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 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 safe withdrawal rate 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
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