Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
So you are helpless until Bogle gives that speech. Why does all your future success lie outside your control?
You know why, Anonymous. You Goons have engaged in criminal behavior. You have threatened to destroy people’s careers. And Bogle has backed you up. That scares people.
I obviously don’t like the way it is. But I like the idea of posting dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements about 10,000 times less. I would far rather be in my shoes than be in your shoes.
It’s a process. Things are a mess today. We are living through an economic crisis that could have been avoided had you Goons just permitted honest posting re Shiller’s work or had Bogle spoke up against your tactics. It’s horrible to contemplate how many millions of lives have been destroyed over absolutely nothing (knowing how the stock market works benefits everyone).
The other side of the story is that the good news here is 50 times more good than the bad news here is bad. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows us how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while increasing returns enough to retire five to ten years sooner. That ain’t nothing! Our research will be featured on the front page of the New York Times following the next price crash and I think that it would be fair to say that what we learn from that research and from follow-up investigations may be what keeps us from falling into the Second Great Depression. It’s humbling to know that I played a lead role in getting Valuation-Informed Indexing on the map.
In your typical Goon way you look at this as things being outside my control. I look at it as an opportunity to do amazing things that fell into my lap. Had Bogle come clean back in 1981, there would have been thousands of people developing the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept when I came on the scene in 2002. Because of the cover-up, it was left to a nobody like me to do this work. In the short term, that caused me a lot of pain. But I think it’s fair to expect that in the long term it will generate a very big financial payoff. WhaChaGonDo?
Todd Tresidder at the Financial Mentor site and I talked this over at one of the FinCon meetings. He said that he liked it that he had so little competition because people are afraid of what the Buy-and-Holders will do to them if they post honestly re the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. I don’t quite share his take. I see what he was getting at. But my concern is that the cover-up has already caused a major economic crisis and that it will get a lot worse following the next crash. I worry that we are going to see major political problems when millions of middle-class people learn how they have been tricked by the Wall Street Con Men and by you Goons. I would prefer to have more competition and be living in a more stable political situation than the one that the Buy-and-Hold Lies have brought on.
Still, there are huge opportunities here for those with the courage to stand up to the Con Men and to their Internet Goon Squads. I believe that the biggest payoffs will go to those who got in early and I think it would be fair to say that I’ve got the longest track record of posting honestly re these matters. So in the long term this could turn out to be a very good thing for the Bennett family. I guess we will see.
I am not able to post dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements in any event. It’s just not in me. I remember when I was putting together my plan. I was very careful not to make mistakes. It would have enraged me had I learned that someone who I trusted had engaged in deliberate deception. I don’t ever want people to be that mad at me and to have grounds to bring either civil suits against me or to demand criminal prosecution of me. So I have been careful not to ever offer even the slightest hint of a willingness to sign up with you Goons. Find somebody else, you know? Not this boy! No way, no how.
We’ll see how it goes. If it goes well for the country that I love, it should go very well for me indeed. If it goes poorly for me, I think it would be fair to say that my country will be going down with me. I hate that idea! But this is something that affects the entire country. I can’t dictate the timing of when the con will be exposed as much as I would like to be able to do so. I am just going to have to be patient, like it or not. That’s part of the job.
Wish me luck!
Take care, man.
Rob
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