Set forth below is the text of a comment that was recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
So your fine with being disobedient to God’s word.
I believe that, when I die and have to stand before God, I will be held to account for my behavior her on Planet Earth. Yes, I have some concerns about my failure to provide financially for my family for many years. I do not say that that’s not a concern. I have spoken to more than one priest re that matter. I have had long, searching conversations/confessions with them about it. I have had two who felt that I have behaved in a way that is more wrong than right and I have has two who have felt that I have behaved in a way that was more right than wrong. I have been referred to books and Bible passages and things like that and I have read those books and Bible passages in the most open and humble spirit that I was able to muster. Nothing that I have read or heard has persuaded me that it would be okay for me to know about the horrible suffering that millions of souls are likely to experience in the event that stocks continue to perform in the future somewhat as they have always performed in the past and to do nothing to help.
The most basic commandment of all is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If the tables were turned and there we someone out there who had the knowledge needed to help me avoid that kind of pain, I would want that person to go to a little bit of trouble to get the message to me. So I do what little I am able to do to get the message out to the millions of lives that are today in the balance presuming that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research.
There’s a chapter in my book with the title “My Mother Speaks From the Grave About the Horrors of Buy-and-Hold Investment Strategies.” My mother was born in 1917. So the Great Depression had a big effect on her life. She had to drop out of school in the eighth grade so that she could go to work in a factory and her family would have money for food. She went on a date when she was at the age where she should have been a senior in high school an d the boy was a freshman in college and he asked her what school she attended. When she told him the real story, she had to experience the look of disappointment and shock in his eyes.
That’s Buy-and-Hold! That’s the science of stock investing, according to our Wall Street Con Men friends. It’s all about putting the possibility of turning a quick buck above the lives and hopes and dreams of millions of people. I can’t live with myself if I find myself in circumstances in which I can do something about it (I didn’t ask to be placed in these circumstances!) and I fail to do anything about it. I am the one who has to be able to live with my conscience, not you. I do what I have to do. As I have observed before, I can do no more and I can do no less. I can’t control whether people listen or not. That’s up to people. But it’s up to me whether I work up the courage to say something or not. I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep at night if I didn’t work up the courage to say a little something in these circumstances. So that’s what I do. The rest of it is out of my hands.
I am far from the most religious person in the world. I believe in God. I go that far. I believe that God gave me the mother He gave me in preparation for this experience. I believe that He wanted me to hear her stories so that I would know what to do when the time came for me to make my decision. I can’t prove it. But it is hard for me to accept that it is just coincidence that I had the mother that I had and that then the day came when I was required to make the choice that I have been required to make.
I believe that God knows everything that is in my heart. He knows how much I have thought about this matter so that I would know the choice that is in accord with His wishes for me. He knows whether I am acting out of selfishness or pride or out of a desire to use my talents to carry out His will. I believe that I will be okay in His eyes when my day comes. I feel confident that I would not be okay in His eyes if I came up with some rationalization for letting down millions of good people and putting my own personal comfort above the need to do something to help them. So I play it the way I play it. I can do no more and I can do no less.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Anonymous says
You went out and talked to 4 priests, which means you wanted to keep searching until one of them said some words that you interpreted to support you and you ignored those that said you are wrong.
It seems to be a pattern with you.
Rob says
I don’t think that’s right. If that were the situation, I would have stopped asking the question as soon as someone gave me the answer that I wanted. That’s not what happened. This question is still on my mind every day of my life today.
I went out to dinner last night with my younger boy, This question came up in the conversation. I am always looking for feedback. I do have responsibilities to my family. That’s real. I also have responsibilities to my country. That’s also real.
All of us have responsibilities re this matter. We don’t live solely as individuals (although of course in part we do). We live in communities. When we say “oh, market timing might not always be 100 percent required, it’s probably okay to just keep it zipped when we see errors in Buy-and-Hold retirement studies, that no-market-timing stuff really is a great marketing gimmick,” we hurt people in very serious ways, we eventually destabilize our entire economic system.” I believe that we all have a responsibility to do our part to help us work this one out as a nation of people. We just can;t have a situation where we have one sets of laws that applies in every field of human endeavor other than stock investing and a different set of laws that applies in the investing field because there is a quick buck to be made playing it that way.
I didn’t ask to be placed in these circumstances! I wish it had been someone else who has been selected to tell the story of why we need as a nation of people to shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I’ve enjoyed the intellectual challenges. I’ve been impressed by the heroism and love of those who have worked up the courage to stand up to you Goons. But, no, I haven’t liked one bit seeing the harm that has been done to my family because in the eyes of the members of the Buy-and-Hold Goon Squads anyone who “crosses” them by telling the truth re what the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research says must be destroyed. So, yes, I think about the question every day.
But my thoughts always end up in the same place. If our nation is to survive the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, we need to find some way to get every discussion board and blog opened to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. The long-term safety of our retirement savings is just too important for us to fail to do that. We all need to do our part. And I have found myself in circumstances where doing my part has come to mean taking on some personal sacrifice. So be it, you know? Taking care of my family is important to me. But being able to sleep at night is important to me too. Both things are so.
It is my sincere belief that the people who came up with the Buy-and-Hold (no market timing required!) concept would never have gone down this road if they knew where it was going to lead. I want to see all the wonderful ideas that they came up with to work. And there is 150 years of historical return data showing that none of those ideas can work in the real world if we don’t fine some means of reining in the irrational exuberance that always threatens to destroy our entire society when a large enough number of us comes to believe that “oh, price discipline might not really be all that important when buying stocks, perhaps it will all work out somehow.”
I don’t believe that it will all work out automatically. I believe that it all works out when we all do out part to make that happen. So that’s what I struggle to do.
My best wishes to you, Anonymous.
Rob
Anonymous says
“I went out to dinner last night with my younger boy, This question came up in the conversation. I am always looking for feedback.”
And no doubt your son said “I get it Dad, you were right not to support us.”
At least you interpreted it that way.
Rob says
No. He didn’t say that. He didn’t make any judgmental statements in either direction. It’s not his style to do that.
Rob
Anonymous says
Like his mom and brother, he knows you won’t listen anyway.
“Taking care of my family is important to me. But being able to sleep at night is important to me too.”
So NOT taking care of your family is what allows you to sleep at night. Wow, dude.
Rob says
It’s a crazy situation, Anonymous. But it’s not a crazy situation that I created. I sent an email to the site administrator at Moltey Fool in June of 2002 asking him to give Greaney the boot.
Rob
Anonymous says
“ But it’s not a crazy situation that I created.”
Wrong, you made the decision to quit your job, and to remain unemployed .
Rob says
And that’s a wonderful thing. If I hadn’t quit my job and remained unemployed, I could not have done the work that I have been doing for 20 years trying to get every site on the internet opened to the honest and open discussion of the far-reaching implications of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. the research that is helping us all to put Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold behind us and to move onto Valuation-Informed Indexing, the first true research-based investment strategy.
Do you think that it would have better if I had just kept it zipped re the error in the Greaney retirement study? I sure don’t.
Rob