“Another Way of Handling It Would Have Been for Greaney to Add Langauge to the Study Noting That There Are Lots of People Who Believe That It Is Not Possible to Calculate the Safe Withdrawal Rate Accurately Without Taking Valuations into Consideration. That Way, People Could Hear Both sides and Decide for Themselves What Withdrawal Rate to Use in Their Retirement Plan. Adding Language to the Study Making People Aware of What Shiller’s Nobel-Prize-Winning Research Shows Us Would at Least Remove the Element of Fraud from the Thing.”

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

Okay.  Then stop asking people to do things.

I believe that John Greaney should have corrected the error in the retirement study posted at his web site within 24 hours of the moment at which he became aware of it. That was on the morning of May 13, 2002, when I pointed it out in my famous post to the Motley Fool’s Retire Early board.

Is that asking people to do things?

It certainly was SUGGESTING that action be taken. I strongly believe that action should be taken.

But I knew from the moment that I put up that post that Greaney was going to respond abusvely rather than immediately correct the study. He had a long history of abusive posting,. I presumed that the community as a whole would demand action within two or three days and that, if Greaney refused to correct the study, he would be removed from the site.

Or another way of handling it would have been for Greaney to add langauge to the study noting that there are lots of people who believe that it is not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate accurately without taking valuations into consideration (we have seen thousands of our fellow community members express a desire that honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research be permitted). That would be fine too, from my perspective. That way, people could hear both sides and decide for themselves what withdrawal rate to use in their retirement plan. Adding language to the study making people aware of what Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows us would at least remove the element of fraud from the thing.

I was aware of the error in the Greaney study when I put my first post to the Motley Fool board, in May 1999. I didn’t say anything for three years because I was afraid of what Greaney and his Goon Squad would do to me and the rest of the board community if I spoke up. I think I was being a bit of a creep for those three years. I owed my fellow community members better than that.

On the morning of May 13, 2002, I came clean. I expressed my sincere view that I believe that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. I EXPECTED some sort of action to follow from that. Lots of my fellow community members thanked me for starting the most helpful and exciting discussion in the board’s history. I suppose that you could say that they expected to see some sort of action too. But Greaney drove off all the people interested in the subject of early retirement with his abusive posting. So no action was ever taken.

I still believe that action should be taken. I believe that every mention of the 4 percent rule should come with a cautionary note about what Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research shows. And of course the bigger issue is the “idea” that the Buy-and-Holders have mistakenly put forward that there might be some alterntive universe in which market timing/price discipline is not 100 percent required at all times for all investors (there is research showing that short-term timing does not work and in the days before Shiller published his Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns, the people wh developed the Buy-and-Hold concept jumpted to the hasty and unfortunate conclusion that, if short-term timing doesn’t work, perhaps long-term timing is not always 100 percent required either — that’s the source of all the difficulties that we have experienced over the past 20 years).

I’d like to see all of the textbooks rewritten and all of the research that has been supressed (Rob Arnott told me that researchers working in this field view it as a career-limiting move to publish research building on Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning work) discussed freely at every site. And all the other wonderful stuff that we would be seeing if the same laws that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field were applied in the investment advice field as well.

So there are a lot of things that I would like to see done. But I don’t for two seconds believe that it is at all likely that you Goons are all going to go to Greaney and insist that he correct the study immediately. I suppose that it could happen. That would of course be super. But after 20 years of this stuff, I think it would be fair to refer to that possibilkity as an extreme long-shot. So I am not asking you Goons to do anything or expecting you to do anything. Does that help?

I am posting my sincere thoughts re these matters. I believe that I should have been doing that all along. I think that I was a creep to permit myself to be intimidated into not doing it for three years. I believe that everyone in this field would feel better anout himself or herself if he or she began posting his or her sincere thoughts about the subjects being discussed. I am not able to imagine any downside to permitting honest posting at every site.

I believe that we will see the greatest surge of economic growth in our nation’s history in the days after we open every site to honest positng re the peer-reviewed research. I believe that, in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, we will find a way as a nation of people to provide access to discussions of the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research to every investor in the nation (and on the planet). I forsee all of our lives getting better and better and better and better in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis (which I anticipate being a horrible and scary event, one that could end up shaking not only our economic system but our political system as well).

That’s it.

I am not asking you to do anything, Anonymous. I think it would be wonderful if you took some steps, But I am not expecting you to do so or asking you to do so. I am posting about my sincere belief that the Greaney retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment and that every citizen of the United States should feel free to post about that error and every other error that followed from the core Buy-and-Hold error that market timing/price discipline is not always 100 percent required at every site on the internet every day. No more, no less.

My best wishes.

Rob