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

You could help out Bogle and the goons by not filings charges and by not trying to after them for settlement payments. Then all would be well. What do you think about that? Consider it a Christmas gift.

I am going to post honestly about what the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research says. If I do anything else, I am committing financial fraud myself. So long as I do that, the word is going to get out about the 35-year cover-up. Probably not today or tomorrow. But following the next price crash. I am not the United States. When you commit a crime, you are committing the crime against the people of the United States. I don’t personally have much to do with it.

The criminal acts are detailed at my site, that’s pretty much the extent of my involvement re the criminal side of this. But even if my site did not exist, this would get out. Shiller’s book is still out there. The research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau is still out there. Shiller’s Nobel prize is still out there. The massive act of financial fraud is eventually going to be written up on the front page of the New York Times regardless of anything I do.

The full reality is that it is probably a plus that I have detailed the criminal acts at this site. I make an effort to put the criminal acts in the best possible light. I say that Bogle’s mistake was the product of cognitive dissonance. How many people do you think there will be saying that following the next price crash? I have said it on numerous occasions. And you can point to time-stamped posts in which I said it and you can say “this is a fellow who had no reason to be biased in favor of the Wall Street Con Men or the members of their various Goon Squads who was saying this.” So my posts have a high degree of credibility. And I think you can point to some of the things that you Goons said to show that there really was cognitive dissonance at play.

The cognitive dissonance play is the best play you have. And the materials at this site help you make that play. The materials at this site do not really hurt you. They reveal the truth. The truth has certain aspects that put you in a bad light. But the truth also has certain aspects that put you in a good light or at least in a not-so-bad light. You can use the materials at this site to develop a defense that I think might cause a good number of reasonable people to react in a moderate way. And I am 100 percent happy to encourage people to look at things in that sort of way, in a way that works to your favor.

Look at Wade Pfau. He is a very smart guy. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics. He was skeptical about a lot of things that I said in the early days. Even today I believe that he is skeptical about some things I say. You can point to someone like him and argue that, if that guy didn’t get it, how could we be expected to get it? You can point to John Walter Russell. John asked that we use phony numbers on the Risk Evaluator because he found the real numbers too shocking. John was as honest as the day is long. But he felt enough social pressure that he asked that we use phony numbers.

You can even look at my history. I was a proud Buy-and-Holder at one time. I once speculated that the SWR at the top of the bubble was probably somewhere around 3 percent. This stuff is not easy. It is easy in a way. It is intellectually easy. But it is very, very, very hard emotionally. That is your defense. You tell people that “we really did believe in it and we did not want to see people hurt and so we did some things that might seem wrong looking back but that seemed to make sense to a lot of us at the time we did them.” I am not saying that that gets you off 100 percent. But I believe that it is best you can do at this point in the proceedings. It is not a crazy position. And it is something that I can back you up on. If someone in my position feels okay backing you up, lots of people will feel okay backing you up.

We are looking at something very big here. It’s hardly possible for the human mind to let in how big this is. Again, look at Wade Pfau. He was AMAZED when this stuff started to click for him. This is like harnessing the power of the silicon chip. The goal is not to put people in prison. That’s petty. The goal is to get the word out, to improve everyone’s life in a very big way. Our problem is to figure out how we do that without having people go to prison for a long time. The answer is to focus on the good being done and thereby try to get the focus away from the 14-year delay, which is a big deal but perhaps is not as big a deal as it at first seems when you put things in perspective and consider how huge an advance it is we are looking at here.

Unlike the criminal actions, the civil suits are my thing. It is my aim to approach those in a generous spirit. I obviously expect to be paid for my work and this is very, very important work that caused me a lot of trouble for a long time. I am going to be paid very well. I don’t know how much Steve Jobs or Bill Gates ended up with but I am sure that we are talking about a numbers in the hundreds of millions. This is a lot bigger. So the $500 million figure that I have advanced is not at all out of line.

And I have offered to direct 10 percent of that to helping get the word out (by promoting my site and by funding blogs that would explore different aspects of the VII question). I can understand people not wanting to go to prison. I cannot understand the Wall Street Con Men being too worried about a payment of $500 million. These people have lots of money. Paying the $500 million will revitalize the entire industry. It helps everyone. And it puts them in a good light. I don’t see much of an issue there.

We cannot go back in time. If I could push a button and take us back in time, I would push the button. We have to deal with the world as it exists and make choices that work the best for every single person involved. That’s my aim. The good here is 50 times more good than the bad here is bad. So if we all approach this in the right spirit I am 100 percent confident that we will all end up in a very good place.

The entire thing is a Christmas gift. We need to start looking at it that way. Learning new things is wonderful. This is an advance. There is nothing even a tiny bit bad about it. We all just need to let that in.

Rob

 

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

Maybe you send send him a letter letting him know he has a chance to reduce his prison sentence and a lower settlement amount if he responds by close of business.

That’s the approach that I’ve tried with you Goons, Anonymous. It hasn’t done the trick. Surprise! Surprise!

People don’t like to go to prison AT ALL, you know?

I get it. I wouldn’t want to go to prison. If I were going to go to prison when people learned the realities of stock investing, I might want to block people from learning the realities of stock investing too. I hope that I wouldn’t do something like that. But I think it would be fair to say that I would be temped. Nobody likes to go to prison.

What do you propose that I do about it? I didn’t create this situation. It developed over time and it was well in place long before I showed up on the scene. I have on many occasions offered to do anything in my power to help out the Wall Street Con Men and you Goons so long as it does not require me to travel to the wrong side of the Felony Line myself. I am obviously not willing to do that. You can certainly understand why I would not want to go to prison myself, right?

You tell me something that I can do that would help Bogle out and that would help you Goons out and I will be on it in two seconds, Anonymous. I ask for nothing in return. It’s the right thing to do and it’s what I want to do. So all you have to do is to tell me what you want and it’s as good as done. The problem is that there is nothing that you can suggest. Bogle and you Goons have made such a mess of things that there are no 100 percent good solutions available to us at this point in the proceedings.

All that I can do is all that I can do. While there is no perfect path available to us, there are better paths and worse paths. You identify the path that Bogle and you consider the best path possible given where things stand today, and I am on it. That’s the best offer that I can make. It is not possible for the rational human mind to imagine how someone in my position could offer you a better deal than that. The most appealing deal that can be imagined by the human mind is the one that I offer you.

And I of course wish both Bogle and you Goons all the best that this life has to offer a person as well.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

What you are doing, is not helping anyone. Regardless, you still have time to work a job AND troll the internet. Average Americans go to work every day. Why is it that you cannot do the same?

It’s helping millions, Sammy. There are not millions today who have been helped in a concrete sense. But there are thousands. And those thousands will become millions following the next price crash, when every web site on the internet will be opened to honest posting on the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

We are watching a process play out over time. It’s easy to get frustrated that it is not playing out as fast as most of us would like to see it play out. We don’t have too much choice, you know? Things are what they are. We express our deepest beliefs re what we are as a society in our laws against financial fraud and in our posting rules prohibiting abusive tactics and so forth. I think it would be fair to say that a nation’s deepest beliefs will ultimately rule what can and what cannot be said re how stock investing works.

Is it even possible for the rational mind to imagine it playing out any other way? Given that we know how this is going to play out and that we know that things will be resolved in a positive and constructive and life-affirming way, do we really have any choice but to just hang in there and to continue giving this our best possible shot regardless of any abusiveness we happen to encounter from the Goons among us? I don’t see any other practical and realistic options. I am of course heartened by the thousands of ordinary investors and experts in this field who have expressed a desire that the entire internet be opened to honest posting, suggesting a belief on their end that they too see no possibility of a negative outcome in the long run.

Did the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau not advance the ball in a major way? That research showed that investors who are willing to adjust their stock allocations in response to big swings in stock prices can thereby reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Not helpful? Huh? I connected with Wade after suffering YEARS of abuse from you Goons. Had I folded my cards the first time one of you threatened to kill my wife and children as my “punishment” for having “crossed” you, that research would not exist today.

It exists. It will be featured on the front page of the New York Times in the days following the next price crash. Millions will be helped. It sometimes takes a little courage to change the world for the better. That’s the price one pays. I have a funny feeling that we are going to see thousands stepping forward and showing a willingness to pay that price when they see the human misery that is likely going to follow from a deepening of the economic crisis.

We are a good people. We will get there. Can you try to have a little faith in us? Can we just agree to wait to see how things play out following the next price crash before jumping to any hasty and ill-advised conclusions that the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research is not in the process of helping MILLIONS to live richer (in every sense of the word) lives?

I am afraid that I am not buying what you are selling, my old friend.

That said, I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.

Hang in there. It gets better. A LOT better.

It takes time. But it will be worth it 500 times over. I am sure.

Rob

 

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

No, it is YOU that has the disagreement. Bogle and Shiller have said not to time the market. YOU created the story. The words don’t line up, so then you say they are lying, it it is still all part of your story. You keep trying to blame everyone else, experts, goons (also made up by you), media, etc. Why? Because you need to find someone to blame for your failed retirement plan and to avoid the public embarrassment that has gone along with it.

Let’s see how it all plays out following the next price crash, Sammy.

It’s one thing to know that there is 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for even a single long-term investor. It’s something else to look into the eyes of the millions of people whose lives you have destroyed with your relentless promotion of the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind and not feel humbled by the experience.

Jack Bogle is a good man. He is going to come around. Robert Shiller is a good man. He is going to come around. The other Wall Street Con Men are good men. They are going to come around. God help me for saying so, but I believe that there is good buried somewhere deep even in you Goons. You are going to come around.

When we are all working together, we are going to be grateful that there were some among us who were not willing to go along with the con and who instead directed their energies to exploring and developing the new research-based ideas re how stock investing works in the real world. I know that I started feeling a whole big bunch better about myself when I got off the Buy-and-Hold train and embraced the idea of doing honest work in this field.

That shouldn’t be such a controversial choice. In other fields of human endeavor, it is common for people to do honest work and it is common for others not only to tolerate that but actually to encourage it. I believe we are going to see the rules that govern human behavior in every field of human endeavor apply to the stock investing field as well following the next price crash and the worsening of the economic crisis that may well come with it.

We’ll see, you know? I certainly will be rooting for all good things to happen for you regardless of how this stuff works out. I believe that as a nation we are working through a process. I believe that the good news here is 50 times more good than the ugly stuff that we have seen for 14 years now is ugly. We all just need to hang in there and have faith in our fellow humans and let all the good stuff play out before us.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters in any event, old friend.

Rob

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

If you weren’t banned, would we all be saved?

Not because I am so special.

But, if I were free to post honestly, everyone would be free to post honestly. The first thing I am going to do when I am re-admitted to every board at which I am banned, is to ask that everyone else that was banned be readmitted and to encourage all those who have engaged in self-censorhip to start telling us all exactly what they truly believe. Once that happens, the many smart people who make a living in this field are going to see that there are hundreds of millions of dollars to be made offering honest and accurate investing advice. And the thing will just grow and grow and grow.

What makes me special is that I was the first person to say that I will post honestly or I will post not and that there is zero room for negotiation re that point. Once one person is able to post with full honesty, there is nothing to stop hundreds of others from doing the same thing. I am in the process of opening up amazing opportunities for thousands of good and smart people. Those people will be helping ALL of us, Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike.

The upside here is off the charts. You are right in a sense that, when my ban is lifted, it will set in force a long series of amazing advances that will help us all live far better lives for many, many years to come. But you are wrong re any suggestion that it will be my posts alone that will be saving us all. There will be thousands of people making positive contributions once one of us has won the freedom to post honestly. There is huge leverage to achieved with a lifting of the Ban on Honest Posting.

I hope that helps a bit.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Is today’s topic part of your transition to the political arena that you have been speaking about over at your website?

It is. That’s the issue that I have been thinking about the most in recent months.

We all want to invest effectively. We are all on the same side re that one.

But we all carry a Get Rich Quick urge within us, which we try to hide from ourselves. So we all engage in self-deception during bull markets re the size of our investment portfolios (please understand that I have been guilty of this myself — I am not saying that I am immune from this universal inclination).

That’s the tension. We want to know the real numbers so that we can plan our financial futures effectively. But we also want to fool ourselves re those numbers. How do we as a society get about the business of incorporating the findings of the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research into our understanding of how stock investing works?

My belief, based on conversations with tens of thousands of investors that I have had over the past 14 years, is that we need to see concrete evidence of how dangerous Buy-and-Hold is before we will be willing to abandon it. We have 145 years of historical return data. My initial thought was that that would do the trick. The last 14 years of discussions have shown me that that is not so. We need more. We need to see current-day realities showing how dangerous it is to get the numbers that we use to plan our retirements wildly wrong.

We of course cannot gain access to that until prices crash. So I have come to the belief that we are not going to make it to the other side until prices crash.

But a price crash is going to bring on a lot more than just concrete evidence that Buy-and-Hold doesn’t work. A price crash will send the economy back into a recession because trillions of dollars of spending power will disappear from consumers’ life savings. A deepening of the economic crisis will bring on further mistrust of the political establishment, which will make politics on both the left and the right even more contentious than what we have seen this year. All of these things are connected.

I have come to the conclusion that these problems need to be solved in an integrated way. When I say “we need to correct the errors in the Old School retirement studies,” the people reading those words hear “we are going to see another crash and a deepening of the economic crisis.” They fear that, they don’t want to let in that reality, and so they tune out my words and I don’t get to first base on the safe withdrawal rate question. People are smart enough to appreciate these connections on some level of consciousness even though they don’t permit themselves to integrate them into their thinking enough to cause them to lower their stock allocations.

The good news here is 50 times more good than the bad news here is bad. That’s the message that I need to get out. Once people appreciate how big an advance this is, they will welcome the idea of spreading the word all over the internet re how the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research permits us all to live far richer lives than we ever before imagined possible. But people are just not going to hear that message until the next price crash leaves them no other options. And, when that happens, people are going to be scared about the economic and political effects that could follow from that crash.

My job will be to reassure people that the news really is good and not bad. The risk here is that we will all panic following the next crash and make things worse than they need to be. My job is to put forward a balanced message: Yes, it is unfortunate that we ignored Shiller’s research all these years but the reason is that we are flawed humans and those same flawed humans have achieved some amazing breakthroughs over the past 35 years that puts us all in a very amazing place on a going forward basis.

I am today working through in my head how to present this message in a balanced and effective way. I don’t have it all figured out yet. I am in the early stages of thinking through the problem. You are right to note that this column is one of my early efforts to think things though and to push myself to a fuller understanding of what is going on in all of our minds and hearts at this point in the proceedings.

That was a good and interesting and stimulating question, Sammy. Thanks for taking time out of your day to post those words here.

Rob

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

“And I have common sense on my side.”

Everyone, as in literally every person, thinks common sense is on his side. Might as well say “I’m right because I say so.”

So you are dropping FinCon, where everyone talks investing, in favor of political sites, where everything you write about is off topic. Perhaps you could explain the common sense in that plan.

You are right about the common sense thing, Anonymous. I agree with you re that one. I see it my way and you see it your way. I cannot say it your way and remain honest and I presume that the same is so with you.

And I also certainly agree that what you say about FinCon appears on first impression to be so. Investing issues should be explored at places where people congregate to discuss investing issues. Nothing could be more obvious.

I have had great success bringing up Valuation-Informed Indexing at the FinCon meetings. People love, love, love hearing about the implications of Shiller’s amazing research. I couldn’t be happier about the reaction that I have received to my discussions of VII at FinCon meetings.

So far, so good.

The problem is with the follow-through. People tell me that they are thrilled to hear my message. THEN THEY DON’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

They don’t link to me or send me e-mails when we return home from the conference or engage in their own explorations of the various topics or go to sites that have banned honest posting and ask that they drop the funny business or whatever. We are so close. But in 14 years we haven’t crossed the finish line. It’s frustrating.

In a sense it is more frustrating when people respond positively to my message than it is when people behave goonishly. With you Goons, I can pretty much dismiss a lot of what you say because it is so obvious that your intent is to block discussion and you have zero interest in participating in a learning experience. I don’t like the way you behave. But at least your behavior is easy to comprehend. You like Buy-and-Hold, you never want to give it up and so you are relentless about blocking any discussions of anything that threatens to replace Buy-and-Hold. I have never experienced a goonish interaction at a FinCon event. It is always this other thing — this mix of either a moderately positive or an intensely positive experience with a great reluctance to going forward on the path pointed to by that experience.

That is the more frustrating reaction for me because it comes close enough to being what I want to see that it makes me feel hopeful but yet it never provides the payoff that I need to see to get the fire started and to thereby open every investing discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other investing-related topics. If people were not so positive, I could hope that I would get a better reaction by improving my presentation. But people LOVE the presentation and are intensely impressed by it. So I cannot draw any hope from making efforts to improve. I go into these things knowing that the odds are very high that I am going to experience frustration. After six years, I have grown weary of the experiencing the frustrating encounters. So I am opting out this time.

I don’t believe that things are going to go great at political blogs. I believe that things are going to be frustrating in the political realm too. So I am not saying that this change will solve my problems.

However, the type of experience will be a bit different. In the political realm, the problem is that people defer to the investing experts re investing topics. That is an understandable position to take. It is certainly the position that I took in the days when I was a Buy-and-Holder. I never thought that it might all be a scam that people who proclaimed themselves as “experts” had been covering up for 21 years. I know it today to be a scam but I didn’t know that then. And so I can understand why other people who don’t follow investing closely don’t today see Buy-and-Hold as a huge scam.

The question is — Where am I more likely going to see change over time, in the investing realm or in the political realm?

People are too compromised in the investing realm. Wade Pfau thought that he would be awarded a Nobel prize if he continued to do the honest work that he was doing when we completed the peer-reviewed research that we co-authored. He had a HUGE incentive to tell you Goons to stuff it. But when he saw that you had the power of Jack Bogle and the other Wall Street Con Men behind you, he concluded that his career would be finished if he continued to do honest work in just the one area of safe withdrawal rates. That’s pretty darn amazing. Wade is a smart guy and an ambitious guy. The fact that he concluded that the corruption in the investing field has become so pervasive that a decision to do honest work re just a single important subject means career death tells us all something about what we are up against in trying to bring this economic crisis to an end.

In contrast, we are seeing things begin to happen on the political side. Bernie Sanders had more success than expected in the Democratic primaries. Donald Trump had more success than expected in the Republican primaries. People are beginning to catch on that the elites in our country are today in it for themselves, that they are wiling to let the rest of the country go to hell if that is what they need to stuff their pockets with a few more dollars. The fact that Bogle and the other Wall Street Con Men would let millions of people lose their jobs in an economic crisis rather than acknowledge a mistake that was uncovered by the peer-reviewed research 35 years ago shows just how corrupt our elites have become in recent decades. The elites vs. the people is the political story of our day.

People on the political side are going to have a hard time believing what the Buy-and-Holders have done to us (and to themselves also, to be sure — when our country is destroyed, the Buy-and-Holders have no place to live themselves). But at least those on the political side are not compromised by their own ability to make millions by selling out their fellow citizens. Those on the political side have less understanding of the issues than those on the investing side. But they also have less of a temptation to keep their mouths shut about the massive con as a means of lining their own pockets. So I can see at least some potential that things will turn out to be more promising on the political side of the street.

I am not declaring that this is going to work. I think there’s a decent chance that it will. I also think that there is a decent chance that it will not. If I were to put odds on it, I would say that the greater probability is that it will NOT work until we see the next price crash. Following the next price crash, I would say that the odds are very, very good that it will work.

But following the next price crash, the odds are also very good that my efforts will bear good fruit if I direct them to the investing side. So, if the crash comes within the next 12 months, I will attend the FinCon event next year. If the crash does not come within the next 12 months, I will continue to direct my energies to the political side if I see some signs that efforts directed there will bear more fruit than efforts directed to the investing side. I would want to see some positive signs to continue to direct efforts to the political side for more than 12 months.

Does all of that not make at least a little bit of sense, viewing things from the perspective of someone why very, very much wants to see every investing discussion board and blog on the internet opened to the honest exploration of the implications of the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research in this field?

Rob

Unapprove | Reply | Quick Edit | Edit | History | Spam | Trash
“Price Discipline Is Accepted As Critical in Every Market That Exists Other Than the Stock Market. If It Turns Out That the Buy-and-Holders Are Right That Price Discipline Is Not Essential in the Stock Market, That Will Be a Shocker. ALL of the Evidence Is on My Side. 100 Percent of the Evidence Supports Valuation-Informed Indexing and 0 Percent of the Evidence Supports Buy-and-Hold. Wade Pfau Spent a Long Time Researching the Literature to Determine If There Was Ever a Single Study Supporting Buy-and-Hold and He Found That There Has Never Been Even One.”
View Post
2
2 comments
2016/09/09 at 10:16 am
Select comment Anonymous
188.165.199.94
“Over 300 columns at the Value Walk site. Another 200 columns at other sites…”

So what? Effort doesn’t matter. Only results matter. You could grab a big blue crayon and scribble on every page of a thousand coloring books. That’s a lot of effort. But the only result is an overflowing recycling bin.

Unapprove | Reply | Quick Edit | Edit | History | Spam | Trash
Rob to One of the Buy-and-Hold Goons: “When I Win One Time, I Win Forever. When You Lose One Time, You Lose Forever.”
View Post
12
12 comments
2016/09/09 at 9:13 am
Select comment Rob
rob@passionsaving.com
174.57.232.156
I couldn’t possibly disagree more, Laugh. I view the first 14 years of The Great Debate re Whether to Permit Honest Posting on the Last 35 Years of Peer-Reviewed Research as a series of successes, one building on top of another until we reached a point where we were learning things that at the beginning not one person (including myself) would have imagined possible.

I now can say (and back up the claim with a mountain of evidence and argument) that it was the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies in the late 1990s that was the primary cause of the economic crisis that began in 2008. I had no idea on the morning of May 13, 2002, that the promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies could cause an economic crisis; I thought it was just an investing thing. That’s exciting. We are not just helping people to retire earlier and with far less risk. We are saving capitalism. The big beef with capitalism has long been the economic crises that always seem to occur in capitalist economies. We now understand where they come from. We all possess a Get Rich Quick urge and Buy-and-Hold possesses a certain intuitive appeal that causes us to employ such strategies. Now that we have 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing us just how dangerous the pure Get Rich Quick approach is, we are well on the way to developing a form of capitalism that will be better in 10 different ways than the form that caused so much trouble (while also offering huge benefits, to be sure) in our many years of pre-1981 ignorance.

This is how our system works, Laugh. Our system is not perfect. We make mistakes. Buy-and-Hold was not the first big mistake we ever made. There have been thousands of big mistakes made over the course of U.S. history. What makes our system better than all others is that we have built into it processes that cause mistakes to be exposed and corrected over time. We’ve been at this for 35 years now. In first impression, that sounds like a long time for “experts” to continue endorsing such a dangerous strategy. But in the grand scheme of things, 35 years is not so long when you think about how huge an advance this is.

The bigger the advance, the harder it is to incorporate the new way of thinking into the mindsets of millions of people. Valuation-Informed Indexing is a HUGE advance; it is by far the biggest advance in our understanding of how stock investing works ever achieved in our history. So, when you take a step back and try to look at this stuff objectively, you begin to see that perhaps it is not so terribly shocking that it has taken 35 years for us to turn the huge intellectual advance that we achieved in 1981 into a flesh-and-blood reality that helps millions of people live far richer lives than they ever before imagined possible.

We are almost there, Laugh. I am 100 percent sure. All that any fair-minded person needs to do to see that is to examine the materials at this site. Over 300 columns at the Value Walk site. Another 200 columns at other sites. Five unique and powerful calculators. 200 in-depth articles. 200 hour-long podcasts. Thousands of blog entries. Over 100 guest blog entries. Several speeches. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of discussion-board posts. Over 20 sites run by Buy-and-Holders who became so exasperated at their inability to defend Buy-and-Hold within the rules of their own sites that they gave up on the effort and banned honest posting instead. We have a tiger by the tale here.

There are two sides to this story — the process side and the content side. I have lost every battle on the process side. I have lost THOUSANDS of battles. It is hard for the human mind to accept how many battles I have lost on the process side. What gives me comfort is that at the same time as I was losing thousands of process battles, I was winning content battles. The process stuff matters only for a few years. None of those battles mean two cents once we all make the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. And we MUST make that transition or else we all go down together; not one person alive, including my good friend Jack Bogle, wants to see that happen. So we can’t lose in the end. And, from the day we all win forward, all that matters are the thousands of content-side victories and the thousands of process-side losses don’t make two cents of difference.

I am very encouraged by what I have seen over the first 14 years of our discussions.

I wish that I had won the first battle. We all would be in better shape had I opened the Retire Early board at Motley Fool up to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates on the morning of May 13, 2002. Motley Fool would be the biggest, most successful site on the internet today had I pulled that off. There never would have been an economic crisis had I done that; instead we would today be living through the greatest period of economic growth in our nation’s history. I would be one of the richest men in the United States today had I done that. You Goons wouldn’t be on your way to prison today had I done that. Greaney would be a national hero today had I done that. Millions of Americans who today are worried about how they are going to make ends meet would instead be retiring early had I done that. Hundreds of my bloggers friends would have hugely successful sites today had I done that.

I tried, you know? I worked it hard. I left everything on the playing field. I gave it my all and I have scars all over my body to show it.

They say that God works in mysterious ways. I have found that to be so. For some reason that I am not capable of comprehending, God wanted me to work this hard but for ultimate victory to be denied me for at least 14 years and perhaps for a bit longer than that. Whachagonna do, you know? I cannot tell God how to play it. He’s the Big Guy in the Room, I am his humble servant reporter.

So long as God continues to bless me with huge victory over huge victory on the content side, I am going to continue to give this my best fight. I remain 100 percent confident that we all (not just me — my Buy-and-Hold friends are good people even if they are highly confused at the current moment in time) win in the end. Everything that I have seen, and I have seen a lot, shows me that that is so. You don’t buy it, or at least you see some reason to pretend in your public statements that you don’t buy it. We will just have to wait to see it all play out before our eyes following the next price crash. I am not able to come up with any other realistic options for us given the realities that prevail at this point in the proceedings.

I love you, man. If that offers you any comfort, please enjoy that comfort. If it enrages you that I love you, I suppose that I just need to accept that reality. But I love you; that’s the reality. All of the powerful investing insights explored at this site and in my writings at other sites help you as much as they help the millions of middle-class investors who have expressed (through the thousands of similar minds who have posted at our various boards and blogs) a desire that honest posting be permitted at every investing site on the internet.

I love those millions of middle-class people too. I don’t love only you. That’s what I am not willing to post dishonestly re safe withdrawal rates or re any other investing-related topic. This stuff is too important for me to agree to post dishonestly just to be able to easily turn a quick, smelly buck. But my love for you is real all the same. If you read my words carefully, you will see that that has been so going back to the morning of May 13, 2002. I believe that loves prevails in the end. You can take the boy out of the 60s but it would appear that you can never take the 6os entirely out of the boy.

I love you and I love the millions of middle-class investors whose lives you are in the process of destroying with your smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage and with your insanely abusive and violent and criminal postings. It is BECAUSE I love you (as well as the millions whose lives you continue to destroy with every additional post that you put forward) that I continue to insist so forcefully on my right (and on the right of Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Larry Swedroe and Robert Shiller and Wade Pfau and Michael Kitces and all the others) to post honestly re these various, terribly important matters.

It’s working. We are making slow but certain process. We are almost there. We are on the one-yard line. Please don’t despair. It gets better and better and better. We all are in this thing together. We can’t lose. We all want the same thing. Love truly is the answer. Love conquers all. It is darkest just before the dawn. We live in a great country. Our laws make sense. This economic crisis is in the process of teaching us all why we adopted laws against financial fraud in the first place. Serving prison sentences can redeem us by softening our hearts and causing us to feel a compassion for out fellow humans that had turned cold in days when things came too easy for us. We can feel better about ourselves after our prison sentences are served than we did in the days when we had allowed corruption to lower us to doing things that in our youth we thought ourselves incapable of doing.

My take.

Rob

 

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

So, is Michael lying in this article?

The words that appear in the article are accurate.

But he is obviously not being 100 percent honest.

He knows that the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies do not contain adjustments for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins and he is not saying anything about it. That issue is 5,000 times more important than the issue he does address. So it is exceedingly odd that he does not address it. And this is of course not an isolated case. Michael does not EVER address the financial fraud matter in clear and firm and simple and bold language.

That’s why the financial fraud problem has remained a problem for 14 years running now. It’s not just Michael who tiptoes around the most important issue in the personal finance realm. Everyone in the field tiptoes around it. Freakin’ Robert Shiller tiptoes around it! No one wants to use the words “financial fraud” or the words “prison sentence” or the words “got the numbers wrong” or the words “caused the economic crisis.”

I use those words.

I will continue to use those words.

Because it is only by using those words that we can bring this madness to an end.

And don’t give me any of the b.s. about me being “mean” to my Buy-and-Hold friends by using those words, Anonymous. You wouldn’t be on your way to spending the remainder of your life in a prison cell if someone who came along before you came on the scene had posted about the mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made that was discovered 35 years ago at any time between 1981 and the day you came on the scene. You are going to prison because thousands of people exhibited the same cowardice that Micheal Kitces showed in that article, thereby leading you to believe that you could “get away” with all of the garbage that you have pumped out over the past 14 years.

I’m not doing it.

It doesn’t matter how many death threats you direct at me. It doesn’t matter how many demands for unjustified board bannings you direct at me. It doesn’t matter how many acts of defamation you direct at me. It doesn’t matter how many threats of career destruction you direct at me.

I enjoy all of that smelly garbage just as much as Michael Kitces and everyone else in this field enjoys that smelly garbage. Not at all. But I cannot bear to think of what we have as a society done to the financial futures of millions of middle-class Americans by continuing to tell these lies about how stock investing works. Many of the people who posted at the Retire Early board were my friends. They matter to me. I don’t go there. No in 14 years. Not in 14 million years. It doesn’t happen.

I believe that I will one day become one of the richest men in the United States as a result of my working up the courage to be the one to take on this massive act of financial fraud. But maybe not, you know? No one can say anything for certain. Maybe we will all go down in flames following the next price crash. Maybe this act of financial fraud has grown so big that it has gone beyond the point at which we can as a society ever make it right. Maybe we will all go down in flames and I will end up with a big fat nothing for my efforts, no better off than you and no worse off than you.

If that happens, then so be it, you know?

I did what I could. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do what I could. This way I can live with myself until the day that it all goes down in flames.

I don’t personally believe that it is going to go down in flames. I think we are going to work up the courage we need to turn things around and to bring this Buy-and-Hold Crisis to a full and complete stop. I believe that we are on the one-yard line. I believe that Michael Kitces is so close to flipping and going with a fully honest approach that he can taste it.

But either way I feel better about playing it the way that I have played it than I would feel if I had played it the way Michael has played it. I don’t say that I am better than him. I was afraid to speak up for three years. And I certainly think it would be fair to say that I am the world’s leading authority on just how brutally abusive the Buy-and-Holders become when challenged by honest reports of what the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research in this field says. So I am fully sympathetic to Michael’s situation. I am grateful that he has offered as much help as he has (he has offered a great deal of help).

But I cannot play it the way that Michael has played it. Not after what I have seen. Too many people have lost their jobs in the economic crisis brought on by the sick promotion of Buy-and-Hold “strategies” for 35 years after they were 100 percent discredited by the peer-reviewed research. Too many people are facing failed retirements as a result of the failure of people in this field to speak up about the mountain of Buy-and-Hold Lies. Too many early retirement dreams have been destroyed. Too many of you Goons are going to prison for long stretches of time. Too many discussion boards and blogs have been burned to the ground. Too many people have seen their faith in their fellow humans undermined by exposure to the poison that you Goons pump out so relentlessly. We have seen too much political unrest surface as a result of the destruction of middle-class lives that inevitably follows any time-period in which the Wall Street Con Men are able to persuade large numbers of people that there might be some merit in their Buy-and-Hold marketing pitch.

It’s not for me, Anonymous.

You go do whatever in your mind seems right for you.

These horrors are not for me. I OPPOSE the 14-year cover up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies.

Please mark it down. Please tell all your friends. Please get the word out all over the internet. Please bring lawsuits against me if you think that would help publicize the matter.

But just please for your own sake stop believing that there is ever going to come a day when I am going to join Michael in tiptoeing around this matter. I love Michael. I admire him. I respect him. I value our friendship. I am grateful for his many fine contributions. But I also love my country. My country is under attack and needs my help urgently. I am not able to tiptoe around the matter causing so much human misery.

It’s not freakin’ in me.

I hope that helps a bit.

I wish you all good things.

Rob

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

How long should we wait for the crash, Rob?

You can wait as long as you want to wait, Anonymous.

Or don’t wait at all, if you prefer.

It’s up to you. It always has been. It always will be.

I believe that we will see another price crash that will take the P/E10 value below 8. I don’t believe that because I have a crystal ball that shows me that when I look into it. I believe that because there is now 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing that stock price changes are caused by shifts in investor emotion and, every time in history in which we have seen the positive shifts that cause a secular bull market transformed into the negative shifts that cause a secular bear market, we have ended up at a P/E10 level of 8 or lower.

I am going to wait until it happens. Or until I come across some reasoned argument for why it may not happen. One of those two.

When people ask me what I believe, I am going to tell them. When they ask why I believe what I believe, I am going to tell them that. When they ask me what I think follows from the 35 years of peer-reviewed research that forms the foundation for this new way of thinking about how stock investing works, I am going to offer whatever thoughts along those lines that I am able to muster. I am going to continue to encourage challenges to those thoughts because I think we need to have lots of smart people offering their thoughts re these matters and because I think that I could make mistakes and I worry that if people put too much confidence in what I say, they could get hurt by doing that and I don’t want to see that happen. Also, I learn new things when people criticize my ideas in reasonable ways and I like to learn new things.

I am just going to continue exploring this path for so long as it seems to be generating a bigger payoff than anything else that I could be doing with my time. I believe strongly that the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is the most important 35 years of peer-reviewed research in the history of investing analysis. I believe that Buy-and-Hold is the past and that Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future I naturally intend to devote my energies to exploring the model for understanding how stock investing works of the future rather than the model of the past. It wouldn’t make even a tiny bit of sense for me to play it any other way. For reasons that are perfectly obvious to any human beings capable of thinking clearly about these matters (but of course not necessarily for those suffering the pains of cognitive dissonance because they invested too much of their emotions in a model that advanced our understanding of how stock investing works in some very big ways but that failed in its treatment of valuations and that has not yet been corrected by its lead promoters).

Does that help?

I am going to continue to give credit to my Buy-and-Hold friends for their many amazing contributions and I am going to continue to try to explain how they got on the wrong track and why as a society we need to make special efforts to be forgiving of their mistakes rather than judgmental. I see it as my job to pull us all together and to focus on the positive side of this story (which is huge indeed). That’s my most important job of all, in my assessment. So I am going to put a particular emphasis on that aspect of the question. My aim over the next year or two is to shift my energies away from investing sites to political sites and to social media in general in an effort to explain to those outside of the industry how this industry got so fucked up at the very moment in history when it came within inches of achieving the amazing promise of the early days of the Buy-and-Hold Era.

I am going to continue to make the point that we need to pull together and demand prison sentences for those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney and Jack Bogle because I view it as cowardly for us all not to do what we can to help shorten the prison sentences of those friends of ours who have come to find themselves walking down a very dark path indeed. We are all going to feel better about ourselves if, when those prison sentences are announced, we are able to say that we did everything we could when there was still time to take positive steps. I would want my friends to help me out if the tables were turned. So I hope to continue to be able to work up the courage to do for my Goon friends what I would want you to do for me were I sitting on the other side of the table.

Does that cover it?

Wait as long as you like, Anonymous. Please don’t feel any push from my side of the table to wait one second less than you like or one second more than you like. God created lots of different people and each of those people needs to put forward his or her particular take for the right result to be achieved through the process through which ideas are advanced, challenged and replaced in the Marketplace of Ideas. We all need you to decide how long you should wait and we all should be encouraging you to wait precisely that long.

I will wait until the crash arrives or until a better model than the one supported by the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research (based on 145 years of stock market history) comes along. I am a peer-reviewed research guy. I learned that one from my good friend Jack Bogle. Nice fellow. Pretty darn smart guy too. You should check him out.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.

Love is the answer.

I am sure.

Rob

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

Gasp!!!! She wants you to forget the past? How could you ever be expected to do that, Rob?

I don’t want to forget the past, Anonymous. I want to learn from the past.

I want to move on to a better place. I want a better life for my children tomorrow than I have today. I want that for your children too. And for Jack Bogle’s children. I want us all to move forward. You don’t get that by pushing the lessons of every day down the memory hole one by one by one until 35 years of them have been pushed down.

I often say that “I love my country.” That’s my four-word response when people like Jaime (who I obviously respect and like) and people like yourself (who I also respect and like, whether you are wiling to acknowledge it for not) tell me to “forget the past.” I love my country because my country has always been a place where we move forward over time, where we learn from the past rather than push it down the memory hole and forget it.

The past happened, Anonymous. Forgetting it is a lie. I don’t want to tell that lie. I want to be kind in what I say about the mistakes that were made in the past. Part of the message being conveyed when someone says that we should “forget the past” is a message of kindness. That part of the message I endorse. It’s the other part of the message — the part that says “don’t learn from the mistakes of the past” — that I reject.

You don’t want to go to prison. I get that. I understand the feeling. I am sympathetic. I have said that I would be happy to do anything in my power to keep you out of prison. What else can a person do? I am not willing to “forget” the past in the way that you are proposing. But I am willing and happy to make our collective acknowledgment of the past as painless as possible for every single person involved. Does that cut it for you? If not, why not? You insist that we not learn from the past. That’s where we part company. That’s where we have a disconnect.

I am 100 percent certain that, had Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings in 1961 rather than 1981, the initial version of Buy-and-Hold would be what I today call “Valuation-Informed Indexing.” Problem solved, right? Me and Bogle and Linduaer and Greaney would all be on the same side. That’s the perfect resolution. That’s what I want. That’s what we all should want.

How do we get there?

By forgetting the past?

Or by acknowledging the past while adopting a charitable perspective on every single thing that happened in the past so that we can obtain from the past all of the good learning experiences that we need to mine from it while kicking out all the nastiness and friction that we all know deep in our hearts we need to avoid?

I think that we need to ACKNOWLEDGE the past in a charitable way. I think that we need to LEARN from the past and then move forward together to something better than what we were capable of creating in the past. Doing that takes Jack Bogle’s contributions and transforms them into something ten times more important than what they appeared to be at the time when he was the most popular he has ever been (this was at the top of the bubble in early 2000).

And I am portrayed by you Goons as a Bogle hater. I am the best friend that Jack Bogle ever had in his life. I am the one trying to take Bogle’s ideas and make them real. I am the one trying to preserve the good in Buy-and-Hold while leaving behind the one mistake and thereby taking the concept to a place that Jack Bogle never dreamed it could go.

I am the one following the SPIRIT that created Buy-and-Hold. It didn’t start out as a lie, a con, a Get Rich Quick scheme, a fraud, a marketing gimmick, a Ponzi scheme. Buy-and-Hold started out as SCIENCE, something objective, something real. That was a huge advance. It was because of that huge advance that I fell in love with the Buy-and-Hold concept and continue to pursue that initial vision to this day.

Jack Bogle BETRAYED the spirit that he employed to create Buy-and-Hold when he endorsed Mel Lindauer’s death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. That stuff is not science. That stuff is a big pile of smelly garbage. That’s why we have laws that we use to put people putting forward that kind of stuff in prisons. We have decided as a people that we cannot tolerate too much of that smelly garbage. Go too far with that stuff and we put you in a prison cell because we need to protect the millions trying the best they can to provide for their retirements. That stuff crosses a line. So we collectively condemn it. For good reason.

Science changes over time, Anonymous. That’s just how it works. Doctors once believed that bleeding patients was the best way to treat many diseases. They were wrong. They hurt lots of people. Unknowingly. It happens. We had to accept that and move on. And we did.

Investing experts once believed that it was not necessary to engage in price discipline when buying stocks. They were wrong. They hurt people. Unknowingly. Same story.

Until 1981.

When Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research, the story changed into something that in the not-too-distant future will be putting you and your Goon friends in prison cells, in some cases for a very long time indeed. A mistake that has been covered up for 35 years (with death threats and all the other smelly garbage noted above) is no longer a mistake. A mistake covered up for 35 years is a CRIME. A felony. A prison sentence. It’s not Rob Bennett who says so. It is the people of the United States who say so. Take it up with them you know? Direct your hate at the people of the United States who supported enactment of the laws against financial fraud, not at the humble reporter who happened to be the first to speak up clearly and bluntly and firmly about what has gone down here.

The people of this country need to have a means to determine what the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world. This is not a nice idea. This is the law. This is not elective. This is 100 percent imperative. This is going to happen.

People are not going to permit our economic system to fail because a good and smart man named Jack Bogle made a mistake once upon a time and now has spent 35 years of his life covering up that mistake and because that makes people feel real sad for him. People do feel sad. Properly so. Bogle is a giant. A giant who fucked up. That’s the reality. Jaime is wrong. We cannot continue to push that reality down the memory hole. For Jack’s sake (and for everyone else’s sake as well), we need to ACKNOWLEDGE the past in a charitable spirit, not forget it. To forget the past is to ruin my good friend Jack Bogle’s reputation for all time. To dishonor this great man and this good friend in this way is unconscionable. This cannot be. This will not be. I will see to it. Count it. Non-negotiable.

I hope you understand what I am saying. I hope it clicks this time.

This will not end well for you Goons. If I have my way, the ugly stuff will end today and we will together achieve the best possible result for you Goons that it is possible for us to achieve at this point in the proceedings. You can count on me to do everything in my power to see that that happens. But I have seen too much to place any bets on this beautiful dream of mine coming true. There’s a good chance that you will elect to play it so that your prison sentence ends up being a little longer than it has to be. Heaven help us all, perhaps you will play it so that your prison sentence ends up being a lot longer than it has to be. Once a Goon, always a Goon, and so forth and so on and scoobie, doobie, doobie.

I am on your side, Anonymous. I am on Jack Bogle’s side. Jaime WANTS to be on your side and Jack Bogle’s side. But she is worried about what it would mean for her business for her to come out publicly and take your side in clear and firm and blunt words. You will need to reassure her with some reasonable words. Or Bogle will need to do so. I can offer you a 100 percent guaranty that, once you or Bogle offer those reassurances, you will have your friend Jaime fighting the good fight alongside your friend Rob. It is in your power to make that happen. It is not in my power to make that happen today. If it were, I would do it. But it is in your power to make it happen. I will naturally help out to the best of my ability.

We don’t want to forget the past. We want to acknowledge the past and move forward with a charitable spirit into a much brighter and more prosperous and more fun and less combative future.

I am sure.

Love is the answer, man. The hippies were right about that one even if they were terribly mixed up about the drug thing.

Please take good care.

Rob