Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Your inability to tame your self-love of hearing/seeing your own words, and instead create a PROPER brief descriptive ‘headline’ or “title” for an article speaks volumes about your mental incapacity, Rob. It’s just one tiny thing, but like a tell-tale tassel in the wind for a sailor, it is enormously informative for those paying attention.
It’s not self-love, Anonymous.
Yes, the headlines are long in the items that items that I post to the blog under the category of “Goon Conversations.”
The reason why they are long is that they explore micro-issues. In ordinary circumstances, there might be an item that would have a headline of “Old-School Retirement Studies Fail to Include Valuation Adjustments.” That’s shocking. All you need are those few words to convey a shocking truth that every investor on the planet needs to know about. So, in that ordinary sort of case, all that you need is a headline of short length to convey the information that needs to be conveyed.
Those are not the circumstances that apply in the investing realm today. I have posted articles at a good number of sites containing short headlines conveying that message. Those articles should have been picked up by every investing site on the internet. They should have been featured on the front page of the next day’s New York Times.
It didn’t happen.
If it had happened in the way that it should happen if things were proceeding as normal, there would be no need for these blog entries that report on our Goon Conversations and that contain such long headlines. The circumstances that apply here are not in the slightest way normal. We are dealing with a very strange phenomenon, a massive case of cognitive dissonance that has affected pretty much all of us (including Rob Bennett up until the evening of August 27, 2002).
What has happened here is that as a society we got off track in our quest to come to understand how stock investing works in the real world. The Buy-and-Holders did amazing work building the foundation of a model to help us all out. The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers are heroes to the middle-class. They got one thing wrong. They didn’t understand the effect of valuations at the time they were building their model. Shiller added that missing piece in 1981. But by that time the Buy-and-Holders had been describing their mistaken view of how things work for 16 years and had a hard time accepting that they had gotten such a critical piece of the puzzle wrong. So they went into cover-up mode. The bull market caused people to be happy with Buy-and-Hold and so there was little motivation to develop a new model until the economic crisis that began in 2008 scared people. And then the Federal Reserve stepped in and pumped up stock prices again so that even today there is limited interest in finding out what truly works.
It’s not just that people like to believe that the Pretend Gains created by high stock prices are real. It’s that the people who work in this field have been telling the false story of how things work that they feel that they will be sued or perhaps even imprisoned if they come clean now. And the investors whose lives have been destroyed become angry when they hear how they have been tricked for so long. That makes it even harder for the “experts” to come clean. So we are living in a time when deception and intimidation have become commonplace in the investing advice world.
It is my job to tell that story.
Part of the job is to expose the corruption that had permitted this massive cover-up to remain in place for so long. Part of the job is to describe the pressures that caused so many generally good and smart people either to participate in the cover-up or at the minimum tolerate it. I post these Goon Conversation blog entries to help people come to a full understanding of what happened. We need to understand the Goon mind, which is really just a cartoon version of the Get Rich Quick mindset that we all carry within us. It is by coming to an understanding of what happened that we will come to peace with what has happened. These Goon Conversation blog entries are going to help me get your prison sentence reduced a bit, Anonymous. This is important work.
But there are now so many of these Goon Conversation blog entries in the Post Archives that the new ones deal with extreme micro-issues. All of the basic, general stuff was addressed years ago. I don’t want to hold back on posting these items because as a society we very much need to come to a full understanding of what drives you Goons and no one else is doing this kind of work. So I have to post the items. But it is not possible to sum up in a few words the points made in the items that are going up today, which are examining minute details of the story rather than addressing general matters which could more easily be summed up with a small number of words.
So the headlines are a lot longer than those you see at other sites.
As the idea of looking at investor emotion becomes more commonplace, people’s understanding of what is going on will become sharper and fuller and it will become possible to get by with shorter headlines. We are not there today. These are the pioneer days. This is the future of investing analysis. But we are very much in the early days of coming to an understanding of what it means to use peer-reviewed research (ALL of the peer-reviewed research, including that published in the past 34 years) to guide one’s investing strategies.
That’s my sincere take re this matter, in any event.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, my long-time Goon pal.
Rob
Anonymous says
The “goon phenomenon ” had to start somewhere and with someone. Who was the person that as the first goon and triggered this mass conspiracy?
Rob says
We didn’t know how stock investing worked until 1981, Anonymous. We had some important pieces of the puzzle even before the Buy-and-Holders came along in the 1960s. And of course the Buy-and-Holders supplied many important pieces, adding to our knowledge. But humankind was missing a critically important piece of the puzzle until 1981, when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings showing that valuations affect long-term returns (the far-reaching implication being that investors must be wiling to change their stock allocations in response to dramatic valuation shifts to have any hope whatsoever of keeping their risk profiles roughly constant).
Had Bogle responded to the publication of Shiller’s research by going to the front of a big room and saying the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong,” we would be living in a very different world today. We wouldn’t be trying to endure an economic crisis. We would be enjoying the biggest surge of economic growth in our history. Bogle didn’t do that. Bogle ignored Shiller. He continued to promote the same Buy-and-Hold strategy that he had been promoting before Shiller published his revolutionary research findings.
I don’t believe that that was fraud. I wasn’t around in those days. So I need to be a tiny bit tentative about statements that I make that relate to those days. But all the evidence that I have seen indicates that that was cognitive dissonance, not fraud. Bogle believed in Buy-and-Hold. He was excited about it. He thought it was the answer. He thought it helped people. When people love something and they see evidence that it is not in reality what they once thought it was,their minds shut down. This happens all the time. It is a well-documented phenomenon discussed in great depth in the psychological literature.
We experienced a huge bull market following the publication of Shiller’s research. As prices climbed higher and higher, it became harder and harder for the Buy-and-Holders to acknowledge their mistake. If what Shiller had proven to be so really was so, Buy-and-Hold was the most dangerous investing strategy ever concocted by the human mind and, the higher prices went, the more human misery Buy-and-Hold caused. As the dangers grew larger and larger, the psychological resistance to permitting people in this field to do honest work grew greater and greater.
It became fraud when someone threatened to destroy someone’s career if they told the truth about what the post-1981 research says. I didn’t show up on the scene until the morning of May 13, 2002. The first act of fraud obviously took place long before that date. But I cannot tell you when the first act of fraud took place. It might be that Shiller could tell. I wouldn’t be surprised if following the next price crash Shiller publishes a sequel to Irrational Exuberance reporting on the acts of fraud that were employed by Buy-and-Holders to block him and other economists and researchers from telling the truth about how stock investing works for many years. Shiller and others who knew about his research and believed in it could tell you more about pre-2002 acts of financial fraud than I can.
That brings us up to May 2002. You know what happened from that date forward.
The massive act of financial fraud has gone on so long that we now are in a situation where it is career death for anyone in this field to tell the truth about what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research teaches about how stock investing works in the real world. That needs to change if we are going to bring this economic crisis to an end. We all need to be insisting on our right and the right of every other citizen of this country to tell the truth about his or her beliefs about how stock investing works.
There is no other way out. That’s the law. And our laws against financial fraud are reflected in the published posting rules of every investing discussion board and blog on the internet. We need to enforce our laws making financial fraud a felony to be punished by prison time. Once we see enforcement of the laws that govern in this area, no one will be afraid to speak honestly on safe withdrawal rates or on any other critically important investment-related topic and we will all begin reaping the many benefits of being the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth (the first generation to have access to 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that the stock market works just like every other market that has ever existed — that price discipline is what makes the stock market work and that whenever investors are persuaded not to exercise price discipline, the market collapses and millions of humans endure great suffering).
The shorter answer to your question is that the first Goon was the first human. We all have a Get Rich Quick urge residing within us. I do. I once was a proud Buy-and-Holder. We all are flawed creatures. The breakthrough was Bogle’s idea that we should use the peer-reviewed research as out guide re how to invest. He was right the first time. He should have stuck with that wonderful idea. My view is that Valuation-Informed Indexing is just an extension of Buy-and-Hold. It is Valuation-Informed Indexing, not Buy-and-Hold, that is consistent with Bogles core principle that we should use the peer-reviewed research as a guide to how to invest.
The beauty of using research as a guide is that research is objective. The danger of using your own human impressions as to how things work without considering what the research says is that human impressions are SUBJECTIVE. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows that it is the subjective (but much loved by humans!) idea that the stock market is the only market that ever existed in which price discipline is not 100 percent essential that is responsible for 70 percent of the risk of stock investing. Permit honest posting on the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field and stocks are no longer any more risky than Certificates of Deposit.
But there is now an entire industry that has been built up around the idea that there might be some magical, mystical world in which Buy-and-Hold might somehow work for one or two long-term investors. The people who have made fortunes in this industry will fight bitterly against efforts to expose their massive act of financial fraud.
The other side of the story is that most of these people (perhaps ALL of these people) are good people and smart people and hard-working people. They long to do good, clean work once again. As the human misery that they have caused grows larger and larger, there will come a point at which some of them will work up the courage to speak out. Then the whole house of cards comes tumbling down and prison sentences are announced for you Goons. Then it is over. No one wants to go to prison. Once people see the laws being enforced, Buy-and-Hold is history and we all enjoy a second Independence Day.
I hope that helps a bit, my long-time Goon friend.
Please take good care.
Rob
Anonymous says
So, “Adam”. Got it.
Rob says
Yes, the Get Rich Quick urge is part of human nature.
The question on the table is whether it is the job of an investment advisor to exploit the GRQ urge to the fullest extent possible (Buy-and-Hold) and thereby take millions of dollars out of the pockets of the people who earned them and and put them into his own already overflowing pockets or to shoot straight with his clients and readers by reporting accurately and honesty what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research says about the chances of the pure GRQ/Buy-and-Hold approach ever working for even a single long-term investor either in this solar system or in any other.
As you know, I favor honesty and accuracy when it comes to reporting the numbers that millions of people use to plan their retirements.
I believe that this is the future of investing analysis. It’s not just the GRQ urge that is inherent in human nature. A desire for personal integrity is also part of human nature. I believe that our desire to possess personal integrity is going to prevail after we see the full extent of the human misery caused by the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage following the next price crash.
But we will have to be patient and let things play out before we can say for absolute certain.
I hope that helps a bit, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.
Rob
Anonymous says
well then, if everyone is a goon, we can send everyone to prison, nor can we treat anyone different.
Rob says
The job of an investing expert is to help us all overcome our goonishness, Anonymous.
We should be trying to minimize risk, not push it to its highest limit.
My take.
Rob
Rob says
And it is the members of your jury who will determine the length of your prison sentence. That one is not my call.
My best wishes.
Rob
Anonymous says
Who is an expert vs an amateur expressing an opinion?
Rob says
Death threats and threats of career destruction are not opinions, Anonymous.
Death threats and threats of career destruction are acts of intimidation.
Death threats and threats of career destruction employed to keep millions of middle-class Americans from learning what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research says about how stock investing works in the real world constitute financial fraud, a felony under the laws of the United States.
That means prison time.
My best wishes, my soon-to-be-prison-dwelling friend.
Rob
Anonymous says
If these so called “goons” didn’t exist, how would that have changed things for you?
Anonymous says
” whether it is the job of an investment advisor to exploit the GRQ urge to the fullest extent possible (Buy-and-Hold) and thereby take millions of dollars out of the pockets of the people who earned them.”
1) B&H is the opposite of GRQ, regardless of whether it is or is not an actually viable investment strategy( it is.)
2) B&H is the way to assure you get the LEAST income stream as an advisor, whether it works or not (it does.)
It is roughly analogous to being a fitness author who merely says: “Eat less, exercise more.” That is the very best fitness advice in the universe, and the only “sure thing” in that field, as well. Yet you’d go broke if that was your entire ‘schtick’. Well, B&H is the best general purpose investment strategy esp for future retirees, but an advisor who espouses it doesn’t have much to do or to earn. So where do those millions come from, Rob? Your logic is non-existent on this point, as well as most others.
Anonymous says
How much money have you lost due to the goons?
Rob says
If these so called “goons” didn’t exist, how would that have changed things for you?
If the Goons didn’t exist, the errors in Greaney’s retirement study would have been corrected by the morning of May 14, 2002.
The board community would have worked together to get ALL the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies corrected within a short amount of time.
We would have seen a 10-part series showing the superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold published on the front page of the New York Times many years ago.
We wouldn’t be in an economic crisis today.
It would have changed things for the better for every citizen of the United States.
But you of course know all this, Anonymous.
I wonder why you pretend otherwise.
Rob
Rob says
How much money have you lost due to the goons?
It’s got to be a number well in excess of the $500 million that I have agreed to consider as a settlement of my legal claims. Otherwise, that wouldn’t be much of a settlement offer.
No?
Rob
Rob says
It is roughly analogous to being a fitness author who merely says: “Eat less, exercise more.”
Except in this case the fitness instructor says: “Eat more, exercise less.”
There is now 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that exercising price discipline is 80 percent of the investing project. Exercise price discipline and it is impossible to imagine how you could ever do poorly in the long run. Fail to exercise price discipline and it is impossible to imagine how you could ever do well in the long run.
So what do the Buy-and-Holders say? “Hey, there might be an alternate universe where it might work out not to always practice price discipline. You never can say for sure.!”
If the Buy-and-Holders truly believe that there is an alternate universe where everything works the opposite of how it has always worked here on good old Planet Earth, why have they not constructed rocket ships to take us all to that alternate universe?
Where are the rocket ships, Anonymous? That’s what I want to know.
Rob
Anonymous says
What legal claims? How did you come to $500 million?
Rob says
It’s a settlement offer, Anonymous.
I am willing to agree to a settlement because it permits us to put the ugly stuff behind us and to work together on bringing the Buy-and-Hold Crisis to an end.
Do you have some kind of problem with the idea of bringing the ugly stuff to an end?
If you do, then don’t accept the settlement, you know? No one is required to agree to a settlement. It is an option.
We can go to court. That works.
I like the idea of bringing the ugly stuff to an end. Call me madcap.
Rob
Rob says
By the way, I have indicated an intent to use 5 percent of the settlement to finance blogs that would permit honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.
And to use another 5 percent to promote this site so that everyone in the nation knows about the 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing the dangers of the Buy-and-Hold strategy.
That’s called “giving back.”
My guess is that you Goons hate that idea too.
Surprise! Surprise!
Rob
Anonymous says
5% of nothing is still nothing.
Rob says
I’d take nothing over prison 500 times over if it came to that, Anonymous.
We’ll see how it plays out.
Rob
Rob says
B&H is the way to assure you get the LEAST income stream as an advisor, whether it works or not
The Wall Street Con Men are altruists. Pretty much everyone who works in this field is doing it out of a sense of charity.
That’s why the Con Men are so wiling to immediately correct mistakes when they are brought to their attention. No defensiveness. No arguing. No exceptions.
Makes sense!
Rob
Anonymous says
“The Wall Street Con Men are altruists”
Your smarmy response proves you have no case to make. The question still holds: Why would a dishonest adviser tout B&H, when ANY other strategy would result in more dollars for THEM? Your claim that people make millions advocating B&H is ludicrous on it’s face, and you’ve provided nothing to prove otherwise. You are a very dishonest person.
Rob says
The Buy-and-Holders are not dishonest people by nature, Anonymous. They are good people. They are trying to help their clients and readers. They believe that Buy-and-Hold works. They follow it themselves.
And it’s not true that pushing other strategies would make more money for them. Buy-and-Hold is hugely popular. Millions of middle-class investors want a strategy that is supported by the peer-reviewed research. Buy-and-Hold is not supported by the peer-reviewed research today but there was a time when just about everybody thought that it was. And people still claim that it is. That’s why it is popular. That’s what people want. The false claim that Buy-and-Hold is supported by peer-reviewed research is a huge marketing plus. It is a huge money maker.
The claims made by Buy-and-Holders are dishonest. Just as it would be dishonest to say today that the earth is flat. There was a time when lots of good and smart people thought that the earth was flat. It wasn’t dishonest to make that claim in those days. But it sure is a dishonest claim today. Prior to 1981, Buy-and-Hold was state-of-the-art stuff. It is not state-of-the-art stuff today. Today it is financial fraud for someone who purports to be an “expert” to push Buy-and-Hold. Buy-and-Hiold was discredited by the peer-reviewed research 34 years ago. Experts are required to keep up with the peer-reviewed research. There is no excuse for falling 34 years behind. None.
We are as a society working through a process by which we transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. The sooner we complete that transition, the better for every single human being involved. My job is to see that that transition is completed as quickly as possible. Every post that I write is written with that aim in mind.
I don’t want to be intimidated into posting stuff that I don’t believe. And I don’t want anyone else to be intimidated into posting stuff that he or she does not believe. I learn more from other posters when they post honestly. So I want everyone to feel free to post honestly.
We permit honest posting in every other field of human endeavor. We need to return to permitting it in the investing advice field too. To permit honest posting again would be a win/win/win/win/win. It is not even possible for the rational human mind to imagine any possible downside. Honest posting is great stuff. Not just for Valuation-Informed Indexers. Honest posting is great stuff for Buy-and-Holders too.
There’s plenty of money to be made by all of us in a world in which honest posting is permitted at every discussion board and blog on the internet. And in this crazy new world that I envision, none of us need to worry about going to prison when the lies that we tell to cover up mistakes we made years ago catch up to us.
This new world that I envision sounds like a pretty darn cool world, no? It’s a world in which the laws of the United States apply on the investing advice field just as they do in all other fields of human endeavor and a world in which the published rules of every discussion board and blog are enforced in a reasonable manner to protect us all from the Goon posters who absent such enforcement destroy our posting communities.
I love our posting communities. I don’t want to see them destroyed.
I love my country. I don’t want to see it destroyed.
I love my Buy-and-Hold friends. I don’t want to see any of them spending one day more in prison than whatever number of days of prison time is already baked into the cake for them given events that have already taken place that I obviously am not able to change without access to a time machine.
That’s the deal. That’s where things stand. That’s the story here.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
Anonymous says
So, if we take your comments from here as well as previous comments, here is an overview of what should have happened over the past couple decades if you were never banned from the various financial boards:
1. You would have been one of most popular posters (if not the most popular poster) on all the financial boards.
2. You would become one of the most sought after financial experts quoted by much of the press and would even have generated many front page articles on the New York Times (as well as various multi-series publications).
3. You would have been a headlining speaker at most major financial investing forums and other speaking events.
4. You would have been highly published in various peer-reviewed financial publications.
5. You would have possibly been considered for a Nobel prize.
6. Most people following the investment community would now be following VII, which would then lead to the healing of our economy and would then bring on the biggest economic growth we have ever seen in US history.
7. You would have become one of the most wealthy individuals in the US, resulting from speaking fees, book fees, investment advisory fees, etc.
8. You would be working together on a daily basis with Jack Bogle, Wade Pfau, Robert Shiller and a host of other financial experts, with you taking the leading role.
Did I miss anything?
Rob says
You missed lots of things:
1) Bogle would be viewed as 20 times the expert that he is perceived to be today because his ideas would actually work in the real world — which is what he intended in the first place.
2) The internet would be a far more powerful communications medium because people who have important things to say about the subjects addressed at the various boards and blogs would feel free to post honestly and Goons like you would be banned when they violated the posting rules.
3) I would be getting feedback from all of the experts in this field and I would be able to use that feedback to sharpen my thoughts and my writings.
4) All of the experts would be getting feedback from me and from other Valuation-Informed Indexers and they too would be able to use the feedback to sharpen their thoughts and writings.
5) You Goons would not be headed to prison.
6) We wouldn’t be seeing the political unrest that we have seen in recent years on both the left and the right because our free market economic system would be delivering on its promises.
7) Support for our free market economic system would be growing because people would see that we have solved the problem of the boom/bust cycle.
8) The Retire Early Movement would be surging forward because we all would be spreading the word about the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau showing us all how to retire five to ten years sooner while dramatically reducing the risk associated with stock investing.
I can live with all that, Anonymous.
You can’t. Because you were taken. And because it hurts so much to be taken re a matter so important to your future that you cannot bear to acknowledge the obvious reality.
I am sympathetic. I know you are hurting.
But I am also sympathetic to the situations of the millions of middle-class people who ALSO have been taken in by this massive act of financial fraud. Lots of those people want to turn their financial situations in a more positive direction before it is too late to make changes (after the next price crash hits, most of their life savings will be gone and the Pretend Money is never going to return to them).
Those people have rights. I want to see their rights recognized. I want to see the laws against financial fraud enforced. I want to see you Goons placed in prison cells, where you belong.
I hope that all of that makes good sense to you.
It’s not personal. I do care for you Goons.
But I love my country too. And I want to see us all pulling together to bring this Buy-and-Hold Crisis to a full and complete stop by the close of business today. That’s the bottom line here.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, my long-time Goon friend.
Rob
Anonymous says
So that list shows what SHOULD have happened. But we know what HAS happened. The scoreboard is showing a massive, epic blowout. If you took the field today against the Patriots, all by yourself, the final score would be closer than your competition with the Goons. And yet, you see nothing wrong with your game plan.
Rob says
So that list shows what SHOULD have happened. But we know what HAS happened. The scoreboard is showing a massive, epic blowout. If you took the field today against the Patriots, all by yourself, the final score would be closer than your competition with the Goons. And yet, you see nothing wrong with your game plan.
I am not happy with the results that we have seen thus far.
But there’s nothing that I can do about it.
I care about the people who read my stuff. I am incapable of lying to them.
It’s possible that I could get things wrong. Even that scares me. I hate the thought that I might get something wrong and someone might go by what I said in error and hurt himself or herself by doing so. But at least in that case I didn’t intentionally do anything wrong. If I flat out lie, it’s intentional. I cannot live with that on my conscience.
So I have never had any other options than the ones that I have chosen.
I don’t like the results that we have seen. But, given that I have never had any other options, I have concluded that the best thing to do is just to live with what has happened. I could cry. Do you think that would help? I guess that there have been one or two occasions on which I have been tempted to have a cry. But I concluded that it would do no good. So I didn’t go there.
That’s it.
I have played the cards that I have been dealt to the best of my ability. Yes, I have scars all over my body from the hits that you Goons have delivered to me. I don’t say otherwise. But what of it? I don’t control the world. I am not Superman.
We have to accept the things that we cannot change, Anonymous. So that’s what I try to do. I try to make the best of the difficult circumstances that apply here.
I speak out against you Goons. Frequently. Forcefully. I do that much.
That’s about all that I can do, given the circumstances that apply. So that’s what I do.
I hope that all that makes good sense to you.
My best wishes.
Rob
Anonymous says
You have posted everything you have wanted to say before you were banned. You have said anything new since that time. What makes you think that if there were no bans and you kept repeating things for 13 years that the results would be any different?
Rob says
My posts received insanely positive reactions starting from the first day, Anonymous.
Not from the majority of posters, obviously. But from about 20 percent of the board community. This was true at every place at which I posted. So it is clear that there is significant minority of investors who very much want to learn about Valuation-Informed Indexing.
The Buy-and-Holders hate my stuff with a burning hate. But that won’t be a biggie once we see enforcement of the laws against financial fraud. The Buy-and-Holders are obviously free not to participate on threads at which Valuation-Informed Indexing is discussed. Or they can of course participate in accordance with the published posting rules of all the boards and blogs (this is my preference). The only thing that has ever caused a problem is you Goons. Once your prison sentences are announced, you won’t be a factor anymore. No one is going to want to be associated with you once your prison sentences have been announced.
So the key is enforcement of the law. The laws against financial fraud are very much needed. But they don’t enforce themselves. We need kind and brave people to step forward and demand enforcement of these laws. As people see the human wreckage caused by our tolerance as a society of the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies, I am confident that we will see more and more people demanding reasonable enforcement of the law. Then all of the problems that we have experienced during the first 13 years of our discussions can be solved in a very short amount of time.
First we need to see the price crash. That will cause people to lose confidence in the pure Get RIch Quick approach (Buy-and-Hold). Then we need to pull together as a society and demand enforcement of the laws against financial fraud. From that point forward, things just get better and better and better.
It’s not like there is some downside to permitting honest posting. It’s all upside for every single person involved. I think it would be fair to say that we are looking at an insanely powerful value proposition — huge upside, zero downside. It doesn’t get any better than that.
It’s a process, Anonymous.
There is no real “controversy” here. We are all on the same side. We all want the same things.
And we are already on the one-yard line. We are already close.
We need one last push to get over the goal line. I am confident that the next price crash will give us the little push we need to avoid falling into the Second Great Depression. I don’t believe that even you Goons want to see us fall into the Second Great Depression.
We’ll see how it goes.
I remain optimistic.
Perhaps that’s just my nature.
Rob
Anonymous says
You do realize that these questions are asked just to get a laugh at your response.
Rob says
No, I don’t, Anonymous.
I realize that you are Goons. And that that is the way that Goons portray their actions.
But I also realize that you are frightened Goons, that you understand that you have broken laws and that you may well be going to prison following the next price crash.
I don’t think that you will come clean. I acknowledge that much.
But I believe that the responsible and charitable thing to do on my end is to make the offer to help you out regardless of what b.s. you put forward re your motives for posting here.
I will continue to do what’s right from my end regardless of what b.s. you advance. The stuff coming from you is on you, not me. I do not control what you put forward.
You have a friend here.
But there are lines that that friend will not cross. No felonies. That’s out. That’s so far out that I could not possibly exaggerate how far out it is.
So long as I let you know that, I have done my part. The rest is out of my hands.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all of your future life endeavors, Goon friend.
Rob