Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Wade told you to move on three years ago. You simply can’t. Ever. That’s messed up.
Why the heck would I ever want to move on, Stag? Are you joking?
I write about personal finance. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance ever achieved in the history of personal finance. It is bigger than all earlier advances all added together. And I am going to consider moving on before the dream is realized? Huh? Wha?
ALL of the research supports this. It is a 100 percent vs. 0 percent proposition. Robert Shiller has been awarded a freakin’ Nobel Prize for his work. And yet thousands of investing analysts and academic researchers remain to this day too afraid of what the Buy-and-Holders will do to them to be willing to direct their energies to exploring the implications of the peer-reviewed research that Shiller published 34 YEARS AGO. All of those people are free to do honest and good work on the day you Goons go to prison. And I am supposed to consider moving on? Really? That’s a question you feel a need to ask?
$500 million.
That’s the size of the settlement check that I get on the day this matter is resolved. And you are thinking that I might consider moving on before cashing that check? Are you freakin’ nuts? If the tables were turned, would you be willing to walk away from a check for $500 million, Stag? No, I didn’t think so.
When I get that check, I am going to use some of the money to reform the internet. I think it would be fair to say that not one of us wants to see something like this happen ever, ever, ever, ever again. When we tell this story to the American people, we are going to have 100 percent support for making reforms in how the internet is run to make it the most powerful communications medium in history. I’m a journalist. But I care so little about achieving those reforms that I am going to give consideration to moving on at some point! Um — That makes sense, Stag! I believe you! Truly outstanding!!!!
What are you putting in your tea, Stag?
No more economic crises. That’s our reward for opening the internet up to honest posting on the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. Am I supposed to not care, in your assessment?
A 70 percent reduction in stock investing risk. Another reward available to us all in 24 hours if we use those 24 hours to insure enforcement of posting rules ALREADY IN EFFECT AT EVERY BOARD AND BLOG ON THE INTERNET. It makes sense to walk away from that for no reason whatsoever. No, really. I am serious! It makes sense somehow!
All middle-class Americans get to retire five to ten years earlier than they ever imagined possible back in the unfortunate days when we were still missing the final piece of the investing puzzle. If I were to struggle 50 years and thereby become able to help everyone on the planet retire five to ten MONTHS earlier, I would be on the cover of Time magazine as “Man of the Year.” The only “problem” I have is that I showed them how to do it five to ten YEARS earlier and it makes the Buy-and-Holders feel bad that this is so wonderful that it makes them look bad for not coming up with it themselves. So I should consider moving on. Why not? Nothing important going on here, right?
My Buy-and-Hold friends!
I love Jack Bogle. He’s taught me more about this subject than anyone else alive with the exception of Robert Shiller. I have a chance to pay him back by taking all the good work he has done and making it workable in the real world and I am going to piss that away because — because why, Stag? Why again is it that I should want to piss this all away? I keep forgetting.
All of the researchers who want to do good and honest work. All of the economists who want to do good and honest work. All of the bloggers who want to do good and honest work. All of the journalists who want to do good and honest work. All of the policymakers who want to do good and honest work. I should consider betraying all those people. Why? John Greaney got an important number wrong in a retirement study posted at his web site and he really, really, really doesn’t want to acknowledge the error. It follows that I should betray those people. Goons come first!
I don’t think so, Stag.
Some of the questions we face in life are kinda hard. Some of them are easy. I think it would be fair to say that the question of whether I should move on re this one is one of the easiest questions that any human who has ever walked the Valley of Tears has ever had to face.
My take.
My best wishes.
Rob
Anonymous says
Do you think you should be awarded a Nobel prize? Should you be Time Magazines man of the year? Should you be on the front page of The New York Times?
Rob says
I think the work that I have done over the past 13 years is of huge importance, Anonymous.
The work that I have done is built on the work of many others. As I have noted many times, there would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing today had it not been for the hugely important work that was done before me by Jack Bogle and all the other Buy-and-Hold pioneers.
And it was Shiller who showed that the Buy-and-Holders made a mistake in not realizing the importance of always engaging in long-term timing (price discipline) when buying stocks. But Shiller did not fully develop the insight. He explained the theory in a good bit of depth in his book. But he did not address the strategic implications AT ALL in his book. He has done a tiny bit of that in more recent years. But still not that much.
I have explored the strategic aspects in great depth over the past 13 years. Certainly the work that I have done should be featured on the front page of the New York Times. Of that there is no question whatsoever. I don’t believe that I am eligible for a Nobel Prize. I don’t know all the rules that apply. But my sense is that I don’t possess the credentials in the economics field that would be needed to be up for that prize. However, I think that Wade Pfau should win a Nobel prize for the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with him. And I certainly should be given the recognition that I earned by getting him interested in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and by helping him learn what he needed to learn to complete the research.
As far as the Man of the Year thing goes, I would like to see a joint award following the next price crash, when all this is going to break open. Why not award Bogle, Shiller, Pfau, Arnott, Russell and me the award jointly? I certainly could not have done what I have done without the help of those five. And none of them could have had much impact without the other five either. Bogle is well known. But his work only hurts people until he corrects his mistake, which was discovered by Shiller and then exposed by me and Russell and Arnott and Pfau. Shiller is also well known. But his theoretical work cannot help people in the real world until the strategic implications that follow from it are well known. And it is Russell and Pfau and me who have worked so hard to get those strategic implications explored and publicized.
There’s plenty of credit to go around. There will be lots of others who will be receiving big-time recognition once we open every investing discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting. In ordinary circumstances, it would not have been possible for someone like me to accomplish such amazing things. It happened this way because of the insanely abusive tactics of the Buy-and-Holders. I was able to do what I have done because I saw back in 2002 that no one else had explored the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings and I saw a huge opportunity there. Why not create the only web site on the internet that did that and profit in a huge way while also helping millions of people to achieve financial freedom many years earlier than has ever before been possible?
You Goons hate me for that. Your entire Campaign of Terror against our board and blog communities is rooted in envy. You can’t stand it that someone else took advantage of this opportunity while you missed out. That’s too sad, you know? You could have done it. You should have done it.
But you don’t need to permit yourself to be consumed by regret. You can still do amazing things today. I haven’t covered everything there is to cover re the first true research-based strategy. Nor has Shiller. Nor has Russell. Nor has Arnott. So get to it, you know? You won’t. Goons don’t do positive. Goons don’t do constructive. Goons don’t do life-affirming. But that path remains open to you all the same. It’s your call. No one has forced you to play it in the way that you have elected to play it.
The millions of middle-class investors whose lives you have destroyed will overcome you following the next price crash. That’s how our country (which I love) works. We don’t always get things right in one year or two years or even in 13 years. The Civil Rights Revolution took a long time. The Moon Landing took a long time. The Computer Revolution took a long time. That’s the way it goes. I am not the first person who had to face obstacles in my efforts to do good for millions of people. I won’t be the first to use the benefits available to all in this country to overcome those obstacles either.
I have done amazing things. I am very proud of the work I have done.
Lots of other people have done amazing things too. I am proud of those people too. We all should be.
You Goons have destroyed millions of lives with your hate and anger and contempt and envy. We all should be ashamed of ourselves for permitting your abusiveness to continue for so long. Our bad!
But if we end up in the right place, as I firmly believe we will following the next price crash, the good we achieve here will be 50 times bigger than the ugliness we have seen play out before us because as a society we lacked the courage to stand up to you Goons and to the Wall Street Con Men whose bidding you do. We’re not perfect. But I think it would be fair to say that our system of government has achieved a lot of great things over the years.
I have zero concern re whether I will receive the recognition that I merit following the next price crash. I DO have concerns that we may as a society destroy ourselves if we elect to seek revenge on you Goons instead of showing the mercy and understanding that has been characteristic of us in our best days. So I see it as my job to do what I can to steer things in a positive direction. That’s what I’m about. That’s why I continue to engage in conversations with you Goons when words appear before me that suggest to me that there might be opportunities to take this all to a better place than the sewer where Mel Linduaer and John Greaney and my good friend Jack Bogle have elected to take it during the first 13 years of discussions.
The Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies did not contain valuation adjustments. Lots of people either did notice it or could have noticed it had they been paying attention. But I am the one who noticed it and went public with what I noticed and then didn’t back down re my right to warn people of the dangers of those studies when you Goons threatened me with career destruction if I continued to do honest work. That’s how great discoveries are made, Anonymous. That’s what I did and that’s how it is done. I have huge gratitude for the thousands of good and smart and generous people who helped. I offer no apologies to the con men and to the Goons who have been holding back progress for 13 years now.
I hope that helps a bit, Goon friend.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.
Front-Page Rob
Anonymous says
Yesterday: “Wade is going to prison”
Today: “I think that Wade Pfau should win a Nobel prize”
Just so he can plan accordingly, which comes first?
Rob says
Richard Nixon was a hugely accomplished person. He opened relations with China. He expanded the social welfare programs enacted in the 1960s in a huge way. He took us off of the gold standard. He got us out of the Vietnam war. He won re-election in one of the biggest landslides in history.
And he resigned from the Presidency in disgrace. Watergate is the primary thing that he is known for.
Wade showed great intelligence in the work he did re the peer-reviewed research that we co-authored. He showed great courage in the efforts he took to promote that research when he showed up at the Boglehheads board despite the insane abusiveness of Mel Linduaer and others. He even contacted the authors of the Trinity study and requested a correction of the error that they made that has caused so much human misery. No one other than Wade has done that. He is a hero in my eyes and he should be perceived as a hero by all Americans, in my assessment.
He also sold out his friends and his family and his profession and his country and himself when you Goons (backed by my good friend Jack Bogle) threatened to destroy his career if he continued to do honest research and to promote it in an honest manner.
That’s the way it played out, Anonymous. Humans are often not just one thing. Many of us are a mix of good and bad things. Wade has done amazing research that in future days will be liberating millions of people from wage slavery. And he is guilty of financial fraud. A felony. Prison time.
We will decide as a society what happens to him. I get one vote like everyone else. I will be praising him to the skies and playing down the financial fraud to the extent possible. I will note the circumstances in which the financial fraud took place and implore people to put themselves in his shoes and to consider what they would do if they had financial responsibility for two small children and one of the most powerful people in the world signaling support for a smear campaign aimed at destroying his career.
But I won’t lie about the fact that Wade committed a felony. If I do that, I become part of the cover-up and I am guilty of a felony myself. No thanks, you know? Find somebody else.
I wish all the best for Wade just as I wish all the best for you. And I would like to see this massive act of financial fraud brought to a full and complete stop by the close of business today so that we won’t have more people committing felonies in days to come just because they want to make a living in this field and have observed how impossible it has become for a person of integrity to do that in the late years of the Buy-and-Hold Era.
I don’t know precisely how things will go for Wade. I know that I wouldn’t trade place with him for all the money in the world.
Does that help?
Rob
Anonymous says
Robert Michael “Hocus” Bennett slandered: “Wade committed a felony”
If everyone that you’ve similarly publicly maligned were to sue, you’d spend years in court, not to mention the probable judgements against you. Of course, when you don’t have a pot to piss in, and most people are not very litigious, then you can afford to be cavalier with the facts and lie through your teeth with virtual impunity…
Rob says
Threatening lawsuits against those who post honestly re the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research is one of the intimidation tactics that you Goons have employed on numerous earlier occasions. Yuck! In other fields, honest posting is the norm. In most fields, honest posting is not only permitted but encouraged. My aim is to see that the ethical standards that apply in all field other than investing analysis be applied in the investing analysis field as well.
There are many ethical people who would like to work in this field and who would be willing to do so if only honest posting were permitted. And there are many who work in the field today who would like to feel more free to behave ethically in the future. All humans have a deeply felt need to possess and evidence personal integrity in their work lives.
That’s true even among the Wall Street Con Men. Please recall that it was HONEST statements in Jack Bogle’s book that helped me understand why the Old School retirement studies got the numbers so wildly wrong. It’s common for the Wall Street Con Men to mix in honest stuff along with their smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. Why do you think that is, Anonymous. I think it is because on a deep-down level, the Con Men are humans and possess consciences.
Wade would be in very different circumstances today had many others insisted on their right to post honestly about safe withdrawal rates and many other critically important investment-related topics. If it became common practice to post honestly in this field, the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney and Jack Bogle would have been removed from the boards and blogs at which they post a long time ago. If that were the world we lived in, Wade would have by now been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics that he envisioned he would be winning for the peer-reviewed research that we co-authored.
It wasn’t Rob Bennett who put Wade Pfau on the path that he walks today. It was you Goons. In a secondary sense, it was the posters who were appalled by the behavior of you Goons but who so feared seeing you turn your insane abusiveness in their direction that they tolerated your behavior rather than speaking out against it. In the ultimate sense, Wade is of course responsible for his own behavior, as we all are. But the reality is that we live in communities and we take our cues as to what sort of behavior is acceptable by what we see done by our peers. Wade was led to believe by Bogle and others that the regular practice of financial fraud has just part of the deal in the investing advice field in the Buy-and-Hold Era.
I don’t buy it.
Lots of Normals tolerate financial fraud today because it frightens them to accept that their retirements are nowhere near as secure as they have been led to believe they are by the Wall Street Con Men pushing the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage on a daily basis. How do you think those people are going to respond when they learn that it was all a con, that those who follow the peer-reviewed research have known that Buy-and-Hold was garbage for 34 years now? I think they are going to react strongly.
You Goons are going to hear a lot worse things said about you in coming days from the millions of middle-class investors whose lives you have destroyed than you have ever heard from your friend Rob. I bend over backwards to put your behavior in the best possible light. We’ll find out together how the millions of people whose lives you have destroyed will play it. I will argue for a balanced response. I am not at all sure that I am going to be able to hold people back from taking HIGHLY punitive actions. But we’ll see.
I don’t think that the Wall Street Con Men are going to sue me. If they do, they risk creating publicity re their massive con. And, in any event, many of them would like to move past all the fraud garbage and begin doing honest work again. People don’t enter this field expecting to spend their entire lives promoting Get Rich Quick schemes and having to associate with the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney and Jack Bogle. I mean, come on. People who work in this field are like people who work in all other fields — they have a deeply felt need to do good work and to help people. That’s my secret edge against you Goons, Anonymous.
Sue me prior to the next crash and you run the risk of going to prison sooner than you otherwise would. I don’t think you’ll go there. You live today with the hope that maybe there won’t be another crash and maybe you will avoid going to prison altogether. You are not going to take the risk of bringing this to a head. And, once we see the crash, it will be too late to bring a lawsuit. The cat will be out of bag at that point.
You are screwed.
That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter in any event.
Despite my sincere belief that you are screwed, I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Please take good care, Goon friend.
Rob