Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Some consider your posting abusive, so they ban you.
You ban posts that are not abusive and I have never seen a single person that has posted a death threat.
It comes down to you wanting to post what you want, whenever and wherever you want, but you do not allow the same on your website.
When research was published showing that smoking causes cancer, the tobacco companies considered that abusive and did everything in their power to stop people from learning about it. They in essence banned discussion of the new research.
As a nation we overcame that b.s. in time. I believe that we will see the same happen in the investing realm. When that happens, I will be able to point to thousands and thousands and thousands of posts in my file showing that I had been advocating that honest posting be permitted going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. I have done everything that a person could possibly do.
Rob
Can you show us the research that proves your allegations of death threats? Can you show us the research behind getting a $500 million dollar windfall?
The fact that the Greaney retirement study hasn’t been corrected to this day proves it, Anonymous. Are you able to imagine a scenario in which a retirement study is not corrected for 18 years after the error in it becomes public knowledge and where there have not been death threats and other criminal acts used to block discussion of the error? It is not possible for the rational human mind to imagine such a scenario. Anyone who wants to know what happened knows that there were death threats and other criminal acts.
And, yes, that’s a kind of “research” into how stock investing works. The Buy-and-Holders think of research as involving rows of numbers. That’s how research into rational stuff looks. But what Shiller showed is that stock investing is not a 100 percent rational thing, it is instead at times a highly emotional thing. Say that reason is 50 percent of stock investing and that emotion is 50 percent. Then half of your research should be looking at reason-based stuff (this is the sort of research that the Buy-and-Holders favor) and half of your research should be looking at emotion-based stuff.
A showing that a retirement study has not been corrected for 18 years after the error in it became public knowledge is the kind of “research” that Shiller showed we need to do if we are to come to a full understanding of how stock investing works. We need to get over this thing of believing that reason-based research tells the full story. It does not. The emotional stuff plays a big role. And we need to look at things like death threats and acts of extortion to get a grip on how the emotional stuff is affecting us all.
Shiller changed out understanding of how stock investing works in a fundamental way. It is because his work is so important and so revolutionary that we are having a hard time incorporating it into our thought processes. But we need to do it. Stock investing affects all of our lives. We need as a society to come up with some way of providing access to honest and accurate reports re safe withdrawal rates and re scores of other critically important investment-related topics. That means coming to terms with the death threats and all the rest. Stuff that is not rational. Stuff that is emotional. Emotional stuff that matters every bit as much as the rational stuff.
That’s the future of investment analysis. Shiller showed us what we need to do to get the numbers right for the first time in history and we all need to pull together to figure out what we need to do to make that dream a reality.
I don’t know where you came up with this idea that the $500 million is a “windfall.” That’s the amount that I have agreed to settle for so that we can leave the lawsuits behind and just enjoy working together to help everyone alive on the planet lead better lives than they were able to live in the pre-Shiller era. The way you calculate that number is just to look at what I would have earned with my work if there had never been a criminal act holding me back from opening every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting re the last 30 years of peer-reviewed research.
Do you know how many businesses went under in the Buy-and-Hold Crisis of 2008? Save those businesses from going under and right there you’ve got a lot more than $500 million produced. So I don’t expect to have too much trouble supporting the $500 million number. This is the biggest advance in the personal finance field in the history of our nation and there is nothing else in a close second place. I mean, come on.
Rob
Wade Pfau’s research concluded that you did not understand the Greaney issue. Wade Pfau’s research into your “missing step” concluded that you would not get the $500 million. Wade Pfau’s research concluded that you caused him considerable harm.
Because he was threatened.
Wade spent 16 months researching the merits of Valuation-Informed Indexing and loving every minute of it and expressing his amazement that hundreds of researchers had not looked into it long before he came along and bafflement that anyone could ever have concluded that Buy-and-Hold was superior and excitement about how he would be able to help millions to live better lives as our research became known throughout the investment community. Then you threatened to destroy his career if he kept at it. And he told me that he was scared of you and wrote a few words to make you happy disowning his wonderful work. Gee, I wonder what was going on there.
Extortion is a crime, Anonymous. It is a felony. This particular act of extortion did harm to millions of people. I think it would be fair to say that you will be spending time in a prison cell in the days following the next price crash. Not this boy, you know? I don’t want to spend time in a prison cell and I do not want to see people who used to be my friends doing so either. So I have done everything in my power for 18 years now to persuade you to walk a different path and to persuade others to try to persuade you to walk a different path. When you discover that the only way that you can defend your favorite investing strategy is to engage in criminal acts, it is time to go looking for a new favorite investing strategy.
My sincere take.
Rob
Wade doesn’t agree with what you just posted and you know it.
And he is going to flip back to posting honestly about all this stuff in the days following the next price crash. And you know that.
And everyone else in the field will too. I believe that even a good percentage of you Goons will be posting honestly in the days following the next price crash. We all want the same things deep down. We all need to know how best to invest our retirement money.
Wish us luck!
Rob
Wade prefers that you do not speak about him any more. You have caused him too much harm already.
It’s the 39-year cover-up that has caused Wade (and many thousands of others) harm, not me. Bring the cover-up to an end, as I have been proposing relentlessly since the morning of May 13, 2002, and we are all free to say what we believe. What possible problem could there be for anyone at that point?
We cannot have a functioning society if we do not provide people with some access to honest and informed reports re the peer-reviewed research in this field, Anonymous. We just cannot. The situation that we are in today is not a viable long-term situation. We all need to pull together and put on our thinking caps and come up with some way to bring things to a better place.
Wade LOVED working with me on Valuation-Informed Indexing. Loved it, loved it, loved it. And the work we were doing would have benefited millions of people if only we could have shared it with those millions of people. Wade doesn’t mind doing amazing work that helps people. He just doesn’t want to see his career destroyed by the Buy-and-Holders as his penalty for doing it. So we all need to pull together and take action to bring the cover-up to end.
My sincere take.
Rob