Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
“If you are talking about the owners of sites, I have asked them to enforce the rules that THEY THEMSELVES adopted for their sites. That’s not asking them to change, it’s asking them to be what they always intended to be.”
There is no rule that says that Rob Bennett gets to do whatever he wants on anyone else’s site.
Every site has rules, Anonymous. I have never seen a site that had a rule prohibiting honest posting. If I ever found one like that, I would respect it. I wouldn’t post there because I am not interested in posting dishonestly. But a site like that wouldn’t do that much damage. If you let people know up front that you do not permit honest posting, people are not going to take the investment advice that is offered seriously. I suppose that they could visit to obtain some amusement or something like that. Not my thing. But to each his own, you know?
That was not the situation at the Retire Early board. There was no rule there prohibiting honest posting and people believed that the investment advice was sincere. People discussed the Greaney retirement study every day and they used it to plan retirements. So I had an obligation to point out the error in the study.
Some people would have preferred that I had not done that. Fine. Those people can continue to use the 4 percent rule if it makes them happy. It’s none of my business what they do. But there were other people who were thrilled to find out about what the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research says about the subject of safe withdrawal rates. No one has a right to block those people from seeing the posts that they want to see. The rules of the board do not permit intimidation tactics aimed at achieving that purpose.
Now you have pulled it off regardless of what the rules say. And you think that is some great accomplishment. I do not. I believe that the published rules of the various sites reflect what we truly are as a people. So I go by that. I believe that there will come a day when every site on the internet will permit honest posting re the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research. Because those rules did not just come into being as some sort of aberration. They say something about what we are as a people. It’s the popularity of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold that is the aberration. That will pass with the arrival of the next price crash, which will make Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold less appealing. And we will get back to being what we truly are deep down inside as a people.
That’s where I am coming from. I wish you all good things.
Rob
Does anyone in the investment community talk to you anymore? If so, why don’t they just post here in support and stay anonymous?
Because someone who did that would then have to live with himself. There’s never been an iota of evidence supporting the “idea” that price discipline (market timing!) is not required when buying stocks. If there had never been an efficient market theory (there never would have been one if Shiller had published his Nobel-prize-winning research in 1961 instead of in 1981), there never would have been one person in the world who would not have claimed that price discipline (market timing!) is every bit as much required when buying stocks as it is when buying anything else. Every person who works in this field would love to be spreading the word with millions of investors re what the research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world. There’s only one problem —
If you tell people what the research says, you make the Buy-and-Holders look bad. If the Buy-and-Holders would have come clean back in 1981, there never would have been a problem. No one would have found fault with them for the mistake they made. But it is not 1981 anymore. It is 2021. 40 years have passed. So it looks really, really, really, really bad for someone to tell the truth re what the research shows.
You’re saying that someone could protect himself from the death threats and the threats of career destruction by posting anonymously. That’s true enough. That’s not a bad point.
How do you think a person who did that would feel about himself? He knows that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies get the numbers wildly wrong, He knows that it was the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold that served as the primary cause of the 2008 economic crisis. And he says so. But he doesn’t give his name. Why doesn’t he post under his own name? Is he ashamed of what he is doing? Is he afraid of what you Goons will do to him for posting honestly? Is he a coward? Does he not realize that he would have more credibility and thereby help more people if he put his name behind his words?
We all played a role in causing this Buy-and-Hold Crisis, Anonymous. Greaney posted his study at his web site. Anyone who cared to could have pulled it up and checked whether there was a valuation adjustment in it. Why is it that I was the first one who noticed (if you go by public posts) that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment? How does something like that happen? The investment advisers played a role and the academic researchers played a role and the journalists played a role and the policymakers played a role and the site owners played a role and the book publishers played a role and on and on. We’re all in on this. Every last one of us (including me) played at least a tiny role in causing this horrible situation.
Since we all caused it, we are all going to need to pull together to fix the problem. It can be done very quickly once we all work together to make us all feel safe to speak honestly. But it is not going to happen by encouraging a few people to post anonymously. I have spoken to people off-the-record. I have had people ask me questions. I have had conversations like that that have extended for hours of time. Do you know what usually happens at the end of them? The person who asked the questions usually says:”Please don’t tell anyone that we had this conversation.” Why? Are they ashamed?
They are indeed ashamed. They are not ashamed of wanting to know the realities of stock investing. There’s nothing shameful about that. They are ashamed of not having done anything to bring the cover-up to an end. We are all ashamed of that. The 19-year cover-up of the error in the Greeaney retirement study is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States. There is nothing else even in a close second place. We all played a role either in making that happen or in letting it happen and we are all ashamed of ourselves for not doing more to bring it to a full and complete stop many years ago.
We are going to have to come to terms with our shame. I believe that we will do that in the days following the next price crash. The ocean of misery that we will see appear before out eyes will just be too great for us not to finally speak out and come to terms with what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research in this field teaches us about this important subject. You are asking people to do something (to post honestly but anonymously) that would cause them to feel even more intense shame It’s not realistic to expect humans to behave that way. What the vast majority of us are doing is rationalizing — we are telling ourselves that perhaps the next price crash will not be so terrible, perhaps we will work our way through this somehow. We are not electing to post honestly but anonymously. It would be very hard for someone to justify doing that given how important it is to get these things right.
That’s my sincere take, in any event.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“They are indeed ashamed. They are not ashamed of wanting to know the realities of stock investing.”
So all those hundreds of people you say are supporters are all ashamed. Maybe you could name just a few and we can confirm what you say.
Go to the library and pick up a phone book for any city in the United States and start calling.
We adopted the laws against threats of physical violence and against extortion as a nation of people. We are all ashamed that we have failed to enforce those laws (for 19 years if you count back to my famous post of May 13, 2002, or 40 years if you count back to when Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research).
We need to get over it. I think we will. But we will have to see how things play out.
Rob
If a reporter for The New York Times as you for actual 3rd party links to the alleged death threats and job threats, would you provide those to the reporter?
Sure.
When the first death threats were made, I called the police. They had a policeman come to the house and interview me and he asked me to provide links. I did so, So this is all in an official police report if a reporter at the New York Times wants to look at it.
I also provided links when the site administrator at Morningstar.com asked about the death threats. A long-time community member observed that a number of people who had never posted at the Vanguard Diehards board suddenly showed up and began posting abusively when the accuracy of the Greaney retirement study was challenged. I explained that you Goons had been doing things like that dating back to May 2002. The site administrator asked me for links and I provided them.
I would provide links to a New York Times reporter. But I would also point out that all that anyone needs to know to understand what is going on is that the error in the Greaney study has not been corrected in the 19 years since I pointed it out. What matters is the huge act of financial fraud. Death threats are of course a very bad thing. But the death threats affect only a few people. The financial fraud affects every investor on the planet. And there is simply no way to cover up the error in the study without making use of death threats and career threats. How else would you pull something like that off?
So, yes, people trying to get to the bottom of this should certainly look at the death threats and the career threats. But they need to come to terms with the fact that the cover-up has continued for 19 years if they want to understand what is going on. Lots of people aided the cover-up. Only a tiny percentage of those who aided the cover-up posted death threats. None of this makes sense until you come to understand that, while just about all of us oppose the use of death threats and career threats to continue a massive act of financial fraud, just about all of us find appeal in Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold investing strategies. We feel more sympathy for those using death threats to “defend” Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold investing strategies than we would for people who employed death threats for other purposes.
It is the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge that resides within all of us that is the driver of all the strange behavior that we have seen over the past 19 years. Yes, death threats are weird. But wanting to go with a wildly wrong is pretty darn weird too. And there’s a lot more of us showing a desire to go with a wildly wrong safe withdrawal rare than there are people among us who have advanced death threats. The Goons couldn’t get away with what they do if we didn’t all love Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold investing strategies so much.
The death threats should be examined, I’m all for it. But, if it weren’t death threats, it would be something else. I am not aware of any death threats directed at Wade Pfau. But acts of extortion were used to shut him up. It’s always something. The driver here is the conflict between what the last 40 years of peer-reviewed research shows and what all investors desire in an investing strategy — a way to get something for nothing. We are not going to solve the problem until we come to terms with the problem. And the problem is the Get Rich Quick urge that resides within all of us, not the fact that you Goons made use of death threats on several occasions to keep those seeking to post honestly re the research from doing so.
The question that matters most is: Why are so many of us willing to tolerate the use of death threats when they are used to protect the Buy-and-Hold strategy from effective questioning when we would be appalled at the use of death threats employed in other contexts.
My sincere take.
Rob
If the police had actual links, then they would have gone after someone. With that said, you can post the links here for all to see and then you will have all the support you could ever need. Go ahead and post the links. We will wait.
The policeman asked me whether I believed that you were actually going to kill me. I said that it was my belief that you were trying to scare me in an effort to shut me up. But I noted that my wife was afraid of what might happen when she took our baby out in the stroller. And that, by definition anyone who advances a death threat is a crazy person and it is not possible to say what a crazy person might do. So I didn’t put the odds that one of you Goons would follow through on your threat at zero. He was writing in his notebook while I spoke. So I presume that most of that is in the report.
I had lots of support on the day the death threats were made. FoolMeOnce started a thread in which he said that the level of integrity of the board discussions had dropped so low that he no longer felt comfortable in having his name appear at the board, so be was leaving. 50 people endorsed that post. So I had plenty of support. But there were over 200 endorsements on the post that Greaney put up in response laughing at the idea that he would ever hesitate to advance death threats if they were needed to keep the cover-up going. And in a few weeks FoolMeOnce and others who made similar comments were back posting at the board.
10 percent of the population is opposed to the Goon stuff. 90 percent is opposed as a theoretical matter. But 90 percent of the population believes that Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is a real thing. Even though that group might oppose death threats in the abstract, they support the continued promotion of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies more than they oppose death threats. When that changes (I believe that it will change in the days following the next price crash, when people are able to see up close and personal where Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold always takes us), we will be able to do amazing things. But for so long as 90 percent of the population supports Get Rich Quick.Buy-and-Hold, it is going to be rough sledding.
Death threats are bad. Very bad. But death threats are one symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. The core problem is the Get Rich Quick impulse that resides within all of us. The last 40 years of peer-reviewed research shows us how to overcome that self-destructive impulse. But as of this moment in time, most of us do not want to overcome it. So we tolerate things like death threats and career threats. The ordinary rules of human discourse do not apply when it comes to the survival of Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold investment strategies. All bets are off when someone evidences a desire to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
You are accusing an anonymous poster of making a death threat? Do you think anyone is stupid enough to believe you?
I believe that, in the days following the next price crash, there will be millions of people who will want to know what happened to their retirement accounts. I will tell them. I will blame it on the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge that resides within each and every one of us. I will point them to the Greaney retirement study as an illustration of how it works. If they possess a true desire to know the realities at that time (I believe that they will), they will want to know how it is that an error was discovered in a retirement study and remained uncorrected for 19 years. That’s the story. That’s the deal. That’s the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge that makes stock investing so risky in action.
If they want to hear the details on how the cover-up continued for 19 years, I will tell them about the death threats and the acts of extortion and the board bannings and hundreds of other things. People are free to believe what they want to believe and not to believe what they do not want to believe. My job is to tell the story as it happened. So that’s what I will do. I hope that we will all make the decisions that will lead to us living better lives in the post-Buy-and-Hold Era than we ever imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold Era. But I of course don’t control that. I can only do my part, which is to tell the story as it happened. My role is a journalist’s role.
If you are able to come up with some story for how an error in a retirement study remained uncorrected for 19 years, you can tell it. I don’t think that you are going to be able to come up with anything even remotely believable. The story that I need to tell is pretty far out there, I’ll give you that one. But a story that includes death threats is going to be 50 times more believable than any story that doesn’t include death threats. I am not able to imagine any possible way that an error in a retirement study could remain uncorrected for 19 years WITHOUT death threats. I am just going to tell the story as it happened and let the chips fall where they will.
I will wish you Goons the best of luck with it, in any event. I hope that that will help at least a tiny bit.
My best wishes.
Rob