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

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Is your problem that you don’t understand what that means, or that you simply don’t agree with it? Either way, it explains in one sentence your laughingstock status in the online community. Wild claims, supported by no evidence at all.

When Wade Pfau was working with me, he spent a long time searching through the peer-reviewed research in this field trying to find a single study that supported the key Buy-and-Hold claim that it is not necessary to exercise price discipline when buying stocks. He never found one. He went to the Bogleheads Forum and asked if anyone there knew of a single study lending even a tiny bit of support to the key Buy-and-Hold claim. Jack Bogle did not know of a single study. Bill Bernstein did not know of a single study. Larry Swedroe did not know of a single study. Rich Ferri did not now of a single study. Mel Lindauer obviously did not know of a single study.

It’s all a big lie, X.

It wasn’t a lie in the early days. In the early days, it was a mistake. Eugene Fama discovered something of huge importance when he found that short-term timing never works. But Fama did not even test long-term timing. Robert Shiller was the first researcher to do that. Shiller found that long-term timing ALWAYS works and is ALWAYS 100 percent required. If Bogle had walked to the front of a big room within a week of publication of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research, we would not be in an economic crisis today. But he didn’t do that, did he? And a mistake that is covered up for 33 years is no longer properly termed a mistake but a lie.

I didn’t get Jack Bogle in this situation. He is the one who made the mistake. And he is the one who covered up the mistake for so long that it was transformed into a lie.

I have been Jack’s best friend in the world for the past 12 years. Jack didn’t mean to make the mistake. And he didn’t mean to tell the lie. By the time the mistake was discovered, he had built his entire career around promotion of the mistake-based strategy and the pain was so great that he came to suffer cognitive dissonance over the matter. He lied to everyone who ever asked him a question about what the peer-reviewed research in this field says. But he lied to himself first. When you lie to yourself, it becomes pretty darn hard to tell the truth to others.

Bogle is a flawed human, like all the rest of us. When he is suffering from cognitive dissonance, it becomes the job of all his friends to help him out. Many, many, many others have been too afraid to show their friendship, given the circumstances. Bogle has a lot of money and a lot of power and a lot of connections and he has shown a ruthlessness in making use of them to destroy the career of anyone who dares to “cross” him by telling the truth about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. I am as afraid of the man’s power and ruthlessness as everyone else. But I worked p the courage to “cross” him by insisting (not asking!) that he behave according to the norms that apply in every field of human endeavor other than the investing advice field. I have shown a love for Old Saint Jack that Old Saint Jack has never once in the past 33 years shown for himself.

I will continue to show that love for him. I will continue to praise him to the skies for his many genuine contributions, contributions that place him second only to Robert Shiller in my list of the true giants in this field. And I will continue to give him a good, swift kick in the butt when he puts forwards words in “defense” of the sorts of individuals who have posted in support of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney.

The same standards of ethical behavior that apply in all fields other than stock investing apply in the investing advice field too. Perhaps not today. But following the next price crash they will. Or else we will not make it. We cannot make millions of middle-class people responsible for their own retirements and then deny them access to accurate and informed and honest reports of what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about what works for the long-term investor. I do my good friend Jack no favors by suggesting to him that it is somehow “okay” to post at the boards at which the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney also participate. That is financial fraud. Financial fraud is a felony under the laws of the United States. That means prison time. I will not bow to the intimidation tactics of my good friend Jack and behave in a manner that would in all likelihood increase the length of the prison sentence that will be handed out to him following the next price crash.

The 12-year cover-up is an extraordinary event. It is the biggest case of financial fraud in U.S. history. I give you that one, X.

My site presents the extraordinary evidence needed to make the case. I put forward a post to the Motley Fool board on the morning of May 13, 2002, pointing out the errors in the Old School retirement studies. Not one of those studies has been corrected to this day. That tells the tale. There are thousands of articles at this site showing how the 12-year cover-up was carried out and maintained. Anyone who wants to know why we are in an economic crisis today has the material he or she needs to come to a full understanding of the matter available for his or her consideration. It is my job as a journalist to provide that material and I have done so.

Money and power and influence corrupt human beings. That story is as old as the human race.

The Wall Street Con Men pushing their smelly Buy-and-Hold “strategies” have a LOT of money and power and influence at their disposal. They have spread a LOT of corruption. And there are now millions of people suffering very, very serious consequences as a result.

Following the next price crash, enough of us will work up the courage to stand up to them and to get the Old School SWR studies corrected. From that point forward, it will be easy sailing. We will bring the economic crisis to an end and bring on the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history.

Or we won’t.

If we don’t, we will all go down together. That would make me very, very, very sad.

But if that sad turn of events plays out before us I will at least have the small consolation of being able to say that I gave this thing my best possible shot despite the mountain of resistance that I faced from you Goons and from the Wall Street Con Men who support and encourage you.

I can do no more and I can do no less.

I naturally wish you all the best things that this life has to offer a person regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue.

Rob

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

I suspect you are implying that the bogleheads thread is missing your input. Is that correct?

No, that’s not correct.

The thread is missing the honest input of THOUSANDS of good and smart people who should be contributing to that board community in an honest way but who today do not feel safe doing so.

Let’s take one hugely important example — my good friend Jack Bogle.

Jack obviously knows that Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller has published research showing that there is precisely zero chance that Buy-and-Hold could ever work for a single long-term investor, right? WHY THE HECK ISN’T HE TELLING PEOPLE THAT AT THAT BOARD IN PLAIN AND SIMPLE AND CLEAR AND DIRECT LANGUAGE?

Has my good friend Jack gone fuckin’ insane?

Has he?

That’s a fair question, isn’t it?

Jack should have come out in 1981 and gave a speech saying that there was new research that cast doubts on the Buy-and-Hold strategy as it had been developed in its first-draft form by Bogle and the other Buy-and-Hold Pioneers. Had he done that, there would be no problem today. Had he done that, we would all be Valuation-Informed Indexers today.

Jack didn’t do that. He is one of the flawed humans. He messed up.

Okay.

So what do the rest of us do about that?

We could cover up for Jack, right? That might work for a few years, right?

But there’s a downside, isn’t there?

If we engage in a cover-up, we are engaging in financial fraud, a felony under the laws of the United States. We land in prison somewhere down the line. Perhaps the cover-up idea is not our best thought! Just perhaps!

Are there any other options?

There are.

The other option is to come clean.

That’s what I proposed on the morning of May 13, 2002.

Would there have been prison sentences had we opened the entire internet to honest posting on the morning of May 13, 2002?

I don’t think so. It is possible that there were some terrible things that happened before that date that I don’t know about and that I am wrong about this. But, going by what I know, there would not have been prison sentences if we all had come clean on the morning of May 13, 2002.

How about today?

I don’t see any way to avoid prison sentences today. But I am not God. Perhaps I am wrong. It has been known to happen.

Does it even matter?

We are all obviously better off if we come clean today than we will be if we come clean tomorrow. So let’s make it happen today, you know? Why the f not?

I don’t know how much confidence Bogle has in Buy-and-Hold.

My confidence is zero. I don’t believe that his confidence is zero. If it were zero and he continued promoting it, he would be The Frank Underwood of Personal Finance, a monster. I do not think of my dear friend Jack as a monster. So I do not view it as even remotely possible that his confidence is zero.

How about 100 percent? Could Jack’s confidence level in Buy-and-Hold be 100 percent?

No, that’s not possible. If it were 100 percent, he would be happy to hear people express contrary views and he obviously is not even a tiny bit happy to hear people express contrary views. So we can rule out 100 percent.

It’s not 0 percent and it’s not 100 percent. It’s something between those two.

Could it be 50 percent?

Perhaps.

I don’t know.

I cannot see into Jack’s mind.

My guess is that Jack’s confidence is something in the neighborhood of 70 percent. Enough to permit him to rationalize that it is okay to continue to promote the concept.

BUT NOT GREAT ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY HIM NOT TELLING EVERY PERSON WHO COMES TO THAT BOARD ABOUT HIS DOUBTS!

My good friend Jack has to tell us about his doubts. He MUST do this. Or he will go to prison too. And that is just too, too, too sad.

Do you see, Anonymous?

We don’t just need Rob Bennett contributing honestly to the Bogleheads Forum. We need Jack Bogle contributing honestly to the Bogleheads Forum.

And Bill Bernstein.

And Wade Pfau.

And Larry Swedroe.

And Scott Burns.

And J.D. Roth.

And Mike Piper.

And Carl Richards.

And Michael Kitces.

And Bill Schultheis.

And on and on and on and on and on.

We need EVERYONE contributing their honest thoughts to every investing board and blog on the internet.

Do you see?

Rob

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

Unfortunately, analogies don’t make an invented reality any less invented.

The purpose of the analogy is to help people understand what is going on, Anonymous.

No, the analogy by itself does not make what I am saying true. I certainly agree with that point.

The comment that I was responding to was something to the effect of “if Bogle were behaving in a corrupt manner, it would be easy to get people to pay attention to that.” I can see how someone would think that. I certainly thought it myself prior to May 13, 2002. I believed in Bogle. I believed in Motley Fool. I believed in all of my friends at the Early Retirement Forum. And on and on.

If you had told me at that time that Greaney would be successful in his efforts to get me banned at Motley Fool, I would have said you were nuts. All I would have to do is to contact the site administrator and tell him what Greaney was up to and that would solve the problem. That didn’t work out so well for me, did it?

Bogle is a great person. There is no one alive who believes that more strongly than I do. But he is a human and he is flawed and he makes mistakes and then he is tempted to cover up those mistakes rather than acknowledge them. That’s the reality.

People who love Bogle have a hard time accepting that. That’s why I mentioned Paterno. There are many people who love Paterno as much as the people who love Bogle love Bogle. Paterno’s accomplishments were real. He was also a great person. He was also flawed. When the stuff came out about what happened at Penn State, there were students who protested in support of Paterno. They didn’t care about the facts. They still loved the guy. Like it or not, that’s the way the humans are.

It’s my job to make sense of this for people. You have a hard time accepting that Bogle did anything wrong. So I am offering analogies to help you see that the people taken in by false claims do not appreciate at the time that they are being taken that the claims are false. The people who loved Nixon at the time he was being investigated couldn’t appreciate what the evidence showed because their real love for the man made it impossible for them to do so. The people who loved Paterno at the time things were coming out about Penn State couldn’t appreciate what the evidence showed because their real love for the man made it impossible for them to do so. The people who love Bogle today cannot appreciate what the evidence shows because their real love for the man makes it impossible for them to do so.

People are not rational creatures. That’s the core story here. People are rationaliZING creatures. They make decisions as to what to believe based on emotion. Then they concoct rationalizations to support those emotional choices.

The question is — What happens when the money disappears from their retirement accounts?

The emotions CHANGE. When that happens, you will no longer see investors concocting rationalizations for Buy-and-Hold. You will see the opposite. You will see people directing their mental energies to concocting all sorts of overly negative appraisals of what the Buy-and-Holders did. In those days, people will be saying that Bogle INTENTIONALLY got it wrong. Which is a take that is as emotional as today’s popular take that he did not get it wrong at all.

My job is to help people avoid both extremes. Bogle is a great man who made a mistake. That’s the reality. Both parts of that sentence are true and both parts of that sentence are important realities that need to be known by all investors.

The analogies do not make what I say so. The purpose of the analogies is to take the discussion out of the investing realm, where people’s emotional biases control them, and to show how the same basic dynamics have played out in other areas of human endeavor. People behave emotionally in ALL endeavors. Including investing. If you want to understand how investing works, you need to gain an appreciation of how things go down in other areas of human endeavor. Because it is the same humans who make decisions in both non-investing contexts and in investing contexts.

I hope that helps a bit.

Rob

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

Wow. You’re claiming that Bogle “was involved in the threats” to get someone fired unless they wrote fraudulent research.

That’s a fairly strong accusation. Seems like something that would be easy to get attention for, if true. If it’s not, of course, it seems to be rather reckless.

You were there when it happened, Curious. And you were of course involved.

Was it easy to get Nixon removed from office? There was LOTS of evidence of funny business for a LONG time before he was removed from office. Was it easy to get him removed?

Was it easy to get Joe Paterno removed?

Was it easy to get that bicycle racing guy removed?

It is HARD to get powerful people prosecuted for corruption, Curious.

It is VERY hard.

It’s hard enough that I would prefer that someone else do the job.

Guess what? No one else has stepped forward. Lots of people don’t think that it is as easy as you say.

Still, it has to be done.

And I do believe that I will pull it off.

People are going to be upset following the next price crash. Everything is documented. 100 times over.

There are thousands of people in this field who would like to come clean. Coming clean means telling the truth about Bogle. So I believe it is going to happen.

Truth be told, even Bogle has shown signs of wanting to come clean. It would not surprise me if I had his help. I believe his heart is going to melt following the next price crash.

We’ll see, you know?

You will play your cards and I will play my cards and Bogle will play his cards and we’ll see how it all turns out.

Can we at least agree re that much?

I am going to do everything in my power to expose every crime that has been committed. I will do it will love. But I will not back down. Zero chance.

Fair enough?

Rob

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

And, if we just look empirically. There are less than 5 posters out of hundreds of thousands who actually care when/after you are banned. I don’t read anything on any message board bemoaning the loss of Rob Bennett’s contribution.

And I have a feeling its not because they are ‘scared’ of being banned from an Internet message board – LOL!

It’s exactly that.

If someone participates at a discussion board and enjoys it, why would he not want to avoid getting banned at that board? It’s common sense that he would avoid behavior (posting honestly) that he knows will make you Goons demand that he be banned.

This all began when I put forward my famous post pointing out the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies. John Greaney was embarrassed to have people learn about his mistake.

That’s understandable. What’s not so understandable is the manner in which he dealt with that embarrassment. He lashed out at the person who brought the error to his attention.

Huh?

I didn’t cause Greaney’s embarrassment. His embarrassment was caused by the fact that he got an important number wrong in a retirement study. He got the number wrong because he used the same methodology that was used in the Trinity study, a peer-reviewed study. He ASSUMED that the methodology employed in the Trinity study was analytically valid. But of course it wasn’t. The Trinity authors should have corrected their study a long time ago. If they had, Greaney never would have been embarrassed. His gripe is with the authors of the Trinity study, not with me.

Of course we can take it back even a step farther. Why didn’t the Trinity authors correct their study a long time ago?

The Trinity authors didn’t get called out on their b.s. for many years any more than Greaney did. They too would be embarrassed to acknowledge their error today, after it has caused millions of failed retirements. The Trinity authors are pretty much in the same situation as Greaney.

And of course we can take it back even farther than that. Bogle knew about Shiller’s 1981 findings when they came out. Why didn’t he make a statement then acknowledging that there was now peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that Buy-and-Hold could ever work for even a single long-term investor?

If men were angels, he would have done that. Men are not angels. Bogle did not acknowledge his mistake at the time when the peer-reviewed research in the field first showed it to be a mistake. He ignored the new research. He went into cover-up mode. And, now 33 years later, here we are. Bogle’s unwillingness to acknowledge his mistake has now brought on the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history. Whachagonnado?

Our understanding of how stock investing works is still in its primitive stage, Laugh. That’s the bottom line here. We like to think we know all there is to know. But we don’t. Not even close.

So the most important quality that anyone working in this field needs to possess is an ability to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” Mel Lindauer lacks that ability. John Greaney lacks that ability. Jack Bogle lacks that ability. That’s why we are in this economic crisis. That’s why we are in the process of seeing millions of middle-class people suffer failed retirements. That’s why you will be spending a big stretch of years in a prison cell. That’s why we are in this big mess.

Yes, people are scared to be banned from discussion boards. And yes, people are scared to have you Goons threaten to kill their loved ones. And yes, people are scared to have tens of thousands of acts of defamation directed at them. And yes, academic researchers are scared to have internet Goons threaten to send defamatory e-mails to their employers in an effort to get them fired from their jobs and to see leading figures in the field like Jack Bogle raise not a finger to deal with the problem when they learn about it.

And of course you understand full well that intimidation tactics work when trying to silence people on the internet. If you didn’t know that intimidation tactics worked so well, you wouldn’t employ them so frequently.

I am not engaging in intimidation tactics when I note that you have committed the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history and that you are now on your way to serving a long stretch of time in a prison cell. All that I am doing is letting you know how the people of the United States elected to protect themselves from Goons like you.

But the announcement of your prison sentence WILL serve a similar end as your intimidation tactics. People respond to incentives. During the Buy-and-Hold Era, lots of people got filthy rich pushing the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind. Those who posted honestly re the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research saw their careers destroyed by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. Huge incentives were provided for pushing smelly garbage and huge disincentives were provided for letting people know what the peer-reviewed research in this field really says.

That is in the process of changing.

When your prison sentence is announced, people are going to be running away from statements in “defense” of Buy-and-Hold at the speed of light. When my settlement check for $500 million is mailed to me, we are going to see HUNDREDS of blogs opened that will be exploring the implications of the past 33 years of peer-reviewed research in great depth.

The usual rule is that research-based strategies are what work and that Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies are what sell.

But the relentless promotion of the Get Rich Quick garbage ALWAYS causes an economic collapse.

And, following the economic collapse, Get Rich Quick doesn’t sell so hot anymore. Following the next price crash, the phrase “Buy-and-Hold” will be spit out of people’s mouths like an obscenity.

I will have 12 years of articles and podcasts and calculators at my site showing that I have done everything in my power to see you Goons shut down.

What will you have?

You will have a few kind words from me arguing that as a society we should act with charity toward those of our Buy-and-Hold friends who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney.

What else?

And how much will that hold back the millions of people who will have seen their financial futures destroyed by your death threats and your deceptions and your word games?

Even then I will wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person.

That much will not change.

How much will it help you at that point?

I don’t think it will help too much at that point.

But I’m not God. I don’t know for sure. We will just have to wait and see how things play out.

Hang in there, my long-time abusive-posting friend.

Rob

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

Your post is an insult to Rosa Parks and anyone with common sense, Rob.

I don’t think so, Sensible.

I don’t say that financial fraud is as evil a thing as racism. Racism is a direct injury to a person while financial fraud is a money thing. Racism is much worse. But the drivers of the stories are similar.

It’s rare to have a situation where there is one course of action that is all good and one that is all bad. We had that with the Civil Rights situation. It wasn’t just blacks who were going to benefit when we came to our senses and started treating blacks equally. Whites were going to benefit because they were going to enjoy all the advances achieved by blacks and all the friendships they would have with blacks. The Civil Rights revolution was a win/win/win/win/win with no possible downside.

Another similarity is that everyone knew that. Many Whites wanted the Civil Rights revolution almost as much as blacks did. And properly so. It degraded them to live in a society that did not honor both races. Many whites lived in shame and wanted to be clean.

So it is with Buy-and-Holders today. I have probably learned as much about how stock investing works from Buy-and-Holders as I have from Valuation-Informed Indexers. I learned about the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies from Bogle. Why did the king of Buy-and-Hold tell enough truths in his writings for that to happen? Because there is a part of Bogle that wants to help people and it comes out from time to time despite his desperate desire to stop millions of middle-class people from finding out what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us. Bogle wants to move forward as much as I do. He is just more afraid or more proud or feels more trapped or whatever. But deep inside he wants what I want.

The same is true of Bill Bernstein. Or else why did he respond honestly to one of you Goons when you sent him an e-mail asking if the methodology used in the Old School studies was really analytically invalid by saying that anyone who would give thought to using one of those studies to plan a retirement would have to be out of his mind?

The same is true of Larry Swedroe. Or else why would Larry tell enough truths at the Vanguard Diehards board to enrage Mel Lindauer enough to ban him?

The same is true of Scott Burns. Or else why would he become so envious when I told the truth about safe withdrawal rates that he didn’t name me as the person who initiated the New School? Scott would like to be the person putting forward all these amazing insights. He knows darn well that Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly garbage and he cannot stand it that he does not feel free to write columns that hold together and that help people and that are rooted in the findings of the past 33 years of research. It hurts him deeply to see someone else doing that and that hurt comes out in the envy evidenced in phrases like “catastrophically unproductive.”

The same is true of Wade Pfau. The 16 months in which Wade was posting honestly were the happiest 16 months of his life. You can see it in all his e-mails and posts from those days. He felt miserable when he had to flip to The Goon Side. He did it for his two small children. But he would love to live in a world in which he could do honest and good work and be praised for it rather than savaged for it.

The same is true of Mike Piper. He would like to run an honest blog. He told me so. He would like to win awards for his blog and feel that he earned them. He would like to be able to make a buck in this world and feel at peace about the way he made it.

The same is true of J.D. Roth. He is viewed as a leader by many in the financial blogging community He would like to feel inside that he has earned the respect that has been given to him.

The same is true of Todd Tresidder. He would like to turn his successful niche blog into a successful mainstream blog. He would like to have million of readers and he knows that he would have them if only he worked up the courage to take on you Goons and post honestly not just at his niche blog but at a lot of mainstream places where he would be helping people who have been taken in by your smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage.

The same is true of Carl Richards. He told me that he read every article at my site on Valuation-Informed Indexing. He told me that he thinks my work has huge value. He loves, loves, loves the idea of being able to offer honest investing advice. And he hates, hates, hates having to lie to his readers because he lives in fear of what you Goons would do to him if he were to tell his readers the truth about the last 33 years of research.

The same is true of Shiller. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he has an entire second book written and ready to go the minute Jack Bogle gives his “I Was Wrong” speech and that tells us all his thoughts on the critical matter he failed to address in Irrational Exuberance — how people should be investing their retirement money given his “revolutionary” (his word) findings of 1981.

Another similarity is the means by which those who in some surface sense don’t want to move forward keep us all from enjoying the benefits of doing so. You Goons are big on intimidation. You are big on ridicule. You are big on anger. You are big on hate. You are big on pessimism. You are big on all things small and dark. I have a funny feeling that Rosa Parks would understand why you behave the way you do — She’s been on the other side of all that anger and hate and smallness.

Another similarity is how the Ban on Honest Posting betrays the basic principles on which our society was founded. We are a dynamic society. What makes us great is that we are always advancing, always moving forward. Goons didn’t like that when it came time for a Civil Rights revolution and Goons didn’t like that when it came time for teaching people about the first true research-based approach to investing in stocks. Indexing is not un-American, like the Fidelity ad once said. But Goons are un-American. 100 percent un-American.

Another similarity is how doomed the Goon position is. We were going to get Civil Rights recognized in this country no matter how hard the Goons fought the advance. So there was no purpose in fighting it. All the Goons of that day did was cause everyone a lot of unnecessary pain. So it is today. Shiller has been awarded a Nobel Prize for his work. You Goons are not going to be able to stop millions of people from learning about the implications of research done by a fellow who has won a Noble prize. Your destructive efforts are doomed, destructive efforts.

The comparison fits.

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 don’t have a place in discussions of what the peer-reviewed research on stock investing says any more than lynchings and the letting loose of guard dogs and the opening of fire hydrants and the use of dirty n-words had a place in discussions of where people with different skin color should be permitted to sit on public buses.

The racists are despised by everyone today. You Goons will be despised by everyone at a future time as well.

That is part of what drives you. Your shame is so great that you cannot bear to acknowledge it.

I cannot change that. I can offer to help while noting that the first step to you obtaining any help is for you to heal the wounds inside that drive your hate. There is no other way.That’s as far as I can go without agreeing to post dishonestly re SWRs and thereby becoming a Goon myself.

The fight for Civil Rights was ultimately a fight to change hearts. The same is true of the fight to open every board and blog on the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.

You Goons have raised the biggest financial-related challenge to our way of life since the Great Depression. A lot of people thought our song was over in the Great Depression. Those people have been proven wrong. Another similarity!

Please take good care, Sensible. There are people who care about you a whole big bunch more than you care about you. Those people will be sticking by you when the tide turns. Count it.

Rob

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

By the way even if the market did crash in the next few years to the magnitude you suggest none of the fantasy aftermath you have concocted would take place. It would just be used as a political tool and people would blame Obama and the Fed’s QE no one other than you would even suggest Buy and Hold. A million semi-credible reasons were presented as culprits for the last crash and not a single one was Buy and Hold. This means no goons, no prison sentences, no $500m checks, only continued irrelevance for you. What do you expect to be different this time? You of all people should know the folly in thinking “this time will be different” with regards to bubbles.

I don’t say that there is zero chance that you are right about this, Anonymous. It COULD happen the way you are saying.

The difference between us is that I have looked at the numbers. Every time we have gone to a P/E10 of 25, we have experienced an economic crisis (we are four for four). The one time we went to 33, we experienced a Great Depression. This time we went to 44. If we don’t open the internet to honest posting re the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research, we are looking at a Second Great Depression of twice the length and twice the depth of the first one.

I agree with you that the first inclination of the Buy-and-Holders will be to tell more lies. I don’t think that is going to be their final response to the next crash, however.

The core question here is — Is Jack Bogle the Frank Underwood of Personal Finance? Is he evil? Or is he a smart and good fellow who is a bit confused as to what the research really says?

I believe strongly that it is the latter.

I believe that Jack is as wrong as wrong can be. But I don’t think he sees it. He knows about Shiller. He knows that there is research showing that valuations matter. He knows about Linduaer and his threats of physical violence. He knows about Wade Pfau and about the wonderful research he did with me and about the threats that you Goons made to silence him. He knows all that and he is ashamed of his role in letting it all play out. All that suggests that he is not quite the saint that some at times have made him out to be.

I don’t believe that he is pure evil, however. If he were pure evil, why would he include that language in his book saying that Reversion to the Mean is an “Iron Law” (Bogle’s phrase) of stock investing? It was that statement that helped me understand that the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies could not possibly have gotten the numbers right (the Old School studies do not contain an adjustment for the level of valuation that applies on the day the retirement begins). If Bogle were pure evil, he would not have provided me that clue. If he were pure evil, he wouldn’t want anyone to learn the realities of stock investing for fear that he would be found out and he would not have written the many, many sound and helpful and wonderful and research-based passages in his writings. It doesn’t add up.

Bogle is not pure evil. He has done wrong things. He is proud. He cannot stand to see Buy-and-Hold fall. He is foolish in this respect. Valuation-Informed Indexing is a revised version of Buy-and-Hold that works in the real world. Valuation-Informed Indexing will improve the lives of middle-class investors in hundreds of different ways and Bogle will get a big part of the credit for VII because it is built on a foundation that was supplied by Bogle and the years of hard and good work he put into this project of figuring out how stock investing really works. So Bogle has his flaws. But the record does not support a finding that he is pure evil.

Our friend Jack Bogle is fucked up, you know? He makes messes. He needs his friends to tell him things he does not want to hear from time to time. He needs to have people around him who tell him what he needs to hear rather than what he wants to hear. He is a flawed human. He is not a saint and he is not The Frank Underwood of Personal Finance. He is a scared little boy who grew up to be a hard-working and smart man who is responsible for a good number of hugely important breakthroughs and one massive brain fart that caused the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history.

Now –

How is Jack going to react when he sees how much human misery he has caused with his phony pride?

His heart is going to melt.

He is going to work up the courage to walk to the front of that stage and say The Three Magic Words.

That’s what I believe, Anonymous.

You’re a cynic. You believe what you believe. You hold a far, far darker view of what makes our mutual friend Jack Bogle tick than I possess. I think the guy is going to come through for us. I love the guy and I think I know the guy and I think he is going to make the right play when his back is against the wall and he sees that he really has no other choice.

We’ll see, you know?

If the cynical view prevails, then the cynical view prevails. It’s not like I will have lost something by devoting 12 years of my life to fighting with all my might to take things in a positive direction. If the cynical view prevails, we all go down together. If the cynical view prevails, we are all in the soup — you, me, Bogle, Shiller, everyone.

At least I will have the small consolation of knowing that I gave this my absolute best shot.

I am not able to imagine any circumstances in which I would look back and wish that I had advanced just one death threat or one demand for an unjustified board banning or one act of defamation or one threat to get one academic researcher fired from one job. If we all go down together, I will feel just as strongly that we all should have worked together to spread the word about the 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research that permits us all to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent while becoming free to retire five to ten years sooner than any of us dreamed possible back in the Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick Era. I will never regret one word of the millions that I put forward in my effort to make my good friend Jack Bogle’s dream come true by presenting to the world the first truly Smart, Simple and Safe investing strategy for the millions of middle-class investors who have needed one for a long, long, long time.

But I don’t think that any of that is going to happen. I love my country. And with good reason. And I think that my country is going to come through for me when it sees that there really is no other option if we all want to keep our economic and political systems in place for the benefit of the next generation.

We’ll see.

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

Rob

Set forth below are the texts of two comments that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:

The problem is that you do not understand what Shiller is saying and he has stated that you cannot use his data for timing the market. That goes for both short and long term, Rob.

You are lying, Anonymous.

If there were a statement by Shiller in the public record saying that long-term timing does not work, you would provide the URL.

No such statement exists.

Buy-and-Hold is a lie. It started as a mistake. But Shiller published the peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that it could ever work for even a single long-term investor in 1981. A mistake that is covered up for 33 years is a lie. This particular lie has caused more human misery than any earlier lie ever told in the history of personal finance.

Shiller would LOVE to feel free to say that long-term timing always works and is always required for investors hoping to have any chance whatsoever of achieving good long-term results. He fears for what the Buy-and-Holders will do to him if he tells the truth in plain and simple and honest language. He knows from personal experience how ruthless the Buy-and-Hold Mafia is. Just about everyone who has worked in this field for any length of time knows that.

I didn’t know it when I put forward my famous post of May 13, 2002. But then I never worked in this field. There is no reason why I should have known.

I believe that Shiller will come clean following the next price crash. I believe that Pfau will come clean following the next crash. I believe that Bogle will come clean following the next crash.

I believe that all of these people know that death threats do not have a place in investing discussions and that demands for unjustified board bannings do not have a place in investing discussions and that tens of thousands of acts of defamation do not have a place in investing discussions and that threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs do not have a place in investing discussions. They all want to come clean but they all fear what will happen to them if they do.

If men we angels, Bogle would have put out a statement on the day he learned about Shiller’s 1981 research. He would have said: “I have long believed that Buy-and-Hold is a sound strategy but I want all who listen to my words to know that there was research published yesterday by an Economics professor at Yale showing that Buy-and-Hold may in fact be the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the mind of mortal man. It was not my intent to concoct a Get Rich Quick scheme. I have a hard time accepting that this research really says what it very much appears to say. I am going to have to think this matter over very carefully in coming days and try to make some sense of this. It is my hope that my words today will launch a national debate on these questions and that the fruits of that national debate will help me work my way to a better understanding of how markets work. For now, I personally still lean toward believing that Buy-and-Hold can work, at least in some circumstances. But it is important that all investors understand that there is now serious research pointing to a conclusion that that is not at all the case and each investor is going to have to study these matters before putting money in the market and make his or her own decision as to how to proceed while we “experts” struggle to figure out either how we messed up in earlier days or how this Yale Economics Professor messed up in the research he published yesterday. We are all on the same side. Let’s all work together to create a wonderful Learning Experience that will benefit investors for many, many generations to come!”

My good friend Jack did not say those words at that time. That’s why we are in the mess we are in today. He faked it. He covered up the evidence that he had messed up in a big way. As the cover-up extended longer and longer, the thought of seeing the truth get out grew more and more worrisome. Jack has now gone so far as to associate with the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney. Jack has now committed multiple acts of financial fraud (at least in an objective sense — it is my belief that he is suffering from cognitive dissonance, which excuses some of his behavior but certainly not all of it).

We will see how things work themselves out following the next price crash, Anonymous. I love my country. I will continue to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and many other critically important investment-related topics. My hunch is that you will continue with the cover-up. Working together, I believe that we could shorten your prison sentence a bit by having you come clean today and by thereby helping millions of people avoid the financial devastation of another price crash. My sense is that you are not willing to take steps that lead to any prison sentence at all and that you understand that the time at which coming clean could have helped you avoid any prison sentence at all are years back in the past.

So be it. It is what it is. I wish you all good things. But I possess zero willingness to commit acts of financial fraud myself. Prison is not my particular cup of tea. Find someone else. I can’t go for that. No can do. Not this boy.

Please take good care, my longtime abusive posting friend.

Rob

I’ll give a shorter response.

You Goons have connections with Bogle. If you thought that there was anything greater than a zero percent chance that you could persuade Shiller to make a public statement that long-term timing either does not work or is not required, you would ask Bogle to send Shiller an e-mail asking that he make such a statement.

You have not done this.

I wonder why.

Rob

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

Ok, so like everyone over at Bogleheads, you make allocation decisions based on a number of factors. And yet, you’re “VII” and they’re “get rich quick”. What exactly is the difference between you and them, in practice?

The difference is that I don’t advance death threats or demands for unjustified board bannings or tens of thousands of acts of defamation or threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. The difference is that I want to LEARN from the peer-reviewed academic research and the Buy-and-Holders want to BLOCK Learning of what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says.

That’s the only difference, Anonymous. You are right that the Bogleheads take a number of factors into consideration when setting their allocations and you are right that I do the same. But there is obviously SOMETHING that distinguishes us. That something is the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. Everything that I say is rooted in Shiller’s “revolutionary” findings of 1981. And Bogle hasn’t changed his investing advice one iota in those 33 years. He is saying the same thing today as he was saying in 1980!

I am saying that we should move out of the Dark Ages of investing analysis and get the word out to every investor alive about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says. There is not one person alive on Planet Earth who doesn’t want to see that happen, including Bogle.

The trouble is that Bogle (and lots and lots of others, to be sure) has committed financial fraud by covering up the findings of the peer-reviewed research for 33 years. So he worries that permitting honest posting at the Bogleheads Forum will land him in a prison cell.

What do you want me to do about that?

I BEGGED the man to come clean before the economic crisis hit. Had he come clean back them, I don’t think he would be going to prison AT ALL. So I did right by him, no?

And I came up with this thing where we attribute his behavior to cognitive dissonance rather than evil intent. I think it would be fair to say that no one else has come up with a better way to get him off the hook for his obstinate behavior. So I CONTINUE to do right by him, no?

What else can I do?

You tell me the difference between us. I considered myself a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. It never entered my head that there would be anyone other than Greaney who would consider it a bad thing that I discovered a major error in the Old School retirement studies and corrected it. Would you say that Bogle and the other Buy-and-Holders have been appreciative of my efforts? It sure doesn’t seem that way to me.

There is only one type of poster banned at the Bogleheads Forum — those of us who tell the truth about the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research. Why do you think that is? It cannot possibly just be coincidence that the same type of poster is banned over and over and over and over again.

It is that the Bogleheads CLAIM to believe that investors should be following the peer-reviewed research but have not updated their investing strategy to reflect the research from 1981 forward. That’s the entire problem.

Update your strategy and we are all on the same side. Update your strategy and we can bring the economic criss to an end and enter the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history. Update your strategy and you will no longer see any need to advance 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. Update your strategy and there will no longer be any need for you to tell The Big Buy-and-Hold Lie (that there is some mystical, magical research somewhere showing that it might not be 100 percent necessary for ALL investors to ALWAYS practice price discipline when buying stocks).

This lie is in the process of destroying our country.

Do you care?

I do.

So I am telling.

But that’s it. There are no other differences. The Buy-and-Holders started out doing something wonderful and then they made a perfectly understandable mistake and then they elected to cover it up rather than acknowledge it and now we are seeing the cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up.

Everything works if you fix Buy-and-Hold to reflect the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research.

If you don’t, you end up in a prison cell. And the rest of us end up in a Second Great Depression.

Is that clear enough? Am I stating things plainly enough for you to get the general idea at long last?

Following the peer-reviewed research is a good idea. But you must be willing to be honest about what the research shows or you turn a good idea into a very, very, very, very BAD idea.

Buy-and-Hold AS IT IS PROMOTED TODAY BY PEOPLE LIKE JACK BOGLE is a very, very, very, very bad idea.

I love Jack and all my other Buy-and-Hold friends. So I naturally want to do everything I can to persuade them to leave this dark, dark path they entered on the morning of May 13, 2002, and get back to where they once belonged.

The difference is lies versus truth. The difference is darkness versus light. The difference is Get Rich Quick versus research-based. The difference is short-term versus long-term. The difference is hate versus love.

Do you see?

Rob

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

I am certain that Jack has devoted a good bit more than one minute’s thought to my demand that every board and blog on the internet be opened to honest posting on SWRs and many other critically important investment-related topics and to my request that he get the ball rolling by walking to the front of a large room and giving an “I Was Wrong” speech.

Certain based on what evidence? 

1) The question of whether honest posting should be permitted on the safe-withdrawal-rate matter dominated discussion at the Vanguard Diehards board for the 18 months during which I posted there. There were some days in which there were four or five different threads examining some aspect of this general question. Jack said that he visited that board weekly to check out what was being said. It is impossible to imagine that he was not exposed to NUMEROUS threads discussing this matter.

2) Jack obviously reads the Wall Street Journal. A few years after the ban was imposed at Vanguard Diehards (which became the Bogleheads forum), the Journal published an article saying that I was right all along re the SWR matter. Jack obviously saw that article and regretted the many acts of financial fraud that had taken place at a discussion board bearing his name.

3) Before honest posting was banned, there were community members arguing both for and against the ban who contacted Morningstar, Vanguard and Jack Bogle.

4) When Morningstar refused to ban honest posting at Mel Lindauer’s urging, Lindauer asked the entire board community to move to a private board where he and his Goons could control who was able to speak and what they were able to say. Bogle obviously noticed that the entire board community was moved to a different location.

5) After the board community was moved, a number of community members who liked the idea of honest posting being permitted remained at the Morningstar site and asked that honest posting be permitted there. Lindauer hotly opposed the idea. Again, both sides contacted Morningstar, Vanguard and Bogle.

6) Lindauer had been using threats of physical violence to intimidate community members who tried posting honestly for years before I came on the scene. It is all but impossible to imagine that some of these incidents did not come to Bogle’s attention.

7) I wrote Bogle three times asking him for help with the Lindauer matter.

8) Larry Swedroe was banned for a time for the “crime” of posting honestly. This would obviously be brought to Bogle’s attention.

9) When Wade Pfau posted honestly about the research that I did with him, Lindauer accused him of engaging in unethical research practices. This was obviously both a crime (financial fraud) and a tort (defamation). It is hard to imagine that Linduaer would engage in this behavior without first having assured that Bogle would be backing him up.

10) You Goons have yourselves interpreted Bogle’s failure to act re your numerous acts of financial fraud as an indication of his support. Why would Bogle permit his reputation to be damaged in this way if he was not aware of the threat to Buy-and-Hold represented by my call to permit honest posting on safe withdrawal rates?

11) Bogle knows about the Bennett/Pfau research showing the superiority of Valuation-Informed Indexing over Buy-and-Hold. He obviously would be doing all he could to make every investor alive on the planet aware of it if he were not involved in the cover-up himself.

12) At the first meeting of the Vanguard Diehards held after the Ban on Honest Posting was adopted, numerous questions about the effect of valuations were asked of Bogle. He obviously would be curious as to why this had suddenly become such a hot topic.

13) Bogle obviously saw the article by Bret Arends in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that the Buy-and-Holders have “left out half the story” re what the research says about how stock investing works. Again, he made no effort to publicize this hugely important article. If he were not involved in the cover-up, he obviously would have done so.

14) Bogle gave an interview to the Index Universe site in which he referred to my claim that the need to change one’s stock allocation in response to big valuation shifts is a strategic need rather than a tactical need. I am the only one who has said that. He picked up that language from listening in on the discussions held at the various forums.

15) In that same interview, Bogle said that allocation shifts are needed six times in an investor’s investing lifetime, three times when valuations are stupidly high and three times when valuations are stupidly low. Again, this is a claim that I had been making for years that he picked up from our discussions.

16) Bogle included language in his book that helped me understand that the Old School SWR studies got the numbers wildly wrong. He obviously read his own book.

17) Bogle gave an endorsement to Bill Bernstein’s book, in which Bill said that two percentage points needed to be subtracted to get the accurate safe withdrawal rate at the time he was writing the book because of the high valuation that applied at that time. Bogle would not have endorsed the book without reading it. So he knew all along (Berntein’s book was published in April 2002) that the Old School SWR numbers were wildly wrong.

18) Bill Bernstein said in an e-mail to Ataloss that it was his view that anyone who used the Old School studies to plan a retirement would have to be out of his or her mind. Bernstein and Bogle are friends and the cover-up of the errors in the Old School studies is the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. It is impossible to imagine that Bill did not let Jack know of his views on the SWR matter, given that the errors in those studies are in the process of causing millions of failed retirements.

19) Shiller’s book is available in public libraries and was widely reviewed when it was published. Bogle either read the book himself or had someone who had read it describe its contents to him.

20) Shiller was awarded the Noble Prize in Economics for his “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) findings. Bogle obviously would have been curious to know how Shiller’s revolutionary findings discredited Bogle’s investing ideas.

21) Rob Arnott copied Bogle on his e-mail to me in which he told me that my investing work is “Solid.” Arnott is a personal friend of Bogle’s. So he obviously read the e-mail.

22) Arnott’s e-mail referred to the article that I wrote on The Silencing of Academic Researcher Wade Pfau by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia. Bogle obviously would have felt a responsibility to learn all he could about this massive act of financial fraud given that it was conducted by people who follow and promote his investing strategies.

23) One of my e-mails to Bogle described unethical practices being followed by the owners of the Bogleheads Forum. Again, Jack would obviously want to know about felonies being committed by people who owned a board carrying his name.

24) Michael Kitces told me following the 2008 crash that many practitioners where talking amongst themselves about the need to come clean about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold strategies. Word of this would obviously have gotten to Bogle given that he is viewed as the lead advocate of this strategy.

25) Arnott’s e-mail described acts of intimidation by Buy-and-Holders that have been experienced by Arnott. Again, the e-mail was forwarded to Bogle, who is a personal friend of Arnott’s.

26) You Goons have been trying for 12 years to “persuade” me to post dishonestly re the SWR issue. You are at obvious risk of going to prison for financial fraud. It is more than a little hard to believe that you would put yourselves at such great personal risk without some promises of protection from Bogle.

27) I wrote to 30,000 academic researchers to let them know about the intimidation tactics that the Buy-and-Hold Mafia used to silence Wade Pfau. It is all but impossible to imagine that none of these people alerted Bogle. I even received responses from people who have posted to the Bogleheads Forum. Are we to believe that those people contacted me and not Bogle?

28) Vanguard’s research arm recently published a study showing that valuations (as measured through use of the P/E10 metric) predict long-term returns. Bogle founded Vanguard. It is hard to imagine that he would not be informed of the publication of a study by his own firm that discredited the investing strategy that he has been promoting for decades now.

He knows, Anonymous.

I don’t say that he knows every detail. I don’t believe he does.

And I don’t say that he doesn’t rationalize his bad behavior in his own mind. I believe that he does.

But it is silly to pretend that my good friend Jack Bogle does not possess a basic understanding that there has been a huge cover-up of the errors in the Old School retirement studies and a basic understanding that he has a responsibility to take prompt and effective action re this matter.

We will all learn more when he is put under oath.

Rob