Set forth below is the tex of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“ That’s what Bernstein is up against. That’s what Wade Pfau is up against. That’s what Michael Kitces is up against. That’s what Robert Shiller is up against. That’s what Rob Bennett is up against.”
You consider yourself to be in the same league as these other people?
Every one of those people, including me, would like to see you Goons placed in prison cells so that they can do honest work in this field. No one got into this field to destroy people’s lives. We all want to help people. Which means telling them when we see that a retirement study lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
Helpful Rob
So you want people to go to prison because they disagree with you. Grow up.
There is no one who has done more to keep people OUT of prison that I have, Anonymous. I wrote to the site administrator at Motley Fool in June 2002 saying that he should give Greaney the boot because of his abusive behavior. Had Greaney been given the boot then, no one would be at risk of going to prison today. There had been no death threats then. There had been no acts of extortion then. Greaney had gotten the number wrong in his study. But I am not sure that at that time you could say that that was due to fraud. I think that at that time a jury would have said that it was just a mistake. So no prison terms!
And we would have gotten all the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected! So we all would be living better lives. Which means that we would be happy, not angry. Happy people do not form a resolve to get others placed in prison cells. So there would be no issue.
It is the cover-up that is causing all the trouble. We need to bring the Ban on Honest Posting re what the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us all about how stock investing works to a full and complete stop by the close of business today. Now where did I hear that before? That’s the answer. That’s the only answer.
The trouble is that, if we do that today, there are still probably people who will be going to prison. The prison terms will be shorter if we bring the cover-up to an end today than if we wait until after the next price crash. But at this point it is hard to see what we could do that would avoid prison terms altogether. So we’re kinda stuck. If you have any bright ideas, I would be thrilled to hear them. But I am not able to imagine anything short of opening the entire internet to honest posting that would bring us all to a good place. And opening the internet to honest posting is in all likelihood going to land you in a prison sentence after 18 years of this stuff.
Any ideas?
Rob