A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

“If I See Mike Piper at the Bloggers Conference and He Asks Me Whether I Think He Is Going to Prison or Not, I Will Say to His Face Just What I Said Here.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site.

So you are NOT going to tell them to their faces that they will be going to prison.

Got it.

I don’t see how you draw that conclusion from what I said, Slanegirl.

If I see Mike Piper at the conference and he asks me whether I think he is going to prison or not, I will say to his face just what I said here.

If I see Rick Ferri, I will say something a bit different because what I said here re Rick Ferri is a bit different. But what I say to Rick Ferri’s face will again be consistent with what I have said about Rick Ferri here.

If I see Jack Bogle, I will say to Jack words consistent with the words that I have said about Jack here. I have sent three e-mails to Jack re this matter. Did I hold back in those e-mails? I sent e-mails to Wade Pfau following his deal with you Goons. Did I not say in my e-mail to Wade the same thing that I say here? I wrote: “Think, man. This is insane!” Is that not strong enough language to get the point across?

You are accusing me of something that is not true. But you are touching on an important point.

All of us humans hate to make other people feel uncomfortable. That’s part of our nature. But in this particular case, this part of our nature is causing us to do harm to ourselves and others. A lot of people are thinking “Yeah, it’s obviously the case that those Old School safe withdrawal rate studies got the numbers wildly wrong — they wouldn’t write about it in the Wall Street Journal if there weren’t something to it. But I don’t want to point out that Rob Bennett has been saying this for 11 years now. Rob has been reporting the accurate numbers for many years and a lot of big names in this field have been participating in a cover-up. Those people may be going to prison. I don’t want to do something that is going to cause people to go to prison. I am going to keep my mouth shut.”

These people are trying not to cause trouble. That is generally a good impulse. But it is not at all a good impulse in this particular case. There are some circumstances in which you absolutely MUST cause some trouble because, if you do not, there’s going to be trouble ten times worse. When the house is on fire and there are people sleeping in it, you don’t keep it to yourself because you don’t want to trouble their sleep. You scream. You shake them. You pull them out of bed.

We have as a society been asleep re the safe withdrawal rate matter for 11 years now. Our collective attitude has been: “Oh, it will work itself out somehow, let’s not go there.” We need to go there. We need to examine the problem closely and we need to fix the problem. That means that, for starters, we need to start talking about the problem and what caused it and why it has remained unfixed for 11 years now and about how our knowledge that these mistakes were made changes what we have long believed about how stock investing works.

We need to do that for all sorts of reasons. One of those reasons is that more people will get sent to prison if we fail to talk about it and those who do get sent to prison will get sent there for a longer period of time if we fail to talk about it. I don’t tell people to their face that they may be going to prison and then laugh at their misfortune. I tell people to their face that they may be going to prison as part of an effort to insure that acts are taken that will help them to get their prison sentence REDUCED.

It is 100 percent crazy that people are going to prison over this. Our discovery of how stock investing really works is 100 percent good news. It’s a dream come true. It’s like discovering the Fountain of Youth. We need to stop fighting over it and start enjoying our good fortune. If we had only corrected the retirement studies within 24 hours of the time that the errors in them became public knowledge, no one would be going to prison. I of course said that we should correct the studies way back on the morning of May 13, 2002. And there were of course hundreds of community members who backed me up on that and who want to see this taken to a place where it is early retirements we are all talking about instead of prison sentences either long or short.

You have placed yourself in circumstances where you are going to be serving a long prison sentence a little bit down the road, Slanegirl. As your friend, I tell you to your face that you better do something about the situation now, when it is still possible for positive actions to be taken. Your idea of committing multiple felonies to insure that Greaney does not need to correct his study is not working out so hot. Yes, you are hurting me. And yes, you are hurting millions of middle-class investors. And, yes, you are hurting every expert in this field, including our mutual friend Jack Bogle. But that’s not the complete list of the humans you are hurting. You are hurting Slanegirl very, very, very much. Please stop doing that.

My warmest wishes to you and yours, my long-time abusive posting friend.

Please note that I said that last part to your face as well. And that my eyes let you know that I mean every word of it.

Rob the Tough-Love Dude

Valuation-Informed Indexing #162 — Stock Overvaluation Hinders Economic Growth Far More Than Does the Budget Deficit

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I’ve posted Entry #  to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Stock Overvaluation Hinders Economic Growth Far More Than Does the Budget Deficit.

Juicy Excerpt: The sad reality is that the same human weaknesses that causes the budget deficit draw us to Get Rich Quick investing strategies. The politicians aren’t doing the job they need to do, that much is so. But it’s not because politicians are by nature bad people. It’s because politicians need to get elected to remain politicians. And the politicians who take serious steps to address the deficit problem don’t win elections. The people doing the voting don’t want to hear the realities spoken out loud.

It’s the same story in the investing realm. The big shots in this field recommend Buy-and-Hold strategies. Not because they are bad people. Because that’s what sells. Everybody knows that spending more than you earn cannot lead to anything good and everybody knows that not taking price into consideration when buying stocks cannot lead to anything good. But we all like to pretend that we do NOT understand. So those who want to make it in the political realm play along with us. And those who want to make it in the investing realm do the same.

The problem is actually worse in the investing realm. The level of stock overvaluation that we have seen in recent years does far more harm to our goal of achieving economic growth than do today’s budget deficits.

“Following the Next Crash, We Will See All Kinds of Things Come Out That We Can Barely Imagine Today. I Believe That We Are Going to Hear Shiller Say That He Has Been Intimidated FOR YEARS. Until We Hear Testimony Taken Under Oath, We Won’t Be Able to Say How Many Will Be Going to Prison.”

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

Rob,

How many people are going to prison. Who will be paying you the 500 million?

I’ll offer you my impressions, Anonymous. That’s the best that I can do given the unique circumstances that apply. We have never as a nation been in a situation like this before. These are entirely uncharted waters.

There are millions of good and smart and hard-working people who believe that Buy-and-Hold works and who naturally share that belief with friends and neighbors and co-workers and fellow community members. These people have obviously never done anything wrong and have zero chance of going to prison. I was one of these people myself until the night of August 27, 2002, the night that John Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to post honestly on safe withdrawal rates. It was when I saw 200 people endorse his post that I saw how emotional a strategy Buy-and-Hold was and knew that it was not for me.

The next layer down is people who participated at discussion boards at which the Buy-and-Hold Goons employed intimidation tactics to drive away those with an inclination to post honestly about the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research and who failed to speak up about it. That’s dishonorable behavior. Those people helped the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies in an indirect way. A case could be made that those people were in some small way engaged in an act of financial fraud. But I would be very surprised if any of those people were prosecuted. Prosecutors need to allocate limited resources in an intelligent manner. Limited resources are not going to be directed to people whose only “crime” is that they kept quiet. Those people will not be going to prison.

The next layer down is people who actively participated in the cover-up by putting up intimidation or deception posts but only on a small number of occasions. I believe that no one will be prosecuted for doing this sort of thing on a small numbers of occasions. Again, there are bigger and more important fish to fry.

Going down another layer, we have people who participated in long-running smear campaigns aimed at keeping middle-class investors from learning about the errors in the Old School SWR studies and about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold investing strategies in general. These are the people most likely to be prosecuted, in my assessment. People have sympathy for those who make one or two mistakes. Sympathy wanes when people make a career out of the destruction of human lives. It is to protect ourselves from these sorts of individuals (The Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons) that as a society we adopted the laws against financial fraud in the first place. I am highly confident that the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons will be spending many years in prison cells.

Then we have people like Mike Piper, at the Oblivious Investor blog, and Carl Richards, at the Behavior Gap blog. Both Mike and Carl have done a great deal of top-notch work. They are both friends of mine and they have both been highly complimentary of my work. They’re both smart. They’re both good guys. It pains me to think that there is anything more than a zero chance that either Mike or Carl (or any of the many others in similar circumstances) will be going to prison. Yet it is a stone cold fact that both Mike and Carl (and the many others) provided HUGE help to the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the studies that are in the process of causing millions of middle-class people to suffer failed retirements. They committed the act of financial fraud as that crime is defined in the statute books.

Will Mike and Carl (and the others) go to prison? I don’t feel that I can answer that question. I am too close to all this. I have personal friendships with these people and I naturally hate the thought of seeing my friends carted off to prison cells. On the other hand, I also care about the millions of middle-class people whose lives are in the process of being destroyed. I think it is fair to say that after the next price crash those people are going to be very, very, very angry to learn that the errors in the Old School studies have been public knowledge since the morning of May 13, 2002, and that these people engaged in multiple acts of financial fraud to keep people from learning this. I can with my heart hope that Mike and Carl (and the others) will not go to prison while acknowledging with my head that my heart may not rule the day re this one.

Then we have all the people who have known about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold for many years and kept it zipped because they didn’t want to see their careers destroyed by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. Rob Arnott reported that, when he asked a convention of academic researchers whether they thought Buy-and-Hold could work, only a tiny number of hands went up. Yet when he asked the same researchers whether they rooted their research in a belief in Buy-and-Hold, nearly every hand in the room shot up in the air. That’s obviously not the way in which academic researchers are supposed to behave. That’s obviously not ethical behavior. I believe that these people will be held to a far higher standard than non-experts. These people are paid to know this stuff. They can’t say “Oh, I haven’t been able to find time over the past 32 years to keep up with any new developments in the field.”

There are thousands of cases of this kind. Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research in 1981. I didn’t come on the scene until the morning of May 13, 2002. I saw intense hostility evidence itself following my first post. So the cover-up had obviously been going on for a long time before I came on the scene. I believe that, following the next crash, we will see all kinds of things come out that we can barely imagine today. I believe that we are going to hear Shiller say that he has been intimidated FOR YEARS. Lots of others will be saying similar things. Until we hear testimony taken under oath on all that has been going on, I don’t think that any of us will be able to make fully informed statements about how many will be going to prison or for how many years.

Finally, there are cases like the cases of my good friends Wade Pfau and Jack Bogle. I love these guys. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing if not for the huge contributions of Jack Bogle and there would be no peer-reviewed academic research with my name on it showing millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent if not for the huge contributions of Wade Pfau. So I am biased.

The other side of the story, of course, is that both Jack and Wade are in circumstances in which they could bring the economic crisis to an end with very little effort on their part. Wade just needs to get that study written up on the front page of the New York Times and Jack just needs to address the Lindauer matter so that the hundreds of posters who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted at the Bogleheads Forum can see that desire given recognition in the real world.

I believe that whether Wade and Jack go to prison or not will likely depend on the answers they give to questions put to them under oath. People are going to want to know how deep their fears were. Were family members threatened? How did they rationalize their behavior to themselves? How deep was their cognitive dissonance? All this kind of thing.

As for the $500 million, that’s just a number that I put forward as part of an effort to provide an incentive for the Wall Street Con Men to seek a settlement prior to the next crash. Any person who has participated in the cover-up is liable to me for the financial damages I have suffered as a result of the damage done to my business. The amount of the damages is obviously a number far bigger than the number I put forward as a possible settlement amount. I did that because I don’t want us to go into the Second Great Depression. I am happy to settle for $500 million if it brings the economic crisis to an end and helps us on our way to the greatest period of economic growth in our history. I am far better off getting $500 million to spend in a thriving economy than I would be to receive a far larger amount in a society that is in a state of collapse. No one wins if we fail to bring this matter to a successful conclusion prior to the next price crash, in my assessment.

Rob

“Our System Works Only If We All Say What We Honestly Believe. Once Intimidation Enters the Picture, Things Get Corrupted.”

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

Just amazing how so many people who are much more intelligent, more successful and far more wealthy are wrong and Rob is the only one right………because, of course, Rob can’t possibly be wrong.

I CAN be wrong, Anonymous.

Say that I am wrong. Would that make it acceptable for me to post dishonestly? It would not.

All of us can make mistakes. None of us can be required always to be right.

But none of us may post dishonestly. We must say what we truly believe.

We are all better off being wrong and honest than being right and dishonest.

Why is that?

Because no human can ever be sure that he is right. We are all flawed creatures.

The only way we will discover our errors is if someone coming from a different set of life circumstances is honest enough to point out our errors to us. That person is worth gold.

I don’t say that I am certain that I am right. I say that I must post honestly and that there can never be any negotiation re that point.

What if Bogle is wrong? He can be wrong too, no?

Would he want Rob Bennett insisting on his right to post honestly and pointing out his (Bogle’s) errors?

I am 100 percent sure that Bogle would want me to point out his errors.

So I am going to continue to do it.

If you care about Bogle, you should DEMAND that I continue to do it.

There shouldn’t be even a tiny question in anyone’s mind re this one.

Our system works only if we all say what we honestly believe.

Once intimidation enters the picture, things get corrupted.

That hurts each and every one of us.

Please think it over, my old friend.

Rob, the Fellow Who May Have It All Wrong But Who Properly Insists On His Right to Post Honestly All the Same

“If the Purpose of a Ban Is to Cover Up an Error Made in a Retirement Study, the Ban Is an Act of Financial Fraud. That’s a Felony. That’s Prison Time.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the Goon Central board:

Rob doesn’t seem to realize that almost all websites are private property and he can post at them only if the owner allows.  An owner can ban him from a site for any reason, and he has no recourse. 
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That’s not what the laws concerning financial fraud say, GW.  If the purpose of the ban is to cover-up an error made in a retirement study, the ban is an act of financial fraud. That’s a felony. That’s prison time.If the ban is the result of an act of intimidation advanced by someone engaged in a cover-up of an error in a retirement study, that act of intimidation is an act of financial fraud, a felony.

There is no law that makes it a crime to write random numbers on pieces of paper. But Bernie Madoff is in prison today because he wrote random numbers on pieces of paper and then told people that these numbers reflected transactions that he made with their money. That part turned what he did into financial fraud, a felony. Bernie Madoff is in prison today.

That’s where you are headed, GW. For a long time. We are not talking about one or two felonies here. We are not talking about mistakes made in a heated moment but cold and calculated acts extending over an 11-year time period. We are not talking about an act of financial fraud that caused a few thousand people to experience failed retirements but one that caused millions to do so.

My warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob, a Fellow Who Is Very Happy Today That for Years He Refused Greaney’s Entreaties to Commit Acts of Financial Fraud Himself

“The First Question That I Get From Just About Everyone Who I Tell That It Is Now Possible to Reduce the Risk of Stock Investing by 70 Percent Is — Why Don’t We Hear About This From Every Expert in the Field, Rob?”

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

Are you going to talk about Wade, goons, death threats, prison sentences and lawsuits at FinCon? It would be dishonest and corrupt to avoid those topics when mingling with your fellow bloggers, since that is ALL you talk about here.

That is not all I talk about here, X.

I have five calculators here that exist nowhere else on the internet.

I have over 200 RobCasts and just about all of them are over one-hour long.

I have 200 articles focusing on different aspects of what the peer-reviewed academic research of the past 32 years says about what works in stock investing.

And I of course have links to the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau, the research that shows millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent.

I will obviously be talking about as much of that stuff as I possibly can.

But, yes, I will also talk about you Goons and your death threats and your board bannings and your tens of thousands of acts of defamation and your threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.

Why?

Because the first question I get from just about everyone who I tell that it is now possible to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent is — Why don’t we hear about this from every expert in the field, Rob?

The obvious answer to that question is that the Buy-and-Holders are not willing to admit the mistake they made and have been engaging in brutally abusive tactics to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning what the research says.

We know all we need to know on the substance side to bring the economic crisis to an end and to enter the greatest period of economic growth in our history, X. We are on the 99-yard line. The last yard is getting you Goons sent to prison. When your prison sentences are announced, the news will go viral and Buy-and-Hold will be a dirty phrase at every web site on the internet.

I talk about bringing an end to the ugly stuff because it is by bringing an end to the ugly stuff that millions of us get to experience the benefits of being lucky enough to be born at the greatest time to be investors in the history of Planet Earth.

Does all that make good sense to you, my good friend?

Rob, the Fellow Excited About Being Given the Job of Carrying the Football One More Yard and Making the 99-Yard Drive So Far Achieved Pay Off Big-Time for Every Single Person Involved

“If I Had Magical Powers, Perhaps I Would Offer You a Deal Where You Avoid Prison In Exchange for Permitting Honest Posting on Investing Topics on the Internet. But I Am Not the One Who Will Be Sending You to Prison. So I Cannot By Myself Cancel Your Prison Sentence.”

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

Rob,

The only hate I see is coming from you. You are the one that threatens people with prison time and lawsuits. You are the one that makes endless posts about “goons”.

It all started with you when you got banned from the boards. You have spent your time weaving a story to fit your fantasy of people going to jail and you reaping millions of dollars.

It all started when I pointed out the errors in Greaney’s safe withdrawal rate study, Pink.

If the numbers in the studies that millions of us have used to plan our retirements are wildly wrong, then the entire model for understanding how stock investing works that was used to create those studies is wrong. Everybody gets that.

The question is what to do about it.

The Buy-and-Hold Mafia says we need to cover it up.

I say we need to correct the model. Once corrected, the model is called “Valuation-Informed Indexing.”

The kicker here is that there are consequences that follow from getting the entire model wrong. The consequence in this case is that we experience another stock crash, one so big that it puts us in the Second Great Depression.

If we were smart, we would fix the model before experiencing the crash.

But even if we are dumb, we are going to fix it following the crash. Why the heck wouldn’t we?

So you end up in prison.

I CANNOT CHANGE THAT, Pink.

If I had magical powers, perhaps I would offer you a deal where you avoid prison in exchange for permitting honest posting on investing topics on the internet.

BUT I AM NOT THE ONE WHO WILL BE SENDING YOU TO PRISON. SO I CANNOT BY MYSELF CANCEL YOUR PRISON SENTENCE.

I can tell you a surefire way to get it reduced. People are going to be a lot less mad about what you have done if we avoid another crash than they are going to be if we experience another crash. So I can work with you to get the word out about the realities and thereby help us avoid another crash. That would translate into a somewhat SHORTER prison sentence.

And I can spin things in a direction that leads to a shorter prison sentence. I can put up words about cognitive dissonance and all that sort of thing. I can do that honestly. So that’s something you can ask of me that I can actually do for you.

But I cannot change 11 years of internet history, Pink. That’s beyond my abilities.

You need to stop focusing on the past, which cannot be changed, and start focusing on the future, which can be. By taking smart actions today, you make your future a lot better than it would otherwise be.

Or at least so Rob Bennett believes.

My warmest regards to you and yours.

Rob the Non-Superman

“We Have An Entire Nation of People in Pain Over What They Once Believed About Investing. Once the Pain Is Over, It Is Over for Good. So the Thing to Do Is To Do Everything Possible to Insure That the Transition Takes Place As Soon As Possible.”

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

These people are not your friends. In fact, you are like a boil on their ass.

That’s not so, Anonymous.

There is not one person alive who does not want to know how to invest effectively. Not one.

I am teaching them how to invest effectively. So I am obviously their friend.

And I like learning stuff from them too. So it works both ways.

Is there friction in evidence in my dealings with them?

There is indeed.

What’s that about?

It hurts to realize that you have been taken, Anonymous. I am telling them that they have been taken. I am saying things that cause them to feel pain.

So they strike out at me.

But they STILL want to learn how to invest effectively. The pain they feel doesn’t change that.

The pain is a temporary thing. The learning experience is a forever thing.

The bad stuff that we have to work through to get to the good stuff is small. The good stuff on the other side is huge.

I am their friend.

They don’t see it because of the pain, that’s all.

If there were a way to avoid the pain, I would of course elect that path.

There is no such way.

All learning experiences begin with a realization that you don’t know it all. So that has to come first.

If they could see what is on the other side, they would jump in two seconds. Our problem today is that they cannot yet see what is on the other side clearly enough to want to jump to it.

But there is no other way. So that is what they will do in time.

Once the pain is over, it is over for good. So the thing to do is to do everything possible to insure that the transition takes place as soon as possible.

We have an entire nation of people in pain over what they once believed about investing, Anonymous.

Please don’t let that reality get you down.

The pain is in one sense a very good sign. The pain comes from the realization that you could have done so much better with your money. The more pain you feel, the better you could have done.

We are seeing lots of pain. That means that there is lots of forward movement there to be achieved. The advance here is huge.

It is the job of all investment advisors today to help people through this pain. Lots are not doing it because it is hard work. That’s wrong. It is hard work but it is also important work. And very fulfilling work. Once people get past the pain part, they never, ever, ever want to go back to the discredited strategies.

There are no boils on any asses. We are all in this together. We are all friends.

We are humans, of course. So we are scared. We may COMPLAIN of boils on our asses. That’s just us griping about the pain. The thing to do is to bring an END to the pain. We know who are friends are by checking to see who is putting the most energy into that project. The people who are NOT our friends don’t have the combination of guts and love to do it. The people who ARE our friends want to do everything they can to help us out of a tight spot.

I’m your friend, Anonymous. I am not a boil on your ass.

Really!

Rob the Boil (Not!)

“Wade Is Embarrassed About the Reports on His E-Mails for Only One Reason — Because He Joined the Cover-Up and Committed Felonies in Support of It Himself. He Doesn’t Gain Some Magical Right to Have His Felonies Remain Secret Just Because Much of the Evidence of His Involvement Is Contained in E-Mails to Me.”

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Tell me Rob, what’s ethical about disclosing the contents of private emails sent to you against the wishes of the sender? Wade is not ashamed of anything he said in any of those e-mails, Yip. He is very, very PROUD of the work he did. Nothing could be more clear. He communicates this clearly over and over and over again.

He is AFRAID. He has financial responsibility for two small children. He knows how ruthless the Wall Street Mafia is. He doesn’t feel that he can afford to lose his job. That’s all.

And Wade is not the only one. Bogle has made clear in a number of his comments that he would like to feel free to post honestly. Swedroe would like to post honestly. Burnszzz would like to post honestly. Bernsteinzz would like to post honestly. Morningstar wants to permit honestzzz posting at its discussion boards. So does Motley Fool. So does the Early Retirement Forum. There are hundreds of bloggers who would like to be doing honest work. There are hundreds of personal finance journalists who would like to be doing honest work. There are tens of thousands of investment advisors who would like to be doing honest work.

How do you suggest that we make this happen?

So long as everyone is afraid, nothing good can happen. The Buy-and-Hold Mafia can cut us all off one by one.

Once a group of us stands together and INSISTS on our right to post honestly, we are all safe. There is not a thing that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia can do to us once we work up the courage to stand together.

We gain that courage by knowing that there are lots of others out there who want to see minimal ethical standards apply in this field, just as they do in every other field.

I did not intend to write reports on Wade’s e-mails when we were working on the research. There was no news value in them. The news value was in the research we produced together. That research changes the history of investing analysis. We showed millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. That’s Nobel-prize-quality stuff.

You committed felonies to keep that research from getting out to the millions of middle-class people who desperately need to know about it. Jack Bogle indicated that he is fine with that. That’s financial fraud. And not an ordinary case of it either. That’s the greatest act of financial fraud ever committed in the history of the United States.

Your felonies make Wade’s e-mails news. Your 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School SWR studies is the biggest economic and political story of any of our lifetimes. In that context, Wade’s e-mails become news.

All that said, I was careful about how I reported on what Wade said in the e-mails. I did not post the entire texts of the e-mails. I used quotes from Wade only when they were needed to tell the story effectively. I gave Wade the ability to control to a large extent how the story would be told. I posted every word he wrote to me in response to the posts on the e-mails and I collected all his responses in a single article so that people could easily gain access to any responses from him. I told him that I would be happy to run responses from him on every single e-mail if that is what he wanted. I told him that I would run the full texts of the e-mails if that is what he wanted (he asked that I do that in only one case and I followed his instructions).

I did not violate Wade’s privacy. He does not have a right to demand that I not provide the authorities evidence of multiple felonies when they are committed. And these are not ordinary felonies. These are felonies that caused the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history. These are felonies that have caused tens of thousands of businesses to fail and that have put millions of people out of work. These felonies have caused great political friction both from the left (the Occupy Wall Street movement) and from the right (the Tea Party movement). These felonies are likely to put us in the Second Great Depression in not too much more time. This is serious stuff, Yip.

Wade is embarrassed about the reports on the e-mails for only one reason — because he joined the cover-up and committed felonies in support of it himself. He doesn’t gain some magical right to have his felonies remain secret just because much of the evidence for his involvement is contained in e-mails to me.

It is my JOB to report on this story. I of course need to be fair to Wade in my reports. I have been fair to Wade in my reports.

And, to the extent that it was possible to avoid using Wade’s words in my reports, I think it made sense as a matter of charity to honor his wishes that I do that. I did indeed honor his wishes.

I would be committing a felony myself if I were to fail to report on the story. A journalist who knows about a story of this magnitude and who fails to report on it because some of those who committed the felonies are friends of his is himself participating in a cover-up.

No thanks. Find someone else.

I have reported the story. I will continue to report the story. I will always make every effort possible to be kind to those involved. But it is not only those who have committed felonies who matter here. There are millions of middle-class people whose hopes for retirement have been destroyed by this 11-year cover-up. Those people matter too. I need to balance their rights to learn what the last 32 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about what works in stock investing with Wade Pfau’s rights to keep personal things personal.

It’s not a personal matter anymore once you take acts that put the future of the country you live in in great jeopardy. My understanding is that Wade is currently a citizen of the United States. There are responsibilities that go with being a citizen of this country. One of Wade’s responsibilities was to report to the authorities the threats that were made to shut him up and to demand that those making the threats and those supporting those who made the threats be put in prison for their crimes. There are REASONS why the behavior you have engaged in is criminal behavior under the laws of the United States. The people of this nation adopted those laws as PROTECTION against people like you.

Wade has nothing to be ashamed of EXCEPT for his dealings with you Goons and his dealings with the Wall Street Con Men, Yip. That’s the bottom line here. If he wants to start feeling good about himself again, he needs to return to behaving ethically in the execution of his responsibilities as an academic researcher. If he feels that that is impossible given the realities that apply today, he needs to find another way of making a living. No one has the right to lend support to the sorts of individuals who have posted in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney and their 11-year cover-up of the errors made in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies.

I naturally hope that my good friend Wade enjoys all the best that this life has to offer a person.

I naturally wish the same for you, Yip.

Rob the Patriot and the Good Friend of Wade Pfau (a Fellow Who Has a Desire to Do the Right Thing for His Country Himself But Who Is at the Moment Too Afraid of What the Buy-and-Hold Mafia Would Do to Him)
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“It’s ALL a Guide. But You Buy-and-Hold Goons Don’t ACT Like It’s All a Guide. You Act Like You Have Discovered Truth. It’s a Guide Alright. And You Forgot That. And You Hurt Lots of People By Doing So.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board:

the Four Percent Rule may be much more valuable as a guide rather than a steadfast rule…

There’s no problem in using the 4 percent rule as a guide, Drip Guy. That’s how I’d like to see the numbers generated by the New School SWR methodology used. I am not God. I don’t want people looking at the numbers generated by my calculator and saying “This Rob Bennett fellow says it, so it must be so and I am going to plan my retirement around those numbers.” I produce those numbers as a guide. So, fine. Let’s say that the Old School numbers were intended as a guide as well.

Then why the death threats?

Why the board bannings?

Why the tens of thousands of acts of defamation?

Why the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs?

It’s not just the Old School SWR numbers that are a guide, Drip Guy. The entire Buy-and-Hold model is only a guide. We didn’t even start studying stock investing in a systematic way until the 1960s. How could ANY of it be more than a guide at this point? It’s ALL a guide. But you Buy-and-Hold Goons don’t ACT like it’s all a guide. You act like you have discovered Truth.

That’s why you are going to prison. People who put forward guides don’t go to prison, Drip Guy. People who put forward guides don’t feel so upset when other sorts of guides are put forward that they feel a need to commit felonies to stop the people who want to hear about the other sorts of guides from hearing about them.

Every single word that any one of us humans puts forward re stock investing in the Year 2013 is a freakin’ word of guidance and nothing more. That’s where we stand in the development of our knowledge of how this stuff works.

That’s why those who fail to remember that it is all a guide and who engage in felonies to stop those who have other sorts of guidance to offer, guidance that may end up being of huge value to millions and millions of people, need to be placed in prison cells. We made the laws that will be putting you in prison to protect us from the sorts of individuals who forget that every number ever produced by the Buy-and-Holders was a mere Guide.

It’s a guide allright.

And you forgot that.

And you hurt lots of people by doing so.

And, unless you straighten up and learn how to fly right before the arrival of the next price crash, I think it would be fair to say that you will be spending a long time in a prison cell for that act of forgetfulness and the felonies that it led you to commit.

My best wishes to you, old friend.

Rob the Leader of the New School SWR Guidance