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 wrote to him to ask what the deal was and he said that it was “catastrophically unproductive” of me to point out the error”.
No he didn’t.
What actually happened is laid out here.
http://www.passionsaving.com/200711.html
“The Dallas Morning News columnist said that he appreciated my “efforts to add another level to the safe withdrawal rate discussion.” But he added that: “You go about it in a manner that is catastrophically unproductive by adding missionary zeal that inflates your importance and demeans others. The whole idea that there is a new school of Safe Withdrawal Rates reeks of personal aggrandizement.”
In response to this you sent him a 4,500 word email that mentions “I” or “my” over a hundred times and which went over many of your usual “hocomania” topics.
In response to that, Scott was much more succinct, he said “Sadly, your response is exactly what I wrote you about.”
The key phrase is “You go about it in a manner that is catastrophically unproductive”. This has been the message that you have received over and over again. It has always been your manner of debating/discussing and you never learn your lesson.
Correcting an error in a retirement study is pretty darn important stuff, Evidence. My “manner” in discussing these issues has been to insist that the error be promptly corrected or, at the very least, that everyone seeing one of the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies be notified that there are two schools of academic thought as to how stock investing works and that the Valuation-Informed Indexing school produces very, very, very different numbers than the Buy-and-Hold school.
I offer no apologies for my missionary zeal in insisting that those retirement studies be corrected. A good number of the people who relied on Greaney’s study to plan their retirements had become friends of mine during the time that we posted together at the Motley Fool site.
I have zero problem with crediting my Buy-and-Hold friends for the many important contributions that they have made. But I feel strongly that they hurt themselves as well as millions of ordinary investors by failing to take prompt action to correct the error they made in their retirement studies. None of us know it all. All of us make mistakes from time to time. But there are responsibilities that apply in the investment advice filed that must be honored, in my sincere assessment. One of those responsibilities is that one must correct a retirement study that one has advanced once one learns of a serous error in that study.
If I need to add hundreds of instance of the word “I” to make that point, I am fine with that. The important thing is that the point be made clearly and firmly and repeatedly until the study is in fact corrected. Please note that the Scott Burns approach (which is followed by a good number of others, to be sure) has not to this day resulted in correction of the Greaney study or any of the other Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. When someone comes up with an approach that gets those studies corrected (or that at a minimum makes people who see the studies aware that there are two academically respected schools of thought as to how stock investing works), I will salute the fellow or gal who pulls it off. Until that happens, I will continue with the approach that makes sense to me — praising the Buy-and-Holders to the sky for their mountain of genuine good work while at the same time insisting on prompt correction of the studies.
I hope that that helps a small bit, good friend.
Correction Seeking Rob
You are really not understanding what Scott Burns said to you. It was not a complement. You somehow see yourself and you message as important, when that is not the case.
I certainly don’t think that Scott Burns was trying to compliment me. He was in pain. He saw that I had made a valid point. He also saw that it was his job to evaluate that point and either endorse it or criticize it. He also saw that, if he endorsed it, his own career would suffer. He also saw that there were no legitimate grounds on which to criticize it. He was trapped. His response was to lash out in an irrational way. He insulted me. He was not able to come up with any case for insulting me. He just advanced the insult and then refused to talk about it.
He preserved his career. That was his aim and he achieved that aim. But he did it at the price of sacrificing his rational mind. What he said made no sense. If what I said (that the Greaney retirement study lacked an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins) is so, that’s a very big deal. Millions of people have used the Trinity study (on which the Greaney study was based) to plan their retirements. If that study is in error, then millions of people’s financial lives have been placed in grave jeopardy and it is Scott Burns’ job to help those people by publicly exposing that error. By putting forward the nonsense insult, Scott protected his career. But he paid the price of acting in an irrational way that compromised his personal integrity. I think he paid too big a price for the career rewards that he obtained. But that is of course a personal choice that we all need to make for ourselves.
The message that I am putting forward is the most important message before this country today. Our economic system cannot survive is we do not find some means of getting honest and accurate investment advice out to the millions of people who desire it and need it. That’s absolutely imperative. There is no more important work being done today than the work that I am doing.
That is of course the reason why it is so hard. If it were not hard work to tell the truth about safe withdrawal rates and about scores of other critically important investment-related topics, everyone would be doing it and the reaction to my May 13, 2002, post would have been “of course Greaney’s study is in error, it needs to be corrected within 24 hours.” That was not the universal reaction to the painfully obvious point that I made. That’s why we are still here.
The puzzle is — WHY was that not the universal reaction?
The answer is that there had already been a 21-year cover-up of the obvious implications of Shiller’s peer-reviewed research on the day that I put forward that post. The difficulty in giving the obvious response to my post was not that there was anything tricky or questionable in what I said. The difficulty was the awareness of the 21-year cover-up. This field is run by wealthy and powerful and well-connected people. Scott Burns is not the only human who thinks twice before taking on lots of wealthy and powerful and well-connected people. If those people had acknowledged their error when it was first revealed to them (in 1981), Greaney would never have made the error in the first place. So there would have been no issue.
Those people did not acknowledge their error when it was pointed out to them. We are all today living the consequences of their unfortunate choice. Scott Burns decided that it was not his problem, that someone else would have to take on all these wealthy and powerful and well-connected people. I made the other choice. I don’t think that we can duck this one indefinitely. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, the now 39-year cover-up will someday cause another economic crisis, perhaps another Great Depression. I love my country. I cannot live with having a decision to duck that one on my conscience. So I have made a decision to do what I can to get the word out.
Which, ironically enough, is what I think our Wall Street Con Men friends themselves would want me to do if they were thinking clearly re these matters. Our Wall Street Con Men friends have blocked our thinking about how much human suffering their continued cover-up is likely to cause because they could not live with their decision if they permitted their minds to work properly in assessing it. So even our Wall Street Con Men friends will be thanking me for my choice when we all get to the other side of The Big Black Mountain.
Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, in any event, you know?
I naturally wish you all good things, my dear Goon friend.
Wall Street Con Men Ally Rob
You really don’t get it. It is like someone tells you that grass is green, but then you say it is really red and that there has been a conspiracy over the last century to block the new school of thought on the color of grass. You just make everything up to fit your story.
I can’t get around the fact that Greaney’s retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment and yet he has not corrected it for 18 years now. And as a society we have tolerated that!
That’s the “story” that I fit everything to. The fact that the Buy-and-Holders have known for 18 years now that there is a very serious error in a study that many people have used to plan their retirements and that they have not done anything about it tells me something about Buy-and-Hold. It does not tell me something good.
We all make mistakes. I consider the mistake a trivial thing. It’s the 18-year cover-up that is my concern. That one scares me. I cannot sign on to that one.
My best wishes.
Stone-Cold Frightened Rob