“People LOVE Being Told That They Possess More in the Way of Assets Than They Really Do Possess. That’s Why Buy-and-Hold Is So Popular — the Lie Being Told Is a Soothing One to the Ears of Millions of Us. But There’s Nothing Soothing About Seeing Your Retirement Account Wiped Out. When We See in Flesh-and-Blood Terms How the Buy-and-Hold Lies Have Destroyed Our Lives, We Will Turn on the Con Men Who Have Directed So Much of Their Human Energies to Pushing Those Lies and to Profiting From the Human Weaknesses That Make Us All Susceptible to Them.”

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

If no one will state it, then what evidence do you have that indicates that will change in the future?

It’s common sense, Anonymous.

Look at what happened with the Bernie Madoff con. People who had looked at the numbers knew that Madoff was working a con long before he was exposed. People wanted to believe because we all carry a Get Rich Quick urge within us. But people stopped believing when they lost most of their retirement money.

What reason do we have for thinking that it might turn out different with Buy-and-Hold? I sure am not able to think of anything. People LOVE being told that they possess more in the way of assets than they really do possess. That’s why Buy-and-Hold is so popular — the lie being told is a soothing one to the ears of millions of us. But there’s nothing soothing about seeing your retirement account wiped out. When we see in flesh-and-blood terms how the Buy-and-Hold lies have destroyed our lives, we will turn on the con men who have directed so much of their human energies to pushing those lies and to profiting from the human weaknesses that make us all susceptible to them.

That’s my sincere take, in any event. We will have to wait to see how things play out to know for certain.

My best wishes to you.

Rob