“When People in Positions of Responsibility Fail to Speak Up re Insanely Abusive Behavior it Creates an Environment of Intimidation That Affects Every Person Who Participates in Community Discussions. If It Were Not for That Environment of Intimidation, We Would Have Over the Past Three Decades Had Thousands and Thousands of Good and Smart People Warning Us All of the Dangers of Buy-and-Hold.”

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

“I don’t know where you got that one, Anonymous.”

Read the second line of your last response.

The second line of the post that I believe is the one that you are referring to states : “Have you ever seen a Valuation-Informed Indexer put forward a death threat?” How does that translate into: “So John, Mel, Jack and Wade all made death threats?,” which is the statement that prompted me to write: “I don’t know where you got that one, Anonymous”?

Mel Lindauer and John Greaney have advanced death threats. Jack Bogle and Wade Pfau have not. But Bogle and Pfau did not speak up when they saw Lindauer and Greaney and the members of their respective Goon Squads advancing death threats. Why not?

When people in positions of responsibility fail to speak up re insanely abusive behavior it creates an environment of intimidation that affects every person who participates in community discussions. If it were not for that environment of intimidation, we would have over the past three decades had thousands and thousands of good and smart people warning us all of the dangers of Buy-and-Hold and we wouldn’t be living through an economic crisis today.

So the entire thing is a scam. If an idea cannot survive without regular, heavy doses of intimidation tactics being employed to keep smart people quiet, that thing is a con, a scam, a fraud. No?

Buy-and-Hold wasn’t a scam prior to 1981. It was once a real thing. But it has been 36 years now since Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. And we are still discussing this stuff. Huh? What the h?

Millions of people have been hurt in very serious ways, Anonymous. It’s not a joke. This is serious business.

My sincere take.

Rob