Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Of course, you are an expert at lying, Rob.
All of us humans are, Anonymous.
Have you read Freud? Isn’t projection a form of lying? Are there ANY humans who don’t engage in even a tiny bit of projection (that is, a tiny bit of lying)?
How about Dostoevsky? When his character Raskolnikov killed the old woman, did he not justify doing it by telling himself lies (rationalizations)?
What Wade Pfau and I discovered in that famous peer-reviewed research paper we co-authored is that nearly 70 percent of the risk of stock investing is attributable to the lies that investors tell themselves. If every book on investing started with a discussion of those lies and with descriptions of the tools that investors need to make use of to protect themselves from the effects of those lies, we all would be able to retire a good number of years sooner.
No?
It sure seems so to me.
When you say that I am an expert on lying, you are saying that I am an expert on stock investing. Because effective investing is all about avoiding risk. And most of the risk of stock investing is the product of the lies we are all inclined to tell ourselves unless the experts help us out by reporting straight to us on what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research has revealed to us all about how stock investing works in the real world.
Or at least so says Rob Bennett.
Rob
Anonymous says
If you co-authored the paper, why is your name not listed as an author, but merely in the credits section, along with a host of others?
Rob says
My name is not listed as co-author because I do not have the academic credentials to be formally listed as co-author. As you well know, Anonymous.
But Wade never held back from acknowledging my role in the 16 months in which we worked together. I have reported on our 16 months of e-mail correspondence at this blog. He was 100 percent up front about acknowledging my role. He said that he got all the ideas for the paper from me. He said that he was amazed at what I taught him. He said that he owed me a huge debt. We talked about him being awarded a Nobel prize for the paper and he expressed gratitude to me for making that possible for him. He talked about how we were changing the world together.
Who is the real author of a paper — the guy who writes the words that appear in it or the guy who teaches the guy who writes the words what he knows to be able to write the words? Wade did great work. But I was the lead author on that paper. Wade has certainly never said otherwise.
Why did you threaten to send defamatory e-mails to his employer in an effort to get him fired from his job if you didn’t view me as the primary author of the paper? Wade is not the one who pointed out the errors in Greaney’s retirement study. If I had not been the lead author of the paper, it never would have concerned you. Your own behavior shows that you know yourself who was the primary author of the paper. There is no other explanation of your threats.
The question you should be asking is why did a Ph.D. in Economics have to learn the basics of how stock investing works from some guy whose only claim to expertise in this field is that he figured out how to get stuff posted to internet blogs and discussion boards? Wade should have been taught all about the benefits of Valuation-Informed Indexing and about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold at Princeton. Why wasn’t he?
It’s because they don’t teach the realities of stock investing to Ph.D. candidates at Princeton that we are in an economic crisis today. I’ve spoken to numerous academic researchers who would LOVE to be doing honest work. Why aren’t they? Why doesn’t Princeton have entire courses focused on what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field teaches us? That’s the most important economic and political question facing us as a nation today, Anonymous. That’s the question that we should be exploring on a daily basis at every board and blog on the internet. When we talk openly about that question, we all are freed of the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage forevermore.
It’s my job to get numerous courses on Valuation-Informed Indexing added to the curriculum at Princeton. When that happens, people like Wade Pfau will no longer have to come to people like me to learn the basics. And internet Goons like you will no longer feel compelled to threaten to destroy the careers of people like Wade.
I won’t get that job completed by agreeing to join you in your massive act of financial fraud, Anonymous. I get that job done by standing firm on the right that I possess under the laws of the United States to post honestly re these matters at every investing board and blog on the internet. It’s probably going to take another price crash for us all to make it to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. I don’t like that reality. But the world is today what the world is today. The important thing is that we are on the one-yard line in our effort to achieve the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. One pass into the end zone and we all are freed to live far richer lives (in every sense of the word) than we ever imagined possible back in the Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick days.
There’s not going to be anyone denying that I am the primary author of the Bennett/Pfau research once we get that ball into the end zone. There’s not going to be anyone saying that I wasn’t smart to refuse to join your massive act of financial fraud when I cash that $500 million settlement check.
I am the lead author of the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in this field in over 30 years. You are an internet goon headed on his way to prison following the next price crash. Gee, I wonder who is winners here and who is losers here! Some of these matters are so darn hard to figure out!
I’ve offered to put forward some words to help you get your prison sentence reduced a bit, my long-time Goon friend. Is there any other kindness that I can offer you at this point in the proceedings?
Rob
Rob says
Those who stand in the path of the History Train get run over by it, Anonymous.
That’s not my doing, That’s the way it is. I just report the realities to Goons like you.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Rob says
Here is an article reporting how the Wall Street Journal was once placed in circumstances in which it had no choice but to preserve its journalistic integrity in the face of intimidation tactics being practiced by the biggest advertiser in the nation, General Motors:
http://digg.com/2015/the-time-a-newspaper-stared-down-the-countrys-largest-advertiser?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email
The investing issue is 5,000 times more important. We are now in the early days of the biggest economic crisis in our nation’s history as a result of the 34-year suppression of discussion of the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings of 1981. Every middle-class worker alive in the United States needs to know the realities of how stock investing works that the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads so desperately want to keep from them.
You will lose, Anonymous. This saga will end with the announcement of long prisons sentences for you and your Goon friends.
Good.
I want to see the people of the United States win. And you Goons are the only thing standing between them and the end of this economic crisis. So I will be happy to see the announcement of your long prison sentence go viral on the internet.
I will continue to work to keep your prison sentence as short as possible, given the circumstances that apply. Working to keep your prison sentence as short as possible is not betraying the millions of middle-class people who need to know the truth about the massive act of financial fraud worked on them by the Wall Street Con Men who today own this industry (but who tomorrow will be serving time along with you Goons). But I will stay true to those people until the end.
Non-negotiable.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob
Rob says
There’s one way that you can shut me up, Anonymous.
You need to get your Wall Street Con Men pals to get me imprisoned. Even that might not quite do the trick. What you really need to do is to get them to see that I am given the death penalty. Dead men don’t question safe withdrawal rate studies.
Short of that, you end up in a prison cell. As you have known for a good number of years now.
Hang in there, Goon friend. It gets better. A LOT better.
Prison sentences come to an end. People start new lives.
I wish you well.
Rob