Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Do you think people should follow your example when it comes to planning their retirement?
Sure.
I think that people should use the peer-reviewed research in this field as a guide on how to invest. I learned that one from my main man Jack Bogle. That’s one of many re which I believe that The Big Guy was right on.
You are obviously suggesting that people should not follow my example because your criminal acts have blocked me from earning money in this field for the past 17 years. When I collect my $500 million settlement check, my setting myself up so that I could go 17 years without a paycheck is going to look very, very good. This isn’t the way that I intended to go. I obviously would have preferred you not to have engaged in criminal actions or for responsible people to have taken effective steps to rein in your criminal behavior when it first evidenced itself. But $500 million ain’t a bad payday any way you look at it.
Someone had to expose The Great Buy-and-Hold Con. It turned out to be me. I wish it had been someone else, you know? I don’t think that anyone would choose 17 years of this for any amount of money in the world. But it’s more than a little gratifying to know that my work will help millions and millions of people to plan their retirements more effectively for many years to come. I earned that $500 million. I like it that our system provides that sort of payment to people who love their country enough to put up with the sort of garbage that you Goons have directed at me.
So, yes, I think that people should aim to save effectively and I think that people should aim to invest effectively. The thing that I very much think people should NOT do is to engage in criminal acts that end up causing them to spend the last decades of their lives in prison cells. Huh? What the f? Not this boy, you know?
I’d take the cards that I am holding over the cards that you are holding every time, my dear Goon friend. And I can’t say that it’s a terribly close call either.
My best wishes.
Felony-Avoiding Rob
“When I collect my $500 million settlement check, my setting myself up so that I could go 17 years without a paycheck is going to look very, very good. ”
But let’s say you get to the age of 70 and you don’t get that $500 million, You would look pretty foolish, don’t you agree?
Yes, I agree.
But I don’t see that I have ever had any alternative courses of action available to me. What would you have me do, Anonymous? If I say that I believe that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in his retirement study, I am guilty of fraud myself (and obviously so as I have said on thousands of occasions that I do not believe that the study contains a valuation adjustment). That would obviously be an insane thing to do.
I am always trying to figure out what you Goons would like to see me do. The best guess that I am able to come up with is that you would like me not to mention this stuff anymore, neither the fact that none of the Buy-and-Hold studies contain valuation adjustments nor the fact that there has been a 17-year cover-up of that reality.
Is that a viable option?
I don’t think so. Say that Shiller is right. I believe that he is. If Shiller is right, we are going to see a devastating price crash. In the past three bull/bear cycles, we dropped to a CAPE level of 8 before the irrational depression that always follows a period of irrational exuberance came to an end. That’s a 70 percent drop from where we are today. Millions of retirements will fail. Hundreds of thousands of businesses will go under. Millions of people will lose their jobs. It is possible that we will experience a Second Great Depression. I obviously pray that we do not. But, given what I know about Shiller’s research, I cannot rule out the possibility.
I love my country. I live in this country. My boys are going to be starting their own lives in this country. Should I just keep quiet about what I know and let millions of people suffer as a consequence? I am not able to rationalize doing that. If you knew in advance about the 911 attacks, would you have kept your mouth shut? I think you would have tried to do something. A Second Great Depression would have effects on our country worse than those we experienced with the 911 attacks. I don’t see how I can in good conscience keep my mouth shut about what I know given the likely consequences to millions of people of me doing so.
The story needs to get out. Of this I am 100 percent sure. If we could go back in time, the Buy-and-Holders would vote for it getting out way back in 1981. It is my belief that the story did not get out when Shiller published his research because the Buy-and-Holders were suffering from cognitive dissonance and just elected to look the other way. Now they cannot stand the thought of word getting out because they feel that it will look bad that there has been a cover-up going on for so many years. But, if the story is going to get out sooner or later in any event, the Buy-and-Holders and everyone else are better off if it gets out as quickly as possible. So for 17 years I have been doing everything in my power to see that it gets out as quickly as possible.
I have paid a big price for what I have done. Obviously. I certainly do not say different.
But what sort of price will we all pay if I elect to keep my mouth shut? It seems to me that that price is likely to be many times bigger. I wish that there were no price to pay whatsoever. But it appears to me that my only options are to pay a very, very big price or to pay a price many times higher than that. For 17 years I have chosen to pay the smaller price no matter how painful it has been to pay that price (and it of course has been painful indeed).
We need to solve this problem. I need that. You need that. Shiller needs that. Bogle needs that. Bogle needs that even now that he has died. Bogle needs that to protect his reputation. As a Bogle lover, I want to see his reputation protected. So I work to help Bogle out as much as I work to help all the rest of us out.
I just am not able to imagine any possible good that could come from a continued cover-up. We are talking about unimaginable amounts of pain being inflicted on people. I fell into circumstances where I can help those people and be compensated very, very handsomely for doing so. That is the course of action that makes sense to me. I acknowledge that I have been hurt very badly and I of course do not like it. I just am not able to see any course of action that would not lead to more hurt, both for me and for millions of others. So I soldier on.
I hope that all of that makes at least a tiny bit of sense.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.
Rob
“But I don’t see that I have ever had any alternative courses of action available to me. ”
You should have kept working instead of quitting at such an early age.
Clearly, I don’t buy this whole conspiracy thing, but let’s set that aside for now. Even if there was some credibility to you claims, you didn’t have to quit working. You can still hold a job and do your whole internet thing in your spare time, just like everyone else.
I don’t agree.
My plan was very carefully thought out. When I left my job at Ernst & Young, I had no intention of not working again. The entire purpose of my plan was to shift to a form of work that I would find more fulfilling and that would in the long run produce more income than the corporate employment that I left behind. I obviously would have earned amounts far in excess of what I needed had it not been for the criminal acts of you Goons. I did absolutely nothing wrong. My plan worked like a dream. No one can anticipate criminal acts, whether they are employed in the corporate realm or in the self-employed realm.
I will pursue litigation to have all of the damages paid to me in the days after your criminal acts are exposed on the front page of the New York Times. I made a few calls to lawyers a long time ago. I experienced the same problem talking with the lawyers re my lawsuits as I have experienced trying to get the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected. People have a hard time believing in what you refer to as “this whole conspiracy thing.” There has never in U.S. history been a time when a matter of this importance has been covered up for so long. Most people have never experienced or even heard about an act of financial fraud of this magnitude. So they have a hard time appreciating what went on and are reluctant to get personally involved.
I believe that that will change in the days following the next price crash. Millions of people will be experiencing very serious losses in the event that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is on the mark (I believe that it is). All lawyers will hear about the problems and will be looking for people who were harmed to bring lawsuits on their behalf. I don’t believe that I will have any problem finding a lawyer to take on my case at that time. All lawyers want to take on cases where the damages are in excess of $500 million. So it won’t be an issue at that time.
The issue today with the lawyers is the same as the issue with the site owners today. The thing that you refer to as “this whole conspiracy thing” is the fact that there is now 38 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. Everyone alive on the planet needs to know that. But it is a scary thing to point out when you know that most people’s lives are riding on the validity of Buy-and-Hold and they are thus highly reluctant to listen to the message. Things will not improve until there are enough of us posting honestly that you Goons will no longer dare to commit criminal acts. But how will there ever be sufficient numbers posting honestly until a few of us are willing to take on whatever heat you direct at us to win recognition of the right of everyone in the field to post honestly? There is a reason why the work that I have been doing is worth a very big multiple of $500 million. This work frees everyone. Our society’s understanding of how stock investing works will never be the same again after we have freed everyone in the field to do honest work. We are on the threshold of a huge advance but it can only be achieved by a few of us being willing to take on some very, very, very hard and nasty hits. That’s just where things stand today.
I could not have done what i have done had I been doing this in my spare time. I made the right call. I expect to finish writing my book on these matters by the end of this year. Once I have the manuscript in hand, I could imagine taking corporate employment and going part-time with the investing work. I have not made a decision to do that. But, once I have written the book, i will feel that i have in hand what I need to tell the story in a powerful and complete way. Combining the book with the materials already residing at this site, I would feel highly confident that the Valuation-Informed Indexing story will prevail in the days following the crash. So I could see easing up on the time that I devote to this at that time. I do want to get the book written first. My understanding of the matters involved has not until recent months been deep enough to complete the book. But the book is coming well now. So I think that I am close.
There’s nothing wrong with doing these sorts of things part-time. But there is nothing wrong with doing these sorts of things full-time either. You can get more good work completed and have a bigger impact working it full time. But there are obviously income implications to doing it that way. I have suffered negative income implications solely because of your criminal acts. And on the content side I have achieved things 500 times more important than what I thought was possible when I first started walking this path. So I am hardly going to express regret for playing it the way that I did. My efforts have paid off in amazing ways both for myself and for my family and for the entire world except for the effect of the criminal acts, which I expect to be compensated for down the line a bit.
It all comes down to what happens in the days following the next price crash. If millions of people want to know at that time what happened to their retirement money, I will be able to tell them and this site will be the hottest site on the internet and no one in the Bennett family line will have to be concerned with financial constraints for many generations to come. Good for the Bennett family line, you know? I love my boys (and I hope and believe that I will love their children) and I am happy to have been able to have helped out in the way that I have. While of course being unhappy about the thousands and thousands of thousands of hits that I have had to endure getting the job done. This has been hard work. I think it is the hardest and most important work that anyone in the United States has done over the past 17 years and I hope and expect to be compensated accordingly.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, that much is for sure.
My best and warmest wishes to you, dear Goon friend.
Highly Compensated (Not Yet But Soon, Let Us Pray!) Rob
“The entire purpose of my plan was to shift to a form of work that I would find more fulfilling and that would in the long run produce more income than the corporate employment that I left behind.”
No, your historical posts show you had only counted on a small amount of side income. You never had a substantial business income. To win anything, you would need to have suffered damages and quantify that. Secondly, even if you had a substantial business, the Statute if Limitations have long run out.
The crime is ongoing. Greaney’s study has not been corrected to this day. The bans remain in place. The abusive posting continues. Wade Pfau remains afraid to work with me to promote our research because of the threats you made.
I’ll quantify the damages. There are millions of investors. The Bennett/Pfau research shows them how to reduce risk by nearly 70 percent. Those millions of investors would obviously have been happy to have paid a large amount of money to reduce their risk by 70 percent. If only ten million paid me only $50 for me to show them how to reduce risk by 70 percent, that’s $500 million right there.
Rob
“The crime is ongoing. Greaney’s study has not been corrected to this day”
Again, I don’t agree with your premise. But even if your position was true, your knowledge of this, and any damage claim originated on 2002, which is 17 years ago. Time ran out a long time ago.
As to amount of your damages, even if we had no Statute of Limitations, you would have needed an established business with a long term record of investors paying you for your “services/advice”. You have to show how you had a steady stream of income, followed by activities that disrupted (damaged) your income stream and then the resulting decline.
“I made a few calls to lawyers a long time ago. I experienced the same problem talking with the lawyers re my lawsuits as I have experienced trying to get the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected. People have a hard time believing in what you refer to as “this whole conspiracy thing.” ”
That should have been your clue that you were wasting your time.
Again, I don’t agree with your premise. But even if your position was true, your knowledge of this, and any damage claim originated on 2002, which is 17 years ago. Time ran out a long time ago.
As to amount of your damages, even if we had no Statute of Limitations, you would have needed an established business with a long term record of investors paying you for your “services/advice”. You have to show how you had a steady stream of income, followed by activities that disrupted (damaged) your income stream and then the resulting decline.
I don’t agree with any of this, Anonymous.
I put up my post pointing out that Greaney’s study lacks a valuation adjustment on the morning of May 13, 2002. That much is certainly so. But the full reality is that the study has not been corrected to this day. So the act of financial fraud is ongoing.
And I don’t know why you say that I needed to have a steady income stream to suffer damages. I suffered damages as a result of your criminal acts. I would have earned hundreds of millions of dollars if you had not engaged in those criminal acts. So I obviously suffered damages as a result of them.
The deciding factor is going to be how the members of your jury feel about your deceptions. You have been able to keep the cover-up going because lots of people are emotionally invested in Buy-and-Hold and are not willing to call you out on your b.s. But is that going to remain true in the days following the next price crash? I don’t think it will. I think that people will be pissed off and will want to know where their retirement money went. That will change the entire dynamic.
But we will just have to wait and see how it all plays out to know for sure.
Rob
“I don’t agree with any of this, Anonymous.”
Talk to the people that make the laws, because that is the way it is.
“I made a few calls to lawyers a long time ago. I experienced the same problem talking with the lawyers re my lawsuits as I have experienced trying to get the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected. People have a hard time believing in what you refer to as “this whole conspiracy thing.” ”
That should have been your clue that you were wasting your time.
The effect on me was just the opposite.
Say that Shiller is right. That means that bull markets are a mass delusion.
How does a society engage in a massive delusion? It’s not easy. If the site owners were enforcing the published posting rules, we could not have bull markets. People like me would spill the beans and the mass delusion would come to an end.
In ordinary circumstances, if criminal acts were used to stop people like me from spilling the beans, people like me could go to lawyers and get help and again the mass delusion would come to an end. So the reaction of the lawyers is part of the bull market story too.
Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize because he did something of huge importance. The Buy-and-Hold Model is the dominant model for understanding how stock investing works. The Buy-and-Hold Model says that stock prices are set through a rational process. So they are real, they can be trusted. Shiller says something different. He says that prices are set by shifts in investor emotion. They are NOT real. They cannot be trusted. They are temporary. To the extent that stock prices are set by investor emotion, they are the product of a mass delusion. Learning that that is so is a huge advance.
I love my country. So I want news of this advance to be shared with every investor on the planet. So that we all enjoy its benefits. I am not even able to imagine any downside.
You are saying that I should interpret any sign that Shiller is right, that stock prices really are the product of a mass delusion, as a sign that I am wasting my time. I suppose that in the short term that is kinda, sorta so. It’s hard to break through the mass delusion. I have been trying for 17 years and I have had my head slammed against the wall 17 million times.
But the mass delusion hurts each and every one of us in very, very big ways. If we are going to get over it, we are going to need to discuss these matters openly and frankly and honestly. There is no other way. So I don’t interpret signs that we really are suffering a mass delusion as signs that I am wastimg my time. I interpret those signs as signs that we all really need to get about the business of opening every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research.
Buy-and-Hold says that it is reason that matters. Shiller says that it is emotion that matters. All that I have seen from Buy-and-Holders for 17 years now is emotion on top of emotion on top of emotion. That doesn’t tell me that I am wasting my time. It tells me that we all need to be paying more attention to what Shiller showed.
If Shiller is right that it is emotions that determine stock prices, emotions are not going to be the same when the CAPE value is 8 as it is when the CAPE value is 30. If Shiller is right, all of the people who today do not want to hear what the Valuation-Informed Indexers say are going to in the days following the next price crash be angry about the lies that were told to them by the Buy-and-Holders. Emotion works in two directions. You have benefited from it for 17 years. When the CAPE value is 8, I think that the emotion will be helping me, not you.
But, again, I think we are going to have to wait to see how it all plays out.
Rob
Talk to the people that make the laws, because that is the way it is.
You won’t decide the matter and I will not decide the matter. The members of your jury will decide the matter. That’s how it works.
Rob
“You won’t decide the matter and I will not decide the matter. The members of your jury will decide the matter. That’s how it works.”
Based on the laws, there will be no jury. There will be no case to begin with.
“The effect on me was just the opposite.”
That’s your problem. You lack critical thinking and discernment.
Based on the laws, there will be no jury. There will be no case to begin with.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob
That’s your problem. You lack critical thinking and discernment.
Okay, Anonymous.
I wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, in any event.
Rob