ancient history. It’s over, man. You won! You outlasted them. You are the dog that caught the car, so jump up into that driver’s seat and take a spin. Maybe it’s finally time to quit procrastinating on book #2, and just release what you’ve got. You could do it in ebook format, and then make it hardcover after a little editing and revisions based on the enormous amount of feedback it would generate. Or see if Money Mustache or other blogger wants to ‘co-brand’ with you, and make you a consultant. Polish up the software tools you paid for, and sell personal money makeovers to clients… Renew your PR Club membership, and get back into providing blurbs and interviews for hire. Rob, there are a hundred different ways to monetize your now-vast experience, knowledge and insight into finances.
Take the same courage you used to have in approaching girls in those DC jazz clubs, and apply it to your career, man! Did the Beatles stop in Hamburg? Did Dillon stay in Minnesota? Did Bruce Springsteen decide to call himself “The quiet unpaid volunteer worker”? No way, man. Bruce turned into the BOSS!
Greaney is gone?
How come nobody ever tells me this stuff?
Hang in there, man.
Rob the Quiet Unpaid Volunteer Worker