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

Do you expect the bogleheads to merely forget your past behavior and trust that you have changed?

Any Boglehead who thinks that I have changed is a damned fool, Uralapin.

The owners of the Bogleheads Forum are as corrupt as the day is long. But I wouldn’t call any of then fools. You don’t have to read too many of my posts here to know where things stand. They know where things stand.

Following the next price crash, there will be court proceedings. Things will be set straight. That’s how our system works.

After the owners of the Bogleheads Forum have spent some time in prison, their hearts will melt. That’s how human beings work.

I intend to take over operation of the Bogleheads Forum after the prison sentences are announced. There are lots of great people who post there and they deserve to have a place where they can feel clean about the discussions in which they participate.

Our economy will recover. I believe that we will see the greatest period of growth in U.S. history.

When their prison sentences are over, I will welcome the owners of the Bogleheads Forum to the site. We will get along just fine and they will make important contributions. They will feel better about themselves.

We all will make it to the other side of The Big Black Mountain together.

And people will look back in future days and wonder what all the commotion was about.

My best wishes to you.

Rob

The Wired.com site recently posted an article titled Why the Trolls Will Always Win.

I do not agree with the conclusion stated in the title of the article. I believe that the trolls responsible for the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies will LOSE big time when their prison sentences are announced following the next price crash. I believe that, when that happens, legislation will be passed making clear that site owners are responsible for crimes and torts committed at their web sites, especially when those crimes and torts are committed through violations of the published rules of the site and when the owners of the sites are aware that the published rules have been violated and yet have failed to take effective action. I see the internet discussion board as a powerful communications medium of the future that will not realize its potential until the internet is opened to the millions of good and smart people who would be happy to make positive contributions if the lowest of the low among us were reined in.

That said, Kathy Sierra is as much an expert on the insanity of internet Goons as I am. She has earned a right to her opinion on these matters, she states her opinion intelligently and fairly, and I believe that all of us concerned about the future of the internet should be paying attention to her words and to the words of the thousands (!) who posted comments in response to her article.

Re the words quoted in my headline, what is going on here is that the internet has the capacity to enhance all of our lives in very important ways. That’s obviously a good thing. But advances are always going to be perceived as threats to those who see themselves being left behind. It is the power of the internet to do so much good that causes the Goons to feel such intense hatred toward those who employ it for constructive and positive and life-affirming purposes. Those who think that the internet can achieve its potential without us all working together to see that the laws of the United States and the rules of the boards and blogs at which we post are applied on it are ignoring a dark side of human nature that has been present since the first day and that in the past has always been reined in by good and responsible people.

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

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

Which one would be “cotton candy nothingness”

A) A broad diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, real estate and cash

Or

B) A plan to get a $500 million dollar settlement

I think it would be fair to say that you take comfort with being aligned with powerful people and I take comfort with being on the right side of the History Train.

There aren’t enough powerful people in the world to persuade me to give up the benefits of being on the right side of the History Train.

And ten-thousand peer-reviewed studies showing where the History Train is headed are not enough to persuade you that people with wealth and power and influence can ever be overcome for the good of the overall society.

We’re like characters in a book around which a Great Drama is playing out.

I didn’t ask to be a character in a book. And I don’t think you did either.

But here we are. The drama is playing out around us whether we like the idea or not.

I am obviously not ever going to be willing to sell out my friends and the larger society to appease the powerful people whom you are trusting to protect you.

And you are obviously never going to be willing to let the harm being done to your friends and to the larger society persuade you to turn on the powerful people with whom you are aligned.

If there were some sort of compromise possible, I think it would be fair to say that your or me or someone else would have pointed to it a long, long time ago.

I’ve tried. I’ve bent over backwards in my efforts to make things appealing for every single person involved.

And you probably would say the same thing coming from the other direction. I don’t think you’ve tried very hard. But my experience with the humans is that people working different ends of a drama like this see just about everything differently.

I don’t see any possibilities that have not been explored. My take at this point is that the drama in which we are all enveloped is bigger than any of those caught up in it. No one knows what to do. I THINK I know what would work. But you appear to not have confidence in the merit of what I propose. And I obviously don’t have confidence in the merit of any of your suggested “compromises.”

So it is what it is, you know?

It’s not like I woke up one morning and said: “Oh, I know what I will do today. I will start a 12-year saga in which I will be banned from 15 different internet sites and thereby will come to co-author research showing million of middle-class people how to reduce the risk of stock investing by nearly 70 percent.” It all happened step by step. I questioned whether valuations should be accounted for in Greany’s study. Most community members felt that the debate that followed was the best we ever had in the history of the Retire Early Community. That made Greaney mad and he elected to burn the board to the ground. That convinced me that I was right and thousands of my fellow community members have supported me in amazing ways over the course of the 12 years and thereby have helped me to discover amazing things about how stock investing works that no one else has written about. And so you felt yourself forced to engage in more and more outrageous acts to keep the word from getting out.

I cannot walk away from the $500 million settlement payout that obviously goes to someone who has discovered such things under such circumstances.

And you cannot walk away with a prison sentence.

And I cannot do anything to be sure of eliminating the prison sentence (I believe that I can get it shortened a good bit but my sense is that that is not good enough for you). I cannot offer a compromise that you will accept because it is not me who will be assigning you the prison sentence. The only trading chip that you care about is not in my possession.

I hope that answers your question. I don’t want to go to prison under any circumstances. For obvious reasons.

My sense is that you don’t want to go to prison either. If I could trade that chip, I would. But I CAN”T. And I certainly am not even going to talk about something that lands me in prison as well. That’s obvious insane talk.

I didn’t go looking for a $500 million settlement. You Goons (with the cooperation of the Wall Street Con Men) forced that one down my throat. Please don’t complain to me now that you don’t fancy the idea.

And please don’t demand that I go back in time and change things that cannot be changed. The things that have happened have happened and it does no one any good for any of is to agree to lie about them. There are Post Archives. Even if I were to agree to deceptive acts here (and I won’t), I would be found out. So that line of thought leads nowhere.

The one good card that we’ve got is that the advance here is so big that it will make the millions of people who will be calling for your head very happy and less inclined to demand justice over mercy. If I were in your shoes, I would be exploring options for playing that card to my benefit.

But I am not you. And you are not me. And, if something like that was going to happen, it likely would have happened a long time ago. Things get harder to resolve with every passing day because with every passing day we see more financial losses as a result of our decision as a society to pretend that the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research doesn’t exist.

If that ever changes, I think that would be great. Obviously.

Do I think it is going to happen?

No.

I once did. I don’t think the odds are with us re that one today.

It makes me sad.

But whachagonnado?

Hang in there, man.

Rob

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

Rob, I’m still unclear why, if you want to promote your views, you don’t just post on these boards in a civil way. What’s the downside?

We are working from opposite beliefs as to what constitutes civility or kindness, Anonymous.

The proper response from John Greaney when I posted about the errors in his retirement study was for him to say “Thank you!” to me for having the courage to act in a way that would save him future embarrassment by permitting him to correct his mistake and get it quickly behind him rather than seeing this thing dragged out for years and years. John did not thank me. And his other friends failed to insist that he do so. I did insist. That’s true friendship. It is through John’s failings and the failings of his other friends that we got on the dark path that led us to the horrible place where we are today.

On October 23, 2002, I engaged in a second act of charity. I put up a post demanding John’s removal from the community. Motley Fool had said that they wanted to see a community expression of a desire for his removal before they would enforce the published rules of the site which called for the removal of posters who put up death threats. We got 25 votes for removal. Motley Fool did not consider that enough and John stayed on.

That’s why he is in a place today where he is headed for a prison sentence following the next price crash.

Say that John had been removed back in October 2002. Six months later, I would have asked Motley Fool to reinstate him. I believe that I would have gotten most of our fellow community members to endorse that request and Motley Fool would have gone along. So all our troubles would have been over. We wouldn’t be worrying about prison sentences today.

There is nothing “mean” about the published rules of our boards and blogs. And there is nothing “mean” about the laws we have forbidding financial fraud. We put these rules and laws in place to ENCOURAGE civility. We need to see that they are enforced in a reasonable manner if we are to insure that civility remains the order of the day.

Because too few of us had the courage to do the right thing back in 2002, we are all in a big mess today. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, Bogle doesn’t like it, Shiller doesn’t like it. But here we are.

You are suggesting that the same cowardice that got us on this dark path will show us the way to a brighter path. I don’t buy it.

I talk about financial fraud and prison sentences not because I enjoy the thought of seeing you behind bars, Anonymous. I talk about financial fraud and prison sentences because I want us as a society to come to terms with what we have done over the past 12 years and to bring the ugly side of this saga to a full and complete stop. I don’t know what the length of your prison sentence would be if you were to come clean today. There has never before in U.S. history been a situation like this. So it is not possible to say. But I know that it is prosecutors who bring charges and I know that prosecutors feel a need to answer to public calls for action. So I believe that the best way to see that your prison sentence is on the short side rather than the long side is to do all that I possibly can do to make the millions of middle-class investors who have been done harm happy with their circumstances rather than angry about their circumstances.

Shiller’s revolutionary 1981 findings represent the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. If we go into the Second Great Depression, it will be the first optional Great Depression in our nation’s history. Shiller has told us how to AVOID a depression. It’s better than that. Shiller has shown us how to avoid all future economic crises, even those not bad enough to turn into depressions. It’s better than that. Shiller has shown us how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. It’s better than that. Shiller has shown us how to invest so that we can retire five to ten years sooner than we ever imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold Era.

It’s not possible to imagine how it could ever get any better than that.

If we shared what we now know about how stock investing works with the millions of middle-class people who have been done great harm during the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School SWR studies, those millions of people would be far less inclined to demand prosecution of acts of financial fraud than they will be if the cover-up continues and we see another price crash.

Could it be that the millions of middle-class investors will be excited enough about the huge breakthroughs that you Goons could avoid prison altogether?

I don’t know. I don’t think it is possible for anyone to know.

What I know for certain is that, whatever your prison term will be if the cover-up continues until we see another price crash, it is going to be a lot less if you come clean before the close of business today. I have zero doubt re that one.

So I know how we need to proceed.

The way that I propose that we proceed obviously benefits me. But it does not benefit ONLY me. It benefits you Goons. It benefits the millions of middle-class investors. It benefits Bogle. It benefits Shiller. It benefits Pfau. It benefits Motley Fool. It benefits EVERYONE!

We are all in the same boat re this thing. There are no two sides. The idea that there are two sides is an illusion.

We need to stop thinking that there are two sides, recognize that we are all in this together, and work together to do what deep in our hearts we all know needs to be done here.

Am I going to become rich and famous as a result of us all taking the right steps? You betcha! And you know what? That’s just fine. That’s not a problem AT ALL.

Bogle will be ten times the hero following us coming clean than he is today. He is a popular guy today. But when Buy-and-Hold is revised in way that reduces stock investing risk by 70 percent, he will be ten times MORE popular. Bogle is big winners if we all come clean by the close of business today.

So is Shiller.

So is Pfau.

So are you Goons.

So is EVERYONE.

We have to go there. We all know it on some level of consciousness. None of us want this ugly stuff hanging over our heads forever and ever and ever. So we know what we need to do.

Now we just need to work up the courage to do it.

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

I wish you all good things, Anonymous.

Rob

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

Yes, they all love you. They’re just too frightened to show it. ALL of them. 100% terrified of the Goons. This is just SO much more likely than any other possibility. Such as the ridiculous notion that they find you vacuous, narcissistic, irritating and/or just plain nuts.

Yes, that is the problem, Miasma.

There is of course a lot of misunderstanding as well. The vast majority of people who recommend Buy-and-Hold strategies (I think it may be ALL of them) BELIEVE that Buy-and-Hold can work. Many have doubts. But those with doubts generally believe that, even with its flaws, Buy-and-Hold is the most responsible option. They might not think it works perfectly but they sincerely believe that it works well enough.

Valuation-Informed Indexing is the new thing. There have been hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars directed to the promotion of Buy-and-Hold. Money magazine has promoted Buy-and-Hold strategies in every monthly issue going back to the mid-1970s. Many people are afraid of stocks. So it gives them comfort to go with a strategy that has been around for a long time and that has been endorsed by numerous experts. Buy-and-Hold is the safe choice in a field where safety is prized. Valuation-Informed Indexing is something new and different and strange. So it starts out at a big disadvantage.

But thousands and thousands of people have expressed a desire to learn more about the new strategy over the course of the past 12 years. Including some of the biggest names in the field. And, yes, you Goons have made them afraid to participate in the discussions they want to participate in, afraid to learn the things they want to learn, afraid to ask the questions they feel they need to ask to become more comfortable with the new strategy.

Fear won’t work anymore once the entire world knows about Valuation-Informed Indexing and about the trickery that you Buy-and-Hold Goons have employed to keep millions in the dark for 12 years now. There will come a day when your Goon tactics will become 100 percent ineffective. But that is not where things stand today. As of today, intimidation works because, as much as people want to learn about the new ideas, they are unsure of their own knowledge and don’t at all like the idea of being confronted with the brutal abusiveness that those posting in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney have been employing for 12 years now.

All of us are terrified by the tactics that have been employed by you Goons. That’s why we have published rules prohibiting such tactics at every discussion board and blog. That’s why we have made your tactics felonies under the laws of the United States. We wouldn’t be sending people to prison for behaving as you Goons do if we didn’t believe as a society that the behavior that you have engaged in is very, very, very bad stuff.

Most of us do not today understand how stock investing works. Investing was not even studied in a systematic and serious way until the 1960s. And we didn’t as a society know it all at the time when Buy-and-Hold was being developed. So we got off on a wrong track and for 33 years now have needed to set things straight again. People have become more open to the research-based approach as Buy-and-Hold has caused more and more financial devastation. But, yes, our knowledge base is still not strong enough for the learning project to go forward in the face of your abusiveness.

We will overcome you. The people of the United States will learn what they need to learn and you Goons will be sent off to long prison terms. We will collectively work up the courage to take you on and to free ourselves as a society from the ignorance in which we have suffered for the past 33 years.

People who want to learn are afraid of you Goons and of the Wall Street Con Men who pretend that they see nothing wrong with your behavior. But as you destroy more and more middle-class lives, we will work up the courage to stand up to you and to transform Buy-and-Hold into what it was intended to be in its early days by removing the Get Rich Quick element of the first-draft version and offering people for the first time in history a true research-based investing strategy.

I wish you all good things, Miasma.

Rob

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

If death threats were made, why were there no charges. Someone threatened me several years ago and I had no problem getting help from law enforcement.

Because it happened on the internet.

The police came to my house when I reported the death threats. They asked me if I believed that someone was really going to try to kill me or members of my family. I said that I thought that the purpose of the threats was probably to intimidate people into not posting in support of me.

Most people at the board didn’t think that someone would really come to my house and kill my wife and children. But they weren’t 100 percent sure. Someone crazy enough to put forward a death threat is at least theoretically capable of doing just about anything.

Say that most members of the board community believed that there was only a one-in-a-hundred chance that one of you Goons would come to my house and kill one of my loved ones. That’s enough to persuade them to keep quiet. People don’t want there to be even a one-in-a-hundred chance that their loved ones will be killed. So they tell themselves “it’s not my fight, let someone else speak up.”

The internet will never achieve its potential until this problem is solved. I believe that this case (YOUR case, Anonymous) will be the one to solve it. People have come to believe that death threats on the internet are a joke. This is a case where you Goons were able to make use of death threats to block discussions that would have prevented millions of failed retirements, discussions that would have permitted us to avoid this economic crisis, discussions that would have permitted us all to learn how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent, discussions that would have permitted us all to enjoy the biggest advance in our understanding of how stock investing works every achieved in the history of Planet Earth.

I believe that following the next crash we will be able to persuade millions of people that the same laws that apply in the non-internet world need to apply on the internet as well. Once we get Goons like you thrown in prison, the power of this new communications medium to do good soars. There are millions of good and smart people who could be making valuable contributions at every board and blog on the internet who hold back from doing so because they have seen Goons like you in action and want no part of of any activity in which your presence is tolerated. We need to hear the contributions of those people. And, after you Goons have been sent to prison, we will enact legislation to make sure that those millions of people will feel safe making positive contributions.

This is a story separate from the investing story. But it is possible that in the long run it is even more important.

Investors need honest discussion boards so that they can get help from their fellow investors when the Wall Street Con Men are trying to entice them with their Get Rich Quick garbage. Once we open up the internet to honest posting, the Wall Street Con Men just cannot get away with their trickery anymore. Sunshine is a disinfectant.

But it is not only in the investing field that this is so. There is huge value to permitting honest posting at economics sites. And at political sites. And at car-buying sites. And at science sites. And at baseball sites. And on and on and on.

The internet is a POWERFUL communications medium. But it becomes a powerful force for bad when we give you Goons veto power over what we say. We very, very, very much need to do something about you Goons. And we will. When people see that their retirement accounts have been destroyed by you Goons, they will see why this matters so much.

I can see the people who put together the Financial Bloggers Conference spearheading a movement to get you Goons removed from every board and blog on the internet. There would be a huge public relations gain in doing that. And all the bloggers would feel ten times better about themselves with you Goons not around. Mike Piper told me that. He said that there is nothing he would like more than to be able to do honest work. But he is afraid that Mel Linduaer would demand the destruction of his site (which is his livelihood) if he were to come out in favor of permitting honest posting. So he lives in fear. I don’t like the idea of my friend Mike living in fear. I don’t think that after the next price crash my friend Mike Piper will have to live in fear much longer.

The worst thing to do with bullies is to empower them by backing down in the face of their intimidation tactics. Internet bullies are people who are losers in the real world. They’ve run to the internet because that’s a place where people who are losers in the real world can gain a level of influence that it would be impossible for them to achieve in the real world. The influence is 100 precent negative. But in the eyes of losers it is the only influence that they are ever going to have and that’s what matters. The thing to do with bullies is to stand up to them and to be sure that they suffer negative consequences for their bad behavior.

We Normals outnumber you Goons ten to one. So it won’t take us long to solve the problem once we put our minds to it. What we need is a clear showing that the Normals are in the majority. When one Normal doesn’t see other Normals speaking up, he gets scared that you Goons really can hurt him in some way. Once the individuals who have posted in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney have been sent to prison, no one will be afraid of you Goons anymore. I mean, come on. The only thing that people will be afraid of is the possibility that they won’t be able to get you Goons removed from their sites fast enough.

A long time back, John Walter Russell put forward the idea that this saga would end in a more positive way than any of us participating in it even imagined possible. I thought those words had the ring of truth to them at the time. And I still believe that John was right. We’ve walked a long, crooked path. But I believe that we are walking a long, crooked path that leads us in the end to a very good place.

The full truth is that I probably need to believe that to get out of bed in the morning. I am obviously biased. So subtract whatever number of confidence points you want to subtract to reflect that bias. The truth remains that that is what I believe and that every action I take is rooted in the belief that the good guys win this one in a most dramatic way on the last page of the saga.

We will see.

Hang in there, man.

Rob

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

Did you ever stop to think that these questions are posed as a way of watching you make a fool of yourself?

I certainly don’t put it past you Goons to do something like that, Douche. It would be consistent with other behavior I have seen from you for you for you to do something like that.

I cannot control that, can I?

If it were up to me, there would be no Goons. Or, if there were Goons, the owner of every investing site on the internet would honor the published promises he made to protect those of us using the boards and blogs for good purposes from you Goons.

Every site owner has not honored their promises. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever lived. We are the first to know how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. We are on the one-yard line. We have 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing us how stock investing works in the real world. We have this wonderful internet technology that permits us to spread the word far and wide. We have seen over and over again that a good percentage of the middle-class population LONGS to hear honest and accurate investing advice for the first time. There are hundreds of blog owners and publishers and practitioners who stand to make millions by spreading this information. Things couldn’t be better.

Except for one thing — You Goons mess it up every time we get a fire going. People feel afraid of individuals who resort to threats of physical violence when others report honestly on what the peer-reviewed academic research in this field says. The Wall Street Con Men back you up and people worry that the Con Men will use their power and money and influence to destroy them. People feel ashamed and sickened to see human beings sink so low. They flee communities that don’t take prompt action to remove you from the premises rather than sticking around to defend the community by insisting on reasonable enforcement of the published posting rules.

I cannot change all that, Douche. Not by myself. I can speak out against it. But if the site owners don’t back me up, your intimidation tactics achieve their goal. If my fellow community members don’t speak up in strong and firm and uncompromising language, a lot of the site owners don’t feel compelled to honor their promises. They stand to make money by pushing the Get Rich Quick garbage just as the Wall Street Con Men do, afterall. Not as much. But the basic behavior driver is the same.

So I need to get you Goons sent to prison. When you are sent to prison, the story is going to go viral. I am sure. When the story goes viral, people will be curious about the substantive issues that caused people to be willing to risk prison sentences just to silence those seeking to let people know about the findings of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That will be the end of Buy-and-Hold. There have been a lot of people who have converted from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I think it would be safe to say that no one has ever converted back. Once we open the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other investment-related topics, I think it would be safe to say that within a year or so there will be no more Buy-and-Hold. We will have pulled together as a community to bury that Get Rich Quick garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things.

The laws against financial fraud were adopted for a good reason, Douche. We need to pull together as a society and enforce them and then move on to a much brighter financial future than any of us ever imagined possible back in the Buy-and-Hold Era.

No?

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment posted recently by one of the Greaney Goons to this site:

Based on your answer, I don’t think you understand what ‘powder’ is in this context Rob. Of course, you have always shown a deaf ear for analogies and comparisons, even (especially?) those you create yourself. So I’ll be so plain as to eliminate all confusion:

Rob, ‘powder’ here is money, plain and simple.

Not some subtle allusion to gunpowder (i.e. not a death threat) or baby powder or cocaine.

Money. Filthy Lucre. Hard cash. Wampum. Mean Green. Lettuce. Greenbacks.

You know; the stuff that unfortunately, is REQUIRED to support a wife and two children, and a house, car, taxes, and other trappings of modern life.

And I reiterate that I think you’ll be broke (‘Again’? Or is it ‘still’?) come 2016, unless you happen to have even more family members ready to kick off, in order to fund your shiftless ways for a few more years.

Care to explain why not, given your original nest egg, and your self admitted withdrawal rates? Because your [rapidly dwindling!] money ain’t been makin’ no money for quite some time, based on your own claims as to it’s allocation.

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

Seems like a vast conspiracy, Rob. Maybe you should contact Alex Jones (prison planet) and see if you can write a financial column.

It’s a Conspiracy of Ignorance, Anonymous.

Prior to 1981, we genuinely didn’t know how stock investing worked. Then we did. But the “revolutionary” (Shiller’s word) advance we achieved was so big that it came as a shock and was hard to take in.

When prices crashed in 2008, million of people were ready to consider new ideas. But the Buy-and-Holders feel embarrassed to acknowledge that the peer-revewed academic research revealing their errors has been around for over 30 years and they continued pushing Buy-and-Hold pretty darn hard all that time.

The cover-up can fairly be described as a conspiracy. I don’t have a problem saying that someone who fails to speak up about death threats and unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs is involved in a conspiracy to commit financial fraud. That’s why I often refer to “The Buy-and-Hold Mafia.”

But I am not aware of any evidence that the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers intentionally got anything wrong. I have seen a lot of evidence pointing in precisely the opposite direction. Why did Bogle include the words in his book that helped me understand the safe withdrawal rate issue if he was involved in a conspiracy? Why did Bernstein acknowledge that the numbers in the Old School studies are wildly wrong if he was involved in a conspiracy? Why did Swedroe get himself banned from the Vanguard Diehards board if he was involved in a conspiracy?

The reality here is that just about everyone in this field would like to see the Ban on Honest Posting lifted. I am confident that Bogle and Bernstein and Swedroe would. And I am confident that hundreds of others (probably thousands of others) would. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I think you Goons would like to see the Ban lifted. If you could go back in time, I think you would play things very differently.

The trouble we all are having is that the Buy-and-Holders painted themselves into a corner. They genuinely don’t know all the ins and outs of Valuation-Informed Indexing. They know that there are many holes in the Buy-and-Hold story. But they have never engaged in extensive discussion of what the last 33 years of research means. And so they really are pretty much in the dark re a large number of critically important investment-related topics. They tell themselves that it is okay not to speak out about the flaws in Buy-and-Hold so long as there is at least a chance that it might more or less work. And they continue to believe that it might more or less work because they have prohibited the sorts of discussions they would need to participate in to come to understand clearly why that is not the case.

How do we get the Buy-and-Holders out of the corner they have painted themselves into?

I gave it a very good shot. I suggested that we explain their lack of understanding of the research as a huge case of cognitive dissonance. That’s not a lie. Cognitive dissonance is a real phenomenon. And there is tons of evidence that it applies here. I was doing a great kindness to my Buy-and-Hold friends to put forward that suggestion. You cannot be held liable either civilly or criminally for mistakes you made when suffering from cognitive dissonance. I have put a good deal of effort into getting all of my Buy-and-Hold friends off the hook.

There’s one big problem casting a shadow over these efforts today. You cannot excuse death threats by citing cognitive dissonance. You cannot excuse unjustified board bannings by citing cognitive dissonance. You cannot excuse tens of thousands of acts of defamation by citing cognitive dissonance. You cannot excuse threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs by citing cognitive dissonance.

So now we have a large number of people who will be going to prison following the next price crash. And now we have a large number of people who will be on the hook for trillions of dollars of financial losses following the next price crash.

That’s why I began mentioning the prison sentences a ways back. For a long time, I kept my mouth shut about them because I thought that mentioning your prison sentences would just inflame you Goons all the more. But you obviously were aware of the risk that you would be going to prison on at least one level of consciousness. Otherwise, you never would have threatened Wade. By the time that Wade and I had published our research, you had in your Goon minds already passed the point of no return. You were going to prison if the truth ever got out and so you had to do absolutely anything to stop that from happening. Even threatening an academic researcher was no longer beyond the pale if that was what it took to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning about the long cover-up of the errors in the Old School studies.

Once I knew that that was the reality, it made no sense to keep quiet about the prison sentences. People who are pretty darn certain that they are headed to prison once people learn the realities are not going to come clean. And, by keeping quiet about your prison sentences, I was encouraging others (like Wade) to engage in behavior that would end up with them going to prison as well. Being “diplomatic” re this point was causing lots of people to suffer in very big ways.

So I stopped that b.s.

Call it a conspiracy if that makes you happy in some twisted sort of way. It’s not a conspiracy in the way that people generally use the word. It’s a case where some wonderful people came up with some wonderful insights but messed up one one point (the need to engage in long-term timing) because we humans just aren’t born knowing everything. Now we know and we should all be jumping up and down at our good fortune. But instead we have been subjected to 12 years of ugliness because the most abusive poster in the history of the internet really, really, really, really, really, really doesn’t want to acknowledge getting the numbers wildly wrong in a retirement study posted at his web site.

I don’t call it a conspiracy. But I sure don’t intend ever to agree to post dishonestly on safe withdrawal rates and thereby participate in the cover-up myself and earn myself a prison sentence to match yours, Anonymous. Please try to find someone else re that one. Call me madcap. No can do.

I will continue posting honestly and you will continue posting abusively and we will meet somewhere on the other side on some future day.

I can wish you well. It’s not a felony to do that. So I feel comfortable offering you my best and warmest wishes.

And that’s where I get off the train. If there is ever a time when I can help you out in any way that does not involve me posting dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements, I hope you will let me know. It would be cruel for me to suggest that there is any give whatsoever re the honest posting matter. So I won’t insult both of us by suggesting that there is even the tiniest chance that you will in 12 billion years see any change re that one.

That covers it, no?

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted at the Investor Junkie blog:

I’d like to hear Larry’s and Miranda’s reactions to the comments made about this article at the Goon Central Board and at the Early Retirement Forum. The first comment at the Early Retirement Forum is by a guy who has an obvious interest in learning about the subject matter. The following comments make it known to him that he will be ostracized if he continues to show interest in this important topic.

Do we approve of that sort of behavior in the Personal Finance Blogosphere? Do we feel a responsibility to protect our readers from it?

Kevin Mercandante writes for this site. Kevin recently deleted SCORES of Goon posts from a discussion held at his site. He can explain to anyone who cares to know about it the nature of the problem here.

Joe Taxpaper recently called the Goons out on their nonsense at his site.

As the Buy-and-Hold Crisis worsens, more and more people are reaching the point where they can tolerate no more abusiveness. When we honor the promise we make to ourselves and our readers in the published posting rules that apply at every board and blog, we all will begin moving forward together. This is the most positive story we have seen in personal finance in any of our lifetimes. We make a terrible mistake to let the lowest of the low among us try to turn it into something nasty and dirty.

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

Rob