Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
You being a lawyer, and me not being a lawyer, could you please article the actual crimes you believe Wade to be guilty of?
And if he is, then why do you not press charges?
If you believe in your heart of hearts that this “financial fraud” is so heinous and destructive, being a lawyer, why not instigate a class action lawsuit on behalf of all investors over the last 33 years against the financial industry and government?
As you demonstrate through various postings, there are people and firms in the financial industry which have and do utilize VII et al, even though they may not call it as such. So the information is definitely out there, the public does have access to it, the professionals are conducting business with it. Let it grow…
Besides that, perhaps you are not the singular person to “discover” VII. As your blogged financial industry professionals have stated, they too have utilize “VII” for years. So who’s to say that many people haven’t figured this out already, they just haven’t felt the need to publish and press as you have; they just got on with it.
The future will be interesting…
The crime is financial fraud, Canuck.
I have a law degree. But I did not work for my law degree for the purpose of practicing law. I worked for it to enhance my skills as a journalist. I have zero interest in bringing any class action suits.
I can imagine class-action suits being brought by others following the next price crash. I guess that’s part of our system, so I guess that’s fine. But I sure don’t see how it helps anyone for the damages to be greater than they would be if we all just came clean today. That makes more sense for about 5,000 different reasons. I mean, come on.
There are other people who understand that Buy-and-Hold can never work in the real world. I would say that that’s about 10 percent of the population. I of course want to see it grow. Is there some reason I shouldn’t get involved in HELPING it to grow? I sure am not able to imagine any.
I agree with you only in part when you say that the information is out there. There is good information available to people who search hard enough for it. But the good information reaches only a tiny percentage of the population. I was a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. So was John Walter Russell. So was Wade Pfau. We all became confirmed Valuation-Informed Indexers once we were exposed to the peer-reviewed research of the past 33 years. Why do you think we didn’t know about this far superior strategy long, long before we became aware of it? Wade had a freakin’ Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton and he didn’t know about it!
There’s some sort of funny business going on, Canuck. I can just tell.
There are some who know who keep it zipped because they know that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia will destroy their careers if they tell. I don’t want the Buy-and-Hold Mafia destroying people’s careers because they tell us all about a better way to invest. I want THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of people sharing all they know! Why the heck wouldn’t I? It’s a win/win/win/win/win.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, Canuck.
My good friend Jack Bogle would LOVE it if we could open the entire internet to honest posting. That would let him off the hook. He would see his ideas helping millions of people (Valuation-Informed Indexing is obviously rooted in Bogle’s ideas except for the one that has been found to be in error). Why the heck wouldn’t he want that?
And of course the same if so for my good friend Bill Bernstein.
And for my good friend Wade Pfau.
And for my good friend Scott Burns.
And on and on and on and on.
None of these people dares to speak up in plain and simple and firm and frank and bold language because they know that their careers will be destroyed if they do.
But what if a number of the Goons were sent to prison and news of that went viral on the internet (as it obviously would)?
That would bring an end to all the nasty stuff, no?
And bring on the greatest period of economic growth ever seen in U.S. history.
And insure the shortest possible prison sentences for those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.
Are you able to imagine any possible downside?
I sure am not.
Yes, I believe that the future will be interesting. I only hope that we all work together to insure that it is the good kind of interesting that we have coming up ahead rather than the bad kind of interesting.
Can we all agree on at least that much, my new kinda sorta ethically compromised friend?
Rob
Hit and sunk says
“Can we all agree on at least that much, my new kinda sorta ethically compromised friend?”
And with that, you torpedoed the only attempt in recent memory to engage you in serious investment discussion. This interpersonal stuff sure is tricky, isn’t it?
Rob says
It’s difficult as all get-out at times. I wouldn’t say that it is “tricky.”
We have to be honest in our dealings with people.
That’s it. That’s what works.
Sometimes people are hiding something. Sometimes from others. Sometimes from themselves. Sometimes from both.
And they don’t want someone being too honest in their dealings with them. It hurts too much for them to hear things as they are instead of as they pretend them to be.
In those cases, it makes sense to be especially careful in how one says things. You want to be aware of sensitivities. You want to be loving.
But you still want to be honest. That doesn’t go away. That’s always important.
A mistake that we all make from time to time is to enable those who are in the process of destroying themselves and others. We tell ourselves “oh, it’s not such a big deal that my friend is out-of-his-mind drunk and getting into his car to drive home, drunks have managed to drive home safely in the past.”
It’s true. Drunks HAVE managed to drive home safely.
But what if YOUR particular drunk doesn’t manage to pull it off on this particular occasion?
Then you have to live with the results of your little white lie for the rest of your life. Little white lies on occasion become big black lies. That’s true too.
I tell the truth about this stuff. I certainly try.
That hurts those who believe in Buy-and-Hold strategies and follow Buy-and-Hold strategies and tell their friends to follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. It hurts BAD.
I get that.
I continue to tell the truth (at least to the best of my ability) all the same.
Not because I want to hurt my Buy-and-Hold friends. Because I want to help them. Because I believe that they deserve to hear the truth from me as best as I am able to tell it.
I don’t apologize for that, Hit. Not for one second.
It pains me to see the hurt it causes. I don’t like that part. But that part is the result of years of enabling behavior on the part of the Wall Street Con Men. If they had been telling the truth all along, as they should have been, every Buy-and-Holder alive would have known about the 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor, either in this solar system or in any other. It’s not my doing that they don’t know or can’t let it in. That’s the doing of those other guys and gals.
That’s my sincere take re all this in any event, Hit.
I tell the truth as I see it.
I could be wrong. I can give you that one. It’s happened before. If it were happening again, I would probably be the last to know. So, if people who experience pain when I tell the truth elect to tell themselves that I simply am wrong, that’s on the right side of the line. I am of course 100 percent fine with that.
Death threats? Demands for unjustified board bannings? Tens of thousands of acts of defamation? Threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs?
I am not fine with that sort of thing,.
That sort of thing gets my Buy-and-Hold friends placed in prison cells following the price crashes that inevitably follow times when the Wall Street Con Men are able to trick large numbers of people into going with their smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage strategies.
No friend wants to see his friends sent to prison. Not anymore than he wants to see his friends kill in car accidents caused by drinking and driving.
Find someone else.
I can’t go for that.
No can do.
Not this boy.
It’s not my particular cup of tea.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours in any event.
Rob
Anonymous says
Your interpersonal skills are at about the same level as your investing acumen.
Rob says
I disagree, Anonymous.
Your pain is real. And the pain of all other Buy-and-Holders is real.
But none of that is of my doing. I am trying to change that.
If my peer-reviewed research paper had shown you how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 5 percent, I would be your favorite person in the world.
It’s because I showed you how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent that you hate me so much. It makes you feel bad to see how much money you have wasted and how many lives you have destroyed.
Had Bogle come clean in 1981, you never would have suffered that pain.
The pain gets worse with every day that the cover up continues.
Yes, I have caused you some temporary pain with my honesty. But Valuation-Informed Indexing is far, far superior to Buy-and-Hold. Your pain will disappear once the entire internet is opened to honest posting and you are hearing the good news from thousands of people, including most of those currently pushing the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage.
It wouldn’t surprise me if you ended up saying that it was worth serving a prison sentence to get your retirement portfolio on a better footing. You probably find that hard to believe today. But depending on how long a prison sentence you end up serving, I don’t think it is entirely outside the realm of the possible.
We will see.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.
Rob