I’ve been sending e-mails to numerous people, letting them know about my article reporting on The Silencing of Academic Researcher Wade Pfau by The Buy-and-Hold Mafia.
Yesterday’s blog entry reported on my correspondence with Joachim Klement, Chief Investment Officer at Wellershoff & Partners, Ltd. Set forth below is the text of the e-mail he sent in response to the e-mail from me described in the earlier blog entry:
Dear Rob
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I am with you a 100%. On the content side one has to think hard which Journal to send an article to before doing so, because the referees at each Journal follow a certain school of thought. That is why I tend to publish in practitioners’ Journals most of the time.
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Anyway, I still get frustrated with the slow pace of progress in economics and finance. These fields seem to become more and more religious about some theories. During the summer I got so frustrated about some of the obvious misconceptions about modern portfolio theory that are still presented as empirically valid that I started to write a series of papers called “Confessions of a Heretic” where I tackle some of these issues one by one. They never have a chance to get published in a Journal or magazine but at least the ideas get distributed to our clients and from there to their friends, etc.
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As a fan of Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” I know that progress can be frustratingly slow and what is typically needed is either a big crisis (which we had but to no effect …) or the ascent of a new generation of scientists who did not build their careers on the old models and theories. I am a physicist by education and the physicist Max Planck used to say “Science progresses one funeral at a time.” I think he was right.
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So we need to keep on arguing. I do it through our business and our papers. If you want to start a policy discussion you need to go to the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times etc. I don’t know any people there personally, but I think two people who might be open for ideas are John Mauldin and Jason Zweig. Jason has his weekly op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal. He comes from the value investing side but I think he is open to Shiller-PE and other similar topics as well.
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John Mauldin’s newsletter is widely read in the industry and I know so by policy makers. After all his newsletter is sent to more than a million people each week. He is focussing on economics but issues like the destruction of retirement savings through bad advice are on his radar screen as well.
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Other than that I din’t have any ideas right now and probably you know these two guys already anyway.
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But I will think about it some more.
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Best regards,
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Joachim
As you are publishing the email exchange that you had with Joachim can we assume that it has come to a conclusion?
Yes and no, Evidence.
I am not sending him fresh e-mails every day. Our communications have certainly come to a temporary conclusion.
But I obviously will be back in contact with ALL of the people with whom I have sent e-mails as time passes and new events develop.
We are all involved in the greatest act of financial fraud in U.S. history (by a factor of at least 50). We will just keep making the case stronger and stronger and stronger.
At some point, I will have a discussion board here where people like Joachim will be participating on a daily basis. And we will have law firms involved that will help out by bringing lawsuits against those who put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney and all that sort of thing.
The effort to open the internet up to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important topics is an effort that will never end until we have brought the economic crisis to an end and we are all enjoying the greatest economic boom in U.S. history. To proceed in any other way would make precisely zero sense.
I hope that helps you out a bit, Evidence.
Rob, the Fellow Working Hard to Pull Us Out of the Second Great Depression Before We Even Fall Into It
Discussion Board? You can’t even get anyone to post on your comment section other than those of us that point out your continued errors.
By the way, care to tell us which law firms you have lined up for all those lawsuits?
You can’t even get anyone to post on your comment section other than those of us that point out your continued errors.
I wonder if the death threats and the board bannings and the tens of thousands of acts of defamation and the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs and the failure of “experts” in the field like Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Larry Swedroe and Scott Burns to speak up in opposition to the use of these tactics might have anything to do with that, Pink.
And if we might see a big change following the next price crash, when those who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney will be sent off to serve long prison terms.
Some of these things are so hard to figure out!
My best wishes.
Rob. the Fellow Who Is Struggling Hard to Understand All the Complexities of the Campaign Of Terror
care to tell us which law firms you have lined up for all those lawsuits?
I think it would be fair to say that every law firm in the country worth its salt will be lined up to talk to me following the next price crash, Pink.
I’ll choose the best of the best to do this important work.
Why not?
Rob, the Fellow Who Sees An Opportunity to Do Good (While Also Doing Very Well for Himself!) When It Is Standing There In Front of His Face
Wade “silenced”?
Apparently, Mr. Bennett’s internet search skills are about on par with his financial-advice capability:
[quote]Asset Valuations and Safe Portfolio Withdrawal Rates
David Blanchett
Morningstar Investment Management
Michael S. Finke
Texas Tech University
Wade Pfau
The American College
June 27, 2013[/quote]
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2286146
PS — Unlike Rob, I actually downloaded, read, and understood the work. It is a nice piece of work, too, although I find some of the assumptions and conclusions to be questionable.
Still, at a minimum it provides excellent ‘food for thought’ for a prospective retiree, very much unlike anything Mr. Bennett has ever independently provided anywhere.
Wade “silenced”?
Yes, Wade has been silenced.
Wade is a professional. He has personally witnessed death threats, board bannings, tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get him fired from his job solely because he published honest research in his area of expertise.
At one time, he took steps to expose the massive act of fraud.
Then, when he was personally threatened with career death, he opted to join the cover-up.
That’s a felony, Banned.
I ain’t going there. Please try to find someone else.
It’s not my particular cup of tea.
No can do.
Rob the Non-Felon
It is a nice piece of work, too, although I find some of the assumptions and conclusions to be questionable.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Banned.
Rob, the Fellow Who Appreciates Hearing the Viewpoints of All, Even Those With a Long History of Engaging in Financial Fraud and Other Felonies
So, there are not law firms engaged and no lawsuits filed. Just more of Rob’s little fantasy as well as part of his strategy of issuing threats to people that don’t agree with him
There are no law firms engaged today and there are no lawsuits filed today, Pink.
But I have zero interest in having any felonies added to my record all the same.
I wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob the Determined Anti-Felon
And so you have confirmed what I posted. No lawsuits, no legal firms, and you are still making threats as part of your fantasy.
Robert Michael Bennett publicly proclaimed, and I then dutifully recorded: “[Wade Pfau] op[t]ed to join the cover-up. That’s a felony…”
Mr. Bennett, specifically and publicly accusing a respected academic of a felony crime is probably not a wise thing to do, even for someone in as dire straits to be noticed as you obviously are.
Your recklessness with the truth has long been noted, but even so, there are limits to what one can be expected to put up with before taking action against such malicious, groundless, and willful defamation.
No lawsuits, no legal firms
But thousands of acts of financial fraud.
Acts of financial fraud are what lead to law firms filing lawsuits following the collapse of a Get Rich Quick scheme.
There were no law firms or legal cases in the Bernie Madoff matter until the fraud was exposed. Now the guy is in a prison cell.
That’s the way the system works, Pink.
I want no part of it.
My warmest wishes to you.
Rob, the Fellow With a Strange Aversion to Spending His Remaining Years in a Prison Cell
there are limits to what one can be expected to put up with before taking action against such malicious, groundless, and willful defamation.
I’m ready for the lawsuits to begin today, Banned.
Give it your best shot.
If the Wall Street Con Men have sufficient pull that they can get someone sent to prison for the “crime” of having discovered the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies, then the Wall Street Con Men have sufficient pull that they can get someone sent to prison for the “crime” of having discovered the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies. It’s not like there is anything that I can do about it.
I have said numerous times that I would prefer the death penalty to agreeing to post dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. So you know all you need to know to know how to proceed.
So proceed. I certainly cannot stop you.
If you do NOT proceed, I certainly will report that you made the threat and failed to follow through. You can count on that much.
The more threats you fail to honor, the less people will be afraid of you.
I think it would be fair to say that we are all in the process of watching the Buy-and-Hold Mafia die before our very eyes.
Good.
I think that’s wonderful.
I think it would be fair to say that these are the sorts of individuals that Dylan had in mind when he wrote his song “Masters of War.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ElaYPo8B90
Rob, the Fellow Who Will Stand Over the Grave of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia Until He Is Sure That It Is Dead
I won’t say that you don’t scare me.
What I will say is that you will never scare me enough to persuade me to post dishonestly on safe withdrawal rates.
Not in 11 years.
Not in 11 billion years.
Count it, my old friend.
Rob the Consistent
Wade already said you were wrong on SWRs Rob. Since you are bringing up dishonesty, maybe you should have a chat with him.
Con men push market timing tricks. That sounds like you, Rob.
Wade already said you were wrong on SWRs Rob.
I want to see what he says when he is facing a jury.
The prospect of a long prison sentence has a tendency to help people remember why engaging in financial fraud on a massive scale is not such a funny joke.
Rob the Anti-Financial Fraud Guy
Since you are bringing up dishonesty, maybe you should have a chat with him.
I had my chat with him when he signed up with you Goons.
I told him that he was “insane” to do so. That’s in the Post Archives and the Post Archives will be presented to the jury to aid them in their deliberations.
Rob the Jury Helper
Con men push market timing tricks.
The con men are the people saying that long-term timing isn’t 100 percent required.
Those who are not engaging in long-term timing are not exercising price discipline. There is now 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research (based on 140 years of return data) showing that this can never work for even a single long-term investor.
The little Buy-and-Hold “joke” ends here and ends now, Pink. I will see to it.
My best wishes to you.
Rob, the Fellow Who Called Out the B.S. Artists Who Push Buy-and-Hold “Strategies”
So Rob, you send around an email to people you don’t know about Wade, yet you fail to tell that that he does not agree with you and that think he is a liar. That seems to be fraud around what is considered to be proper disclosure.
“I told him that he was “insane” to do so. That’s in the Post Archives and the Post Archives will be presented to the jury to aid them in their deliberations.”
Just more silly threats from you acting like a little child.
Grow up Rob and act like a man. While you are at it, try acting like a real father and husband by putting your family first and not your computer.
yet you fail to tell that that he does not agree with you and that think he is a liar.
I have incorporated links to all of Wade’s responses into a single article so that everyone who visits the site has easy access to his side of the story.
If Wade has some particular language he would like to see included in the article linked to from the e-mails, all he has to do is ask and it will be included.
The man has a right to have his side of the story told in his own words. I have zero problem with that idea.
But I have a right to refuse to commit financial fraud myself and I have zero willingness to bend re that one.
Prison is a serious thing.
Please try to find someone else, Pink.
I ain’t cut out for that sort of “work.”
Rob, the Fellow Who Just Flat-Out Lacks What It Takes to Commit Financial Fraud
At some point, I will have a discussion board here where people like Joachim will be participating on a daily basis.
You have talked about having a discussion board here for many years now and it hasn’t happened yet.
You have talked about your second book for years and it has not appeared.
It is clear that procrastination is top of your to-do list.
try acting like a real father and husband by putting your family first and not your computer.
I put my country first, Pink.
At least it’s first relative to my family.
The top three are: (1) God; (2) Country; and (3) Family.
I put my family’s needs ahead of my own.
But I don’t sell out my country when it is under attack and in need of my help.
And I make an effort to honor my obligations to my God. I believe that I will stand before my God on Judgment Day and I don’t want there to be something in my record saying that I have put forward posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and/or John Greaney. No way, no how.
I would be grateful if you would try to find someone else.
I’m afraid that that sort of thing is really just not my cup of tea.
Rob the Particular Tea Drinker
It is clear that procrastination is top of your to-do list.
We need the announcement of your prison sentence, Evidence.
That will go viral. That will get things rolling.
If it were up to me, we would have that announcement by the close of business today.
Any delays are not my doing. I see quick action as a win/win/win.
I wish you all good things, old friend.
Rob the Good Guy
If it were up to me, we would have that announcement by the close of business today.
When things are up to you they tend not to happen. (See discussion board, second book)
See article in the Wall Street Journal reporting that the numbers in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies are in error.
Rob the Numbers Guy
“I put my country first, Pink.”
Really? Just the other day, you said you little campaign here on te Internet was 50 times more important than anything else. When asked about the marriage to your wife and the birth of you kids, you still concluded that your Internet campaign was more important. Care to read the history and explain yourself?
“I have incorporated links to all of Wade’s responses into a single article so that everyone who visits the site has easy access to his side of the story.”
They would have to search it out. You make it sound like Wade is on your side, yet we know that is not the case. Do you understand fair disclosure and balance?
Really?
The economic crisis has affected millions of people.
Yes, that’s more important than my personal life.
When I receive a $500 million payday as a settlement of the damages I have suffered, my family will obviously make out very well indeed.
But that’s not the most important thing going on here.
That’s why I put forward the offer to settle for $500 million. I wanted to send a clear signal that I am not going to put my personal interests above the interests of the nation as a whole in bringing the economic crisis to an end.
My best wishes.
Rob the (Rich!) Patriot
You make it sound like Wade is on your side
Wade is obviously 100 percent on my side. He made clear in hundreds of comments that he loved doing the work he did back in the days when he felt safe publishing honest research.
Bogle ALSO loves the idea of being able to do honest research.
Bernstein too.
Burns too.
Swedroe too.
Every internet blogger too.
There is obviously no way that we all can get what we want without you Goons going to prison.
So off to prison you go!
Self-preservation is the first law, Pink. Our economic and political system must survive. So you must go to prison.
The question that remains is —
How LONG will that prison term be?
It will obviously be a lot shorter if we avoid the Second Great Depression.
So that has to be Job #1 for every person involved who is not so filled with hate as to be willing to behave cruelly to you Goons.
Not this boy.
That sort of thing is not my particular cup of tea.
I want to see your prison sentence be as short as possible.
Please feel free to let everyone on the internet know.
I would consider it a great favor if you would be willing to help me get the word out a bit.
Rob, the Fellow Who Opposes Acts of Cruelty to Internet Goons
Rob said: “Wade is obviously 100 percent on my side. ”
No, Rob, Wade has said you are wrong. Here are his exact words:
“I will make one more attempt at a reality check for you. You go on and on about how I allegedly lack personal integrity because I allowed the Goons to threaten me into silence.
The reality is that though I may have for a brief moment got a bit too caught up in YOUR drama, I do not have any fears about the Goons.
The reality is that you are causing me 1000x more career damage than the Goons ever could have by filling Google with so much nonsense about me, and sharing embarrassing private details such as my overly ambitious journal submission strategies, etc. Those in particular are highly private. People don’t publicly share where they submit articles to unless those articles are accepted. You’ve violated my trust in so many countless ways and yet you still proclaim to be my friend.
And the further reality is that if I *did* lack personal integrity, I could have made this all stop just by saying the meaningless sentence you want so desperately to hear: “I think the errors in the traditional safe withdrawal rate studies must be corrected by using Rob’s analytically valid method.”
But I don’t believe that. I do not believe you have offered a valid correction to the safe withdrawal rate question. And I believe that retirement income strategies go much further than the question of a safe withdrawal rate. And so that is why I’ve had to endure your ongoing harassment for months on end now.
Usually I can figure out the Rob-logic behind what you are thinking, but I really don’t know how you think you come out of this whole episode looking like the good guy. I guess it is because you think you are saving my soul and putting me back on the path of righteousness, or something, huh? If only you had the power to do a little bit of self reflection…”
He said many more words coming from the 100 percent opposite direction in the days before you threatened to send defamatory e-mails to his employer in an effort to get him fired unless he stopped posting honestly and Jack Bogle signaled that that way of proceeding was A/OK by him:
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/the-buy-and-hold-crisis/academic-researcher-silenced-by-threats-to-get-him-fired-from-his-job-after-showing-dangers-of-buy-and-hold-investing-strategies/
There will never be another academic researcher threatened once your prison term is announced, Pink.
Good.
Rob the Seer of Light at the End of the Tunnel
You also lie about me sending emails threatening someone’s job. Where is your proof showing where I did this?
You can’t show it because it is a lie.
Tell it to the jury, Pink.
That’s how our system of justice works.
Rob the Believer in Our System of Justice
You haven’t suffered $500 million worth of damages.
You haven’t even suffered 1% of those damages.
You have probably suffered a few hundred thousand dollars worth of damages due to your ill considered retirement decision, your terrible investment choices.
You also suffered some financial damage due to your decision to abandon your “passion saving” writing which might have netted a small amount of money and replace it with your campaign of terror against investment discussion boards.
I’ve suffered far more than $500 million in losses as a result of the Campaign of Terror, Evidence.
The research that I did with Wade is Nobel Prize-level work. It shows millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent and how to retire five to ten years sooner than they ever imagined possible following Buy-and-Hold strategies.
If each of 100 million people were willing to spend just $1 for each year by which they could retire early, that’s more than $500 million in my pocket as a result of just a single article.
I of course did a lot more than publish that single article over the past 11 years.
Obama spent trillions trying to get us out of the economic crisis. My work showed us how to avoid the crisis in the first place. Those insights obviously have a value in the trillions.
And my effort to open the internet up to honest posting on investing topics would permit hundreds or even thousands of academic researchers to do honest work for the first time. There is no price that can be put on the ability for these people to win back their personal integrity.
I am willing to settle for $500 million so long as this amount is paid prior to the next crash. It makes sense for me to do all I can to keep us out of the Second Great Depression. But never am I going to pretend that the value of the work I have put forward during the past 11 years is not much, much higher than the $500 million figure for which I am prepared to settle so long as the amount is paid in time to prevent the next big deepening of the economic crisis.
I wish you all good things, old friend.
Rob
your campaign of terror against investment discussion boards.
I haven’t shown too much enthusiasm for the relentless promotion of the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage, I think that much would certainly be fair to say.
Rob, the Most Severe Critic of Buy-and-Hold Investing “Strategies” Alive on Planet Earth Today
“The research that I did with Wade is Nobel Prize-level work.”
Wade said you are wrong and even mentioning the Nobel prize is just silly exaggeration.
He only said that after he was threatened, Pink.
The problem with threatening academic researchers is that it becomes impossible to have confidence they believe anything they say once they agree to change what they say in response to threats.
Wade made MANY comments indicating that he believed that the work was Nobel prize quality prior to when the threats were made.
In fact, you have done the same, Pink.
You said for years that my claim of May 13, 2002, that the numbers in the Old School SWr studies were wildly wrong was unbelievable because none of the “experts” had said this at the time. Now every “expert” in the field says that I was right all along.
My guess is that several of the “experts” had doubts about the Old School numbers but were afraid to post honestly because they know what the Buy-and-Hold Mafia does to honest researchers.
We have been making huge strides in our understanding of how stock investing works for 32 years now. But we have gained no benefits because the Buy-and-Hold Mafia has intimidated all who understand what the research really says into silence.
You obviously didn’t know about the errors.
Now you do.
That’s what Nobel Prize quality research does, Pink. It brings you up to speed on realities you never imagined.
My peer-reviewed research shows millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. That is BY FAR the biggest advance ever made in this field.
The idea that that research is not worthy of a Nobel prize is pure Goon nonsense.
If the research was not worthy of a Nobel Prize, why did you threaten Wade? There would be no motive to risk a prison sentence unless the research was very, very, very important.
Your own criminal behavior tells the tale.
Rob, the Fellow Who Believes that Every Investor Should Have Access to Honest Research and that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia Should Be Put in Prison Before the Close of Business Today
Definitely a downward spiral. Rob cannot write anything now without referring to prison, 500 million dollars, or Nobel prizes.
I think it would be fair to say that the prison question, the $500 million question and the Nobel prize question pretty much sum up where we stand today, What.
I write plenty of stuff that doesn’t refer to any of those three issues. I always have and I alway will.
But those three questions are the indeed the ones that matter most at this point in time.
Going to prison is a big deal. It’s obviously a big deal for you Goons. But it’s also a big deal for our entire society when people end up in prison because of things they said and did on the internet.
The $500 million settlement is huge. I have announced plans to use 5 percent to finance the building of new blogs. We can create a lot of exciting new blogs with that amount of money. I also plan to use 5 percent to promote my own blog. That amount of money will make it the top blog on the internet. Again, a very big deal.
And the awarding of the Nobel prize is going to send a message to every academic researcher that the Buy-and-Hold days are over and that the future belongs to researchers who do accurate and honest work. We aren’t going to have one academic researcher doing good work in coming days. We are going to have hundreds. Perhaps thousands. There’s a limit to how many threats you Goons can advance. Your entire strategy collapses once the Nobel prize is awarded.
So these are big issues.
I don’t say that they are the only issues that matter. But I do think it would be fair to say that it would be a mistake not to talk about the prison sentences and the $500 million settlement and the Nobel prize.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, in any event.
Rob, the Fellow Receiving the $500 Million Settlement (But Not One of the Ones Going to Prison!)
I also plan to use 5 percent to promote my own blog. That amount of money will make it the top blog on the internet.</i.
The free market has already delivered it's verdict on your blog. Despite your years of promotion, the only regular commenters are those you dismiss as "the goons"
It’s not a “free” market so long as there are death threats and board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.
That’s sort of the entire point, Evidence.
But then you knew that already, I imagine.
My best wishes to you, in any event.
Rob, the Advocate of a Truly Free Market for Investing Advice
But any one who wishes to can come here.
And they choose not to.
That’s a 100 percent fair statement, Evidence.
Rob, the Fellow Who Wishes It Wasn’t So But Who Acknowledges That It Is
Mr. Bennett,
There are extremely smart people in the investment industry and the ability to invest successfully in order to maximize returns would compel those extremely smart people to follow the money. If you really had discovered something so revolutionary, would you have a strong vocal following by now?
Also, of you really believed in what you say, why have you not followed your own advice?
The vast majority of stock is held by the wealthy. Middle class own very little. Why do you keep referring to middle class investors when they hold such little stocks. Further, middle class investors are more likely to try and time the market, when it is the wealthy investors that buy and hold, often to avoid paying tax on gains. Why do you keep referring to these middle class investors when the buy and holders are wealthy?
If you say that the market will crash and wipe out investors, how do you believe that you will collect $500 million or more? You already said people would be wiped out, so there would be nothing left to pay you, right?
If the various acts of fraud have occured, as you allege, why have prosecutors failed to bring charges?
When you make comments on your board, why dont you back them up with supported facts?
You have claimed to have switched to TIPS and IBonds back in 1996. As we can see those investment options were not available at that time. You have been asked to explain yourself, yet you failed to do so. Please explain.
There are extremely smart people in the investment industry and the ability to invest successfully in order to maximize returns would compel those extremely smart people to follow the money.
Yes and no, Questions.
The people who work in this field have high I.Q.s. No dispute there.
But Shiller’s findings are truly “revolutionary” (that’s the word used in the subtitle of his book).
Most of the people in this field have spent years learning what is in the textbooks. The stuff in the textbooks is wrong. That’s always the case when there is a “revolutionary” advance.
So intelligence and experience can actually be a drawback here. The more study a person has directed to the old model, the less capable he is of understanding the case for why it is wrong.
And the more of a motivation he has to convince himself that the new model is not a huge advance.
Please read the quote from Machiavelli that I put in the “People Are Talking” section of the site. He points out that it is very hard for new systems to gain a foothold. That’s because there are lots of people with an intense desire to keep the old system going (they built their careers around their knowledge of the now-discredited, old system) and not too many with an intense desire to push the new system (it’s hard to make any money promoting the new system until there are a good number of adherents to it).
Buy-and-Holders are today using their intelligence and industry to stop progress. They have become the thing they once opposed. People tried to stop Bogle once upon a time just as Bogle today tries to stop me.
It won’t work. It cannot work. The advance is too big.
The smart thing for someone like Bogle to do is to abandon Buy-and-Hold and promote Valuation-Informed Indexing. No one cares that he made a mistake. No one. What people want is investing advice that works. Bogle played as big a role as anyone in building the Valuation-Informed Indexing Model. Once he endorses it, he gets credit for his huge contributions.
And Valuation-Informed Indexing isn’t a dead thing, like Buy-and-Hold. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future.
Once Bogle realizes that and says so publicly, lots and lots of other smart people are going to join the program. There’s an old saying that “the harder they come, the harder they fall.” It has been very, very hard to knock down Buy-and-Hold. But once it falls, it falls entirely and completely. The transition will be short because there is now a mountain of material showing the dangers of Buy-and-Hold and the wonders of Valuation-Informed Indexing.
My guess is that it will be the next price crash that will start the collapse.
Rob
If you really had discovered something so revolutionary, would you have a strong vocal following by now?
Take a look at the “People Are Talking” section of the site, Questions. If you added together all the endorsements that every other financial blogger has ever obtained, they wouldn’t match the power of the endorsements that I have obtained just by myself. That’s an amazingly impressive reality.
No, I don’t have millions of people singing my praises, as you would expect given those endorsements. All you have to do to solve that puzzle is to go to the statements of the people who made the endorsements. One of the endorsements is from a New York Times blogger who said that he has read everything he can find about Valuation-Informed Indexing and that he believes that the work I have done is of HIUGE value. The same fellow banned me from his site! Why? He wants to make a buck. And Get Rich Quick schemes are the quickest way to make a buck in this field. Buy-and-Hold is the purest Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind. So he doesn’t want to upset the applecart.
Just about everyone in this field experiences that same tension today. Bill Bernstein has said important, honest things about stock investing. But he buries them in endorsements of Buy-and-Hold so that you Goons don’t come after him. It’s the same with Jack Bogle. It’s the same with Larry Swedroe. It’s the same with Scott Burns. Since you Goons threatened to destroy Wade Pfau’s career if he dared to continue to “cross” you by publishing honest research, it’s the same with Wade Pfau.
This is why I stress the importance of your prison sentence. People who are considering endorsing Buy-and-Hold strategies need to know that there will be consequences for doing so. Those people should be laughed at as woefully uninformed given that there is now 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor. In cases in which the Buy-and-Holders engage in criminal acts in “defense” of their Get Rich Quick claims, they need to be put in prison. Once prison sentences are announced, we are going to see a lot fewer Buy-and-Holders engaging in criminal acts of financial fraud.
We are working through this as a society. It pains people to acknowledge that they have been taken. We are experiencing feelings of shame and regret and anger and envy and all sorts of other ugly emotions. We need to focus more on the positive. We are the luckiest generation of investors that ever walked Planet Earth. We live at a time in which stocks have become virtually a risk-free asset class. But a lot of good it does us when we have adopted a Ban on Honest Posting on safe withdrawal rates and other critically important investment-related topics!
We need to get those prison sentences announced. Not because we like the idea of seeing our friends carted off to prison. Because we want as few people going to prison as possible and we want the sentences of those who do go to be as short as possible. The sooner we bring the economic crisis to an end and enter the greatest period of economic growth ever seen in our history, the less public anger there is going to be about what was done to us during the Buy-and-Hold years. The less public anger there is, the fewer prison sentences there are and the less lengthy are those that cannot be avoided.
Anyway, the intensity of my following is off the charts. There has never been anyone in this field who has received as many over-the-top endorsements of his work as I have received over the first 11 years of our discussions. But, no, you cannot expect lots of ordinary people to post here so long as the price paid for doing so is to receive death threats and to be banned from every board and blog on the internet and to see their reputations destroyed through tens of thousands of acts of defamation posts by you Goons.
There are good reasons why as a society we have adopted laws insuring that people who behave as you have will be sent away for long prison terms, Questions. Those long prison terms send a message to all members of our society as to the type of behavior we absolutely will not tolerate.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob, the Fellow Who Cares for the Goons and Thus Wants to See Their Prison Sentences Announced as Quickly as Possible
If the various acts of fraud have occured, as you allege, why have prosecutors failed to bring charges?
Why were charges not brought against Bernie Madoff for so many years?
His fraud was no secret. There was an accountant who had looked at the numbers and sent a letter to the SEC letting them know that the fund was a fraudulent enterprise. Why did the SEC not act?
Bernie was popular, Questions. He was pushing a Get Rich Quick scheme and investors LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Get Rich Quick schemes.
Prosecutors go after those pushing GRQ schemes AFTER the bottom falls out, after the thing has collapsed and all the investors have lost their money and are angry.
You will go to prison AFTER the next crash, not before.
That’s the way it works. That’s the way it has worked with every economic crisis caused by the ruthless promotion of Buy-and-Hold “strategies.” There is nothing even a little bit new in this.
Rob, the Fellow Who Doesn’t Need to Worry About What Will Happen to Him After the Next Crash Because He Started Insisting on His Right to Post Honestly Years Before
how do you believe that you will collect $500 million or more? You already said people would be wiped out, so there would be nothing left to pay you, right?
Oh, I have a funny hunch that the Wall Street Con Men might be able to find a few nickels and quarters between the sofa cushions, Questions.
Just another one of those crazy ideas that have been known to pass through my brain from time to time.
Rob, the Guy Expecting to Come Home with a BIG Bag of Nickels and Quarters Following the Next Price Crash
Why do you keep referring to middle class investors when they hold such little stocks.
In dollar terms, Buy-and-Hold does more damage to the wealthy than to the middle-class.
I focus on the middle-class because I direct all my writings to middle-class investors. I like lots of rich people. I have nothing against them. But my vision going back to the first day was to help millions of middle-class people to learn what they need to know to achieve financial freedom years sooner than they ever before imagined possible.
Buy-and-Hold is the single biggest thing holding back today’s middle-class person from experiencing early financial freedom. So I tend to focus on that.
Rob, the Middle-Class Guy Who Writes for Other Middle-Class Guys and Gals
You compare yourself to Bogle but I don’t think Bogle was successful by sitting around making a cruddy website.
If I understand your ‘plan’ you hope that there is a crash bigger than the Great Depression and that somehow it is determined that Internet personalities caused it because they did not allow our would-be savior (Rob Bennett) to post whatever he wants whenever he wants on their websites. And then this is somehow equated to ‘fraud’. Somewhere in there you are recognized as a Jesus equivalent and people give you money.
This is very interesting – you should spell it out for your wife to see what she says.
I would turn it around the other way. Rob Bennett is to blame for the financial crisis because he knew it was coming but screwed around on the Internet instead of doing anything about it.
“Yes, that’s more important than my personal life.”
This indicates that you are essentially leaving your personal life in tatters so that you can engage in hopeless email spam campaigns. You are like one of those homeless guys with the ‘the end is nigh’ poster boards. I assume some of them think they have 500M coming their way also.
We’re all in this together, What.
That’s the only thing I can think of to say in response to the words you have posted above.
You have my warmest wishes for a full and rewarding life.
Take care, man.
Rob the Believer in the Idea That Love (Not Hate!) Is the Answer
You compare yourself to Bogle but I don’t think Bogle was successful by sitting around making a cruddy website.
There were people who hated Bogle. Fidelity took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal saying that he was “UnAmerican” for promoting indexing.
My good friend Jack would not be where he is today had he responded with hate.
Love conquers hate. That’s how it is tested. That’s what life is — this contest between the forces of love and hate within us.
They say you’ll never eat another hot dog if you go see how they are made. The process here hasn’t been pretty, What. It’s the end result that is a beautiful thing.
The humans will enjoy the beautiful thing we are making together for many, many years to come. Everyone is going to try to forget the smell they experienced during the time it was being processed as soon as possible.
It’s the way of the world, man. You’ve just never seen it in such intensity before because you have never been involved in something so big and important and real before.
Don’t let the bad guys get you down, my old friend.
Rob the Hot-Dog Maker
You are like one of those homeless guys with the ‘the end is nigh’ poster boards.
Do the homeless guys have 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research backing up what they say, What?
If it weren’t for the 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research, I could say “Oh, there is no need for those Old School safe withdrawal rate studies to be corrected by the close of business today,” and not be committing financial fraud, which would land me in prison after the next crash.
But the 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research exists.
So it IS fraud for me to post dishonestly on these matters.
And I am NOT interested in going to prison.
I just don’t see any particular appeal to the idea.
That’s been the big hang-up going back to the morning of May 13, 2002.
I any event, I certainly wish you all good things.
Rob, the Fellow Who ADAMANTLY Refuses to Commit Financial Fraud to Make Mel Linduaer and John Greaney Happy