Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Your posting is not honest. But let’s say everyone decides that you can post whatever you want to their website. It doesn’t change a thing. You are broke and it won’t give you an income. Everyone else will keep doing their thing, just like they have after reading your repetitive nonsense. Don’t believe it? Just go to any currently open board, like Reddit or City data. Post all you want and see what happens. It will just be more of the same and you will not earn a dime.
We need to have national recognition of the 20-year (or 41-year if you go back to when Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research) cover-up. There needs to be a series of articles on the front page of the New York Times that tell the entire story from beginning to end.
We should have launched a national debate on the how-to implications of Shiller’s amazing research on the day it was published. Had that happened, we would today be 41 years ahead of where we are today in our understanding of how stock investing works. We can’t get the 41 years back. Sadly, that’s gone. But we need to recreate the spirit of excitment about the discovery that Shiller made, that valuations affect long-term returns, that stock investing risk is not stable but varible, that market timing is always 100 percent required for every investor, that the safe withdrawal rate is a number that changes with changes in valuations.
The problem that we are facing is that, the longer the cover-up continues, the harder it becomes to pull that off. In the early days, the Buy-and-Holders were just embarrased for people to learn about the mistake they made., Now, it is 50 times worse. They are looking at civil and criminal penalties for participating in a 41-year cover-up. It’s not a good situation.
But it obviously does not get any better as the length of the cover-up is extended. The best that we can do today is to bring it to an end after 41 years. To let it continue into a 42nd year would be a catastrophe. So we all need to pull together and do what needs to be done. I did my part on the morning of May 13, 2002, you know? What have you done to help out, Anonymous?
My best wishes. But, I mean, come on.
Rob
It was just over 20 years ago when you presented the financial community your retirement plan. Many were critical, but you told us to wait and see how it turns out. Over the 20 years, all your predictions came true.
-The stock market collapsed
-Millions of retirements failed and Americans were angry and looking for someone to blame
-The New York Times investigation determined that Rob Bennett was right and that Buy and Hold was the cause
-Congress also investigated and hailed Rob Bennett as a hero
-The goons were sent to prison
-Rob Bennett got his $500 million settlement
-Rob’s new book hit #1 on the best sellers list
-Wade Pfau and Robert Shiller begged Rob to lead their research
-Every investment conference featured Rob Bennett as the keynote speaker
-The Bogleheads forum was turned over to Rob and renamed the “Bennettheads” forum
-Rob and his wife celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary with group of A-list celebrities in Hollywood
I can’t believe that anyone ever doubted Rob’s words.
The United States experienced an economic crisis in late 2008, Anonymous. Those of us who had read Shiller’s book were not surprised. The CAPE value that applied at the time told us that there were trillions of dollars of pretend money present in the portfolios of millions of investors that could disappear in a flash if some negative economic event caused their irrational exuberance to be transformed into irrational depression.
If that economic crisis had taken place in 1980, we could have said that it was just one of those things. But Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning resarch showing that there is precisely zero chance that a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor in 1981. So we all should have known better. If we had been permitting honest posting at every site all along, we all would have been working together to keep the CAPE value at reasonable levels and we all would have avoided the human misery and political turmoil that we experienced as a result of that Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
Stocks are today priced for another Buy-and-Hold Crisis. How many times are we going to go through this sort of thing? The research is there. We should as a nation of people give ourselves permission to talk about it. The published rules of all of the various sites give us that permission. We need to begin enforcing the laws of the United States in the investment advice area in the same manner as those laws are enforced in every other area of life endeavor. We should all care about what happens to our stock portfolos. We should all want to see honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research permitted (and encouraged!) at every site on the internet.
There was a day when people smoked cigarettes without knowing that they were causing themselves to suffer an early death through cancer by doing so. The executives of the tobacco companies were fine with that remaining a secret from us because us not knowing the realities brought in a few extra bucks for them. That’s where things stand in the investment advice field today.
I think it would be fair to say that the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “idea” that market timing/price discipline is not always 100 percent required for every investor is the cancer of the personal finance world. If there is even a one in ten chance that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, we should be talking about the error that John Greaney made in the retirement study posted at his web site at every discussion board and blog on the internet. The fact that the study has not been corrected in the 21 years since the error was brought to Greaney’s attention is a national scandal. Getting that study and all Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected as quickly as is humanly possible is the most important public policy question before the American people today.
That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter, in any event.
I naturally wish you all good things.
Rob
You asked us 20 years ago to wait and see how it all turns out. We waited and look at what has happened. Your market timing scheme did not work. I can’t imagine how it could have turned out any worse for you.
You didn’t wait, Anonymous. You engaged in abusive behavior that disrupted the conversations that thousands of our fellow community members wanted to engage in. Had you followed the published rules of the various sites, which you had to agree to follow before you were permitted to post, I would be a multi-millionarire today and every citizen of the United States would be living a better and fuller and richer life than he or she even imagined was possible back in the dark ages of belief in Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick. The peer-reviewed research is not our enemy. It is our friend.
We are obviously going to need to open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research at some point. So why not just do it today? Every day of delay causes more pain for each and every one of us. If we truly didn’t believe as a nation of people that discussion of new research findings should be permitted, we would have shut down all the peer-reviewed journals. We haven;t done that. The fact that we haven’t done that shows what we all really believe deep down inside. It’s our deep inner convictions that will prevail in the long run. I believe that we may see serious progress in the days following the onset of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, in any event.
Rob
OK – I declare all boards open!
It’s going to take more than a simple declaration to make it happen, Edge.
The Buy-and-Holders have been assuring investors that market timing/price discipline is not always 100 percent required for every investor for many years now. Lots of investment professionals have gone on record saying that. They are going to be embarrassed for people to learn that there was never anything to that claim, that maket timing is 100 percent required to keep irrational exuberance under check. And millions of ordinary investors have invested pursuant to the Buy-and-Hold claim that market timing is not always 100 percent required. Those investors are going to have a hard time coming to terms with the reality that much of the money they are counting on to retire is finnymoney of no true and lasting economic significance.
To achieve our goal of openinv every discussion board and blog to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research, we are going to neeed to pull together as a nation and work it hard. It certainly can be done. But it is going to take time and effort. The benefits promise to be huge. So it will be worth the time and effort. But it’s gping to take a lot more than a simple declaration.
Wish us luck!
Rob