Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
“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
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