Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the Goon Central board:
Another key is acting within the limits of the statute of limitations, i.e. one year in Virginia.This is an ongoing act of financial fraud, NFS.
There have been numerous articles in big-name publications picking up on my 2002 finding that the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies get the numbers wildly wrong. That’s of course a good thing in itself. But there is an obvious oddity about every one of those articles. None of them report the number accurately. None of them (the article by Todd Tresidder was an exception) give credit to me for being the person to discover the errors and for having done it 11 years ago. None of the articles describe the death threats and board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and the threats to get academic researchers fired that have been relied on by The Buy-and-Hold Mafia to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning what they need to learn to invest effectively. Why? Because the entities who publish these articles and the journalists who report on them are afraid of what The Buy-and-Hold Mafia will do to them if they file honest and complete reports. This all comes through clearly and plainly in the Wade Pfau Matter. Wade was thrilled to learn how stock investing really works. He showed great excitement in his many e-mails to me. He said that he couldn’t understand why no one had done the research that he and I produced together. Why? Was he missing something? He checked his numbers over and over again. They really said what they said! How could this be? How could this powerhouse stuff have been ignored for all this time? He even went to the Bogleheads Forum to see if anyone there could make sense of it. No one could. No one (including Jack Bogle!) had ever heard of a single study showing that price discipline is not required when investing in stocks. The entire Buy-and-Hold “strategy” is built on sand. And there is not a sliver of evidence pointing in the other direction. But lots and lots and lots of smart people are careful not to say this in public. Because they are scared of what will happen to them if they do. They have seen how ruthless the Buy-and-Hold Mafia is. They know what is good for themselves and they keep their mouths shut. As Wade learned to do when you Goons threatened to send defamatory e-mails to his employer with the aim of getting him fired from his job and my good friend Jack Bogle raised not a peep of protest about it. That’s fraud, NFS. Anyone who participates in it is part of the fraud. And anyone who fails to speak when he sees the fraud play out in front of him is part of the cover-up of the fraud The fraud is ongoing. The statute of limitations will not begin to run until Jack gives his “I Was Wrong” speech and it is reported on the front page of the New York Times. I will be sure to get the papers filed within 12 months of that day. The full truth is that I am not going to need to file papers. Once Jack gives his speech and it is written up on the front page of the New York Times, we will all be working together to keep our economy from falling into the Second Great Depression. Every one of the people involved in the fraud wants to come clean and to be able to do honest work again. Once one big name makes the jump, all the others will follow within days. I doubt that I am going to need to file legal papers to get the money that I earned with my work of the past 11 years. These things can be handled easily once the will to handle them is present. We’ll see. But I am not expecting to have to file papers. And, in the unlikely event that I am forced to file papers, I can assure you that I will file them within 12 months of Jack’s big speech. I wish you all good things, old friend. Rob |
Reality says
Rob – You are a big fat liar.
what says
Sometimes I think Rob is actually Andy Kaufman.
Rob says
Rob – You are a big fat liar.
I would think that would settle the matter, Reality.
Hang in there, man.
Rob the Big Fat Liar (?)
Rob says
Sometimes I think Rob is actually Andy Kaufman.
That’s because Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing are built on entirely opposite premises. So when you step from one model to the other, it feels like you are entering Opposite World. Every question has an answer that seems so strange.
That’s not my doing, What. I am just a mild-mannered reporter who was handed the job of reporting accurately and honestly what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research says to his buds on the internet.
The way we get past this feeling that the research-based model is strange is by exploring all its findings, by answering all of people’s questions, by taking things apart and then putting them back together again, by proceeding step by step, point by point. We do all that through —
Discussion!
There is no other way from Point A to Point B.
Had Shiller published his research findings in 1971 rather than in 1981, the name of the famous book published in 1974 would have been A Valuation-Informed Walk Down Wall Street. There never would have been any problem. We all want the same things. Had it played out that way, we all would have worked together to get for ourselves those good things we want (smart, safe, simple investing strategies).
Fate played us a little trick by first showing us enough of the story for us to get it 100 percent backwards and then only a few years later supplying the missing piece of the puzzle that makes it all click perfectly. Fate (or God, or Evolution, or Whatever) wanted us to work it out between ourselves, not just to have all these magical advances handed to us on a platter.
My job is to get you settled down enough that you permit the process that we follow in every other area of human endeavor to play itself out in the field of investing analysis. Your job is to settle and learn and enjoy and enrich yourself to an extent you never imagined possible in your Buy-and-Hold days.
Or you can tear yourself to pieces through use of the twisted energy of your own hate, like Rumpelstiltskin. Heaven help me if I ever forget to mention that that option remains open to you at all times!
Anyway, I wish all good things for you and yours, What. Don’t let the bad guys get you down.
Rob the Anti-Rumpelstiltskin
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob,
You keep talking about what your “job” is. No one hired you to do anything. You don’t have a job. You quit your job and retired too early and with insufficient savings. Your constant diatribe rests upon your references to Wade P., who has already told you that you are wrong. Further, we also see that your stated retirement investments were built on lies and have also fallen short of market returns.
My recommendation is to go get a REAL job in which you receive pay for doing something that someone actually wants you to do and actually creates some value. What you are doing now is not a job, provides no value and can be argued that it could actually harm people by not letting them know the REAL reason that their retirement savings will fall short of expectations.
Rob says
You keep talking about what your “job” is. No one hired you to do anything.
Did Rosa Parks have a job, Pink?
There is a time when a person who has a love for his county has to stand up, no matter the power and brutality of the forces lined up against him.
I didn’t ask for the job. The job I asked for was to make the Retire Early board at Motley Fool into the #1 board in that site’s history.
It was Greaney who turned it into something else.
When people put their trust in you and make you the leader of such a board, yes, that job comes with responsibilities. You either honor them or you spend the rest of your life coming up with rationalizations for why you failed to honor them.
Any fair-minded reader of the first 11 years of Post Archives will conclude that I honored my responsibilities to my fellow community members.
I wish you all good things.
Rob, the Rosa Parks of Personal Finance
Rob says
What you are doing now is not a job, provides no value
So says a Goon.
Alert the media.
Rob the Shocked
Rob says
Your constant diatribe rests upon your references to Wade P., who has already told you that you are wrong.
The story that my good friend Wade tells under oath will determine the length of your prison sentence, Pink.
Why do I have this funny feeling that my good friend Wade is not going to be inclined to commit another felony on your behalf when he is already on trial for giving in to your intimidation to commit his first felony in your behalf?
Some of these matters are so hard to figure out!
Rob the Continually Puzzled
The Pink Unicorn says
Typical Rob. Throws out the threats when he sees he is wrong yet again.
Rob says
I’m so ashamed!
Rob the Red-Faced
The Pink Unicorn says
Rob,
I missed the part where Rosa Parks was giving out financial advice.
Secondly, I think we can see that Wade is a person of honor and it is sickening to see you call him a liar, just to promote you silly agenda.
Rob says
I missed the part where Rosa Parks was giving out financial advice.
Rosa Parks was standing up for freedom and simple justice.
There was not one person alive on the day she refused to go to the back of the bus who thought in his or her heart that what was being done to her was right. Not one.
Yet no one spoke up. Why?
They were afraid. Blacks were second-class citizens. That was the way it was. You can’t fight City Hall. You go along to get along.
Rosa Parks didn’t go along to get along.
That’s how change is achieved in a society.
We are in the process of burying the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.
It happens by one of us standing up and saying “No!” to the Buy-and-Hold Mafia.
I said “no!” on the morning of May 13, 2002.
I am not ashamed of having said no and of having changed the world for the better by doing so. I am proud.
If you don’t like it, get your Wall Street Con Men Pals to sue me, Pink.
If they are not confident enough that they can crush me with their money, I will continue my efforts to spread the word.
It will only get harder when more of us are standing up to you.
So, if you are going to file papers, I advise you as a friend to file them by the close of business today. The odds are already long. But they get longer each day you delay.
I wish you all good things in any event, my old Goon friend.
Rob, the Fellow to Whom You Need to Send the Papers
Rob says
I think we can see that Wade is a person of honor and it is sickening to see you call him a liar
If you want me to say that Wade is a responsible father to two small children and that that influenced his judgment, I am 100 percent happy to say that, Pink.
If you want me to say that Wade did not dishonor himself in a very serious way by signing up with you Goons, I am not able to say that.
I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors in any event.
Rob, the Guy Who Is Happy to Say Some Things But Who Feels Entirely Uncomfortable Even Thinking About Saying Some Other Things
The Pink Unicorn says
Still calling Wade a liar. Just despicable, Rob. You have no morals or ethics.
Rob says
I’m really just misunderstood, Pink:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq28qCklEHc
Rob the Disturbed