Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:
Are they guilty of fraud by not running your weekly column?
No. I mentioned up above how Jacob Wolinsky (the owner of the ValueWalk.com site) is a hero for running so many columns. He put himself on the line by doing that. He helped a lot of people by doing that.
I’d like to see him do even more. I would like to see him post an article in his own name saying that he has witnessed the tactics of you Goons and that he is appalled by them. He knows about how Wade Pfau was threatened. Why not speak out about that? He would be helping Wade by doing that. Wade wants to get back to telling the truth. If someone spoke up in support of him, that would change the world for the better in a very big way.
He’s afraid. I know how it feels. I was once afraid. I didn’t speak up about the errors in Greaney’s retirement study for three years because I was afraid of what you Goons would do to me if I did. And of course hundreds and hundreds of others have shown that they are afraid. Bogle is afraid. Shiller is afraid. Kitces is afraid. And on and on and on.
That’s what needs to change, Zippy. We all need to work up the courage to stand up to you Goons. You Goons HAVE engaged in fraud and that needs to be addressed. Every responsible person in this field who fails to speak up about it is hurting themselves and their communities and their friends and their profession and their country.
It took me a long time to work up the courage to speak up. I have never regretted it. I have taken lots of hits as a result. But I have also learned amazing things and have experienced the gratification that comes from passing those things along to lots of others. So I opened doors when I worked up the courage to advance that fateful post of the morning of May 13, 2002.
Will we as a society work up the courage to demand that Bogle give an “I Was Wrong” speech and that it be written up on the front page of the New York Times?
I believe we will. If we don’t, we all go down. Our economic system cannot survive unless we find some means to get accurate and honest information about the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research out to the millions of middle-class investors who need to obtain it. So I think we will do the right thing when we are left with no choice, when the next price crash hits and we are looking at the Second Great Depression descending upon us.
I believe that we will have Bogle working with us at that time.
I believe that we will have you Goons working with us at that time.
I sure hope so!
But we will have to wait a bit to see how it all plays out.
I wish you the best with it. That much is for sure.
Rob
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