“Human Beings Get Themselves Into Trouble By Turning Off Their Brains and Giving in to Emotional Impulses. It’s Been Happening Since the Beginning of Time. Shiller Told Us What We Need to Know to Insure That It Never Happens Again in the Stock Investing Realm.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

Why is it that everyone else has a different interpretation of Greaney’s work versus you?  Why is it that only you see the death threats?  Why is it that only you see the job threats?  Why is it that you are the one that has the most bans from all the leading investing blogs?  Are we to believe that all of these other people out there are all wrong about everything and that only you are right?

It’s not only me who says that valuations affect long-term returns. There are thousands of people who posted in support of me at the various boards and blogs. Robert Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for his amazing research showing that valuations affect long-term returns.

All of that does not get the Greaney study corrected. For the study to be corrected, Greaney would have to make a change to it. I cannot compel that and neither can any of those other thousands. If we had the support of the site owners, we could have those who promote discredited studies removed. But the site owners make a lot of money promoting a pure Get Rich Quick approach to stock investing. I asked the site administrator at Motley Fool to remove Greaney. He thanked me for my “thoughtful” e-mail. He told me that he thought it would be ideal if Greaney permitted honest posting. But he didn’t remove him. Eventually, he removed me. And he nominated Greaney for Poster of the Year at the site.

Why do tobacco companies sell a product that kills people?

Why do companies pollute the environment?

Why was the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal kept quiet for so long?

There’s money in it. Mountains of money. That’s the answer.

Laws don’t enforce themselves. People have to enforce them. And, for the length of a bull market, lots and lots and lots of people appear to be ahead of the game in dollar terms if the irrational exuberance remains on the books. The irrational exuberance cannot remain on the books if we permit honest posting. People want their retirement plans to work out, and, if we permit them to obtain the information they need for that to happen, they are going to do what they need to do. Which will bring stock prices down.

Do you want that? I do.

I don’t want all the pain that goes with it. But I want prices to reflect the economic realities. We can’t get there without going though a lot of pain. Sooner or later, we are going to have to do it, whether we like the idea or not, I hope we learn our lesson. I hope that, when we see all the pain that follows from the relentless promotion of all the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold garbage, we make a vow as a society to never, ever, ever let it happen again. I think we will do that. We’ll see, you know?

Human beings get themselves into trouble by turning off their brains and giving in to emotional impulses. It’s been happening since the beginning of time. Shiller told us what we need to know to insure that it never happens again in the stock investing realm. I say that we should take advantage of what he showed us. And I believe that we will begin doing that when we see how much pain following the pure Get Rich Quick approach caused us.

Does that help?

Rob