Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Oh no, Rob. Please don’t make us go to prison. We are all scared. Can’t you tell?
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
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