Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Can you name just one person in the past three years that has publicly supported you?
Can you name one idea in the history of the United States that its backers determined could only be “defended” through the use of criminal acts that turned out to be a winner?
If there had been no criminal acts, we might have had 50,000 people speak out in support of Valuation-Informed Indexing. Or it might be 500,000 people. Or 5 million. Or 50 million. Or 500 million. We won’t know until we try doing this without the criminal stuff.
There are good reasons why we have laws against death threats and against extortion and against defamation. That sort of stuff scares people. Scare people and they stop saying what they really believe. If we all were thinking clearly, we would want EVERYONE to say what they really believe. That’s how we all get to engage in the best possible learning experience.
My sincere take.
Rob
Can you explain why you make allegations of criminal acts, yet refuse to provide proof that they even exist?
Can you explain why Greaney has not corrected an error in his retirement study that was brought to his attention 19 years ago?
The two things are the same thing. Greaney doesn’t want to correct the error. So he was left with no alternative but to engage in criminal acts to suppress discussion of it. The criminal acts obviously do not serve their purpose if they are acknowledged. So discussion of the criminal acts too is suppressed.
The root question is — Why do so many people (experts and ordinary investors alike) let him get away with it? The answer is — because they do not want to know the truth about how stock investing works. Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick is a fantasy. Investors work together to create phony wealth (irrational exuberance). They sense on some level of consciousness that permitting discussion of the scam will cause it to unravel. So they insist that those who talk about these matters pretend that there is some reason to believe that market timing (price discipline!) is not required. Those who claim otherwise are disappeared.
But sooner or later the irrational exuberance disappears anyway. That is what Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows. So this suppression of honest posting business is a temporary strategy. It won’t work forever. When it fails, then what?
We will have the choice as a people to educate ourselves re the first true research-based investment strategy (Valuation-Informed Indexing, which is Buy-and-Hold without the no-market-timing business). We can move forward or we can refuse to move forward and suffer the consequences, which according to Shiller’s research will be severe. I of course vote for moving forward.
If that is the choice that we make as a society, we will be able to talk about all aspects of the question at that time — safe withdrawal rates, market timing, allocation percentages, risk management, and yes, the death threats and other criminal acts that helped us to remain in the dark when we so desperately wanted help in doing that. My job is to tell the story in a balanced and clear and complete way. I intend to give it my best shot.
If you want to know why nothing has been done about the death threats, ask yourself why nothing has been done about the error in Greaney’s retirement study. That’s the story that matters. If we cannot get errors in retirement studies corrected, we are in a fix. And it has been 19 years now. I still say to this day that Greaney’s study lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.
I believe that as a society we are in the process of working up the courage to hear the truth about how stock investing works. I believe that we are going to make it to the other side. Not until after the next price crash. But I believe that we will then make it. But then I would, wouldn’t I?
My best and warmest wishes you you and yours, my dear Goon friend.
Rob