Yesterday’s blog entry reported on an e-mail that I sent to Academic Researcher Wade Pfau on January 1, 2012. My next e-mail to Wade was dated April 5, 2012, and was titled “Concerns Re You Going to the Dark Side.” The text is set forth below.
Wade:
I hope things are going well with you.
This e-mail will not be a pleasant one to write (or to read). I don’t think I have any choice but to write it, given recent developments.
Before I start, I want to state the obvious preface. I have great feelings of respect and affection for you personally and I admire your research work probably more than anyone else alive on Planet Earth today. In ordinary circumstances, that would be the basis for a wonderful relationship. As you know, there have been things that stood in the way of that since our first communications. Those obstacles have always saddened me. My strong sense is that the problem side of the relationship has grown much worse since your postings at my blog re whether Bill Bengen should correct the errors in his SWR study. The purpose of this e-mail is to (1) attempt to confirm whether that is indeed the case or not; and (2) get some things off my chest that I need to get off my chest to fell that I have always dealt with you in good faith.
You are of course aware that there has been an organized effort on the internet to destroy my reputation which has been led by Mel Lindauer and John Greaney and which has made it impossible for me to earn a living for 10 years now. I believe you know that I plan to bring lawsuits against the sites that have permitted the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons to engage in defamation and death threats and other tactics to block numerous board and blog communities from learning what they need to learn what the last 30 years of academic research says about safe withdrawal rates and other important investment-relarted topics.
I believe that we all have a responsibility as part of the ethical demands of our respective professions to speak up when we see this sort of behavior. I have of course spoken up. You have spoken up on a few occasions in small ways but generally have kept quiet re this aspect of things. It’s not easy to say where precisely the line should be drawn re speaking up or not speaking up. My problems are of course not your problems and I of course do not expect you to feel as great a concern re this aspect of the question as I feel since I am directly involved. That said, I strongly believe that there are things you must do and things you must not do to protect your reputation as an ethical person. I believe today that there is serious reason to question whether you have managed to remain on the right side of the line.
I was questioned the other day by one of the Goons as to whether we were still in e-mail communication. My answer was that I presumed we were. I don’t recall us having a back-and-forth discussion since the day you posted on the Bengen blog post. My recollection is that I sent you a copy of an e-mail that I sent to a visitor at my site because he referenced you in the e-mail and I wanted you to see both his words and my words. I did not receive a response to you re that e-mail but I did not see that as being a big deal.
Today, I was communicating with another financial blogger and wanted to send him a link to the blog post in which you explored Valuation-Informed Indexing and found that it beat Buy-and-Hold in 102 of 110 of the rolling 30-year time-periods in the historical record. As you obviously know, this post of yours was a big help to me in trying to overcome the Campaign of Terror against me and the many board communities in which numerous community members have expressed a desire that honest posting on SWRs and other valuation-related topics be permitted. The goal of the Internet Sewer Rats has been to persuade my potential readers and customers that I have not done important work and your mention of my name in a post that shows that I was right all along made it impossible for them to continue to maintain that position.
You have removed my name from the post. Why?
You of course have a right to re-write posts. In this case, however, the action is an exceedingly odd one. You have been attacked by Lindauer yourself. You have acknowledged in posts that Drip Guy has sent you e-mails and you have changed positions you have taken in discussions at the Bogleheads board as a response to his threats. When you contacted the Trinity authors about correcting the errors in their SWR study, the Greaney Goons put up posts threatening to get
you fired from your job if you followed through and you then retreated from your position after letting me know that you were indeed concerned that you might lose your job as a result of their actions. We of course both know that the Sewer Rats have employed similar tactics in numerous other cases.
I believe you are making a huge mistake, Wade.
Please don’t hear that as a threat. I hope you will hear it as a friend speaking to a friend. I said similar words to Greaney 10 years ago and he is where he is today because he ignored those words (Greaney was my personal friend in earlier times). I said similar words to Lindauer. It breaks my heart to see another one of my friends take this horrible path. Are you insane, man? Please think!
I am a journalist, Wade. My job is to tell this story in as honest and as complete and balanced way possible. I take the responsibilities of my profession seriously and I will honor them. I WILL let personal friendships influence me (I have done
this with Greaney on many occasions). I think it would be inhuman of me not to do so. But I WILL also honor my responsibilities to my readers.
There are millions of middle-class people who have been done great harm by this economic crisis. They need to know the story here. The hardest question for them to understand is — Given that the academic research has shown for 30 years that Buy-and-Hold can never work for any long-term investor, why are there still people today advocating it? I need to tell BOTH sides of that story. That’s my job.
My strong hunch is that you would prefer to stick to the research and keep away from all this ugly junk. Guess what? Every single one of us feels the same way. The full reality here is that the reason your research has not received the attention it merits (I understand that you have received a great deal of attention and that that attention is fully deserved) is because people cannot come to terms with the ugly, emotional side of all this. If our free market economy is to survive for much longer into the future, we all need to work up the courage to deal with that side of things. We need to do so with love, to be sure. But we need to do so with honestly as well. There is no other way.
If I hear a response from you that indicates that you want to deal with the issues at stake here in a responsible way, I will do whatever I can to put in place a process that will work to help every single person involved come out of this looking as good as it is today possible for them to look. That’s the love part of the formula.
The honesty part of the formula is that, if I do not hear from you, I need to report on what you have done in this case and in your other interactions with the Goons on the Bogleheads Forum and elsewhere. I hate being put in these circumstances as I know you hate being put in these circumstances. The bottom line here is that these are the circumstances into which we were born and we both need to work up the courage to make the best of them.
Please always know that, if you see something that I have written and you feel that I have not told things in a precisely fair way, I will be thrilled to give you space in the article or blog post to tell your version of events in your own words. My preference is that it be done in that way.
Please also know that I will of course always respect the work you have done. I very much still believe that you are someday going to win that Nobel Prize and that we are going to see your name on the front page of the New York Times. It will be a great day for all of us when that happens.
Please also know that I will do everything I can to slant things as much as I can in your favor without failing to honor my obligation to my readers to provide them with the detail they need to hear to make sense out of the amazing circumstances that apply in InvestoWorld today.
Please also know that I will always think of you as a friend and will always wish the best for you and will always be\ honored to be associated with you in any way (even if this crazy mixed-up world of ours puts me in circumstances in which I need to name you in lawsuits at other times!).
I will close by letting you know of three things that I have in mind at the moment (the purpose of this e-mail is to assure myself that I have done every last thing that I can do to avoid going ahead with these steps):
1) I am going to start a thread at the Goon Central board letting them know that I have sent you this e-mail (without posting the text). Drip Guy asked me about you directly yesterday, which suggests to me that he feels you have been compromised. I argued yesterday that this was not the case. I don’t want the Goons thinking that I play games re this sort of thing and I have been careful always to respond honestly to their questions. So I think I need to let them know that my sense of where things stand has changed as a result of what I learned today;
2) I expect to post the text of this e-mail at my blog within another week or two. This is obviously an important development in the saga. If you have indeed gone to the Dark Side, that is a major win for the Goons, who have been feeling greatly weakened in recent months aside from this development; and
3) I am in the process of writing a long article that will detail 101 incidents of this nature (you are not the only one who is afraid of what the Goons will do to your reputation if you state your honest beliefs about investing in clear terms!). You are certainly not the focus of the piece. But my expectation is that you will be mentioned in five or so of the incidents. I just want you to know that that is in the works as I feel that each time we go a step down the dark path, it makes it harder to move to the better path for all concerned. How I wish that others could see this point as clearly as I do!
The Goons are not going to win, Wade. They CANNOT win. If we don’t help people learn what they need to learn about stock investing, the numbers show that the whole thing is going to go down (please ask if you have questions about this
aspect of things). There was a big change in people’s attitudes after the 2008 price crash. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I can tell you that nothing had as much impact as that. The next crash is going to hurt worse (because it follows on
so many down years) and is going to cause a much bigger change in public opinion. You want to be positioned on the right side of things when that happens. We are going to need to act quickly then and we need you working with us!
If you have particular concerns or questions, please let me know of them and we can do out best to resolve them when they can be resolved with relative ease.
I cannot post dishonestly on safe withdrawal rates. It is insane that I was ever asked to do this and it is insane that there is even one responsible person who ever thought that it might be possible that I would go along with such a demand. Just
about anything else is negotiable because, once we achieve the right to post honestly on that topic, a lot of the ugly feelings of shame will dissipate. I cannot give an inch on that one. For reasons that should be obvious to all reasonable people.
Sorry for the long e-mail. I hope it leads to good things!
I wish you the best in all your future endeavors, my good (non-Goon, please?) friend!
Rob
Its good to see the jump in dates. I hope this means your months-long one-sided slandering of Dr. Pfau is close to complete.
Excellent Dale Carnegie technique by the way. “Are you insane, man?” Its sure to win friends and influence people.
Better to ask that question of the person you see every morning while shaving.
one-sided
To the extent that my telling of the Wade Pfau story is one-sided, it is not of my doing, ZZZ.
I have invited Wade to comment on every report and I have told him that I will post his comments as separate blog entries.
Wade has elected to post two responses so far and I have posted both as separate blog entries.
I would be grateful if Wade posted more responses. I of course understand that it is his choice whether to do so or not.
I also believe that all bloggers in this field and all experts in this field should be offering their thoughts on what happened to Wade. Outside of a few people retweeting a few tweets of mine, none have done so. I see this as an exceedingly unfortunate reality. Had the experts in this field spoken out in clear and firm and uncompromising terms when Greaney put forward his first death threat, we would have all made the move to Valuation-Informed Indexing a good numbers of years ago and would not be enduring an economic crisis today.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
Excellent Dale Carnegie technique by the way. “Are you insane, man?” Its sure to win friends and influence people.
What do you see as the best way to warn a good friend not to destroy himself, ZZZ?
Buy-and-Hold is dead. It died on the evening Greaney put forward his first death threat and a good number of Buy-and-Holders failed to object in strong and certain and uncompromising terms. Wade is allowing the pressure exerted by those trying to “defend” Buy-and-Hold to cause him to betray his own research. He is running into a burning building. Given the great good that Wade has done for all of us with his breakthrough research, this is truly sad stuff.
I’m proud to be able to say that I used words that left no doubt in Wade’s mind that I cared. “Stop, man, that’s insane!” was precisely the right message to convey given the circumstances that had come to apply at the time I wrote that e-mail.
Please take good care.
Rob
Rob
Better to ask that question of the person you see every morning while shaving.
That’s good advice, ZZZ.
I hope you understand that that’s good advice for all of us, not only me. It’s good advice for ZZZ. Its good advice for Wade Pfau. It’s good advice for John Bogle. It’s good advice for Robert Shiller.
It’s when we are most sure of ourselves that we are most at risk of taking actions that down the road will cause us to destroy ourselves. The ten-year Campaign of Terror against our board and blog communities is nothing short of tragic. We are now talking about the length of the prison sentences that will be served by those who have put up posts in “defense” of Lindauer and Greaney on more than a small number of occasions. Think about what that means! We thought of these people as our friends in earlier days. How have we let things get to this point?
Pride.
Pride and shame.
Those are two of the emotions that the experts in this field need to pay a great deal more attention to if they ever are to achieve the level of understanding of how stock investing works to be able to offer positive and constructive and accurate and honest and life-affirming investment guidance.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, ZZZ.
Rob
I hope this means your months-long one-sided slandering of Dr. Pfau is close to complete.
The last report on my e-mail correspondence with Wade is slated to appear on the morning of July 11, 2012.
I then will have a few blog entries reporting on my e-mail correspondence with Morningstar re the Mel Lindauer matter.
I then will post responses to the points made by Wade in the two comments he posted re my reports on our e-mail correspondence.
Finally, I will post two articles to the “The Buy-and-Hold Crisis” section of the site. The first will provide links to all blog entries on Wade’s research and on our e-mail correspondence in one place, accompanied by my commentary on those reports. The second will tell the story of the e-mail correspondence in narrative form so that I have something to send to political and personal finance bloggers making the most important points in one place and linking to the documentation backing up those points.
I can’t yet give a date when my telling of the Wade Pfau story through today will be complete. It appears to me that it will be a date in late July or early August.
Rob
Bennet wrote: “You have acknowledged in posts that Drip Guy has sent you e-mails and you have changed positions you have taken in discussions at the Bogleheads board as a response to his threats.”
Absolute lie.
Either that I made any threats, or that Wade told you I had made any threats.
(So that’s two lies, I suppose. On top of all the other lies you make. IOW, you are one sick puppy.)
Absolute lie.
Good point, Drip Guy.
Rob
Bennett wrote: “I am a journalist, Wade.”
Rob, you often have made that claim. In particular, you often claim to be a reporter, as well.
Unfortunately, this is all yet more lies — the reality is that you were a paid PR hack, copyrighting for a subscription newsletter. Nothing more. If you EVER had a paid position as a journalist or reporter for a newspaper, periodical, or other legitimate PRESS job, then you have failed to ever mention it until now.
You obey NONE of the norms, standards, and ethics of a nominal Community College newspaper cub reporter, much less a supposed professional with a decade or more of experience.
In addition to not meeting the ethical standards, you also overtly and continually fall short on even the most forgiving of technical expectations. Myriad evidence says that you cannot write, proof, edit, spell-check, fact-check or otherwise manage the pen part of the job, much less the much more difficult aspects of true reportage or journalism.
You may kid yourself, but you sure aren’t kidding any one else.
For you, Rob. Good luck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards
You may kid yourself, but you sure aren’t kidding any one else.
Hard to argue.
Rob
“Hard to argue.”
Impossible to do so convincingly, or else you certainly would.
“We of course both know that the Sewer Rats have employed similar tactics in numerous other cases.”
What other cases?
” Had the experts in this field spoken out in clear and firm and uncompromising terms when Greaney put forward his first death threat”
They probably aren’t aware of your death threats. And since you can’t actually produce any evidence that there were death threats – why do you expect them to be aware or believe you? The only reason I can think of is because you are crazy, you expect other people to be crazy.
Rob’s take
“When you contacted the Trinity authors about correcting the errors in their SWR study, the Greaney Goons put up posts threatening to get
you fired from your job if you followed through and you then retreated from your position after letting me know that you were indeed concerned that you might lose your job as a result of their actions.”
Wade’s take
“I do not have any fears about the Goons.”
Makes sense.
Rob
I believe you know that I plan to bring lawsuits against the sites…
Not quite true. You plan to talk about bringing lawsuits and you plan to fantasize about mythical massive payouts that you might receive but you don’t plan to do a single practical thing to bring about the lawsuits.
You have me figured out, Evidence,
Please take care, good buddy.
Rob
“You have me figured out, Evidence,”
Rob,
One visit to your site, and EVERYONE has you figured out. That’s why it’s all ‘zero comments’ unless a few of the people you universally refer to as ‘goons’ decide to take on the nearly impossible task of talking some sense into you, regarding your lack of ethics, your disgusting behavior towards others, your woefully mistaken ideas about math and finance, your childish vendettas against anyone who does not adopt you as their personal cause, etc.
It only takes a brief scan through your maze of bloviation to understand one is dealing with a mentally ill trollish crank.
That’s why it’s all ‘zero comments’ unless a few of the people you universally refer to as ‘goons’ decide to take on the nearly impossible task of talking some sense into you
Thank heaven for the Goons!
I hate to think where I would be without them, Evidence.
Rob
Ignored completely.
That’s where.
Rob, we ‘goons’ who are strangely compelled to watch you purposely create your own personal trainwreck, are your only audience.
Tell you what — tell us how your schtick goes over in Denver, okay?
But do be sure to bring them lock, stock, and two smoking barrels, Rob. Don’t hold back a bit. Remember, you say you’ve regretted it later every time you’ve done that, so bring on the full-meal-deal for all those bloggers, okay?
Ignored completely.
Are you trying to hurt my feelings, Drip Guy?
Rob
Calling it straight, Rob.
Like you [i]say[/i] you do.
So, where is that url to the Death Threats?
I know it’s around here somewhere, Drip Guy.
Give me a minute.
I’ll find it! I’m sure I will!
It was here just yesterday afternoon!
I remember seeing it!
Rob