Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“And why haven’t you Goons DEMANDED such a statement from Shiller?”
Lots of reasons.
1. Shiller has no idea who you are.
2. If he did know who you are, he would say you’re a nut.
3. When he called you a nut, you would just say he’s being intimidated. Only difference would be the rush you got from him acknowledging your existence. You’d probably send out 30,000 emails bragging about that.
4. Nothing Shiller could possibly say would change my mind about how to invest anyway.
5. Civilized people don’t DEMAND statements from other people
1. Shiller knows what safe withdrawal rates are and Shiller knows what valuations are. That’s what matters.
2) I don’t think Shiller would say that I am a nut. Wade Pfau sure didn’t say that. He researched the issue for a long time and came to the conclusion that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” Rob Arnott sure didn’t say that I am a nut. He said that my site is right on. He said that he has seen the same intimidation tactics that I have run into and that he finds them deplorable. Bill Shultheis sure didn’t say that I am a nut. He said that he found my site amazing, that he had never seen a site that offered so much great information in one place. Michael Kitces sure didn’t say that I am a nut. We exchanged scores of e-mails and he made clear that he enjoyed the interactions and learned a lot from them. I think that, if you Goons thought that there was anything more than a zero chance that Shiller would say that I was a nut, you would have asked for his comments re these matters a long, long time ago. I mean, come on.
3) If Shiller said that I was a nut, I would report on that here at the blog. If he gave reasons why he thought that, I would explore those. If I found some of his reasoning weak, I would point that out. But I would certainly report what he said. What Shiller says re these matters is news.
4) “Nothing Shiller could possibly say would change my mind about how to invest anyway.” — Um….
5) I think it would be reasonable to demand a statement in this case. There are millions of middle-class retirements at risk. If it really is so that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies do not contain valuation adjustments, we are going to experience the biggest social catastrophe in U.S. history. There were thousands upon thousands of newspaper articles and web site articles that offered retirement planning advice rooted in the infamous “4 percent rule.” Millions of retirees relied on that Buy-and-Hold retirement advice to their detriment. These people did nothing wrong. They tried to do the responsible thing by checking out what the experts said. They of course had no way of knowing that there were people who knew that the studies were in error but feared saying anything because of what they knew you Goons would do to them if they offered honest comments. If Shiller can do something to help get those studies corrected 15 years after the errors in them became public knowledge, it sure seems to me that he should be doing it.
If you want to just ask rather than to demand, then please ask. You haven’t done that much for 15 years now.
I wonder why.
Rob
“I don’t think Shiller would say that I am a nut. Wade Pfau sure didn’t say that.”
No, Wade didn’t literally call you a nut. He merely denounced you, cut off all contact with you, and advised others to do the same. Which is what people do to nuts.
Why would uninterested bystanders DEMAND Shiller issue a statement about you? You ask him. No, you don’t do that, do you? Your thing is to enlist others to take action for you.
Wade did those things because you Goons put a gun to his head. He certainly never gave the tiniest indication that he thought that I was a nut during the 16 months in which we worked together on a daily basis and during which he told me on numerous occasions that he had learned many things from me that he had never learned as a result of the work he did earning his Ph.D. This is why you Goons will be going to prison in the days following the next price crash. I mean, come on.
You should ask Shiller because you should want to learn everything you can about how stock investing works and he knows a lot about the subject matter. To want to learn is rational. To not want to learn is emotional.
Rob
I couldn’t care less what Shiller thinks about you. And no one else cares either. Except you. So why aren’t you asking him? If this is so vitally important, why aren’t you typing up an email to him right now? You sent 30,000 emails, so why is number 30,001 impossible?
I’ve written to Shiller two times. John Walter Russell and I wrote him once with a question about the methodology he used in calculations he presents at his web site. He responded to that in a completely helpful way. And then I wrote him once asking for help with you Goons. He did not respond to that e-mail.
People don’t want to take you on, Anonymous. That’s the story here. That’s what is holding us all back. 90 percent of the population believes in some form of Buy-and-Hold. And it hurts their feelings for people to say things that suggest that they have made a terrible mistake. So there is a Social Taboo against taking you on.
But we cannot move forward without taking you on! So we have to do so whether it hurts a bit or not. It will hurt 500 times more to experience a 50 percent drop in stock prices.
I believe that everyone who believes that the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research is legitimate research should be taking you on. It doesn’t help for me to ask Shiller questions. Everyone already knows that I want to see the national debate get started. I have been saying that for 15 years now. There is no news there.
It would be big news if you asked Shiller in a sincere way to share his thoughts on every possible question in a clear and detailed way. He is not going to respond if you suggest that you may freak out depending on what he says. But, if you make clear that you really want to know what he thinks on all sorts of how-to questions, I believe that he would he happy to respond. Why wouldn’t he be?
That would change history in a very, very, very big and positive way. I would love to see it happen.
Are you able to imagine any possible downside?
Rob
Oh brother. Don’t ask him about goons. No one will take that nonsense seriously. Simply describe VII in detail (if that’s even possible) and ask him what he thinks of it. Or are you afraid of the answer?
I am of course not even a tiny bit afraid. I would love to hear Shiller’s comments on Valuation-Informed Indexing. If I got anything wrong, I want to correct the error. If I got everything right, I want to spread the word to the entire world.
There is an important sense in which Shiller has already said what he thinks. He said in 1981 that valuations affect long-term returns. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the model for understanding how stock investing works that updates Buy-and-Hold to reflect Shiller’s 1981 finding that valuations affect long-term returns. That’s the entire deal. We know what Shiller thinks.
But we need to have him say it. He doesn’t address any how-to-invest questions in his book. The Social Taboo is holding him back just like it is holding so many others back.
The Goons (and the tolerance of the Goons on the part of the Normals) is the entire question. But for you Goons and the tolerance of you Goons by the Normals, Shiller would have addressed hundreds of how-to questions in his book before I even came on the scene. So we cannot advance the ball without referring to the stuff that you refer to as “nonsense.”
I am ready for the debate on substance, Anonymous. I have been ready for 15 years now. You are in a lot better position to get it started than I am. No one is afraid of me. Everyone is afraid of you Goons, It is when you Goons signal that you have put down your weapons that we will see a great leap forward.
I believe that it will happen in the days following the next crash. But I would love to see it happen by the close of business today. Get writing, Goon!
Rob
Well, that’s all wrapped up nice and tidy, isn’t it? You won’t ask Shiller about VII. No one else has any reason to ask him. So you just go on saying that Shiller agrees with you.
Nice and tidy. Coward. You brag about having core beliefs. You just refuse to prove it.
We’ll have to wait and see how things play out following the crash, Anonymous.
I have zero willingness to post dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. And you Goons have zero willingness to come clean re the 15-year cover-up. I think it would be fair to say that we have achieved a stalemate.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.
Rob
“I think it would be fair to say that we have achieved a stalemate.”
No, a stalemate is a tie. What you have “achieved” is a massive blowout shutout loss.
Okay, Anonymous.
Please take good care in any event.
Rob
“I am of course not even a tiny bit afraid. I would love to hear Shiller’s comments on Valuation-Informed Indexing. If I got anything wrong, I want to correct the error. If I got everything right, I want to spread the word to the entire world.”
There is no ne interested in your market timing scheme. If you want to know what Shiller thinks of VII, then go ahead and ask him. No one else is interested in joining your world of hocomania. Further, calling people goons and telling them you they are going to prison just reinforces the opinions of those that think you are nuts.
“Wade did those things because you Goons put a gun to his head.”
Wrong. Wade sent you an email saying that it was not true. He also told others (as was documented) that his job was not threatened.
There is no ne interested in your market timing scheme. If you want to know what Shiller thinks of VII, then go ahead and ask him. No one else is interested in joining your world of hocomania. Further, calling people goons and telling them you they are going to prison just reinforces the opinions of those that think you are nuts.
I have had thousands of people tell me that they are interested in hearing what I have to say, Anonymous. If it were not for those thousands of people, you Goons would never have demanded that I be banned from a single board. If if were not for those thousands of people, I would represent no threat to you. LOTS of people are interested. LOTS of people need to know. I owe it to those people to do everything I can to get the word out to them.
The thing that is nuts here is the situation. If I heard stories of some guy being banned at 20 different investing sites solely because he posted honestly re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in the investing field, I would probably reach a tentative conclusion that that fellow is nuts too. But it’s not me who is nuts. It is the situation that is nuts.
Bogle believed so much in Buy-and-Hold that he was not able to let the truth in when Shiller published research showing it in 1981. Bogle suffered from cognitive dissonance. And others played up to him to advance their careers; they did not state the realities as clearly as they should have. So the soft cover-up continued. At some point, the evidence that valuations affect long-term returns became so strong that the soft cover-up became a hard cover-up. In recent years the continued promotion of Buy-and-Hold even caused an economic crisis, the second biggest economic crisis in our nation’s history. At that point the hard cover-up became a super-hard cover-up.
The cover-up has gone on so long at this point that the Buy-and-Holders feel that they absolutely cannot permit open discussion of the peer-reviewed research at even a single large site. But we cannot advance as a society until such discussion is permitted at every site, as our laws require. So we have to bring this cover-up to an end. We simply have no other choices available to us as a society.
I didn’t cause any of this. I noticed that Greany’s retirement study lacked a valuations adjustment and I pointed it out to my fellow community members. Within days hundreds were referring to the debate that followed as the most exciting debate ever held at that site. And then you Goons showed up with your death threats and other garbage. And here we are.
I am happy to do what I can to keep your prison sentence as limited as it is possible to keep it at this point in the proceedings. But that’s as far as it goes for me. I am not going to say that Greaney included a valuations adjustment. If I do that, I cross over to the wrong side of the felony line myself.n No freakin’ way, you know? I love my country. No freakin’ felonies. Not for this boy.
I will continue posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics and we will see how things play out following the next crash. I have a funny feeling that I know how things are going to go. But we will just have to wait a bit to find out for sure. There are no other realistic options available to us at this point in the proceeedings.
The situation is nuts as all get-out. But I am not nuts. Everything I said in my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, has checked out. Thousands of people have looked at Greaney’s study over the past 15 years. Not one has been able to identify a valuations adjustment in the study. I wonder why.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, old friend.
Rob
Wrong. Wade sent you an email saying that it was not true. He also told others (as was documented) that his job was not threatened.
I have posted the scores of e-mails that I exchanged with Wade during the 16 months in which we were working closely together and that tell a very, very, very different story, Anonymous. The members of your jury will get to see both sets of statements before making a decision as to the length of your prison sentence. That’s how our system works.
I wish you the best of luck with it, old friend. But that’s as far as it goes for me, you know?
Rob
“But it’s not me who is nuts. It is the situation that is nuts.”
That’s what every nut says. How about you get just one person to come to this thread and simply comment “Rob Bennett is not nuts.”
No, that’s impossible. The goons would track him down and kill him. Says the nut.
“I have had thousands of people tell me that they are interested in hearing what I have to say, Anonymous.”
And where are these people? They have nothing to fear as they can post anonymously, yet we don’t see a single one of these people you refer to.
“The members of your jury will get to see both sets of statements before making a decision as to the length of your prison sentence.”
Like always,you throw out the prison threat thinking that somehow that might scare someone or in some strange way give you credibility, when all it does is reinforce those that say you are nuts.
That’s what every nut says. How about you get just one person to come to this thread and simply comment “Rob Bennett is not nuts.”
No, that’s impossible. The goons would track him down and kill him. Says the nut.
I cannot get one person to come to this thread and say it. But there have been thousands who have said it over the course of the 15 years. Those thousands don’t just stick around so that they can be available to say “Rob is not a nut” whenever their services are required. But we have the comments of the thousands in the Post Archives of all the various boards and blogs. And those Post Archives can be shown to the members of your jury.
You Goons might not actually track people down and kill them. But you sure have threatened to on numerous occasions. And you have made life unpleasant in lots of other way for those of us who believe that valuations affect long-term returns on numerous other occasions. That affects the debate. We only have 10 percent of the population that agrees with our position to begin with. After you advance your death threats and other abusive garbage, the number drops to too small a number for us to have a pleasant experience so long as you Goons are in the room.
We need to get you Goons out of the room. We need to insist on enforcement of the laws against financial fraud. Then the rest of us (Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike but no Goons) can get about our business in peace.
Whether you track people down and kill them is not the question. The question is — Do you follow the published posting rules of the sites at which you post and do you stay within the limits of the laws of the United States? You do not. So you need to be removed. For everyone’s sake (including your own — the shorter that the Campaign of Terror against our board and blog communities continues, the shorter your prison term will be when it is imposed).
My best wishes.
Rob
And where are these people? They have nothing to fear as they can post anonymously, yet we don’t see a single one of these people you refer to.
I’ve answered this question on numerous earlier occasions and I answered it up above.
We have had thousands of people express a desire to learn about what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world. That suggests that there are MILLIONS of such people in the investing community. We need to reach all of them as soon as possible.
They will all be happy to post once they see that the published rules of the various sites are being enforced and once they see that the laws of the United States are being enforced. There are obviously reasons why as a people we elected to adopt those rules and laws. They are important. Without those rules and laws, civil and reasoned discussion becomes impossible. The vast majority of us want civil and reasoned discussion.
The problem here is that there is a lot of money to be made pushing a Get Rich Quick investing strategy. If the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research is legitimate research (I believe that it is), then Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind. The owners of the vast majority of sites are Buy-and-Holders. They naturally do not want their readers to learn that they are pushing a pure Get Rich Quick approach. So in discussions of Buy-and-Hold they tolerate a level of abusiveness that they would not tolerate in any other sorts of discussions.
It is an unfortunate situation. If Shiller had published his “revolutionary” (his word) research in 1961 rather than in 1981, we never would have had any problem. All of the people who became Buy-and-Holders (including Bogle) would have become Valuation-Informed Indexers instead. But once those people became Buy-and-Holders (because Shiller’s research was not available to them), they developed a keen personal interest in keeping people from learning the realities of stock investing. People who have promoted Buy-and-Hold strategies look bad when people learn what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field says.
I did not create the crazy situation. I am 100 percent unwilling to post dishonestly. And of course I love my country. So I do not want to see us falling into a Second Great Depression. If the only way that I can help the millions of people who want to learn the realities of stock investing to do so is to expose the 36-year cover-up, that’s what I need to do. The cover-up is killing us all. The #1 public policy issue of our time is exposure of this massive act of financial fraud.
My sincere take.
Rob
Like always,you throw out the prison threat thinking that somehow that might scare someone or in some strange way give you credibility, when all it does is reinforce those that say you are nuts.
If I had engaged in behavior that was likely going to get me sent to prison, that would scare me a great deal, Anonymous. That much is certainly true.
But then I am not a Goon, am I? Perhaps if I had a Goon brain, it would not scare me. It scares me enough that I would never post dishonestly or abusively in the first place. But I obviously do not fully understand how the Goon brain operates. You did all the things you did. Perhaps you are just not capable of thinking ahead. That’s the best explanation that I can come up with for your behavior.
I mention the prison sentences from time to time because they are a big part of the story. I have run into lots of people who in other circumstances would love to be part of the effort to launch the national debate. Some are Valuation-Informed Indexers, some are Buy-and-Holders. Both types would obviously add a great deal to the debate. So I want them to feel safe enough to get involved.
But they do not feel safe. They have seen the criminal behavior and they have seen that it has not been prosecuted. They are scared to get on the wrong side of you Goons. It is perfectly natural for people to feel that way. I am 100 percent certain that, if you had asked Wade Pfau a number of years back whether he would ever associate with you Goons, he would have said that there was zero chance. But I am also 100 percent certain that, if you asked him whether he thought there was any chance that Jack Bogle would have ever associated with you, he would have also puts the odds re that one at zero percent. The joke was on Wade when you Goons attacked him and Bogle did not take effective action. And the joke was on me when Wade then decided that to save his career, he would need to agree to do things that in ordinary circumstances he would never agree to do.
Once people have committed criminal acts, it is very, very, very, very hard to get them to come clean. If we could go back to the morning of May 13, 2002, I am 100 percent certain that Greaney would play it different. But of course we cannot go back. A big part of the reason why he did what he did re Wade is that he knew that he was deep into criminal behavior before Wade ever came on the scene. When Wade endorsed Valuation-Informed Indexing, Greaney knew that his only hope of avoiding prison was going even more extensive and more deep with the criminal behavior.
And of course the same is true with lots of others. Before Wade flipped, he wanted everyone who had engaged in abusiveness to come clean. He told me so. How do you think he feels about the idea of everyone coming clean today? It would be highly embarrassing for Wade if everyone came clean today. He is not a full Goon. He still tries to do good work up to the point that he can get away with it. But he is today highly compromised. And he will grow ever more compromised as time passes and as the realities become more and more embarrassing for him.
That’s of course true for Bogle and for lots of others. Bogle has no good reason to oppose spreading the word re Valuation-Informed Indexing. VII makes Bogle look like a genius. He came up with all of it except for the valuations component and it is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance Take the cover-up out of the story and Bogle would be working as hard as Rob Bennett to spread the word re Valuation-Informed Indexing to every site on the internet,
But we cannot take the cover-up out of the picture, can we? Bogle has permitted his name to be used at a site that tolerates posting by the sorts of “individuals” who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney,. Huh? What the f? Bogle too would be highly embarrassed if everyone came clean today. He too is compromised. And that of course hurts all of us. We need Bogle working with the good guys.
Corruption hurts all of us, Anonymous. Corruption is a poison. That’s what scares ME.
I talk about the prison sentences because they are a big part of the story. My job is to tell the story. With 100 percent charity. But also with 100 percent honesty.
I hope that helps a small bit.
Rob
“We have had thousands of people express a desire to learn about what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about how stock investing works in the real world. That suggests that there are MILLIONS of such people in the investing community. We need to reach all of them as soon as possible.
They will all be happy to post once they see that the published rules of the various sites are being enforced and once they see that the laws of the United States are being enforced. There are obviously reasons why as a people we elected to adopt those rules and laws.”
They can post anonymously as they have nothing to fear. People do this every day at almost every other board. There is zero evidence to support your comments. Referencing your website is just referring to your own comments.
I don’t personally think that you Goons are going to kill people. The police asked me that question when they came to my house back in 2002. I told them that I did not think you would follow through with your threats but that the purpose of making them was to intimidate and that you achieved that purpose. Many people don’t want to be threatened even when no action is taken on the threats. And many site owners want those sorts of threats to stop. They are reluctant to ban you Goons because your Get Rich Quick message is a popular one. So they end up banning the target of the threats rather than the ones advancing them.
There is a mountain of evidence to support my comments. And most of what I say here can be documented through investigation of outside sources. Wade had comments at the Bogleheads Forum where he talked about our research and about the stuff that he learned from me. Even if those comments were or are deleted, they can be retrieved though use of a Way Back Machine. And of course there were thousands of comments at Motley Fool and at Early Retirement Forum and at The FIRE board and at lots of other places. Your jury will have plenty of material to work with. And of course there is the most simple proof of all — the fact that Greaney’s retirement study to this day lacks a valuation adjustment even though there is 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns.
It will be interesting to see how things play out over time.
Rob
You want us to believe all of the following items by taking your word:
1. Shiller has been lying or holding back because he is scared.
2. Wade is lying and avoiding you because he is scared.
3. Bogle is scared and an even bigger con-man then Bernie Madoff.
4. Thousands of community members are scared to post at your website and at other websites because they are scared, even though they can post anonymously.
5. All the financial boards have banned you, not because of bad behavior, but because they don’t want to upset the buy and hold crowd.
6. A continuous band of goons have successfully waged a campaign that has kept you from success, that would have other accomplished.
7. Goons have employed a series of job threats and death threats against you and your supporters.
8. Mass implementation of the VII strategy will save the entire global economy, which is otherwise headed for a complete collapse.
9. Goons have committed a large scale effort to block your success, which qualifies as a felony and will lead to prison for those that don’t support you and your positions.
10. The coming stock market crash will lead to articles on the front page of The New York Times, leading to congressional investigations, prison sentences and the need for VII to save our society. As a result, the Wall Street con-men will line up to give you a $500 million settlement to avoid further distresses. Jack Bogle will play a key role in helping you get the settlement payments.
Did I miss anything?
You want me to believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for valuations even though thousands of people have looked at it and not one of them has been able to identify it.
I think it would be fair to say that the thing that you are asking me to believe is about 500 times more unbelievable than all the things you listed put together.
There is no valuation adjustment in the study. I was right in what I said in my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
“You want me to believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for valuations even though thousands of people have looked at it and not one of them has been able to identify it.”
John and Wade already addressed your question. You just choose to ignore it.
I love my country and I am not willing to cross the felony line, Anonymous.
I believe that it will all get worked out in the days following the next price crash.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
“I love my country and I am not willing to cross the felony line, Anonymous.”
I don’t know of anyone that has been charged with a felony. Until that happens, your words are meaningless.
I don’t think my words are meaningless. But I agree that there is no one who has been charged with a felony re this matter.
I’ts unfortunate. Had someone been charged with a felony years ago, that would have brought the Campaign of Terror to a full and complete stop and that would have been the last felony charge brought. If someone had even just been banned from a discussion board or blog for insanely abusive posting in “defense” of Mel Linduaer or John Greaney or Jack Bogle, that might have been enough to get the job done. It would certainly have sent the right message. When we failed as a society to take effective action, we didn’t send a neutral message, we sent a negative message.
When you insist that all felonies that arise re the cover-up of the peer-reviewed research in this field be charged immediately, you are making the same mistake that people make when they become Buy-and-Holders — you are focusing too much on the short-term. Buy-and-Hold really does produce good results over limited periods of time. It has produced poor results for close to 18 years running now. But when you add in the results from the 1980s and 1990s, most people who have been following Buy-and-Hold for decades now are happy with the results it has produced. So they could say the same thing that you are saying here: “Until a Second Great Depression happens, your words are meaningless.”
I don’t think that we should wait until the Second Great Depression happens before opening the entire internet to honest posting re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. We are going to have to do it at that time. That much is for sure. We are going to have to rebuild. But the rebuilding job is easier if you permit less destruction to take place in the first place. So I would favor opening every site on the internet to honest posting on the peer-reviewed research today. I would favor doing it yesterday, if that were practically possible.
It’s the same with the felony thing. You want to see actual prison bars around you and hear a key turning to keep you on one side of them before you will be willing to recognize that you have a duty to follow the laws of the United States. I can’t change that. If that’s how you feel, that’s how you feel, and I just have to accept it. But I can’t say that I endorse the logic chain being used. Your prison sentence will be longer or shorter depending on how many lives you destroy. The longer the Campaign of Terror against our board and blog communities continues, the more lives are destroyed. So it seems clear enough to me that it makes zero sense to wait until felonies have been charged to come clean.
But who the heck am I? Some guy who figured out how to post stuff to the internet, nothing more and nothing less.
I wish you the best of luck with it, Anonymous. For whatever good that does, you’ve got it. And we will just have to wait to see how things play out following the crash.
My best wishes to you.
Rob