Set forth below are the texts of two comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Rob: I’ve written e-mails to 30,000 academic researchers
Goon Poster: How many have made meaningful replies?
The response rate was roughly 0.5 percent, Evidence.
I’d like it to be 5 percent. I think it SHOULD be 50 percent. It’s the future of our economic and political systems at stake here.
But how many whites spoke out for Rosa Parks when she refused to move to the back of the bus?
For that matter, how many BLACKS spoke out for Rosa Parks when she refused to move to the back of the bus?
It takes courage to stand up to the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. The Wall Street Con Men have lots of money and lots of power and lots of connections and have demonstrated a brutal ruthlessness re their willingness to use their power and money and connections to destroy anyone who dares to “cross” them by posting honestly on safe withdrawal rates or any other critically important investment-related topic.
People are scared. For so long as people are scared, we are going to see a response rate of 0.5 percent rather than the response rate of 5 percent that we need to see to get the job done or the response rate of 50 percent that we would see if we all felt free to say what we truly believe about how stock investing works in the real world.
What I think you miss is that that response rate can jump from 0.5 percent to 5 percent and then to 50 percent in a very short amount of time.
How many people do you hear today saying that people with black skin should not be permitted to sit where they please on buses or to drink from the same water fountains as people with white skin?
People always knew on some level of consciousness that racism is wrong. It’s not that people were stupid in the 1950s and then suddenly became much smarter in the 1960s. It’s that a Social Taboo had developed that blocked us all from expressing our true feelings. To get laws changed, people need to speak out. People knew that they would lose their jobs and perhaps their lives if they spoke out about racism in earlier days. Survival is the first priority of the humans. We learned that we had to keep it zipped to be able to live our lives in peace and so we kept it zipped for a long, long time.
Until we didn’t.
Eventually, people worked up the courage to speak up.
Why?
Because survival is not the ONLY priority of the humans. We care about other people. We care about justice. We care about honesty. We care about our consciences. Our hearts go out to people whose lives are being destroyed for no good reason.
Rosa Parks had refused to go to the back of the bus at an earlier time in her life, about 12 years before the time that made her famous. No one backed her up that time. So her act of courage was in vain. When she did it again in the 50s, the time was right. That time she started a revolution. And everything fell in a short amount of time.
That’s how it is done, Evidence.
I got a 0.5 percent response rate on those mailings because most of us are scared today. We’re not dumb. We’re scared. The Buy-and-Hold Mafia is powerful and ruthless and we want to protect ourselves and our loved ones from its acts of violence and destruction and defamation. So most of us are keeping it zipped for the time-being.
But for how much longer?
The people who wrote the scores of responses that I received are the pioneers. They are the leaders. They are the ones who care enough about the future of their country that they worked up the courage to give public expression to their sincere views.
When those people see another price crash, one that may well take us into the Second Great Depression, they will speak out in even stronger terms. They will encourage others to speak out. There are hundreds if not thousands now on the borderline, people who came close to responding to my first mailing and people who will actually do it when I send a second mailing to them following the next crash.
The response rate will never drop to anything lower than 0.5 percent. It will in time rise to something much higher than that. It can only rise, it can never fall. The History Train moves in only one direction — Forward. You Goons are on the wrong side of the History Train and so you are doomed. You are already in a position where you have to get more and more and more abusive just to tread water. There comes a point where it is just not possible to get any more abusive. Then you go down.
You can’t win, Evidence.
Our nation’s laws just don’t permit it. Our nation’s beliefs just don’t permit it.
Robert Shiller didn’t have a Nobel prize in his pocket on the morning of May 13, 2002. He has one today. That should tell you something. That reality is reflective of something deep and real and growing. People are sick of the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage. More and more and more of us are every day working up the courage to say so in clear and firm and bold ways.
The ones who speak out first are the ones who do the most good and who become the most famous and who make the most money by doing so. People are catching on to that.
You are doomed. You were doomed on Day Six, when John Walter Russell put forward his sensitivity study showing that the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies were garbage. But you did have the violence card to play then. And the deception card. And the defamation card. The day is coming when you won’t even have those. When the Buy-and-Holders don’t have violence and deception and defamation to help them make their case, what the heck do they have?
They got nothing.
The good guys win in the end, Evidence.
I am sure.
I am sure because of the country we live in.
This may be a country that for a time tolerates con men but it is also a country that in time works up the courage to demand that they be placed in prison cells for the protection of all.
That’s why I love it so.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue, my old friend.
Rob
I was not happy with the response rate. It was much lower than what I expected. I expected something in the neighborhood of 5 percent. So the response rate I received was about 10 percent of what I expected.
I was THRILLED with the quality of the responses. The quality of the responses exceeded my most wildly positive expectations. By a lot.
That tells me that it is the highest quality people in the field who possess the courage to respond. I think we are going to continue to see it play out that way. Buy-and-Hold appeals to the lowest part of us, our Get Rich Quick urge, the savage and stupid and destructive voice that lurks within all of us. Valuation-Informed Indexing appeals to our better selves, the part of us that longs for honestly and kindness and intelligence.
I believe that love conquers hate in the end, Evidence. I acknowledge that there have been times in history when things have looked pretty darn dark. Love has always prevailed in the end. We wouldn’t be here today talking this matter over if that had not been the case. I think things are going to continue to play out that way. I sure hope so!
My best wishes to you.
Rob
And how many of those 150 people have had an interest in staying in contact with you and working toward The Cause with you?
Every last one of them has a STRONG interest in seeing me succeed, Anonymous.
Freakin’ Jack Bogle has a strong interest in seeing me succeed.
Otherwise, why would he include honest statements about how stock investing works in his books along with all the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage? I learned about the errors in the Old School retirement studies from Jack Bogle, Anonymous. It’s not too hard to figure out which side he would like to se prevail.
It all flips following the next price crash. That’s the one that will melt Jack’s heart. You just wait and see if it doesn’t.
If you want to make it happen sooner and thereby help Jack and you and the millions of middle-class investors out in a big way, please feel free to do so. I would love to see it happen.
But if you and lots of others elect to wait until the next price crash, that’s how it is going to be. I vote for acting by the close of business today. But I am not Superman. We live in communities. When enough of my fellow community members elect to act, that’s when it happens. That part is not for me to decide on my own.
Does all of that not make good sense?
Rob
And how many of those 150 people have had an interest in staying in contact with you and working toward The Cause with you?
It sounds like, from your response, that the answer is zero? 0/30,000 is quite a record, and certainly tells you something about your content and/or approach.
It tells me something about how much harm has been done to our country by the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of our nation, Anonymous.
That much is certainly fair to say.
I wish you all good things.
Rob
RED ALERT…….there is yet ANOTHER SWR discussion going on over at the Boglehead forum:
http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=156464&sid=22bcd93ab8b671e8677838151064c30d
Since you are not on the thread, does that mean each of the threads participants are committing fraud?
Of course it does.
The thing that REALLY shows that the Wall Street Con Men are committing fraud is that none of the Old School SWR studies has been corrected in the 13 years since I put up my post of May 13, 2002, showing that they do not contain adjustments for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
Once the studies are corrected, it becomes possible to talk about the stuff that matters — how people should go about retirement planning given what the research says. So long as there are still people pretending either that these “studies” contain valuation adjustments or that valuation adjustments don’t matter, the discussions go around and around in circles and never generate any constructive insights.
Either valuations matter or they don’t. We now have 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that they matter a great deal. So, yes, it is fraud to pretend otherwise. To engage in discussions of the merit of studies that have not been corrected in the 13 years since they were shown to be in error is OBVIOUS fraud.
That’s my sincere take re this terribly important question in any event, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all good things regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.
Rob
Rob said: “Of course [the participants in the most recent Bogleheads SWR thread] are committing fraud.”
Ahem. Apparently, the Sage of Purcelleville don’t read so gud:
[from the last post on the thread, as of this message]:
“Re: 4% Withdrawal Rate Question
Postby DFrank » Sat Jan 24, 2015 10:13 am
Fundamentally, I agree with [Pfau, Blanchett, Finke’s] conclusion: Given the current market environment don’t count on the old 4% rule working as the data on which it was based doesn’t match the current market situation.
– Even setting aside spending adjustments based on market conditions, I don’t think constant real spending is an accurate model of what most people’s spending profile will be. Most will see declining real spending as they get up in years, perhaps with an increase for medical and/or assisted care costs in the final years
In the paper they acknowledge that these are likely ways in which a typical retirement might vary from their assumptions. In the end I conclude that unless you have a very large wealth to spending needs ratio there is no prescription for success, so best to be prepared to be flexible and adjust to the reality that unfolds through your retirement.”
Uh, Rob…. So, that’s your basic case of financial fraud right there? I mean, he seems to have said exactly what you hoped to say, only far more eloquently and compactly. But since YOU didn’t get the glory, let’s slap the legirons on him, eh, Commander Bennett?
Rob,
A single vital question — one that might change your life and even get you back on track, IF you take it with all seriousness and dead earnest:
Have you ever slowly, carefully, and critically, read the information found at the following link, and identified SPECIFICALLY and with particularity any areas where you think you can find error, omisison, or outright deception?
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates
If so, you know it’s a Wiki, right? And that while you personally are probably barred from editing it, you could at least email admins at Bogleheads as to any SPECIFIC errors you can actually find? My bet is that if you found same, that they will rapidly fix them, if substantiated.
Sadly, you have yet to undertake any such exercise. If you do take the challenge, and do think you find the elsive error, please leave an annotated SPECIFIC reference back here, or as a main new article on your Blog. Nothing could possibly be a better salve for your self-gutted internet reputation. Well, except perhaps a simple statement: “I was wrong. Again.”
Uh, Rob…. So, that’s your basic case of financial fraud right there? I mean, he seems to have said exactly what you hoped to say, only far more eloquently and compactly. But since YOU didn’t get the glory, let’s slap the legirons on him, eh, Commander Bennett?
Why didn’t he talk about the 13-year cover-up, Grandpop?
This is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States, right? There’s nothing else even in a close second place.
That means prison time for lots of people, right?
So what do you think are the chances that the Wall Street Con Men are going to come forward later this afternoon and say “some fellow posted honestly about the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies this morning and so we have all decided to come clean.”
The chances of that are ZERO, Grandpop. The Wall Street Con Men do not want to go to prison.
You see that, right?
If it were just a question of giving the best investing advice possible, we obviously would have solved this problem on the afternoon of May 13, 2002. We ALL want to overcome this economic crisis. We ALL want to be able to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. We ALL want to be able to retire 10 years sooner than we ever imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold Era. There is no controversy re any of that stuff. All of that stuff is a win/win/win/win/win. Re that stuff, we are all in this together. So there is nothing to argue about re anything that this fellow says.
The controversy is over the prison sentences. It is the prison sentences that make the Wall Street Con Men and you Goons get hot.
What do you propose that we do re the freakin’ prison sentences, the real issue here?
I have lots of ideas. I have said that we should point out all the wonderful stuff that the Buy-and-Holders did for us. I have said that we should point out that Shiller’s research really was “revolutionary” (his word) and that it takes time for a society to assimilate such revolutionary insights. I have said that the mistake that was made back in the 1960s has caused lots of people to invest in very dangerous ways and that of course has made everyone in this field worried about the reaction they are going to see when they come clean. I have pointed our that cognitive dissonance is a real thing and that there is a mountain of evidence that most (perhaps all) of those who have advocated Buy-and-Hold have been suffering from cognitive dissonance. I have noted that most of the Buy-and-Holders have included honest statements about what the research says mixed in with their Buy-and-Hold mumbo jumbo, showing that they have consciences and that all else being equal they would like to be helping their readers and their clients. I have hinted on one or two occasions that perhaps we could enact some form of amnesty that would let a lot of our Buy-and-Hold friends off the hook.
What good does it do to say for the ten-thousandth time that the numbers in the Old School retirement studies are wildly wrong if you don’t also point out the massive act of financial fraud and make some effort to bring it to a close by the end of business today?
Do I have sympathy for those who are afraid to speak up?
I have all the sympathy in the world for those people. There is no one alive on Planet Earth who has felt the wrath of the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads to even a tiny fraction of the extent to which I have. So I am filled to the brim with sympathy.
But you know what?
Sympathy doesn’t help the millions of middle-class investors whose lives are in the process of being destroyed one tiny little bit. Sympathy doesn’t pay the electric bill when it is snowing outside. Sympathy only takes you so far.
We need to go beyond sympathy. We need to take steps.
That’s my sincere belief, Grandpop. In an ideal world, no one would have to call out the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads on this massive act of financial fraud. In the real world, everyone who is aware of what has been going on for 13 years now (it’s 34 years if you count back to when Shiller published his “revolutionary” research) has two choices that are on the right side of the ethical line: (1) He can speak out; or (2) he can find another way to make a living or another sort of discussion board to post to. Keeping quiet while the economic system and even possibly the political system of the country that you should love collapse is not an ethically viable option. Not in this boy’s assessment, at any rate.
You talk about me getting the “glory.” Well, I an entitled to a whole big bunch of glory re this matter, no? I pointed out the errors in the Old School retirement studies TEN YEARS before they were written up in the Wall Street Journal. There are millions of middle-class investors whose lives would not have been destroyed had the thousands of our fellow community members who expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted had their way. So, yes, it was a pretty darn “glorious” thing that I worked up the courage to “cross” John Greaney and put up that famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002.
But you know who else gets to see a whole big bunch of glory once you Goons come clean?
Jack Bogle.
Wade Pfau.
Mike Piper.
Todd Tresidder.
Larry Swedroe.
John Walter Russell.
Carl Richards.
Michael Kitces.
Bill Shultheis.
And on and on and on and on and on and on.
There are tens of thousands of people who are going to start posting honestly re what they know about how stock investing works in the days following Bogle’s “I Was Wrong” speech. Those people have important things to share with us all. And they have demonstrated that they are 100 percent happy to do so once we show as a society that we will protect them from you Goons when they do so.
This is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance, Grandpop. There’s a lot of “glory” to go around.
My take is that we should all start enjoying the glory that goes with being the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth by taking whatever steps we can come up with to get your prison sentence reduced a bit and thereby remove the one impediment that stands in the way of our all enjoying our good fortune and massive heaps of glory.
Does all of that not make good sense?
It sure does to me.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.
Rob
Here is a blog entry that I wrote on the Bogleheads Wiki on Safe Withdrawal Rates a number of years back:
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2008/06/10/the-boglehead-wiki-statement-on-safe-withdrawal-rates/
Where is the link to the Retirement Risk Evaluator? I am the person who discovered the errors in the Old School SWR studies (13 years ago!) and the Risk Evaluator is the only New School SWR calculator available today. What possible reason could anyone writing a Wiki on SWRs have to fail to include a link other than to aid a massive cover-up?
Financial fraud is a felony, Grandpop. Prison time.
Rob
You see that, right?
No.
Well, it’s so.
Fama is a legitimate researcher. Buy-and-Hold was once a real thing. There was no bad intent when it was developed.
When Shiller published his research in 1981, the Buy-and-Holders didn’t know what to make of it. They were shocked. They suffered cognitive dissonance. Prices were at rock-bottom lows. So they told themselves that there was no harm in putting off an acknowledgment that Buy-and-Hold had been discredited. They couldn’t imagine prices ever again even reaching fair-value levels, much less going to insanely dangerous levels. So they put off saying anything, hoping someone would come forward to make sense of things in time.
In 1996, prices reached insanely dangerous levels. Now it was too late to acknowledge anything. What were they going to do, say “oopsi, we forgot to mention back in 1981 that peer-reviewed research was published that showed that there there is zero chance that the strategy we advocate could ever work in the real world.” So again things were put off.
When I put forward my May 13, 2002, post, all heck broke loose because the Buy-and-Holders knew that valuations was the weak point of the strategy. They knew that the implications of Shiller’s research could never be discussed or the entire house of cards would collapse to the ground.
Every day, more human lives are destroyed. But the Buy-and-Holders feel that nothing can be done that will not land them in prison cells. So we continue on like this, going down, down, down, down, down, over time.
What do you propose that we do, Grandpop?
I propose that we tell the truth in the most charitable way possible. There may be prison sentences. But if we are as honest as possible and as charitable as possible, we will see the smallest number of prison sentences possible and they will be for the shortest lengths possible given the circumstances that apply.
If you have any better ideas, I’m all ears.
If not, I am going to continue to do the best that I can to bring us all together and to achieve a resolution that leaves every single person affected by this saga in the best possible position in which he or she can be left.
I hope that all makes good sense to you.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“Well, I an entitled to a whole big bunch of glory re this matter, no?”
No. Wade on the other hand seems to be getting a whole big bunch of glory as the leading authority on SWR, given his latest in the Wall Street Journal:
http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2015/01/20/how-much-can-you-safely-spend-in-retirement/
Didn’t read it, did you? It’s really a shame that your jealous rage is all you have left.
The idea here is that I should be going crazy because Wade is using what he learned about safe withdrawal rates from me to get rich and famous while not saying how he happened to learn about this stuff. There are six ways in which this is wrong-headed thinking.
1) I would not trade places with Wade for all the money in the world. I of course would like to be making the money he is making and I would of course like to be getting the recognition that he is getting. But not at the price that he was forced to pay to obtain that money and recognition. Wade betrayed himself and his family and his profession and his country. I am not interested. I don’t want to pay that price and I don’t want Wade to pay that price and I don’t want anyone else to pay that price.
2) Even if my desire for the money and recognition influenced me, I wouldn’t have any means to obtain it. I am not an academic researcher. If I wanted to sell out, how would I go about doing it? It’s not an option for me.
3) Despite the betrayal, Wade is doing good and important work. Wade doesn’t hurt me by spreading knowledge of the flaws in the Old School retirement studies. He is opening minds. The more articles of this nature that people see, the more open they are to Valuation-Informed Indexing. If people had been saying 15 years ago what Wade is saying today, there never would have been any controversy when I put forward my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002. Wade is helping. That obviously makes me happy, not upset.
4) How do people make use of Wade’s ideas without acknowledging that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage? They can’t. Wade’s ideas about how stock investing works are the OPPOSITE of Bogle’s ideas about how stock investing works. The differences need to be RESOLVED if we are as a society to move forward in our understanding of how stock investing works. This site contains the materials that people need to review to understand why the Buy-and-Holders have been standing in our way for 34 years now. We know today how stock investing works. But we have to talk about it in these roundabout ways because the Buy-and-Holders freak out if we speak clearly. Ultimately. Wade’s ideas cannot prevail until we work up the courage to take on the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. So Wade and I are in an ultimate sense 100 percent on the same side.
5) Bogle and all of the other Buy-and-Holders and even all of you Goons are all on the same side too. You see me as the enemy. But that’s only because you are not capable of thinking clearly re these matters today. If we could go back in a time machine to May 13, 2002, and play it over, Greaney would play it very differently than how he played it back then. If we could go back in a time machine to 1981 and play it over, Bogle would play it very differently than how he played it back then. I wasn’t around to help Bogle out in 1981. But I tried to help Greaney out in 2002. How did I know where things were headed? I knew because I understood (in a very vague way at that time) what the peer-reviewed research in this field really says. There are IMPLICATIONS that follow from our findings of the past 34 years and they cannot be indefinitely ignored.
6) We are working through a process. Bogle has a part to play. Shiller has a part to play. I have a part to play. Wade has a part to play. Even you Goons have a part to play. We know where the process leads us. There is only one place to which it can lead us. We all want to get to the same place. So we all should be working together. We will all come to accept that eventually. Because we have no choice. I will be reconciled with Wade and I will end up good friends with Bogle and Shiller and all the others. I will be good friends even with you Goons. You will be in prison for a time. But prison sentences comes to an end. When your prison sentences come to an end, you will no longer see any profit in goonishness and we will be good friends. I have said it. So it must be true!
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, Wade Fan.
Hang in there, man. Don’t let the bad guys get you down.
Rob
Why is it necessary to have a Spanish Inquisition? Why not just make use of new research and move on? This is what normal people do.
Your behavior guarantees your failure.
I don’t want to have a Spanish Inquisition, Laugh. I want to move on. I want just what you said.
A number of months ago, you Goons decided to let me back on the Bogleheads Forum to see how things would go if we tried that again. I went to the board and I looked at the current threads and the top one was one where a guy was asking for a good retirement calculator. Others had put up links to FIRECalc, which was based on Greaney’s study. I didn’t say a word about that. I kept it zipped. Instead I just “moved on,” as you put it. I put up a link to the Retirement Risk Evaluator, which is the first New School retirement calculator. I was re-banned in five seconds.
Is that moving on? Is that avoiding the Spanish Inquisition? Or is that restarting it?
I often say that Bogle needs to give an “I Was Wrong” speech. That’s what I believe. But I have often noted that it would be enough for him to give an “I’m Not Sure” speech. That would get the job done too. The difference is that he would not be endorsing Valuation-Informed Indexing. He would be continuing to endorse Buy-and-Hold. But he would be moving us all beyond the Spanish Inquisition tactics that the Buy-and-Holders have brought to the table for the past 13 years.
Bogle believes in Buy-and-Hold. He believes that he has helped people by telling them about Buy-and-Hold.
You Goons believe in Buy-and-Hold. You Goons believe that you have helped people by telling them about Buy-and-Hold.
Given that you believe in it, you are right to tell people about it.
I do not believe in it. So it obviously would be wrong for me to tell people that I believe in it.
I don’t believe in FIRECalc. So it obviously would be wrong for me to tell people that I believe in FIRECalc. I need to tell people that I believe in the Retirement Risk Evaluator.
If you want to stop using Spanish Inquisition tactics, you can do so today,. You can do what normal people do. You can move on.
That part is up to you. I don’t control you.
If I say that FIRECalc gets the numbers right, I am telling a lie. I am engaging in financial fraud. That cannot possibly be the right answer. That I will never do.
I love all of my Buy-and-Hold friends and I am happy to reach out to them in any way that I possibly can. Right up until they demand that I cross The Felony Line. I do not cross The Felony Line. Not ever.
That part is up to me. The rest is up to you.
I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors regardless of what investing strategies you elect to employ for yourself or recommend to others.
Rob