Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
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
We have a functioning society. The problem is that you have made the choice to not function with society and society norms. You have your own creative definition of what is “honest” which does not line up with what people believe is truthful and factual.
The laws against advancing death threats are in line with our social norms, Anonymous.
The laws against extortion are in line with our social norms.
The laws against financial fraud are in line with out social norms.
The social norm that I am not in concert with is the social norm of encouraging the relentless promotion of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold investment strategies. And that social norm is in the process of changing. The social norm was established at a time when economists believed in something called the Efficient Market Theory. Robert Shiller has published peer-reviewed research discrediting the Efficient Market Theory and pointing us to a far better understanding of how stock investing works (Valuation-Informed Indexing). His views remain minority views today. But he was awarded a Nobel prize. That shows that his views on how stock investing works are not nearly so far out of the mainstream as you Goons like to suggest.
I don’t feel comfortable violating the social norms against financial fraud and extortion and threats of physical violence. So I am going to continue posting honestly even though doing so puts me outside of the failing social norm in favor of the relentless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold approach to stock investing. I believe that a lot of good and smart people are going to examine that failing social norm a lot more closely in the days following the next price crash. Then we will all be on our way to living better and richer lives.
One of our most important social norms is that, when research is published showing that an earlier belief doesn’t pass muster, we permit that research to be widely discussed so that we can all move on to something better. I strongly endorse that particular social norm. All of my work for the past 18 years has been done in deference to that social norm. I became a journalist because I believe that progress is necessary and beautiful and because I believe that explaining things to people clearly and fairly can help them to appreciate which way we need to go as a society to achieve progress. So I am going to continue to say that I believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research and that we should be exploring the far-reaching implications of that research at every discussion board and blog on the internet, without a single exception.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“The laws against advancing death threats are in line with our social norms, Anonymous.
The laws against extortion are in line with our social norms.
The laws against financial fraud are in line with out social norms.”
The laws require proof. That is why we don’t see any charges. You can’t just make it up.
I say that you need to show proof that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
I don’t believe that Greaney himself truly believes that his study contains a valuation adjustment. If he truly believed that, he would just provide a screen shot of the valuation adjustment and we would never have seen any of the other stuff that we have been seeing for 18 years now.
Rob
If you provided documented proof of the death threats and job threats, you would have thousands of people flocking to your website in support. To the opposite, you don’t have anyone here in support. That speaks volumes.
You could have said that about race relations in the South in the 1950s.
Big changes are hard to achieve. Sometimes they are 100 percent necessary and yet hard to achieve.
I believe that a 50 percent price crash that wipes out much of the life savings of millions of people will provide more of us with the courage that we need to stand up to you Goons. It will be interesting to see how things play out.
I like it that the American people have 39 years of peer-reviewed research on their side and a Nobel prize on their side and the published rules for participation at every site on the internet on their side and the comments of thousands of our fellow community members on their side and the Bennett/Pfau peer-reviewed research on the huge benefits of market timing on their side and a best-selling book (Irrational Exuberance) on their side and a new and exciting form of economics (Behavioral Finance) on their side and common sense (price discipline is 100 percent necessary in every other market that ever existed) on their side. I’ll go with all that.
My best and warmest wishes to you, dear Goon friend.
Rob
“You could have said that about race relations in the South in the 1950s.”
Wrong. There was no lack of evidence and there were supporters of the cause. Try again.
There’s no lack of evidence here. A Nobel prize is evidence.
And there have been thousands of people who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted.
What we have a lack of is people willing to speak out in an environment in which their loved ones will be threatened if they do and in which their ability to earn a living will be destroyed in they do.
With 39 years of peer-reviewed research showing that following a pure Get Rich Quick approach never works in the long run, the Buy-and-Holders have gotten desperate, Anonymous. The History Train is rolling down the track and pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies are being left behind.
My sincere take.
Rob
“There’s no lack of evidence here. A Nobel prize is evidence”
Yes, there is lack of evidence. Where is ANY death threat. Just show one single threat, not just your claim. Show just one job threat. It either occurred or it didn’t. Without proof, it never happened.
You have been shown the evidence many times.
In the days following the next price crash, there are going to be millions of people who will have seen most of their life savings disappear into thin air and who are going to want to know how that happened. I am going to point them to the Greaney retirement study and ask them how they think that an error in a retirement study could go uncorrected for 18 years without a lot of funny business going on.
People make mistakes. That’s been happening since the beginning of time. When mistakes are discovered, they need to be corrected. Not just in every field other than the investment advice field. In the investment advice field as well.
We are all in this together. We all need to know how stock investing works. Working together, we can make it happen.
My sincere take.
Rob
No, you have never provided the evidence. You have only made the comments. In fact, if you had any evidence, you would be posting it and repeating it on a regular basis, just like you do with your other talking points. This lack of evidence has hurt any bit of credibility you might have ever had.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, Anonymous.
I do wish you all good things, in any event.
Rob
“It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, Anonymous.”
We already know how things will play out. It will be just like the last 2 decades. You will continue to make up the same delusional comments, you won’t earn a dime and you will blame others for your own failures.
It’s not as if I have any good options, Anonymous. I held back from posting about the error in the Greaney retirement study for three years (from May 1999 through May 2002).I did not feel good about myself when I did that. I had become friends with many of my fellow community members (including Greaney) and I felt that I owed them my honest take, which is that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. I don’t ever want to go back to living like that.
It is common practice for people to post honestly in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field. I believe that it would be a huge plus if it became common practice in the investment advice field as well. The idea of committing financial fraud (I obviously would be committing financial fraud if I said that I believe that the Greaney study contains a valuations adjustment after saying on tens of thousands of occasions that I do not believe that). So I think that the best thing for me to do is to just continue posting honestly and see how things play out in the days following the next price crash, when I believe that the appeal of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold approach will be much less.
I wish you well. I like to think that that might help a tiny bit.
Rob
Accept responsibility for your own failures. Stop blaming everything and everyone else.
Do I have a responsibility to post honestly re whether the Greaney study contains a valuation adjustment?
I think I do, Anonymous. I didn’t honor that responsibility for three years. Starting on May 13, 2002, I did. And I have stuck with that.
It wasn’t a failure to work up the courage to do the right thing. If you want to say that it was a failure when I lacked the courage to do the right thing, I can go along with that. But I cannot go along with the idea that it was some sort of failure to do the right thing.
I can have compassion for the pressures that people face that cause them not to do the right thing. But I cannot say that it is right to leave a retirement study uncorrected for 18 years. Please remember that I have been saying that Greaney should correct the study going back to the early days. I have been trying to help him all along.
We all need to recognize that it’s better to get the numbers in a retirement study right than to get them wrong. That’s the way out.That’s what is best for every single person involved in this matter.
Rob
Rob, your mindset seems familiar.
I can picture a man in 20 years still ranting
“I WON THE ELECTION!!
THERE WAS FRAUD!!!
WE NEED TO OPEN UP THE WHOLE INTERNET TO DISCUSSION OF THE FRAUD!!!!!!!”
I don’t think that Trump is going to succeed with his challenges. But I do think that journalists should be investigating them. If he makes 20 challenges and 19 of them fail and one is successful, we will have learned something. The one successful challenge will not be enough for Trump to win the election. But the investigations will teach us all something both in the one case where the challenge succeeds and in the 19 cases where they fail.
Rob