Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Pretend to solicit advice (a pretense, as the actual intent is to recruit followers.) Send a long irrational screed dismissing the advice. Contact is abruptly terminated.
Rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat…
Both motives were present when I contacted Crystal. Yes, I wanted to recruit a follower. But, yes, I also wanted to hear any advice that she had to offer. You are right to suggest that I wasn’t persuaded by the advice that she offered. That doesn’t show that I was not genuinely interested in hearing what she had to say and in pondering it.
I don’t agree even a tiny bit with what she is saying here. I report on it because I have been given similar advice from many good and smart people. So I am convinced that what Crystal is saying is a big part of the explanation of why we have as a society ignored Shiller’s powerful finding of 1981 for 35 years now.
We don’t want to criticize the Buy-and-Holders. We don’t want to make them feel bad. We don’t want to see them sued or see them sent to prison. So we hold back from expressing criticism of their ideas and of their behavior. The result is that the cover-up continues and even more good and smart people end up being sued or sent to prison. Yuck. I think we are rationalizing cowardice by pretending that failing to speak up re these matters constitutes charity.
I have read a number of articles re the Roger Ailes scandal. It is an amazing story. He has been harassing women for years now. He has done it openly. He has done it over and over and over again. Some of these women possess at least modest amounts of money and power. They are of course protected by laws and by the social beliefs that brought on the adoption of those laws. And yet for years and years they failed to speak up about this monster. Huh? What the h?
How does something like this happen? As you Goons would put it — Was it all some vast conspiracy?
It was not a vast conspiracy in the way that that word is ordinarily employed. All of the women did not get together in a room and decide on a course of action together. Woman 1 thought about doing the right thing and calling out this guy’s b.s. and then she considered how much power he possessed and how much harm he could do to her and her career and elected to keep it zipped. Woman 2 did the same. Woman 3 did the same. And so on and so on.
That’s how bullies remain in power, Anonymous. Intimidation tactics work.
Until they don’t.
Since it became clear that Ailes was finished, we have seen story after story after story come out. No one fears the guy too much today. Each new story causes two more people to come out and tell their story. Lots of people want to tell their story and now they feel safe in doing so.
So it will be with Mel Lindauer and John Greaney and Jack Bogle.
Lots of people in this field want to do honest work. That’s basic to human nature and no amount of bullying by you Goons can change the core reality. If it were some small thing, the cover-up might continue indefinitely. But this is no small thing. This is huge. Shiller was a awarded a Nobel prize for his work. The continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold “strategies” for decades after the peer-reviewed research was published showing that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for a single long-term investor caused the biggest economic crisis in our nation’s history. Millions are today unemployed as a result of the continued promotion of this smelly Get Rich Quick garbage. Millions of people will be suffering failed retirements in days to come as a result of the continued promotion of this smelly garbage.
But, as with Ailes, the mainstream media doesn’t report on the cover-up except in indirect, coded ways. Goons like you can claim that anyone telling the truth believes in conspiracy theories and persuade a good number of Normals that that is indeed the case.
But there won’t be any shortage of experts in this field reporting on what the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research tells us following the next price crash, Anonymous. Then it will be story after story after story in which people try to explain their many years of silence, how they felt intimidated by the Wall Street Con Men and by you Goons and how they had families to feed and all this sort of thing.
The honorable thing to do when one comes to learn about a massive act of financial fraud is not to look the other way but to speak up. I spoke up. I offer no apologies. I believe in showing charity toward others, even toward one’s “enemies.” But there is no charity in acting in such a way as to increase the length of the prison terms that will be assigned to you Goons. I care about you. I want your prison terms to be as short as possible. So I tell the truth about these matters. Sue me, you know?
Crystal has blogger friends who promote Buy-and-Hold strategies. So I put her in a tough spot when I point out to her the 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is zero chance that the pure Get Rich Quick approach could ever work for a single long-term investor. I think she is wrong. I think she is right to care about her friends but I thinking she is hurting them by keeping quiet, not helping them as she sincerely intends.
We are going to have to wait to see what happens following the next price crash to see how things turn out. I am not capable of lying to my friends re the numbers that they use to plan their retirements. So I have never once since the morning of May 13, 2002, had any option but to proceed as I have. I have to tell the truth re these matters. When there are acts of financial fraud that take place before my eyes, I have to say that. I obviously don’t like seeing my friends being sent to prison. But I didn’t adopt those laws making financial fraud a felony and I certainly didn’t encourage any of my Goon friends to put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer or John Greaney or Jack Bogle. So none of this is the result of my actions. My only decision was the one to be honest re SWRs and I obviously have zero regrets re that one.
We’ll see how it all plays out, Anonymous.
I hope that works for you.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person. But I also naturally have zero desire to spend my golden years in a prison cell. Holy moly! That’s insane stuff. I would be grateful if you would try to find somebody else.
Not this boy.
Yowsa!
Rob
Anonymous says
“Yes, I wanted to recruit a follower.”
Have you found that people appreciate being recruited to follow you?
Rob says
I have found that most people LOVE, LOVE, LOVE learning what the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research say about how stock investing works in the real world. I have written about many subjects and I have never seen such a positive reaction apply so consistently in so many different places. It has been inspiring. And there is of course a mountain of material in the Post Archives showing this to be so.
I have also found that people HATE, HATE, HATE the tactics that you Goons employ to intimidate them once you learn of their interest in learning more about the realities. This is obviously why as a people we enacted laws against financial fraud long before you Goons came on the scene. I am 100 percent confident that the announcement of your prison sentence, which I expect to see take place shortly after the commencement of the next price crash, will solve the problem for all non-Goons.
And people will of course feel 10 times stronger about this following the crash. It is not the job of experts in this field to turn a quick buck no matter how many lies they need to tell to pull if off. The job is to report HONESTLY and ACCURATELY what the peer-reviewed research says. To the extent that there are some investors who are not super interested today in learning the realities (and there are indeed many who fall into this camp), I think it would be fair to say that those people will become ENRAGED when they learn how they were tricked by the people advocating Buy-and-Hold strategies after they have lost most of their life savings. These people will have every right to sue these “experts” for every penny they own and to demand long prison sentences in cases where they are not able to make full restitution, which is going to be the reality in most cases since it will mostly be Pretend Gains that will be disappearing.
I naturally wish you the best of luck with it, my long-time Goon friend. And I of course naturally do not want to become personally associated in any way, shape or form with this massive act of financial fraud other than to become known all across the internet as the single biggest ENEMY of those seeking to keep the cover-up going yet another 24 hours and to thereby cause the destruction of even MORE human lives.
Rob