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

Have her INDEPENDENTLY, WITHOUT ANY INPUT OR COACHING FROM YOU, read everything you can amass that you have ever written, from TMF, FIRE board, Vanguard, the Plop, Valuewalk, etc, and read it. It might take her from a few days to a couple of weeks, and this is AFTER you have assembled all the links for her.

There was a fellow who did just what you describe here, Anonymous.

His name was Larry Evans. He somehow found himself reading the material at this site. He thought I was crazy and he was honest and brave enough to come forward and tell me so. He put up a comment at the blog saying that there was no way that the things I was saying could be so. I said that the materials supporting my claims were available at my site and at John Walter Russell’s site.

His response was to offer to spend several weeks going through all of those materials. He asked if I would be willing to post his written-up assessment on his conclusion of that review of all the materials regardless of whether it supported me or not. I said sure.

About three weeks later, Larry called me on the telephone. He told me that he was amazed to find that everything I said checked out. He had worked for Ross Perot in earlier days. He told me that he was going to contact Perot and obtain his help in getting the message out. He said that he wanted to get financial people in the states that are experiencing pension-funding problems involved. He talked about getting venture capitalists involved. I said that all that sounded 100 percent groovy. I said that all that sounded like exactly the sorts of thing that a people trying to recover from an economic crisis caused by a belief in a long-discredited investing strategy would be doing to get their country back on the right track.

That talk lasted about two hours. We had a follow-up conversation a week later that also lasted about two hours. He said that he would be in contact again to plan follow-up steps.

When Larry contacted me again, he indicated that he was too afraid of what the Buy-and-Hold Mafia would do to him if he were to go forward to continue taking the steps that he knew would save his country. We talked about that a bit and parted friends. The last time I talked to him was when I posted at the Financial Mentor blog. Todd Tressider, the author of that blog, says that I am right on all the issues of substance but refrains from saying that the internet should be opened to honest posting because he understands that it is those sorts of statements that would cause the Buy-and-Hold Mafia to come after him and destroy him. I think it would be fair to say that Larry participates today at Todd’s blog rather than mine because he remains interested in learning more about how stock investing really works and because he feels safer posting there than he would posting here, where I tell the truth about the Ban on Honest Posting and the Campaign of Terror and all that sort of thing.

I have been posting daily for 12 years. No one has ever found a single substantive point that I have made that does not hold up to scrutiny. It could be that I have made mistakes. I certainly do not say that I have gotten it all right. But I know that the only hope we have as a society at getting at the truth is permitting honest posting on every board and blog on the internet.

Some of the claims that I make today really do sound out there. I acknowledge that. Some of the claims that I make today sounded out there to me when I first came up with them. I don’t put any claim forward until I possess at least reasonable confidence that there really is something to it. And in every case in which I have put an out-there claim forward, I have come to possess more confidence in it as time has gone on.

There is a huge price to be paid for banning honest discussion on stock investing questions for 33 years, Anonymous. The price is that your knowledge of the subject matter stops growing. You make a point of the fact that I now know more about how stock investing works than big names like Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Scott Burns and Larry Swedroe and Robert Shiller and on and on and on. I acknowledge 100 percent that it is a crazy reality. But it sure wasn’t my idea to have something like that happen. I have shared everything I have come up with openly and freely. I am 100 percent happy to help Bogle get up to speed. I am 100 percent happy to help Shiller get up to speech. I am 100 percent happy to help all the others get up to speed.

I cannot force them, can I? So long as they are too afraid to acknowledge that the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies should have been corrected within 24 hours of the time they became public knowledge (the morning of May 13, 2002), they are not able to participate in the learning experiences that they need to participate in to function as genuine experts once again. Anyone who cannot bring himself to acknowledge that errors in retirement studies that cause millions of people to suffer failed retirements should be corrected within 24 hours ain’t no investing expert, Anonymous. It’s not a close call.

What these people are today is anti-experts. They speak with great confidence as if they possessed the authority of true experts. But they (outside of Shiller) are promoting a FAILED strategy. The idea that a Buy-and-Hold strategy can work is rooted in a belief in the Efficient Market Theory. The way to test whether the Efficient Market Theory is valid or not is to see whether valuations affect long-term returns or not. Shiller ran this test 33 years ago. Buy-and-Hold failed the test. Everyone who is knowledgeable in this field knows this. No one other than myself talks about the many far-reaching implications in clear and firm and simple and bold terms.

The investing advice field is today 100 percent corrupt.

Is that a clear enough statement for you?

Buy-and-Hold is the OPPOSITE of what works. It turns out that buying stocks works just like everything else. The key is to always, always, always exercise price discipline when buying stocks. That means practicing long-term timing. The Buy-and-Holders say that it is not necessary to practice long-term timing. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have 140 years of peer-reviewd academic research available to us. There has never yet been a time when a single investor who failed to engage in long-term timing didn’t eventually suffer a massive wipeout of the accumulated wealth of a lifetime as a result of failing to do so. Buy-and-Hold is a big pile of smelly Get Rich Quick garbage.

Not by intent.

But still…

We need to get the mistakes made by the Buy-and-Holders fixed if our economic and political systems are to survive. That’s the job. I am the one who has been assigned to be the leader in this effort. I didn’t ask for the job. I was volunteered when John Greaney threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to “cross” him by posting honestly on the safe-withdrawal-rate issue.

If someone could find a flaw in any of what I am saying, I would be thrilled. Anything that I can do to help the Buy-and-Holders save face helps all of us. No one has ever found anything. I can’t just make stuff up. I put my work out in the public partly because I want it to be challenged. I want every Buy-and-Holder looking at this and trying to find flaws. The reality as of the morning of January 26, 2014, is that my good friend Jack Bogle has not been able to find a single flaw. If Jack had found a flaw, he would sure as shootin’ not be keeping it to himself. If any Buy-and-Holder other than Jack had found a flaw, he would have shared it with Jack and Jack would have told us about it years ago.

Jack’s response when he learned that I would be appearing at the next meeting of the Vanguard Diehards to ask why he had not taken action to get the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies corrected was to ask his Internet Goon Squad pals to move the entire community to a place under Mel Linduaer’s control so that he would never need to worry again about someone on the internet asking honest questions about the holes in his investing “strategy.” That ain’t good, Anonymous.

The matter will be settled in the civil and criminal trials that we will all be participating in following the next price crash. Please know that I love Jack and that I love all my Buy-and-Hold friends but that I don’t love the idea of seeing them go to prison for their participation in this massive act of financial fraud. So I will never, never, never, never, never agree to post dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. I will do anything to help Jack and all my other Buy-and-Hold friends short of committing a felony myself.

I will never agree to commit a felony, regardless of how much in the way of intimidation tactics the Buy-and-Hold Mafia sees fit to rain down on me. If my good friend Jack Bogle has the power and money and influence to get me assigned the death penalty, then my good friend Jack Bogle has the power and money and influence to get me assigned the death penalty. The death penalty should do a good job of shutting me up (although I obviously have taken steps to see that control of the web site is passed on to an ethical person or people in the event of my untimely death). I would far prefer the death penalty to posting dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. I don’t think that even one of the Wall Street Con Men can dish out anything worse than the death penalty. So my sense is that I am pretty much covered at this point re the various intimidation tactics available to the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squad supporters.

That’s it, Anonymous.

The type of review that you speak of has been conducted over and over and over and over again. There are lots of rich and powerful and influential people who would like nothing more than to find some sliver of academic research supporting the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind. No one has ever come up with anything because there is no possible means to come up with support in the historical record for a Get Rich Quick scheme. I am not to blame for that. Direct your anger at the historical data, not this friendly and mild-mannered reporter.

The investing advice industry is 100 percent corrupt today.

That needs to change if our economic system is to survive.

I didn’t ask for the job of leading the effort to bring honesty to this field. I was assigned it by the Fates.

I will do the best job that I am able to do. I will strive to be as honest as it is possible to be without crossing the line and becoming uncharitable while also being as charitable as it is possible to be without crossing the line and becoming dishonest.

That’s the deal here.

I wish you all good things.

Rob

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

So, what is your backup plan to cover college expenses for the children and what will you do to address any long term care issues? Are you counting on that $500 million legal settlement to cover these items?

There are two possible paths forward, Anonymous.

Path One is that we open the internet up to honest posting on all investing issues following the next price crash. If we elect Path One, I think it would be fair to say that I will be one of the richest men alive in the United States.

Buy-and-Hold is the past, Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future. I have spent 12 years developing the VII concept and my site has a wealth of materials relating to it. There is no other site that has anything even remotely close to what mine has. The brutally abusive tactics of the Buy-and-Hold Con Men and you Goons has kept away all competition.

Then, yes, there is the $500 million settlement on top of that. That’s a big, big, big bunch of money.

I think it would be more than fair to say that money is not going to be an issue for me or any of the Bennett clan for many generations to come in the event that as a society we elect to follow Path One.

Path Two is that we keep the Ban on Honest Posting in effect following the next crash and we all go down together. That would make me very, very, very sad. I suppose that you Goons will say that you “won” if that happens. What the heck will you have won? Our economic system will collapse. If our economic system collapses, there’s a darn good chance that our political system will collapse not long after. So you Goons will be in no better shape than me. At least I will enjoy the small consolation of knowing that I gave this thing the very best effort I could give it.

You believe in Buy-and-Hold. So you don’t think that there is even going to be another price crash. Or at least you think there is a good chance that there will not be another price crash and you are hoping that there will not be one. I get that. What do you want me to do about it? There’s not a thing in the world that I can do!

I have to go by what I believe is going to happen. I have spent 12 years developing the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and I firmly believe that the two possibilities that I have described above are the only two realistic possibilities. I could be wrong, of course. Anybody can be wrong about anything. If it turns out that I am wrong, I guess I will wish that I played it some other way.

But I don’t exactly have a big bunch of pleasant alternatives, do I? The one deal you Goons have ever offered is that I be permitted to post at all of the boards and blogs in exchange for agreeing never to post honestly about safe withdrawal rates again. Do you not get it that, if I do that, I am participating in the 12-year cover-up myself? Which is the very act of financial fraud that I am always saying that you are going to go to prison for following the next crash. Do you really think that there is even a one-in-a-billion chance that I am going to agree to commit a felony at this point? That would be insane. That is obviously not going to happen.

So I don’t have any choices here. If things go as I expect, I will end up as one of the richest men in the United States and get to do a whole big bunch of good for millions of middle-class Americans in the bargain. If things go in the way I hope they do not go, I will not be super-rich but no one else will be either because our economic system will collapse. And in neither event will I land in prison, which is where I would land if I agreed to your “deal.”

What do you seriously expect I would do other than precisely what I have done?

I am going to do the best I can given the cards that I was dealt. If I end up being one of the richest men in the United States, good for me. I earned it, you know? I sure don’t plan on offering up any apologies. I have done amazing work. I will be happy to accept amazing amounts of money for it. And I do intend to use 5 percent of the settlement money to finance a number of top-notch start-up blogs that will help to spread the word on VII. I also plan to use another 5 percent to promote this site all over the internet, which should make PassionSaving.com one of the biggest personal finance sites on the internet.

The “backup plan” is that we all go down together. I hate that idea. But I suppose it is a possibility, given some of the stuff that I have seen happen over the past 12 years. What’s YOUR backup plan in that event? In the event that the entire economy collapses, you are no better off than me, Anonymous.

Your backup plan is a fantasy. You have elected to just pretend that the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research doesn’t exist and to believe that this is going to be the first time in history that a Buy-and-Hold strategy works for one or two long-term investors and that you will be one of the one or two. Well, good luck with that, you know? If you believe it, you believe it. I cannot stop you from believing it. But I sure am not able to believe such a thing. So I obviously am not going to choose anything like that path for myself and my family.

The plan is to continue posting honestly. I love my country. I love what the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers set out to do. I believe that the economic wreckage we are going to see following the next price crash is going to melt Jack Bogle’s heart. I believe he is a good man deep inside. He is one of my heroes. I believe he is going to come through for all of us in a big way. I believe that I will not even need to file papers to collect the $500 million. I believe that my good friend Jack is going to take care of things once he sees what he has done and remembers that I was there trying to steer him in the right direction for years before it happened (when no one else was willing to stick his or her neck out for him).

We have each chosen our paths. Now we will need to wait a bit and see how things play out. Does that answer your question?

There is no amount of money you or anyone else could ever pay me to get me to agree to post dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. It’s not just that I decided against that. I never gave the idea two seconds of consideration. Not in 12 years. I wouldn’t give the idea two seconds of consideration in 12 billion years. Asking me to post dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements is like asking a dog to meow or asking a cat to bark. It doesn’t happen in this world, okay? That one is never going to happen.

And there has never been any other option presented to me. So the plan is to post honestly and to make the best of it. That was the plan on the morning of May 13, 2002, and that is the plan today and that will be the plan 12 billions years from today if it comes to that.

I wish you well with your choices, crazy though I may and do think them to be, Anonymous. I bear you no ill will. I intend to sue you. But that’s to collect money that is mine, not to seek some sort of retribution.

Anyway, I hope that helps you to understand the “plan” a little better. The plan is not really about money. Money is secondary here. The primary thing is protecting my personal integrity, and , most of all, preventing myself from landing in a prison cell by going along with your stupid demand that I join you Goons in your massive act of financial fraud. Find someone else, you know? No can do.

If I end up being one of the richest men in the United States, that will be happy news for me, even if that was not the primary goal at any point of this saga. I’ll take it. I definitely believe I have earned every penny of the $500 million. But my wife doesn’t like to count it until it is cash in hand. So be it. But even if I were to collect only $400 million or $100 million, that’s better than a long prison sentence, in my assessment. Call me madcap.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob

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

Rob,

Help me out here. If we look at the old thread, John answered your questions. Eventually, you said you finally understood and then issued an apology. Are you now saying you were lying back then? Wade also said the question was answered within 82 minutes after your question. Are you saying that Wade was lying?

Thank you for asking an intelligent question, Anonymous. This one gets right to the heart of things.

I still today have a fairly strong recall of the things that were going through my head on the night when I posted my apology. I was not lying.

When I put the May 13, 2002, post forward, I was not certain I was right. I had a high confidence level. I would put it at 90 percent. I knew that the post was going to cause a commotion. So I went over things several times before posting. Each time I did, I was reassured. So I had a high confidence level. But I did not have confidence of 100 percent. I think what made me have doubts is that no one else had ever said the studies were invalid. There were lots of smart people who believed in them. That gave me pause. But I went over things again and again in my mind and things always turned out the same. So I finally did push the button.

The reaction was extreme in both directions. There were people saying that this was a breakthrough, the best discussion that we had ever had at that board. And there were people saying that I should burn in hell for what I had done. As a general rule, this made me more confident that I was right. The fact that the people defending the study could not control their emotions told me that they were probably in the wrong. But these were people I respected and people whom I considered my friends. And they were talking as if they were very sure of themselves. So their reactions did give me pause.

There were elements of the story that I did not understand in those days. I knew enough to say that the studies were in error. But I didn’t know much of the background. I didn’t understand how the errors came to be made. I was able to follow a logic chain showing that I was right. But there was all this crazy emotion surrounding the issue that was putting doubts in my mind. The doubts were not rooted in logic or in human reason. But us humans are not purely rational creatures. We are social creatures and what our friends say influences what we think. The stuff I was hearing was shaking my confidence a bit. But I couldn’t come up with any logical reason for thinking that I was wrong.

I wasn’t just concerned about myself getting something right or wrong. I was the leader of the board and I cared about it deeply. That board was years ahead of its time. There was information available at that board that was not available in the largest personal finance libraries in the world. So I was very protective of the board and sickened by the thought that I might have done something to cause harm to come to it. So on the night that I put up that apology, I was looking for some way to defuse things. So long as the board remained functioning, I was confident that we could bring things to a good place.

Prometheus put up some point that made sense to me. I don’t recall today what it was. But I sincerely believed at the time that the point that he made showed me to be wrong on a small, technical point. I don’t believe that today (I don’t even recall what his point was today) but at the time I was able to convince myself that I really had gotten something wrong. I felt that that was enough to justify an apology. And I hate it when people (usually politicians) put forward apologies that are not really apologies. If I was going to apologize, I was going to do so clearly and without reservation. So I put forward the words that you have quoted.

I stated the apology more strongly than I believed it. But it was not a lie. I did sincerely believe that I had gotten an element of the story wrong and, given the damage that was being done to the board, I believed that that called for a no-reservations apology. I figured that, if I really were right about other elements of the story (as I believed I was), that that would all come out in subsequent discussions and all would be well. My top priority was protecting the board.

The apology was not a lie. It was overstated. So you could say that it was not 100 percent honest. But the purpose of the small amounts of dishonesty that were present in those words was to soothe ruffled feathers so that over time we could all work together to bring things to a better place. If I had it to do over, I would not have written the apology as strong as I did. But I still would have written it. I had sincere doubts at that moment and this was too important an issue for me to cover up those doubts. My fellow community members needed to know that the person who had brought this controversy to the table was experiencing sincere doubts about at least some of it. I think the apology was a good thing, perhaps not executed perfectly (and that the lack of perfect execution can be excused by the crazy, emotion-filled circumstances).

Wade is lying. I have zero doubt about. He certainly does not believe that Greaney answered any questions to any reasonable person’s satisfaction. He expressed complete and utter disdain for the tactics employed by the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons on numerous occasions during our 16 months of correspondence. There is zero chance that he believes the words he put forward in the post in which he praised Greaney for the role he played. Those words were almost certainly dictated by Greaney. Wade posted them in his name because that’s what you Goons insisted on as the price for not destroying his career. Whether Bogle was in on the discussions that led to that deal I do not know for certain. If it is determined after he is questioned under oath that he was, that’s financial fraud, that’s a felony, that’s prison time.

Wade is certainly guilty of financial fraud in an objective sense. I see it as a more complicated question as to whether he will be prosecuted or not. Wade obviously did not want to commit financial fraud for any selfish reason. He is very proud of the wonderful work he did with me. He showed courage in trying to stand up to you Goons for a time in an effort to get the word out to the millions of middle-class workers who very, very, very much need to know about it. He has two small children for whom he is financially responsible. When he saw that Bogle was not willing to speak up and Bernstein was not willing to speak up and Swedroe was not willing to speak up, he came to possess a sincere belief that you Goons could make it impossible for him to earn a living in the field in which he had spent many years of hard work gaining expertise. He truly had a gun to his head. That obviously doesn’t excuse the behavior. But it is equally obvious that there are mitigating circumstances here and that a prosecutor needs to take those circumstances into consideration when deciding whether to bring a case and that, if a case is brought, the jury will need to take those circumstances into consideration as well.

Wade does not possess a complete understanding of Valuation-Informed Indexing. He is strong on lots of important points. But he hasn’t put the entire thing together in his head. So he does rationalize. I think he tells himself that we will not end up in the Second Great Depression regardless of whether we open the internet up to honest posting or not. I think he would pass a lie detector test on that point. Again, that doesn’t excuse the behavior. But it puts it in a different context than it would be in if this were not so.

I believe the same of Bogle. I believe that Bogle rationalizes. I believe he tells himself that we will all get through this somehow even if he does not acknowledge the errors that he so obviously (to someone who is looking at things objectively) made. I believe he suffers from cognitive dissonance (as does Wade, to a lesser extent). I believe that he feels it would be a terrible thing if people found about the mistakes he has made and about the huge amounts of energy he has exerted to cover them up for so many years. I think he is wrong about that. I think that the vast majority of people would have forgiven the mistakes in two seconds had he come clean. I think that the thing that is killing his reputation is the cover-up, just as it was the cover-up of Watergate that did damage to Richard Nixon’s reputation rather than the crime itself. I view my friend Jack Bogle’s destruction of Jack Bogle’s reputation as a tragic event. I also view it as tragic that so few of the people who claim to be his friends have been brave enough to step forward and try to help him out in a moment in which he obviously is in great need of help.

I believe that you Goons follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. To that extent, you are sincere in the things you say. I don’t believe for two seconds that you are sincere when you say that I am on meds or that I stalk women or that the 200 quotes offered in praise of my word at the “People Are Talking” section of this site are not real or re any of the other garbage you post on daily basis as part of your effort to intimidate anyone who posts honestly on these matters. I believe you will go to prison following the next crash. But I believe that it is important that the millions of middle-class people whose lives have been destroyed by the 12-year cover-up not give in to desires for retribution. Prison sentences make sense as a way for society to give voice to its core belief that certain types of behavior cannot be tolerated among civilized people. But we need to keep in mind the circumstances that apply re you Goons as much as we need to keep in mind the circumstances that apply re Wade and Jack. And we always need to remember that it is love that we all deep in our hearts want to see win the day here, not hate.

I think that covers most of what you asked, Anonymous. Have you ever seen the movie Rashomon? People see things from different perspective because they have lived through different sets of life circumstances and possess different personality types. I don’t think it is a good idea to be too quick to label something a “lie” just because it evidences a surface contradiction. You can learn something by trying to understand what is going on below the surface and then trying to made sense of why the contradiction surfaced. There are grays in this world, not just blacks and whites.

I hope that helps a bit, in any event.

Rob

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

John Bogle is an 84 year old grandfather. He has suffered poor health for years, and has had a heart transplant. He still maintains a completely positive attitude towards life, but openly acknowledges that his remaining days are numbered. He was a child of the hard-scrabble depression. He put himself through College at night. He is a man who has made huge mistakes in his youth, and in his career, and owned up to them — even offered them up as counter-examples for others to avoid. By 1974, he had built Vanguard into the second largest mutual fund company in history. He has written about a dozen highly successful books, has lectured, and is nearly universally revered among anyone familiar with him, even those tiny few who might disagree with his basic premises (not very many of those around). History, data, analysis, and the most recent developments in Behavioral Finance all tend to endorse the general surmises and approaches and investing advice that he developed for individual investors, starting way back in the fifties. He has received numerous awards and acknowledgements from a variety of stalwart institutions of academia and industry over the years. Even at his advanced age, long past retirement, he continues to volunteer and to serve and to speak, ONLY for the general benefit of the ‘common man’, not for honorarium, or fame. He is a plain spoken, and a simple man. A truthful man. One of his universal themes has always been to support the individual investor and his quest for security, not to build personal wealth, fame, or some corporate giant, out to optimize profits at the expense of investors and customers.

Given who HE is, I sincerely doubt that he is at this point ‘afraid’ of anything. Anything at all. So he would certainly not be afraid of some little pipsqueak liar on the intertubes who he had never heard of, or if he had, took minimal notice of, after rapidly establishing that he was dealing with a QUACK.

Rob, you should be deeply ashamed of yourself.

Is he truthful about Mel Linduaer, Anonymous?

Richard Nixon did many great things in the course of his lifetime. What is he most remembered for today? A reputation is as strong as its weakest link. Jack’s knowledge of the Lindauer matter is documented.

You talk the “I Love Jack Bogle” talk. I walk the “I Love Jack Bogle” walk.

It was years ago when I first advised my good friend to disassociate himself in every way, shape and form possible from the sorts of individuals who have put forward posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney. I’ve noticed that you have held back, waiting for it to become safe to do so. Some friend.

By correcting Jack’s errors, I have taken Buy-and-Hold to places he never dreamed of being able to take it. No apologies. That’s the job.

And by speaking out in opposition to Linduaer and Greaney I have put myself in circumstances where I can defend Jack’s work following the next price crash, something that none of those who were too afraid to speak out can do effectively.

Mel Linduaer is an internet goon, a nothingburger. My good friend Jack has been responsible for 90 percent of the “fame” that Linduaer enjoys today. I somehow find it hard to believe that Linduaer would have a column at Forbes if it hadn’t been for Jack’s recommendation.

Linduaer thanks him by dragging his reputation through the mud. He thanks him by telling him he had better behave or Mel will sic his Goons on him.

Jack has real accomplishments to his name. Linduaer is an internet Goon extraordinaire. Because he has shown repeatedly a depraved indifference to human life possessed by few, he tells Jack to roll over and Jack rolls over. Linduaer asks Bogle to bark and Jack barks and then looks up with pleading eyes asking the Master whether he has barked loud enough to be spared a whipping this time.

Yuck!

I respect Jack for the days in which he was not ashamed of his humanity, the days in which he wrote in his book that he would want his friends to tell him about any mistakes he made that caused millions of middle-class workers to suffer grave financial harm.

One of the two of us should be feeling deep shame, Anonynous. I think it would be fair to say that much.

Mel Linduaer demanded that I be BANNED FOR LIFE from both Morningstar.com and the Bogleheads Forum. I’d be grateful for anything you could do to spread the word all across the internet.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob

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

I think there may be something to what you are saying here, Pink. J.D. likes me. We are friends. But, when I asked him to get involved to bring the Ban on Honest Posting to an end, he declined to get involved. There’s got to be some reason for that. He’s not at all a bad guy. I think he is a great guy and everyone else I have spoken to feels the same. So there is certainly something odd going on here. I think it is entirely possible that part of what he is trying to convey when he says that my arguments are “overpowering” is that I am too verbose. Maybe what he is trying to say is “you’re just too much, people cannot handle it.”

You are also right that it is off-putting to a lot of people when I put forward long posts. That’s been so going back to the first day. That’s a real issue.

I strongly disagree with your other points — that it would be possible for me to make my points effectively in a single, simple paragraph and that I take things out of context.

Perhaps you feel that I take things out of context. I think it is likely that you genuinely have that feeling. I can assure you that there is ZERO desire on my part to take anything out of context. I write long posts. I go into background and that sort of thing. But never have I put forward a single word with the aim of distracting people from the real issues. I RESPECT the people who challenge my views. I SHOW that respect by taking their challenges seriously. That’s part of the explanation of the long posts. I take the time to write long responses because I CARE. If you go to the trouble to give voice to some concern you have, I feel that I owe it to you to do all in my power to see that that concern is addressed. Never in a million years would I intentionally take something out of context. That would be a mortal sin in my book. It may well be that you perceive it that way. It is my belief that you really do. But that is not what is in my heart.

Why are the posts so long? That’s an issue that very much needs to be examined by people of good faith.

There are millions of people who today believe in Buy-and-Hold. They have been talking about and following the strategy for 40 years now. The core Buy-and-Hold beliefs have been repeated over and over and over again. When you say “timing doesn’t work.” you don’t need to offer any explanation of why you said it because the vast majority of the people reading the words already believes that. So you can indeed make your points in a single, simple paragraph.

That’s not the case for me or for other Valuation-Informed Indexers. When I say “long-term timing always works and always is 100 percent required for those hoping to have some realistic hope of long-term success,” the reaction of the vast majority of my readers is to have lots of questions. If this is so, why haven’t we heard about it from lots of people long before this? That’s the biggest question. If I am to have any hope of convincing those people of the merit of my case, I MUST give the background. I MUST explain how it came to be that 32 years have passed since Shiller published his peer-reviewed academic research showing that there is zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy can ever work for even a single long-term investor and that Buy-and-Hold remains the dominant strategy to this day. The realities that we all face today do not permit me to make my case effectively with responses of just a few words. I must provide background and context or fail in the important work that I do in getting word out about the first true research-based strategy to the millions of middle-class investors who very, very much need to know about it.

There are ways that things could be set up so that I could write shorter posts. One that I mention all the time is that Bogle could give an “I Was Wrong” speech. When Bogle gives that speech, it is going to be written up everywhere. There will be a national debate on these questions. And then people will know what I am getting at when I say something like “long-term timing always works and is always required.” Once that national debate begins, my job gets a lot easier. I can still post and share my thoughts. But I no longer will need to carry the burden of being the only person talking straight to people about this stuff.

Do you want Bogle to give that speech? Are you willing to help me persuade Bogle to give that speech?

Until now, you have not been willing to help. That’s why the ugly stuff continues.

The answer here is not to continue to try to cover things up. The answer is to get everything out in the open. Then the need for long posts disappears.

Say that you believe in Buy-and-Hold 100 percent. If that’s so, then it follows that you should believe that Buy-and-Hold can withstand the challenges that will be put to it in a national debate. If Buy-and-Hold withstands the challenges, confidence in it will be stronger than ever before. So there is no possible way that a national debate could produce a negative result for you. Either you end up switching to a strategy that permits you to retire many years sooner or you are affirmed in your confidence in the strategy you believe in today. Having the national debate is a win/win/win/win/win.

And I will never again need to put forward a long post after we have the national debate because everyone reading my words will “get it” when I say something like “long-term timing always works” or “it’s not possible to identify the safe withdrawal rate without taking into consideration the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins” or “stocks today are a virtually risk-free asset class for those who are informed about the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research in this field.”

Long posts shouldn’t be necessary. But they are because of the unusual circumstances that apply in the investing field today. As a society we once believed that Buy-and-Hold worked. Now doubts are growing. But to get people to convert from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing, we must explain to them what happened, why it is that so many experts still advocate Buy-and-Hold 32 years after the research was published discrediting it? We need to stop trying to suppress discussion and instead ENCOURAGE it. We need everyone (Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike) giving voice to their SINCERE beliefs about how stock investing works. In cases in which experts have come over time to believe that they made mistakes re certain points, they need to SAY THAT in clear and certain and simple terms so that we can all process the message and move forward in a mutual Learning Experience.

We ALL want to learn, Pink. That’s why we all are here. We all need to pull together to insure that this wonderful and important Learning Experience moves forward. We do that by changing the tone. You need to drop the Goon pose and work up the courage to say “Thank you!” to the fellow who brought these issues to the table on the morning of May 13, 2002, and thereby opened up the opportunity to learn things about stock investing that you never knew before and that make your life richer in scores of different and important ways.

I am 100 percent happy to begin today working with you to take this to a very positive place, Pink.

Can you grasp the hand of kindness this time?

Or will you fire back with more of your Goon sludge, sinking ever deeper in the negativity that in earlier days you have brought to the table again and again and again.

Greaney’s retirement study does not contain an adjustment for the valuations level that applies on the day the retirement begins. That is a stone cold objective fact.

Why?

Until we answer that question, our work here is not done. I have put forward hundreds of thousands of long posts explaining why I believe he made that mistake. What’s your take? Do you agree with the explanations that I have advanced or is there some point re which you have a somewhat different take? And, if you have a somewhat different take, are you capable of giving voice to it according to the posting rules that you agreed to follow when you were first permitted to participate in any of our discussions?

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, my old friend.

Rob

 

Set forth below is the text of a recent comment to another blog entry at this site:

Observation: The truth don’t take long to tell.

You’re wrong, Anonymous. Tell the truth of why people with black skin were once not permitted to drink from the same water fountains as people with white skin in 10 words. It cannot be done.

You can tell oversimplified versions of the story that are more lies than anything else in 10 words. But you cannot tell the truth in 10 words.

It would be a lie to say that white people wanted it that way. Because many white people did NOT want it that way.

It would be a lie to say that black people were okay with the situation. Because many black people were NOT okay with the situation.

To tell the truth, you have to say something about the history that both white and black people of the time were born into. People are born into a gravely flawed world and then they work up ways to cope with it.

Jack Bogle is a hero of mine. He has accomplished great things. He is the second most important investing analyst alive today (second only to Robert Shiller).

Jack Bogle is a con man. He may well find himself on trial for financial fraud following the next price crash. He has posted in support of Mel Linduaer on numerous occasions and has failed to address the Lindauer matter after being notified of the problem in numerous e-mails.

The statements in both of the above paragraphs are true.

The complete set of realities cannot be reduced to 10 words. People need to hear both sides of the story to understand enough about the situation we are in today to know what needs to be done to help us out of it.

You are a Goon. Your heart is filled with hate for the past 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research.

You once had a sincere desire to know the realities of stock investing. It is the failure of your dream that has crushed your spirit enough to turn you into a Goon. If Shiller had published his research in 1971 instead of 1981 so that you wouldn’t have gotten your pride tied up in “defense” of the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind, you would be the biggest advocate of Valuation-Informed Indexing alive on the planet today.

The claims made in both of the above two paragraphs are true. It is not possible to tell the true story about what makes you a Goon in 10 words.

My job is to lead us out of the dark place in which we find ourselves. I cannot do it by answering goonishness from one side with goonishness from the other side. I cannot do it with 10-word descriptions of complex human realities.

If I were to try to reduce it all to something in the neighborhood of 10 words, I would say –

All human battles are battles of love versus hate and love must prevail in the end if the humans are to continue to exist together on this planet.

That’s the best I can do for you, Anonymous.

My warmest wishes go out to you and your Goon friends that you will find the spark of humanity that I believe resides somewhere in your heart to this day. Juries want to see a spark of humanity when they are debating within their minds whether to show some mercy or not.

Rob

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

Why do you think you need John Bogle to be successful? Seems to be a big cop out.

Why wouldn’t I want Jack helping us all out, Laugh? He has money, he has name recognition, he had connections, he has a lot to bring to the table.

Let’s look at one simple matter. We need to get the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with my good friend Wade Pfau written up on the front page of the New York Times, right? Well, Jack knows people there. If Jack goes to his friends at the New York Times and asks that my research paper be written up on the front page, it will happen.

That’s how the world works.

And millions of people benefit.

And you see something negative about this? I certainly do not. I see it as a wonderful thing that I can help Jack out and that he can help me out and that together we can help millions of middle-class investors out.

You detect a negative because your pride SUPPLIES a negative. You don’t want to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” and your screaming, inured ego says “I don’t care if the entire world burns to the ground, I will never, ever, ever acknowledge that it is possible that I could make a mistake!”

I don’t buy it, Laugh.

You and your ego live in the same world that all the rest of us live in.

Burn that world to the ground and you hurt Laugh and his precious ego along with the millions of others.

At some point you have to acknowledge that there are other people in the world and that they matter too.

That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter, in any event.

Rob

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

I have a serious question:

Why did you bother posting this? Even though at your best your are horribly redundant, circular, and repetitive, this ‘article’ takes the cake. There is not a new word, idea, concept, thought, or phrase in it. It doesn’t advance a thing, doesn’t provide any new perspective or information, and is a complete waste of time. Rob, if YOU can’t care about your output, then how in the world would you expect anyone else to?

Oh, that’s right — you don’t. The purpose of your writing is to hear yourself talk, and give yourself an excuse for frittering away all of the potentially useful days remaining in your life, and not to actually help or even influence others. How sad is that?

The New Year is coming, Rob. I can think of no better resolution for you to take than to seek the help you have obviously needed for some time now.

Godspeed, and I do truly hope you somehow manage to find some joy this Christmas, in spite of your condition.

The point being made in this blog entry is one of great importance, Anonymous. It is also a HIGHLY encouraging point. And it is a point that the vast majority of “experts” in this field have missed.

If you truly don’t see it, you truly don’t see it. That makes me sad. But there’s nothing I can do about it other than to repeat the point and hope that the next time these wonderful words appear before you, they get through the walls of resistance and make a mark on your consciousness.

Here are the words of the headline:

“Once We Get to the Other Side of the Big Black Mountain, the People Who Now Advocate Buy-and-Hold Are Going to Be the Most Vocal Proponents of Valuation-Informed Indexing. VII Is John Bogle’s Dream Come True!”

John Bogle has money and connections to promote Valuation-Informed Indexing that I do not possess, Anonynous.

It’s the same with Bill Bernstein. And with Scott Burns. And with Bill Bernstein.

And it’s the same with Morningstar. And with Index Universe. And with Early Retirement Forum. And with Motley Fool.

When all of these people and entities are promoting Valuation-Imformed Indexing on a daily basis, EVERYONE in the world is going to know about it. There won’t be any Buy-and-Hold anymore. We will all be following research-based strategies, or at least we will all be aware of what the research says and we will follow Get Rich Quick garbage only as a personal choice, not because some internet Goons engaged in trickery to block us from learning about the realities.

And we will be DEVELOPING the VII concept at a much quicker pace when we have all these people contributing fresh insights on a daily basis and when we have millions of middle-class people contributing their thoughts on hundreds of internet discussion boards and blogs, ALL of which will permit honest posting.

Could anything possibly be more life-affirming? Could anything possibly be more exciting?

We will have brought the economic crisis to an end. We will have entered into the greatest period of economic growth ever experienced in our history. We will all be sharing together, topping each other with great and powerful insight followed by great and powerful insight followed by great and powerful insight. We will be retiring many years sooner than we ever before imagined possible. We will be getting all the people who in earlier times were afraid to invest in stocks investing in this great asset class because it will no longer be viewed as a risky asset class. We will be laughing and getting excited about the future and just having a good time together.

Please tell me what you see as the down side, Anonymous.

I see realizing my good friend Jack Bogle’s dream as a wonderful thing. My feeble human brain is not even able to IMAGINE any possible downside. Has your far superior Goon brain been able to come up with something? If it has, I sure would like to know what it is.

We continue to work at cross purposes. But I continue to wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person all the same, my old friend.

Rob

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

You could use this blog to explain your theories. You just use this blog to rant and rave about people who support “Buy and Hold”. It seems the one holding Valuation Informed Indexing down is YOU, Rob.

We disagree, Sensible.

I have zero problem with people who post in support of Buy-and-Hold in sincere ways. Pro-Buy-and-Hold posts are part of the process by which we all learn together. Those who believe in Buy-and-Hold have both a right and responsibility to say so in all their posts. People who put forward sincere posts in support of Buy-and-Hold are our friends.

People who engage in ABUSIVE posting are NOT our friends.

Those people INTIMIDATE those who have doubts about Buy-and-Hold from saying so.

Those people hurt us in very serious ways. Those people caused the economic crisis. Those people have for 11 years now covered up the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies. Those people are in the process of bringing on the Second Great Depression. Those people have been committing felonies for many years now and need to be put in prison. Animals belong in cages, no? There is a REASON why we made the sort of behavior these people engage in felonies under the laws of the United States.

Once prison sentences are announced for those who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney, our troubles are over, Sensible. We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever lived. The research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows us all how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. Once we get that study reported on at the front page of the New York Times, we will be on our way to the greatest period of economic growth in our history.

But, yes, the prison sentences must come first. We have seen that Jack Bogle is afraid to post honestly because of his fear of what you Goons will do to him if he dares to “cross” you. We have seen that Bill Bernstein is afraid to post honestly because of his fear of what you Goons will do to him if he dares to “cross” you. We have seen that Larry Swedroe is afraid to post honestly because of his fear of what you Goons will do to him if he dares to “cross” you.

We need these people, and thousands and thousands of others, posting honestly. We need to get accurate information out to millions of middle-class investors to have any hope of recovering from this economic crisis.

My best wishes to you and yours.

Rob

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

we all know how to live our lives.  We are soul brothers re this one, Dab. Common sense TRUMPS academic research in my book. Common sense tells us that price MUST matter. All that the academic research of the past 32 years does is CONFIRM what common sense reveals. The reason why I focus so much on academic research is that it was a MISUNDERSTANDING of the academic research that got us on the unfortunate path we are on today. It is the Buy-and-Holders who came up with the idea of basing one’s investment strategies in the academic research. I LOVE them for that. That gets us away from all the marketing-oriented garbage. People will tell you anything to make a sale. The Buy-and-Holders came up with the solution to that problem. Peer-reviewed academic research is INDEPENDENT. It is REAL. We all owe the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers a great debt for their focus on peer-reviewed academic research. They made a mistake. There was research published that really does show that short-term timing doesn’t work and they jumped to a hasty conclusion that long-term timing is not required either. Big friggin’ deal! The mistake means nothing. ALL pioneers make mistakes. It’s because they take risks to help us that they make mistakes. I APPLAUD their mistake. That said, we need to CORRECT the mistake. We need to move forward in our understanding of how stock investing works. We move forward by acknowledging the mistake and putting it behind us. Once we move forward, we will all be on the same side again, Dab. People will be writing about our findings hundreds of years from now. They won’t be writing about these disputes. They will be writing about the end product, they will be writing about WHAT WORKS. The Buy-and-Holders will be getting credit for designing the framework. They earned that. I have obviously never said different. I WANT them getting credit for the important work they really did do. It is the Buy-and-Holders who make the Buy-and-Holders look bad today, not me. I want them on my side. I wanted to call this “The New Buy-and-Hold” or “Buy-and-Hold 2.0.” Those ways of referring to it tell the story of how it all derives from the work of the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers. I only started calling it Valuation-Informed Indexing after a good number of Buy-and-Holders indicated that they wanted no part of it. That was their call, not mine. Common sense is important and research is important. Each is a check on the other. If your research defies common sense, you need to check it carefully to make sure it really is on the mark. And if the research discredits what common sense tells you, you need to check for any holes in the common-sense message. What you want is to have common sense and research working together. That’s what we have with Valuation-Informed Indexing. Common sense says price MUST matter. The last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research CONFIRMS that price always DOES matter. That makes it a lock. All of the conflict that we have experienced is a result of the hard reality that we didn’t always know it all. There was a tine when good and smart people really did believe that long-term timing (taking price into consideration when buying stocks) was not required. Those people built careers around that idea. Now it hurts them to learn that they were wrong. I do NOT want to make them feel bad. But I know that they will end up feeling worse if they cause even more financial devastation. Deep in their hearts, the Buy-and-Holders want to do good work. We all need to work together to bring them to the place where that becomes possible for them once again. Once we get to the other side of the Big Black Mountain, the people who now advocate Buy-and-Hold are going to be the most vocal proponents of Valuation-Informed Indexing. VII is John Bogle’s dream come true! This is what he was trying to achieve with his life when he was a young man. Now he has it and it is better than he ever dared to imagine it could be. We all just need to work together to get him to a place where he feels comfortable saying that out loud. Common sense does NOT support the idea that price can be ignored when buying stocks, Dab. That idea caught on because of a mistaken understanding of what the peer-reviewed academic research in this field revealed (a mistaken understanding that dates to a time BEFORE Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research. It’s not timing that doesn’t work, it’s SHORT-TERM timing that doesn’t work. Long-Term Timing ALWAYS works. Long-term timing is always REQUIRED. To fail to engage in long-term timing when buying stocks is like telling a user-car dealer to please just sell you a good car and that any price he chooses to attach to it will be 100 percent fine with you and so there is no need for you to ask any questions about that aspect of the purchase. Huh? When a large number of the participants in a market come to believe that it is not necessary to ask about price, that market collapses. And here we are. Rob