“We Do Not Believe the Same Things About How Stock Investing Works. We Need To Be Up Front About That. And We Need To Drop the Use of All Intimidation Tactics. We All Have To Acknowledge Openly and Clearly That There Are Two Schools of Academic Thought As to How Stock Investing Works and Celebrate That Reality Because of the Learning Experience it Opens to Us All to Have Our Views Questioned and Challenged and Thereby Sharpened Over Time. A Board That Does Not Permit Honest Posting By All Community Members Is a Corrupt Enterprise.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

We would be happy to encourage other website owners to open their forums to you if you agree to really post honesty (which means no lying) as well as if you behave yourself and agree not to hijack threads.

Deal?

The devil is in the details, Anonymous.

The point of contention for 15 years now has been whether I am willing to pretend that Greaney included a valuations adjustment in his retirement study. I don’t believe that he included one and I am not willing to say that I believe that he included one.

I am okay with saying that Greaney personally believes that a 4 percent withdrawal is always safe. I think that he could pass a lie detector test if he were asked whether he believes that 4 percent is always safe and answered “yes.” But I don’t believe that he would pass a lie detector test if he were asked whether he included a valuations adjustment in his retirement study and he answered “yes.”

People of good will can work these things out. I will bend over backwards to work things out if opportunities are presented to do so in a way that passes minimal ethical standards. It is not ethical for me to say that I believe that there is a valuations adjustment in the study when thousands of people have looked at it and not one has ever been able to identify one. And I can’t act like it doesn’t matter when there is 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and when I believe that that research is legitimate research.

We do not believe the same things about how stock investing works, Anonymous. We need to be up front about that. And we need to drop the use of all intimidation tactics. We all have to acknowledge openly and clearly that there are two schools of academic thought as to how stock investing works and celebrate that reality because of the learning experience it opens to us all to have our views questioned and challenged and thereby sharpened over time.

I have never once in my lifetime given the tiniest bit of consideration to the idea of hijacking a thread and never in 15 billion years would I give the tiniest bit of consideration to the idea of doing that. You consider it highjacking for me to express views consistent with Shiller’s research rather than Fama’s research. I don’t see it that way. I feel strongly that I have an OBLIGATION and a RESPONSIBILITY to express my sincere views with every post I advance.

You have an obligation and responsibility to express your sincere views too. If you were attacked for putting up posts in support of Buy-and-Hold, I would speak out in favor of your right to post honestly in two seconds. So I want the same thing for you that I am demanding for myself and for all other Valuation-Informed Indexers. But the demand that honest posting on the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field be permitted is non-negotiable. A board that does not permit honest posting by all community members is a corrupt enterprise. I don’t say that to hurt your feelings. I say it because it is so and it is an important reality that must be acknowledge if we are to make the changes that we need to make to insure that we experience less conflict in the next 15 years than we have experienced in the past 15.

I hope that helps at least a small bit.

Rob