Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
He told me that “there is nothing that I would like better” than to open up his blog to honest posting re the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. He said that he hasn’t done it because he is “afraid” of what Mel Linduaer would do to him. He said that everyone he knows views Lindauer as “a massive jerk.”
Why the partial quotes? I suspect that the rest of the quotes would give a different impression from the on you are trying to give.
There are a lot of blog entries here dealing with Mike Piper.
He always hated being dishonest. But he feels that he has no choice. He feels that his blog will be destroyed if he permits honest posting.
That’s how lots of people feel. It’s very similar to the situation with Wade Pfau. He loved doing honest research. Be he didn’t want to see his career destroyed.
I think that a good case can be made that it’s the same basic story with Jack Bogle. Jack is the one who provided the honest information in his book that helped me come to understand that the Old School SWR studies were in error. He put that language in the book because he has a conscience. Yet he is the lead promotor of Buy-and-Hold. Beat that!
The impression that I am trying to create is that Mike Piper feels trapped by the lies that he and many others have told in the past. And that the same is so with Wade Pfau and Jack Bogle and thousands of others.
Now –
How do we all work ourselves out of the trap we have created for ourselves?
Do you have any constructive ideas, Evidence?
Rob
Anonymous says
Do we believe that all of these people are liars and you stand alone when it comes to telling the truth?
Rob says
I am not able to lie about these matters, Anonymous. It’s just not in me. That part of this is as clear as clear could be.
As for all the others, not everyone who advocates Buy-and-Hold is a liar. Buy-and-Hold started as something real. Those who advocated it prior to 1981 certainly were not liars.
And most of those who advocated it post-1981 are not liars. I advocated Buy-and-Hold until the evening of August 27, 2002. I wouldn’t say that I was a liar in those earlier days. John Walter Russell advocated Buy-and-Hold until he learned that it is a big pile of smelly garbage. Wade Pfau advocated Buy-and-Hold until he learned that it is a big pile of smelly garbage. Many people have never heard about the 34-year cover-up. If you don’t know that Buy-and-Hold has over time become a big pile of lies, you are not a liar to advocate it.
Now —
I suspected that Buy-and-Hold did not add up in the days prior to my conversion on the night of August 27, 2002. So the full reality is that I really was kinda, sorta a liar in those days. I didn’t think that I was lying. But I had a feeling that I should be digging down deeper and investigating the contradictions in what the Buy-and-Holders (including me!) said.
But I didn’t want to! I wanted people to like me. People love, love, love Get Rich Quick strategies when prices are at insanely inflated levels and there has never been a strategy that pushes the Get Rich Quick concept as far as Buy-and-Hold pushes it. So I knew that digging down deep and exploring the contradictions in Buy-and-Hold might mean that I was going to lose something important — people’s approval of me. So I kept it zipped. I lied to myself first and then, yes, I lied to others.
It all depends on what you mean to signify by the word “lie.”
Does someone who smokes three packs of cigarettes each day lie about the dangers of smoking? He does in a way and he doesn’t in a way. He knows intellectually that smoking is killing him. But if he let that message enter his consciousness in a complete way, he would have to give up smoking. And he doesn’t want to give up smoking. So he lies to himself about it. And he continues smoking. The human will often triumphs over the human intellect.
There are lots and lots of people trying to tell bits of the truth.
Jack Bogle has told important bits of the truth. Bill Bernstein has told important bits of the truth. Robert Shiller has told important bits of the truth. Wade Pfau has told important bits of the truth. Larry Swedroe has told important bits of the truth. Mike Piper has told important bits of the truth. Todd Tresidder has told important bits of the truth. Carl Richards has told important bits of the truth.
None of the people that I listed just above has come out publicly in opposition to the 34-year cover-up of the implications of Shiller’s 1981 research findings. So they are all liars re that point. I am the only one whom I know that has been 100 percent honest re that aspect of things. You Goons have acknowledged that I am the only one speaking honestly re the prison sentences and re the massive act of financial fraud. So I don’t see how there is any dispute re that aspect of the question.
All of those people (and many, many others) are lying about important things and telling the truth about important things. They rationalize the lies. They say: “It’s okay for me to lie about the massive act of financial fraud and the prison sentences because, if I were to tell the truth about those things, my career would be destroyed and I couldn’t tell the truths that I am telling.” That’s so. But it doesn’t justify the lies. The lies have caused an economic crisis. The lies have caused millions of people to lose their jobs. The lies are in the process of causing millions of people to suffer failed retirements. The lies are in the process of sending you Goons to prison for longer terms than you would be serving if all of those people spoke with complete honesty. The lies are killing us all.
The Buy-and-Holders did a terrible, terrible, terrible thing when they failed to acknowledge the mistake they made when it was revealed by the peer-reviewed research in this field 34 years ago. They put Get Rich Quick fantasies in the heads of you Goons. You Goons have been humiliated. You are now too ashamed to acknowledge that you fell for this garbage. So you attacks anyone who makes your feelings of humiliation worse by posting honestly re these matters. And all of these “experts” rationalize their dishonesty on grounds that you Goons are so brutal in your intimidation tactics that they have “no choice.”
They have a choice.
They can do what I have done.
I have refused to post dishonestly on ANY investing matter. Including the massive act of financial fraud. Including the 34-year cover-up. Including the prison sentences.
If there were 10 of us refusing to post dishonestly on any of these matters, you Goons would be in prison today. Which means that the economic crisis would be over. And we would all be enjoying far richer lives than we ever imagined possible back in the Buy-and-Hold Era. And your prison term would be on its way to coming to an end rather than on its way to starting up.
I of course sympathize with all the “experts” who are telling lies re these matters, Anonymous. I get it loud and clear. Wade Pfau is responsible for two small children. He shouldn’t have to see his career destroyed by you Goons just because he posts honestly. That’s not something that he signed up for when he pursued his Ph.D. in Economics.
It’s not something that any of us signed up for. But it is where we are today. When Wade agrees to post dishonestly, he betrays his country and his profession and, yes, even those two small children. Those two children are going to grow up in a world going through the Second Great Depression if we do not act as a nation to overcome you Goons. If Wade doesn’t have what it takes to stand up to you Goons, his responsible option is to find a new way to make a living. To post dishonestly and to thereby make the economic crisis worse is not an option open to someone who wants to maintain a reputation as an ethical person for the long run. Wade f’d up big time when he signed up with you Goons. I told him so in no uncertain terms at the time.
There are lots of people in the Nixon administration who rationalized telling lies when that Administration became corrupt.
There are lots of people who were involved in the corruption of the Catholic church who rationalized telling lies.
There were lots of people at Penn State who rationalized telling lies because they wanted to be on Joe Paterno’s good list.
There are lots of people who told lies to block exposure of Lance Armstrong’s corrupt acts.
There are lots of people who told lies to block exposure of Bernie Madoff’s corrupt acts.
The Buy-and-Hold Crisis is the product of the biggest act of corruption in the history of the United States. But it is certainly not the product of the first act of corruption in the history of the United States. These sorts of things have happened many times before on a smaller scale. People like money. Corruption often appears to be a good way to make tons of it in a short amount of time. For every ten thousand American lives that have been destroyed by the Buy-and-Hold Lies, there is a multi-millionaire who rationalizes his corrupt acts on the grounds that “everyone is doing it!”
I intend to have a career in this field AFTER this massive act of corruption has been exposed, Anonymous. I don’t intend to share a prison cell with you.
So please try to find someone else.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob