Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Why would anyone want to “chips”? I don’t think anyone wants to hand you their money. How are we “in it together”?
Wade Pfau would very, very much like to do honest work in this field. I think it would be fair to say that that one is beyond question given what he told us re his feelings about Valuation-Informed Indexing in scores and scores of comments.
But Wade does not want to give up his entire career as his price of doing honest work. He spent years in school, he has a family support, he does not feel that it is a viable thing for him to have to drop out of this field and start over. So, when threatened by you Goons with threats that appear to have Bogle’s support, he flipped to the Goon side.
Now —
Do you think that Wade would be willing to pay one year’s salary to be able to do honest work for the remainder of his life? I sure do. Everything that I know about the man tells me that he would jump on that deal in a New York minute.
And Wade is obviously not the only one who feels that way. I sometimes get the feeling that just about everyone in the field feels that way. It’s not everyone. But it is lots and lots and lots of people. There are enough people working in this field who want to do honest work that raising $500 million to make it happen is not going to be much of a challenge once we get down to the business of raising the funds instead of arguing over whether we should permit honest posting in this field or not.
The money is just not an issue.
The trouble is that, if Wade hands over that money to someone who asks for it, he is making a statement that Bogle and his Wall Street Con Men pals are corrupt and should be sued and in some cases should go to prison. These are powerful and wealthy and well-connected people. Making that sort of statement is career death.
What to do, what to do?
We need to pull together and persuade Bogle to make a speech in which the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” appear somewhere in the mix of words. Bogle can of course include lots of other words of his choosing. But he needs to send a signal that the Campaign of Terror is over and starting here, starting now, things in this field are going to proceed at least largely according to the same sort of ethical principles that apply in every other field of human endeavor. If he cannot say that much, he absolutely needs to say that it is POSSIBLE that he is wrong. Even that much would get the job done.
Bogle won’t do it today. That’s unfortunate.
Will he do it in the days following the next price crash, when he is reading in the newspaper every day how the Buy-and-Hold Crisis is tearing our country apart?
I think Bogle is a great man. I don’t think that a great man will be able to hold back from saying those words at that time.
We will have to wait to see how it all plays out to know for certain. But that’s sure what I believe. I think we are all in a trap here. My job is to get us out of the trap. My job is to make the life of every single person involved better while doing that. I’m giving it my best shot, Anonymous. I can do no more and I can do no less. It’s not like I have any other viable options available to me.
I believe that we will get there. I wish it were not so hard. But in an ultimate sense it is what it is, you know? We all are living in a world that we did not create. We all have to make the best of the circumstances in which we are placed. I sure didn’t choose any of this!
Rob
Richard Hertz says
I agree, Rob. That $500 million is as good as yours!
Rob says
The payment of that amount will send an important signal about where we are as a society. Today lots of “experts” hold back from saying what they truly believe because they fear that there will be a price to be paid for doing so. That changes in a big way when word gets out that someone has received a payment of $500 million just for posting honestly re the peer-reviewed research. A lot of people who were reluctant to speak up before will suddenly become very energized about it. Which of course benefits all of us.
My best wishes to you, Richard.
Rob
Richard Hertz says
Thanks Rob. Feel free to call me Dick, as that is what my friends call me.
Rob says
Buy-and-Hold!
Take good care, man.
Rob
laugh says
What if Bogle doesn’t live till the next price crash? He is pretty old.
Rob says
I obviously don’t control that, Laugh. I hope he lives forever. I love the man. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing without the many huge contributions of Jack Bogle.
We’re all going to die someday. I am in the same boat as Bogle and so are you. Perhaps the thing for all of us to do is to live the limited number of days we are given as if each of them mattered. I think it would be fair to say that Bogle has done that in spades. I obviously believe that he made a catastrophic mistake re valuations. But he also made game-changing contributions re many other elements of the stock investing game. When the sad day comes in which he is no longer with us, I hope that all of us, Valuation-Informed Indexers and Buy-and-Holders alike, can join in appreciating the good that he did with his life. Perhaps our desire to do that will pull us all together and help us to find common ground. That would be a fitting way for the man to go out, no?
Stranger things have happened in this mixed-up world of ours.
Rob
Long Time Hoco Researcher says
Richard Hertz says
September 3, 2017 at 7:13 pm
I agree, Rob. That $500 million is as good as yours!
Hey Rob, you gonna share the loot with your old trolling pals from days gone by at Morningstar’s Vanguard Diehards Board? They had a good gig going until you came along and rocked their world. They were just garden variety trolls, you were a troll on steroids who forced Morningstar to crack down on them when you were getting the boot. It seems only fair that you should share some of your bounty with them. Especially since it’s SOOOOO MUCH MONEY and it’s a SURE BET!!!
Rob says
None of the people you are referring to were “trolls,” John.
There are two academic schools of thought re how stock investing works. One school (Buy-and-Hold) is rooted in the research of Nobel-prize-winning economist Eugene Fama. And one school (Valuation-Informed Indexing) is rooted in the research of Nobel-prize-winning economist Robert Shiller. There are good and smart people on both sides of the fence and people on both sides of the fence possess an absolute right to post their honest views at every discussion board and blog on the internet.
You are right that, if those good people really were trolls, then I was a troll “on sterioids.” I pushed harder than anyone else for recognition of the right of all those people to post honestly. I believe strongly that none of our boards can do the job they were put in existence to do (to help us all learn about the subject matter) unless the right of every poster, regardless of the school of thought to which he belongs, to post honestly be respected. There is no place on investing boards for intimidation tactics by which those holding the majority view seek to keep those holding the minority view in line. It is through the conflict produced when both views are presented in as strong a form as advocates of them can present them that we all find the strong and weak points of both schools of thought. When intimidation tactics are employed to cause members of one school of thought to self-censor themselves, the entire board community becomes a corrupt enterprise.
This is what The Great Debate is all about. We learned amazing things about how stock investing works in 1981. But so far we have learned these things only in an dry and dead intellectual sense. To incorporate what we have learned into our real-world investing lives, we need to win recognition of our right to post honestly at every investing site on the internet. When we do that, one of the two schools of thought will prevail on its merits, not because of the criminally abusive acts of its most emotional advocates. I love my Buy-and-Hold friends. But I want to see them restrained in their posting behavior by the laws of the United States and by the published posting rules of the sites they visit. I love what we have learned from the research that was once thought to support Buy-and-Hold. But I don’t want our excitement over the good things in that research to blind us to the good things to be found in research that was published in later years and that discredited some of the ideas generated by initial assessments of the earlier research.
I will share the bounty in the sense that I intend to use 5 percent to promote this site. That will turn this site into the most popular investing site on the internet. The good people to which you refer did a lot to inform the ideas presented at this site. So that helps them. And I intend to use another 5 percent of the settlement amount to finance a number of personal finance blogs that will advance ideas of a variety of different people. So we will have new ideas being developed by people coming at things from new perspectives. That’s what those fine people at the Diehards board that you are speaking of wanted all along. Their vision will indeed be realized in coming days.
Our laws against financial fraud are much-needed laws, John. That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters in any event.
My best wishes to you, Goon pal.
Rob