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

Out of curiosity — I know you say that those who support Greaney or Lindaur, or Pfau, or Bogle, or Burns, etc are all felons, who will be going to prison. Super.But, putting aside those that are just supporters of the GRQ terrorists, how many people have actually made death threats related to their defense of the corrupt evil of buy and hold investing?I think I’ve seen you name at least four or five, is that right? But, is it more like a dozen? Even more? Could you please list them? And provide links to the actual threats? Do you think these horrible criminals will get more prison time than those whose crime is just read Bogleheads casually, or to have bought a book on Passive Investing, or merely quietly practice the dark art of non-Lucky Seven investing in secret on their own? Or is everyone who ever even toyed with buying and holding indexes without using PE10 going down, Rob? Curious to hear your take on these specific matters.

There are millions of good and smart people who follow and believe in Buy-and-Hold strategies. I was of course one of them and I don’t see that these people have anything whatsoever to worry about. I think they are mistaken. But their mistake is understandable. There really is academic research showing that short-term timing doesn’t work. We really did not have available to us the research needed to come to an understanding of how things really work until 1981. Shiller’s research findings were truly “revolutionary.” So it is not hard to see why it would take some time for people to come to see the implications that follow from his work.I believe that it is the people who have in some way participated in the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies who are in danger of going to prison.

There are four categories of people that I believe are in danger: (1) those who advanced death threats or other threats of physical violence; (2) those who demanded unjustified board bannings or who agreed to such bannings; (3) those who engaged in tens of thousands of acts of defamation; and (4) those who threatened academic researchers or who were aware of threats made to academic researchers and who failed to do anything about it.

The number of people at risk is in the hundreds or perhaps in the thousands. I do not feel able to give a list of who will be sent to prison and who will not be sent to prison. That’s something we have to decide as a society. I am confident that my role will be to argue for fewer prison sentences and for shorter prison sentences that what most others are calling for.

The issue is just too big and too novel for me to feel up to giving any kind of a precise count.The best way to understand it is to look at a particular case. I think Mike Piper is a good case to look at. Mike is a fine blogger. He is smart. He is hard-working. He is helpful. He HATED the idea of banning honest posting at his blog. He directed a lot of energy to finding some other means of dealing with the situation. All that obviously counts AGAINST a prison sentence.

The other side of the story is that we will be seeing millions of people’s financial futures ruined because of the 11-year cover-up and Mike played an important role in keeping that cover-up going. He obviously knows that the Old School SWR studies don’t contain a valuations adjustment. He knows that Mel Linduaer is one of the leaders of the cover-up. He has acknowledged thinking that Mel is a jerk and has said that he doesn’t speak up against Mel only because he is afraid of him. All indications are that that is indeed so.

If you post claims about retirement planning at your blog that you know to be false and millions of people experience failed retirements as a result, that’s obviously financial fraud. In ordinary circumstances, you obviously risk going to jail by doing that. Are you excused if the most abusive poster in the history of the internet threatens to destroy your business and if you know from personal experience that this individual is capable of going through with his threat and if big names in the field indicate that they are going to side with the abusive poster? WHO THE HECK KNOWS?

No one has ever seen a case of financial fraud as big as this one, Anonymous. Perhaps Mike is going to prison, perhaps he is not. Perhaps it will be a short prison term, perhaps it will be a long one. No one knows.

I’ll tell you what I think. We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever walked Planet Earth. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows us how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. We shouldn’t be talking about how long Mike Piper’s prison sentence is going to be. We all should be working together to tap into the benefits of the amazing research findings of the past 32 years. We should all be working to bring the economic crisis to an immediate stop and to bring on the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history. What’s the downside?

If Mike is not sent to prison, I expect to be working with him for many years to come. That one is easy. If Mike IS sent to prison, I obviously won’t be able to work with him. But I am going to feel bad about him being sent to prison despite being such a nice guy and such a smart guy. So I want there to be lots of posts in the record when Mike’s prison sentence is announced showing that I did everything in my power to bring his potential prison sentence to the attention of Mike and his friends and to implore them to do everything they could to see either that there is no prison sentence for Mike or that his prison sentence is as short as it can possibly be given today’s circumstances.

We all are going to have to live with ourselves following the next crash, Anonymous. I don’t think it is even a tiny bit responsible to hold off on talking about the prison sentences until the events that lock them into place have already taken place. I think the responsible thing to do is to talk about those prison sentences NOW and to do what can be done to get them reduced a bit NOW. So that’s what I do.

The only way to answer the questions you are posing is to look at history and see how things have gone down in the past. We know that Bernie Madoff is in prison. We know that with the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies we are looking at an act of financial fraud that makes what Madoff did look like a drop of water in the Atlantic ocean. So there is clearly a problem here.The other side of the story is that we have never seen a case of financial fraud as big as this. So we just cannot give details of what is going to happen with a high degree of confidence. We are in 100 percent uncharted waters.

I hope that helps a bit.

My best wishes.

Rob

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

Let’s revisit the premise of your “they got the number wrong” theory. We all agree that most of the SWR numbers simply provide an accurate report of what worked historically. The perhaps incorrect assumption some people make is that what worked historically will continue to work in the future.

Do you think that Greaney’s retirement study and Sholar’s FIRECalc should have been corrected within 24 hours of the time the errors in them were brought to their attention?

Or do you not?

Is the purpose of a retirement study or a retirement calculator to help people plan their retirements effectively?

Or is it to trick people?

Do you really believe that the word “perhaps” belongs in the last sentence quoted above?

Do you think that the Wall Street Journal is part of some vast conspiracy to make John Greaney and Bill Sholar feel bad? And the Economist magazine? And Smart Money? And Academic Researcher Wade Pfau? And Bill Bernstein?

Why don’t you state things clearly?

What do you think will happen to you if you simply state what you obviously believe with clarity?

Did your confidence in Greaney’s study grow when he threatened to kill my wife and children if I continued to “cross” him by posting honestly on the SWR topic?

Do you believe that the people whose retirements fail because they believed that Sholar was shooting straight with his calculator should be compensated for their losses by him?

If not, why not?

Do you think Sholar’s decision to ban honest posting on the errors in his calculator was an act of financial fraud?

Do you think the financial losses caused by Greaney and Sholar were greater or lesser than the financial losses caused by Bernie Madoff, who resides in a prison cell today?

Do you believe that people of the stature of John Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Larry Swedroe should be permitting their names to be associated with a discussion board that banned honest posting on safe withdrawal rates as its first order of business?

Do you not agree that these people are lending support to a criminal enterprise by doing this?

Are you proud of your own behavior re the 11-year cover-up of the errors in the studies? Or at you ashamed of it?

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

If by “hiding under the bedcovers,” you mean that I no longer spin my wheels on the internet, you are correct. I’ve found other pursuits that I enjoy more.

I’ll explain what I meant, Wab.

Please understand that I do not mean to direct these comments particularly at you. You did what lots of people did. I am expressing something that I feel very deeply when I use those words. And it sounds like I am taking a dig at you. But that is not really my intent. My intent is to express amazement at a phenomenon that I have seen play out with many different people at many different times.

It is a horrible, horrible thing to get a number wrong in a retirement study or in a retirement calculator.

If I learned that I had done such a thing, I would be greatly embarrassed. I would IMMEDIATELY fix the error. I would apologize to the people whose lives I had destroyed. I would thank the person who brought the error to my attention for saving me further embarrassment.

That is obviously not the way in which either Greaney or Sholar reacted.

I was stunned and amazed at how they reacted.

I was also stunned and amazed at how YOU (and many others, to be sure) reacted.

I think of Greaney as a friend. I think of Sholar as a friend. I think of you as a friend. I think of those many others as friends.

I have learned things from you all. I have had laughs with you. I have had good times with you all. I have been through lots of experiences with you all. That to me equates to thinking of you as friends.

I do not like to see my friends go to prison. The thought is horrifying to me.

Greaney and Sholar (and those who have posted in “defense” of them) have been engaged in a massive act of financial fraud for many years now. They know that their study and calculator get the numbers wildly wrong. They know that people have used the study and calculator to plan retirements. And they have both engaged in a massive cover-up to keep people from finding out about the errors. That’s an act of financial fraud that makes anything that Bernie Madoff did look tiny and insignificant in comparison.

So I think it is fair to say that a good number of my friends from the old days will be going to prison following the next crash.

I HATE that. Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it.

So I naturally spoke up against the cover up. And I naturally asked all my friends to ALSO speak up and to get John’s and Bill’s lives back on track.

I was scared too. I knew precisely how ruthlessly vicious the Greaney Goons were from my dealings with them at Motley Fool. I know that Bill was scared. And I presume that that’s your story too.

I do not understand how you could continue posting at a board that had become a corrupt enterprise.If you didn’t feel safe speaking out, I feel that you should have moved on then.

The phrase was intended to be a reference to your lack of courage. I think that’s a big part of this story. People are scared to death of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney and for perfectly good reasons. But I don’t get it why they don’t see that Lindauer and Greaney lose all their power to intimidate us once we agree to join together in protecting ourselves from them.

If I had agreed to post dishonestly, I could not have lived with myself. That’s me. There’s no requirement that you be me. But I cannot understand how you can do what you did instead. I am simply making that point, getting that out on the table, getting that out in the open.

Your comment that you moved on suggests that things got even worse after the ban. I cannot say that I am surprised. When the good guys reveal that they don’t care about a board, the bad guys take over and it dies. How could it go any other way?

It’s good talking to you again after being out of touch for a number of years. I do think of you as a friend, Wab. I naturally wish you all the best of luck with whatever investing strategies you elect to pursue.

Sometime in 2014 I plan to start a discussion board at this site. I am looking for 10 people who will commit to putting up one post every day during the launching stage of the board. If you are interested in being part of that, please let me know. I would love to have you with us.

Take care, man.

Rob

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

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

Rob,

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

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

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

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

The question is what to do about it.

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

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

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

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

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

So you end up in prison.

I CANNOT CHANGE THAT, Pink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or at least so Rob Bennett believes.

My warmest regards to you and yours.

Rob the Non-Superman

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

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

The same thing that happened after the last two price crashes.

That probably is what you really do believe. I can give you that much.

I do not believe that.

If you believe that the price of stocks matters (there is now 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing this to be so), then the worst possible thing that could happen is that large numbers of investors could come to believe that price doesn’t matter. That’s what has happened. We did not have Shiller’s research when the Buy-and-Hold idea was developed. And the people who promoted Buy-and-Hold were too proud to acknowledge their mistake when it was uncovered. So we pushed stock prices to levels never seen before in U.S. history.

Every time we have seen a P/E10 of 25, we have seen an economic crisis. The one time we touched 33, we saw a Great Depression. This time we hit 44. We are looking at a Great Depression of twice the length and twice the depth of the one that began in 1929.

It’s going to be written up in all the papers!

The reason why everyone is not working to avert it today is that most think as you do, that stock price changes just sort of happen and that you deal with them the best you can and move on. Shiller’s research (confirmed by 32 years of follow-up research) shows that that is not how it works. It is the Buy-and-Hold “idea” (that investors don’t need to consider price when setting their allocations) that causes price crashes and economic crises. We would all know this today given the 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing it to be so but for the brutal and criminal acts employed by the Buy-and-Hold Mafia to keep millions of middle-class investors from learning what the research really says.

You “believe” what you say above in one sense. You have convinced yourself that there is a chance that you will not go to prison for your many acts of financial fraud (a felony). I can give you that much.

But you lack confidence in this belief. You show this with every post you put forward. If you had confidence, you would not favor the use of death threats and you would not favor the use of board bannings and you would not favor the use of tens of thousands of acts of defamation and you would not favor the use of threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. You are worried. Actions speak louder than words.

I wish you well. That’s about all that I can think of to say to someone in your position. If there ever comes a time when we can work together to get your prison sentence shortened a bit, I hope you will contact me. I would be happy to do what I can do.

Take care, man.

Rob the Confident (Or So He Tells Himself!)