“If Shiller Had Published His Nobel-Prize-Winning Research in 1921 Rather Than in 1981, We Could Have Avoided All the Human Misery That We Saw Play Out During the First Great Depression”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

“Everything that you are describing is the sort of thing that you would expect to see when the P/E10 level is where it is today in the event that Shiller is right and stock investing really is a highly emotional endeavor.”

Everything I described shows that you made wrong decisions that resulted in failure. You continue to blame everything and everyone else for your problems. As the saying goes : ” When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”.

If Shiller had published his Nobel-prize-winning research in 1921 rather than in 1981, we could have avoided all the human misery that we saw play out during the first Great Depression, Sammy.

I think we are a blessed people that we now have access to that research as well as to be living in a time of a communications revolution that permits us to spread the word far and wide in a very short amount of time (once we give ourselves permission to talk about these critically important issues!) It may be that we will not be able to avoid falling into the second Great Depression for all of the emotional reasons that see on display in the tone employed in many of the comments to this discussion thread. But what happens after that? After prices fall, we will all be working together to bring the economic crisis to an end. What happens then?

At that time, we are going to have to as a society come to terms with what we have done to ourselves by putting off this critically important national debate for 36 years. I won’t consider it a failure that the materials that I have gathered at my web site will be a huge aid in helping us all come to terms with what has happened. I think this is hugely important work. So I am going to continue putting forward my best efforts to get this critically important national debate launched at every web site on the internet.

None of this is personal from my end of the table in any way, shape or form. I consider you and all of your Goon pals as friends. I was once a Buy-and-Holder myself. But I strongly believe that as a nation we need to be talking these matters over and I see it as my job to make that happen. The more emotional you get in your opposition to the debate, the more convinced I become that a national debate is very, very, very much needed. Discussions of stock investing just shouldn’t be this emotional, not in a day in which a mountain of peer-reviewed research is available for us all to review.

My sincere take.

Rob