Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
A wise man once said” You go about it in a manner that is catastrophically unproductive by adding missionary zeal that inflates your importance and demeans others. The whole idea that there is a new school of Safe Withdrawal Rates reeks of personal aggrandizement.”
To bad you ignored him.
I think that there is a new school of safe withdrawal rate analysis. I believe that, if valuations affect long-term returns (as Shiller showed is the case with his Nobel-prize-winning research), then there is precisely zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels. It is a number that CHANGES with changes in valuation levels. That’s something new that we learned by doing the research.
Of course we need to as a nation of people give ourselves permission to discuss the amazing how-to implications of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. The research doesn’t by its mere existence make us all better investors. We need to talk these things over amongst ourselves to enjoy the learning experience that to our good fortune is now available to us.
I ignored Scott Burns because I think he was wrong re that one. I believe that all of us who care about the future of our country should be doing everything in our power to get every discussion board and blog on the internet opened to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That would be a catastrophically productive thing to pull off, in my assessment.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
Rob says “ Of course we need to as a nation of people give ourselves permission to discuss the amazing how-to implications of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. ”
And then Rob says: “ I ignored Scott Burns because I think he was wrong re that one.”
In short, you want people to let you on their boards and listen to your opinions, yet you should be able to ignore everyone else. You get to decide which opinions are valid. Got it.
I get to decide what opinions are valid FOR ME. I have no problem with someone saying that they relate to what Scott Burns has to say. But I have a very big problem with those who say that Scott Burns can be heard but those finding fault with what Scott Burns says cannot be heard.
And I certainly have not ignored Scott in any general sense. I have devoted thousands and thousands of words to analysis of his comments. I paid attention to him. But, no, I did not find everything that he said entirely persuasive (there were some things that he said that I thought were pure gold and I of course said so).
And I think that Scott would change some of what he says if every site were opened to honest posting and the Buy-and-Hold intimidation stuff became a thing of the past. That’s true of every single person who has participated in the discussions. The intimidation stuff is poison. It hinders learning experiences. Scott suppresses some of his own thoughts. We can never know to what extent he has done this until we open every site to honest posting.
Rob
The evidence says otherwise. That is why you are in the position you are today, you did it to yourself.
All of the evidence points to a conclusion that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. Even Evidence now acknowledges that. And he is the gooniest of goons.
The only evidence that you cite in “support” of the Gteaney study is that people like Scott Burns are not willing to publicly state that it needs to be corrected. You’re right that they have not been willing to do that for 41 years now and you are right that that’s the strangest thing that I have ever seen in my lifetime. My job is to figure out why that is so and to explain it to people when things reach a point (as they will, in the event that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research) at which they are ready to hear an explanation. Why do so many want to shut out what the research says in the field of stock investing when they are perfectly happy to take research findings into consideration in so many other areas?
Scott Burns should have called for the Greaney study and the Trinity study (which he endorsed on numerous occasions) to be corrected. He was initially inclined to go at least part way down that path. He said that he wanted to write an article about my claim that valuation adjustments are required. He got cold feet before the article appeared and it came out a strange mish-mash of confused thoughts. It is not “catasstophically unproductive” to want to get the numbers in retirement studies correct. Correcting numbers that milltions of people are using for important purposes would be considered catastrophically productive in any other field of human endeavor.
I am going to continue to say that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment and that Greaney should have corrected the error within 24 hours of the moment he learned of it. And that Scott Burns should have written the whole thing up when he learned of it. And that there is nothing catastophically unprodutive about it, that we should all be grateful that we have brains that make us capable of rational thought and that we should employ that gift in the investing advice realm in the same way that we employ it in every other realm of human endeavor.
That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob
Need more examples? How about Wade Pfau. We all remember this little beauty:
“Hi Rob,
I forgot that I was still saying things like this even 2 weeks after the initial incident.
This was more than a year ago now, but I am thinking that I was just trying to explain politely to you that I’d rather have you quit writing about me, or at least stop using my name. I suppose that I figured the only way you might understand why is if I explained it in terms of your favorite conspiracy theories.
I will make one more attempt at a reality check for you. You go on and on about how I allegedly lack personal integrity because I allowed the Goons to threaten me into silence.
The reality is that though I may have for a brief moment got a bit too caught up in YOUR drama, I do not have any fears about the Goons.
The reality is that you are causing me 1000x more career damage than the Goons ever could have by filling Google with so much nonsense about me, and sharing embarrassing private details such as my overly ambitious journal submission strategies, etc. Those in particular are highly private. People don’t publicly share where they submit articles to unless those articles are accepted. You’ve violated my trust in so many countless ways and yet you still proclaim to be my friend.
And the further reality is that if I *did* lack personal integrity, I could have made this all stop just by saying the meaningless sentence you want so desperately to hear: “I think the errors in the traditional safe withdrawal rate studies must be corrected by using Rob’s analytically valid method.”
But I don’t believe that. I do not believe you have offered a valid correction to the safe withdrawal rate question. And I believe that retirement income strategies go much further than the question of a safe withdrawal rate. And so that is why I’ve had to endure your ongoing harassment for months on end now.
Usually I can figure out the Rob-logic behind what you are thinking, but I really don’t know how you think you come out of this whole episode looking like the good guy. I guess it is because you think you are saving my soul and putting me back on the path of righteousness, or something, huh? If only you had the power to do a little bit of self reflection…
Now that the whole email history is on display, we have the reminder of how angry you got at the very beginning when I referred to you as dogmatic. Yet, look at the way you’ve treated me for disagreeing with you on something which you don’t even understand. You quote numbers from JWR’s statistical work, but I’m not sure if you can even distinguish a mean from a median. So how can you be sure his work is right? I don’t know either, as I never did get around to digging into it, and I doubt I ever will now. But I’m not sure how a properly calculated lower confidence bound for a 2000 retiree could have been higher than zero.
Rob, suppose the stock market does drop 65% as you are expecting. It might happen, who knows.
Step 1: Stock Market Drops 65%
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Rob wins $500 million settlement from the Goons, the Goons are sent to prison, the investing public learns about and adopts VII.
What is Step 2? There isn’t one. You will still be in the same position as you’ve been in for the last 10 years. Why didn’t something happen for you after the 2008 financial crisis? You are like the guy who keeps predicting new ends for the world as each previous prediction date passes by.
That is why I’m telling you, from one human being to another, that it is time to move on. You are a smart guy, and you could use your talents for something productive. While warning people about the 4% rule is helpful, the way that you go about doing it is rather “catastrophically unproductive” as one wise fellow said to you years ago. I provide a loud voice that is critical of the 4% rule, and so spending your days assassinating my character is counterproductive to your underlying cause. So perhaps you can start fresh with a new issue of social import that carries less baggage for you. What happened in the past is a sunk cost, but you still have a chance to turn things around and start afresh today. And you can do all of this while still being honest and true to yourself.”
There are lots or stories of people not wanting to see their careers destroyed and jumping through lots of crazy mental hoops to stop that from happening. There are just as many stories of people betraying an interest in letting rationality play a role in the stock investing project. If we were a completely corrupt people. Shiller would never have found a journal to publsh his research. He never would have found a publisher for his book. He never would have been awarded a Nobel prize.
We are not a completely corrupt people. I continue to believe that we are going to find a way to get accurate, honest, research-based investment advice out to the millions of middle-class investors who need exposure to it. We’ll see.
Rob