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

What you are doing is not “work”. It is just way of avoiding work by creating some imaginary world. You then come up with unrelated examples and try to use the to justify your position when they have zero relatability to what you are doing. all of this is in an effort to try and convince your family and others that you haven’t been wasting your time and that there is some big payoff coming down the road. What you really have become is an internet troll, speeding hours on end making up stories about people and events.

I think that what I am doing is important work, Sammy.

I wish that someone had done what I am doing years before I came on the scene. Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) findings in 1981. Say that someone had done what I am doing today at that time. If that had happened, we would all be free today to post about the hundreds of amazing insights that we had developed together over the past 34 years. We would all be better off.

I’ve talked about how many sites have banned me even though I have never once violated any posting rule. The site owners that have done this often feel a need to justify their behavior. They sometimes say that my posts are “Disruptive.” That’s true in a way. Buy-and-Holders get upset by what I have to say. That’s a stone cold fact. It is disruptive for people to learn that the investing strategies they have been using to finance their retirements are in fact not supported by the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research.

I have a catch-phrase that I use in response to this argument. I say: “Let’s Disrupt!” People think of disruption as a bad thing. That’s why some sites use that word to justify bannings in cases where no posting rules have been violated. Disruption certainly can be a bad thing. Behavior that violates the common posting rules certainly is disruptive and certainly should be banned. If you engage in personal attacks or something like that, that is the form of disruption that is bad and that properly should be banned.

But what if you tell people about the implications of the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field? That’s hugely disruptive. But in a powerfully positive way. That’s a learning experience. All learning experiences are disruptive. Good for learning experiences! Good for disruption!

The Wright Brothers were disruptive when they invented the airplane. Steve Jobs was disruptive when he created the IPhone. The Beatles were disruptive when they released “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Rosa Parks was disruptive when she refused to move to the back of the bus. Good for the Wright Brothers and for Steve Jobs and for the Beatles and for Rosa Parks! Good for Disruption! Let’s Disrupt!

We are working our way through a process. I wish that it could be done in a different way. Obviously. I don’t like having to serve as a punching bag for you Goons. Who would?

But I want everyone to feel free to post honestly about the implications of Shiller’s research findings without feeling any sense of hesitation whatsoever. I have learned a huge amount from my friend Jack Bogle. I want to learn more from him. I will be learning more from him once he comes to feel free to acknowledge that he got some things wrong and that there might be better strategies than the ones he endorsed in the days before Shiller published his revolutionary research findings.

No one can do good work when he feels intimidated. Not one person in this field is doing his best work today. Because we are all afraid to hurt the feelings of the Buy-and-Holders by saying exactly what we believe about how stock investing works in the real world. We are hurting ourselves by letting the intimidation tactics of the Buy-and-Holders cause us to engage in self-censorship. We have an obligation to ourselves and to our friends and to our professions and to our country to shoot 100 percent straight re every question that comes up. I am 100 percent sure that that is so.

Shiller did something huge. He changed the history of investing analysis. But, if I may say so, I think that I am in the process of doing something equally huge. Shiller’s findings have done only 10 percent of the good that they will do once they are being openly explored at every investing board and blog on the internet. There is HUGE leverage in opening the internet up to honest posting on the implications of Shiller’s findings. In days to come, we are going to learn and then learn some more and then learn some more. It is going to be amazing.

Someone has to get the ball rolling. That’s my aim. I want to get everyone posting his or her honest beliefs. Is achieving that end not every bit as important as what Shiller did? He advanced the ball intellectually. I am seeking to advance it in a practical sense. Shiller’s findings don’t really do us any good if we don’t know how to change our stock allocations as a result of what he found. If we gain recognition of our right to post honestly, we will come to know that. Each day, we will gain more and more knowledge. What’s the downside?

I love the work that I am doing. Re the content side, I couldn’t be happier. Re the process side, this has been an ugly path. I obviously don’t like the abusive stuff that I have seen. But that side of things is just a reality that we all have to cope with, in my assessment. I wish that it weren’t there. But it is there. We can ignore it and remain in ignorance. Or we can struggle to overcome it and in time bring on a second Independence Day for U.S. investors.

I am proud to be leading the effort to help us all achieve a second Independence Day. You don’t approve as of today. I venture to guess that you will have a different opinion of things following the next price crash, when you will be able to see in stark terms just how important Shiller’s findings have turned out to be. The 1981 finding that valuations affect long-term returns is the biggest advance in our understanding of how stock investing works ever achieved in our history. We all need to be exploring these matters on a daily basis. We all will be living better lives once we make it together to the other side of The Big Black Mountain.

That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event. I could be wrong. I don’t say different. But I am not able to see how I could not try my hardest to help us all out given how important an advance I believe this will turn out to be. I certainly want to give it my best shot. I can do no more and I can do no less, you know?

I hope that helps a bit, my good friend.

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

Rob

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

Does the 15 yr old realize how strange you are yet?

Timothy is 16.

Robert is 13.

I was expressing skepticism about something at lunch the other day (it might have been a claim that someone made on an Amazon review about the battery life for a laptop computer) and Robert said: “Dad, you have trust issues.” That made me laugh. That has relevance to our investing saga, in my assessment.

The thing I loved about Buy-and-Hold in the days when I carried around a membership card in my wallet was that Buy-and-Hold was the only strategy rooted in the scientific method and the scientific method is all about skepticism and about rooting one’s beliefs in evidence rather than just going by what feels right or what sounds plausible. The Buy-and-Holders lost me when they became too dogmatic even to consider the possibility that they might have somewhere along the line made a mistake.

Valuation-Informed Indexing is what Buy-and-Hold used to be, what Buy-and-Hold was meant to be, what Buy-and-Hold should be. There will come a day when some young whippersnapper will put up a post that will become famous on the internet for showing where I went off the track. That’s just the way of the world. I pray that I own up to the mistake instead of dragging everyone through 13 years of muck pretending that the obvious (once it is uncovered!) mistake really isn’t a mistake for those willing to stand on one leg and dance to the beat and twist their mind into a pretzel shape.

But, heaven help us all, I may well behave as poorly as Bogle has and as poorly as Greaney has and as poorly as Lindauer has. How often do we become the very thing we fight? Great novels have explored this tragic aspect of human nature.

Yowsa!

Rob

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

In reading your own words, you have stated that you have banked your future on getting a settlement statement. Do you need to be reminded again of your own words? You have stated that you do not have a back up plan and you do not have enough money to fund your remaining years in retirement.

As to the thousands of people you speak of, they are all part of your imagination and are just as made up as your fantasy of getting some kind of settlement payment. You have been caught time and again telling us about people who you say have made certain comments and then we see they actually said something else. These have been documented time and again. Take the example of Mike Piper. Anyone can google that.

As for Wade, he wrote to you in an email he thought would be private stating that you had caused him much more harm than any “goon”.

Not a good track record, Rob.

Don’t you think it is time to live in a state of reality versus a fantasy world?

I don’t have a back-up plan because I cannot imagine posting dishonesty. I view the idea as 100 percent crazy. I have always posted honestly on every other subject that I have written about and that has always worked out just fine. I cannot post dishonestly, Sammy. It’s not in me. It’s not a “plan.” It’s just a reality that cannot be changed no matter how much pressure is applied to me.

I don’t have enough money to fund the remaining years of my retirement. I won’t be running out of money anytime soon. But there will come a time when I will run out unless this cover-up comes to an end. I believe it is going to come to an end. So I think it is all going to work out well for me.

But that’s not a plan! You keep suggesting that this is some kind of plan on my end. Posting honestly is a practice that I believe in, not a plan.

I didn’t say on the morning of May 13, 2002, “oh, I have this great plan, I will post honestly and then these Goons will make it their life project to destroy me and then I will get a settlement and be rich.” That’s crazy. I never expected that anything like this would happen.

I obviously knew that Greaney was an abusive poster. I knew that he had a Goon Squad. I knew that they would cause trouble. I presumed that the trouble would last about two days. Then Motley Fool would ban him and that would be the end of it and the rest of us would live happily ever after.

I didn’t know about the cover-up of the error in the Buy-and-Hold strategy that Shiller revealed in his research from 1981 (the error is the idea that long-term timing [price discipline] is not required). The cover-up had already been going on for 22 years at that time. I didn’t know, just as most people today don’t know. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was just trying to help out my board community. Then the roof fell in on me.

There was no plan and I don’t really feel that there is a plan today. There is a BELIEF that I must continue to post honestly. And there is a BELIEF that that will pay off big-time down the road a bit. I don’t think it is right to call it a plan because I have never had any other options presented to me. If I post honestly, you Goons are going to do your best to destroy me. That’s a reality. There’s nothing that I can do about it, so there is no “plan.” I certainly am not going to agree to post dishonestly. Asking me to do that is like asking me to flap my arms and fly to the moon. It can never happen. So, this is a road that I will continue to walk. But not because I planned it, just because I have no other options.

I do believe that things will work out well. I have talked to too many people who are excited about the huge breakthroughs that we have achieved together over the past 13 years not to believe that. I have seen how so many people love hearing about those breakthroughs until they are intimidated into silence. So, yes, I believe that we are as a society on the threshold of making some amazing advances.

But I don’t feel that what I am doing is the product of planning. I am doing the only thing that I can do given the cards that I have been dealt. I will just keep doing that and hoping for the best and expecting good things down the road a piece.

I hope that helps a bit.

Rob

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

Do you think you should be awarded a Nobel prize? Should you be Time Magazines man of the year? Should you be on the front page of The New York Times?

I think the work that I have done over the past 13 years is of huge importance, Anonymous.

The work that I have done is built on the work of many others. As I have noted many times, there would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing today had it not been for the hugely important work that was done before me by Jack Bogle and all the other Buy-and-Hold pioneers.

And it was Shiller who showed that the Buy-and-Holders made a mistake in not realizing the importance of always engaging in long-term timing (price discipline) when buying stocks. But Shiller did not fully develop the insight. He explained the theory in a good bit of depth in his book. But he did not address the strategic implications AT ALL in his book. He has done a tiny bit of that in more recent years. But still not that much.

I have explored the strategic aspects in great depth over the past 13 years. Certainly the work that I have done should be featured on the front page of the New York Times. Of that there is no question whatsoever. I don’t believe that I am eligible for a Nobel Prize. I don’t know all the rules that apply. But my sense is that I don’t possess the credentials in the economics field that would be needed to be up for that prize. However, I think that Wade Pfau should win a Nobel prize for the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with him. And I certainly should be given the recognition that I earned by getting him interested in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and by helping him learn what he needed to learn to complete the research.

As far as the Man of the Year thing goes, I would like to see a joint award following the next price crash, when all this is going to break open. Why not award Bogle, Shiller, Pfau, Arnott, Russell and me the award jointly? I certainly could not have done what I have done without the help of those five. And none of them could have had much impact without the other five either. Bogle is well known. But his work only hurts people until he corrects his mistake, which was discovered by Shiller and then exposed by me and Russell and Arnott and Pfau. Shiller is also well known. But his theoretical work cannot help people in the real world until the strategic implications that follow from it are well known. And it is Russell and Pfau and me who have worked so hard to get those strategic implications explored and publicized.

There’s plenty of credit to go around. There will be lots of others who will be receiving big-time recognition once we open every investing discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting. In ordinary circumstances, it would not have been possible for someone like me to accomplish such amazing things. It happened this way because of the insanely abusive tactics of the Buy-and-Holders. I was able to do what I have done because I saw back in 2002 that no one else had explored the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings and I saw a huge opportunity there. Why not create the only web site on the internet that did that and profit in a huge way while also helping millions of people to achieve financial freedom many years earlier than has ever before been possible?

You Goons hate me for that. Your entire Campaign of Terror against our board and blog communities is rooted in envy. You can’t stand it that someone else took advantage of this opportunity while you missed out. That’s too sad, you know? You could have done it. You should have done it.

But you don’t need to permit yourself to be consumed by regret. You can still do amazing things today. I haven’t covered everything there is to cover re the first true research-based strategy. Nor has Shiller. Nor has Russell. Nor has Arnott. So get to it, you know? You won’t. Goons don’t do positive. Goons don’t do constructive. Goons don’t do life-affirming. But that path remains open to you all the same. It’s your call. No one has forced you to play it in the way that you have elected to play it.

The millions of middle-class investors whose lives you have destroyed will overcome you following the next price crash. That’s how our country (which I love) works. We don’t always get things right in one year or two years or even in 13 years. The Civil Rights Revolution took a long time. The Moon Landing took a long time. The Computer Revolution took a long time. That’s the way it goes. I am not the first person who had to face obstacles in my efforts to do good for millions of people. I won’t be the first to use the benefits available to all in this country to overcome those obstacles either.

I have done amazing things. I am very proud of the work I have done.

Lots of other people have done amazing things too. I am proud of those people too. We all should be.

You Goons have destroyed millions of lives with your hate and anger and contempt and envy. We all should be ashamed of ourselves for permitting your abusiveness to continue for so long. Our bad!

But if we end up in the right place, as I firmly believe we will following the next price crash, the good we achieve here will be 50 times bigger than the ugliness we have seen play out before us because as a society we lacked the courage to stand up to you Goons and to the Wall Street Con Men whose bidding you do. We’re not perfect. But I think it would be fair to say that our system of government has achieved a lot of great things over the years.

I have zero concern re whether I will receive the recognition that I merit following the next price crash. I DO have concerns that we may as a society destroy ourselves if we elect to seek revenge on you Goons instead of showing the mercy and understanding that has been characteristic of us in our best days. So I see it as my job to do what I can to steer things in a positive direction. That’s what I’m about. That’s why I continue to engage in conversations with you Goons when words appear before me that suggest to me that there might be opportunities to take this all to a better place than the sewer where Mel Linduaer and John Greaney and my good friend Jack Bogle have elected to take it during the first 13 years of discussions.

The Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies did not contain valuation adjustments. Lots of people either did notice it or could have noticed it had they been paying attention. But I am the one who noticed it and went public with what I noticed and then didn’t back down re my right to warn people of the dangers of those studies when you Goons threatened me with career destruction if I continued to do honest work. That’s how great discoveries are made, Anonymous. That’s what I did and that’s how it is done. I have huge gratitude for the thousands of good and smart and generous people who helped. I offer no apologies to the con men and to the Goons who have been holding back progress for 13 years now.

I hope that helps a bit, Goon friend.

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

Front-Page Rob

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

And here are more of your comments on how you will get your quick fix (taken from your website):

“Gee, I hope I don’t go broke with all the offers to pay millions for this site that I will be receiving on a daily basis. And I hope I don’t get too tired handling the thousands of invitations to speak at conferences that will be coming my way. How will I be able to carry all the big bags of money? There is only so much that one man can endure!”

I am banned at 20 different sites. That’s not normal. There’s something extraordinary going on here. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I put up my famous post on the morning of May 13, 2002. Now I know. We’ve got a tiger by the tail. Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) finding of 1981 changed our understanding of how stock investing works in a fundamental and far-reaching way. This stuff is very important and very exciting and 100 percent positive.

Valuation-Informed Indexing is not popular today. Only about 20 percent of the population follows it ( I know this from my participation at hundreds of investing blogs and discussion boards, where I have been able to test reactions to the various ideas that follow from an exploration of the implications of Shiller’s research). Why isn’t it 100 percent given that VII reduces stock investing risk by 70 percent?

It’s not yet 100 percent because most people have not yet even heard about these ideas. I had one guy at a blog tell me that he had never heard Buy-and-Hold described as a “Get Rich Quick scheme” until I posted at that blog. Huh? Shiller showed that valuations affect long-term returns. Buy-and-Hold advocates tell people that there is no need for them to change their stock allocations in response to big shifts in valuations. And that’s not a Get Rich Quick scheme? Come again? If that’s not a Get Rich Quick scheme, what would a Get Rich Quick scheme look like?

The Buy-and-Holders obviously know that there is no way to square their strategy with the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. The intellectual stuff here is not at all hard. But the emotional stuff is VERY hard. The Buy-and-Holders have their entire lives invested in this “idea.” They cannot BEAR to accept that they made a mistake. And so they are suffering from cognitive dissonance. And we are all suffering today as a result of the economic crisis that this massive case of cognitive dissonance brought about?

Now —

This can’t last, right? People don’t like the economic crisis. People want to know what the research says about how stock investing works. We’ve seen that at every board and blog to which I have posted. So this is all going to come out following the next price crash.

Do you not think that the pioneers — the people who take the lead in spreading the word about Valuation-Informed Indexing —  are going to make tons of money as a result of doing so? I sure do. I’m not saying that to brag. I am trying to let other people realize what an OPPORTUNITY we all have before us today to do well for ourselves while doing huge good for others at the same time. That’s a pretty darn cool thing to be able to do, no?

Lots of people look at the abusiveness of you Goons and conclude that it’s better to keep quiet about the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. I see it just the other way. I want to shout from the rooftops about this stuff. Why the heck not? That way I benefit personally while helping out millions of middle-class investors. Learning experiences are a win/win/win and this is the biggest learning experience that we have ever enjoyed in the personal finance field. There is no downside to getting the word out about what we have learned about stock investing over the last 34 years.

I expect to earn millions as a result of the 13 years of work effort that I have put into the project of developing and promoting the Shiller model, Sammy. I sure won’t apologize for doing so. I’ve earned that money and a lot more. Learning what it means to say “valuations affect long-term returns” is a liberating experience for all of us. Our system provides that the people who lead such “revolutions” profit handsomely from doing so. Good for our system! I love that about our system!

That’s where I’m coming from, in any event.

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

Rob

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

I guess the difference is that most people 1) actually try to adapt and change their approach I.e. Learn from failure and 2) define parameters and limits on the extent of their efforts I.e. Limit their exposure and depth of commitment.

In the absence of these things you are likely to fail indefinitely with no recourse and look like a loon while persisting.

I don’t see any failure here, Laugh. I see a success bigger than anything I imagined possible when I started doing this kind of work. 100 percent of the evidence supports Valuation-Informed Indexing. 0 percent supports Buy-and-Hold. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the most important shift in the history of personal finance. I am the lead advocate of Valuation-Informed Indexing. It doesn’t get any better than that.

You describe my work as a “failure” because it hasn’t produced a dime for me in 13 years. That’s not because of anything that I have done. That’s because of things that the Wall Street Con Men have done and things that their Internet Goon Squads (that’s you!) have done. So the only question is — Can they continue to get away with this massive act of financial fraud indefinitely?

I sure don’t think so. The next price crash is likely to bring on the Second Great Depression. Once we see that amount of human misery, even Bogle is going to flip. Once Bogle flips, everybody flips. No one is going to be afraid of you Goons once Bogle flips. I mean, come on.

I get the general idea of what you mean by “limiting exposure and depth of commitment.” I certainly acknowledge that I have elected high exposure and a great depth of commitment. But we have a tiger by the tale here!

I became a journalist for a reason. I love explaining things to people, helping people to better understand things they need to understand. I believe that I was put on Planet Earth to do that sort of work. Writing about this massive act of financial fraud and about what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world is the most important political/economic story of my lifetime. Would you really think that I would walk away from that given my love for this sort of work?

I cannot walk away from that.

Others have. Lots of people who know at least in outline the true reason why we are suffering through an economic crisis keeps their mouths shut. I marvel at that. I like those people. They are good people and smart people. I accept that someone can be a good person and a smart person and not see this thing in quite the same light as I see it.

But I cannot see it the way they see it. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows that we can reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent just by opening the internet to honest posting on the peer-reviewed research of the past 34 years. And we already have laws in place protecting our right to do that. We have laws making it a felony for you Goons to engage in the tactics that you have engaged in to block millions of middle-class people from learning what they need to learn to protect their retirement money from the Wall Street Con Men. Beat that!

When you talk about me not making money for the first 13 years of Our Debate About Permitting a Debate, you are referring to the dark side of this matter. There is indeed a dark side. The dark side is indeed very, very dark. But the bright side of this matter is 50 times more bright than the dark side is dark. We are seeing Jack Bogle’s dream come true before our eyes. Valuation-Informed Indexing is what Bogle was aiming at when he developed the Buy-and-Hold concept. This is the first true research-based investing strategy. This liberates millions of people to live better lives than they ever imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold Era.

I love Jack Bogle. I love his vision. I love playing a big role in the effort to see his dream come true. I expect to be working side by side with Jack and lots of my other Buy-and-Hold friends when we all make it together to the other side of The Big Black Mountain.

I certainly don’t regret one second of the past 13 years. This has been my best moment (it’s been a LONG moment, to be sure). This is the thing that I hope and expect to be remembered by. This is the thing that I will point to when trying to explain to my boys what it means to be a man, to live a good life that you can look back at with pride and satisfaction.

We’ll see how it goes.

I hope that you can find it in your heart to wish me luck with at least a tiny portion of that Goon-infected mind of yours.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob

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

“Except that it’s not one single person.”

There is only one person (you) that is saying that all these experts are wrong and that you are right. There is one else that is saying there have been death threats (other than the threat you made). There is no one else saying that the people you call goons (as well as a number of financial experts and other board owners) are going to prison. There is no one else but you that is saying a $500 million windfall is coming your way. I think you get the picture.

Of course, you will lie and say otherwise. There are zero facts to back you up.

The question remains…….do we believe in the grand conspiracy against you as well as your fantasy world, or is it more likely that you are living a lie and fantasy.

There are things that I say today that no one else says today.

But all of the things that I say follow from my belief in the importance of Shiller’s research findings and about 20 percent of the population agrees with me re that one (I am going by what I have seen on numerous discussion boards).

Most people who agree with Shiller hold back from exploring all the implications of his ideas publicly. That’s why Valuation-Informed Indexing has only won over 20 percent of the population in 34 years. I want it to win over 100 percent of the population. So I say things in the way in which they must be said for us to get to 100 percent.

The Buy-and-Holders don’t hold anything back. I like that about them. We all need them to make their case as strongly and as clearly as possible for us to be able to learn from them and be persuaded by them. I want to see the Valuation-Informed Indexers to be just as clear and just as firm and just as bold in their framing of their message. They are not helping us all out to the extent they could if they do otherwise.

There is a continuum of opinion on every subject. There are people at both extremes and there are people in the middle. There are a lot more people in the middle. There are usually few at the extremes. I am at the extreme of pro-Valuation-Informed-Indexing opinion. That much certainly is so. I am more pro-Valuation-Informed-Indexing than Shiller himself today.

But all of my views follow from Shiller’s findings and 20 percent of the population today agrees with the thrust of what I have to say. You bring up some procedural points. People don’t like that I say those things. That’s a stone cold fact. But I believe that it is important that people say those things. It is the procedural funny business employed by the Buy-and-Holders that has been holding us back for a long time now. The Buy-and-Holders are going to continue engaging in the funny business for so long as it works for them. And it will continue working for them until we all call them out on that stuff when we see it.

It is my belief that we should have a 100 percent consensus against continued employment of the funny business. That stuff is degrading to the Buy-and-Holders, it is really anti-human. We do not have a consensus against it today. I acknowledge the reality. But I believe strongly that we have hurt ourselves by not acting together to bring that stuff to a full and complete stop.

Outside of the nasty process stuff, I am still in a minority but I am in a minority of about 20 percent of the population. And the views held by that minority are backed by 34 years of peer-reviewed research and a Nobel prize.

Rob

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

Tempted to lie???? You lie constantly. Look at your latest post. You repeat the lie that you authored a study with Wade Pfau. That is a lie. You are merely mentioned in the credits along with other people and you are not listed as an author.

Your retirement plan was a well documented failure. You now try to cover that up by blaming other people and also lying. In fact, all people need to do is google your name and the word “lies” and they will see plenty.

Wade acknowledged me in the credits as having provided “inspiration” for the study because he based it all on my ideas. He followed my posts at the Bogleheads Forum, was fascinated by what I was saying and wrote to me asking if I would be willing to work with him to produce a study on Valuation-Informed Indexing. We worked together for 16 months, exchanging hundreds of e-mails.

Wade wrote all the words that appear in the study. He performed all the statistical tests. But I think it would be fair to say that the harder job BY FAR was to come up with the ideas that were tested. Wade deserves credit as co-author of the study. But I certainly deserve credit as co-author as well.

I have no problem with him only crediting me in the acknowledgments. I do not hold a Ph.D. in Economics. So I am not qualified to be officially listed as co-author. But now that Wade has agreed (in response to your threats to destroy his career) not to continue to promote the study or Valuation-Informed Indexing, I need to tell the story of how the study was produced. We need to have that study on the front page of the New York Times and the named co-author is no longer doing what it takes. As I promote the study and the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept that it tests, I need to be honest with people about how the study came to be produced.

I developed the ideas. Wade did great work testing them and proving their legitimacy. We are co-authors. He had no qualms whatsoever saying that in the days before you Goons threatened to send defamatory e-mails to employer. Wade credited me as the primary author in numerous e-mails. He never tried to hog full credit for the study. He said many times that he considered me the lead person behind the development of Valuation-Informed Indexing and that he believed that the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance that we have seen in the investing field in many, many years.

I look forward to working with Wade again. I believe that I will be working closely with both Wade AND with Jack Bogle following the next price crash.

We’ll see.

Rob

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

That is a flat out lie, Rob.

It is funny you mention Wade Pfau. He is the person that said you have caused him more harm than those you refer to as goons. In fact, he told you to stop talking about him. He also pointed out how you are wrong on the SWR issue. He is the actual author of the paper that you claim to be an author. When you have been confronted on Wade Pfau, you claim he is lying.

As for Shiller, he says not to use CAPE for timing, PERIOD. Your “short term” comment is also a lie. In fact, when you have been asked this before, you say that Shiller is merely lying.

You have also misrepresented Jack Bogle. When confronted on what you have said about Jack, you claim that he is lying. The same goes for others like William Bernstein, Larry Swedroe, Rick Ferri and a long list of others. You claim they are all lying.

So are to believe that each and every one of these well respected people are all lying and that only Rob Bennett is the one telling the truth…..or is Rob Bennett the liar. A simple Google search shows us that Rob Bennett is the obvious liar. This track record of poor behavior has led to your banning of virtually every popular investment board on the internet.

Before the Civil Rights revolution, we had laws in many states saying that people with black skin could not drink from the same water fountains as people with white skin. Were all the people who lived in those states lying when they said that they believed that the laws of their states were good and should be followed?
The companies that make cigarettes used to argue that smoking is good for your health. Were the people who knew about the research showing that smoking causes cancer lying by failing to speak out?
Lance Armstrong was once viewed as a hero for winning the races he won as a biker. Most of the journalists who covered him were aware of charges that he used performance-enhancing drugs. Were they liars for not including mentions of that fact in their articles even though they knew that Armstrong would use his considerable wealth to sue them if they did?
People are people, Sammy.
I wish that Bogle would come 100 percent clean today. I wish that Wade Pfau would work with me to get the research that we produced together on the front page of the New York Times. I wish that Shiller would say every time that he is asked about timing that his research shows that short-term timing never works and that long-term timing always works and is always 100 percent required.
But I also acknowledge the other side of the story. Each of those three people knows from personal experience what happens to people who tell the full truth re these matters. Each of them wants to be effective. And so each of them tells himself that it is better if he tells half of the truth and leaves half for his listeners to figure out for themselves. I don’t agree with the choice they have made. I believe that we all need the help that they could provide by telling the full truth. But I also have to acknowledge that each of those three (and all the others playing the half-truth game) have helped us all in a huge way by telling those half-truths in a way insuring that at least half the truth can be heard. Each of those three knows that no truth at all would be heard from them if their careers were destroyed because they told the full truth.
We’re in a tight spot, Sammy. We’re also in a wonderful spot. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance. We will all live better lives after we all give ourselves permission to tell the full truth re these matters. But we are not there today. It makes lots of people feel bad to hear the full truth. Lots of people have their lives riding on Buy-and-Hold and cannot bear to hear that there is now 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that it can never work in the long term.
If we were starting from scratch today, Bogle and Pfau and Shiller would all be speaking in a perfectly clear way. But we’re not. Those 34 years of cover-up happened. We cannot go back in a time machine and play it differently on the second try. We are going to have to find a way as a nation to come to terms with the cover-up. There is no other possibility open to us.
I am certain that the answer is not to say that Bogle and Shiller and Pfau are telling the full truth. Doing that just encourages continuation of the cover-up. I am also certain that the answer is not to baldly call Bogle and Shiller and Pfau “liars,” as you suggest. That claim might be accurate in some hyper-technical sense but it is not true at all in the real world of flesh and blood and sin and redemption. These three men are great men. They have helped us all in huge ways. They are entitled to some respect and affection as a result. If we must say that they are not speaking in an entirely accurate way, then fine, we need to say that. But we need to BALANCE those harsh words with some kind and ALSO ACCURATE words that help people understand the CIRCUMSTANCES in which these half-truths were put forward.
That’s my sincere take. I rank Shiller as the most important investing analyst of all time. I rank Bogle second. I rank Pfau in the top ten. These are great men. Yes, they are great men telling haf-truths about stock investing today. We all need to work together to change that. We all need to do so in a CHARITABLE way if we are to avoid causing even more problems rather than solving the ones that face us today.
There is one other person who has written about these matters who has a history of engaging in half truths. I knew about the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies in May 1999, when I put my first post to the Motley Fool’s Retire Early board. It wasn’t until the morning of May 13, 2002, that I put forward my famous post showing that those studies are in error because they do not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. I was for those three years, in your terminology, a “liar.”
So be it. It’s a correct claim, considered without context. What I said about investing during those three years certainly was not entirely true, I certainly did not say all that I knew.
I was afraid, Sammy. It scares people when they learn that the numbers that they have used to plan their retirements are wildly off the mark. It scares them a lot. A common reaction is to strike out at the people reporting this news to them. So I was afraid. Now look at what has happened to me over the past 13 years. Was I not right to be afraid? Do my deceitful actions not become at least somewhat understandable when considered in the light of what came after?
Bogle is afraid.
Shiller is afraid.
Pfau is afraid.
And it’s killing us all that these three (and many, many others) are not helping us all out by telling us the full and complete truth of what they believe about how stock investing works in the real world. We need them. And they need us. So we are going to have to figure out a way to acknowledge that, yes, they have not told the full truth for these 34 years, but that, yes, they are also great men who have helped us all out in very important ways.
They are humans, Sammy. Humans sometimes lie under pressure. It has been known to happen. Humans are also capable of doing all kinds of wonderful things if you give them half a chance. These three men have done all kinds of wonderful things for millions of people. Let’s all be sure to tell that part of the story too when we point out where they have failed themselves and others in their guarded statements about what we learned as a result of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research of 1981.
Maybe Bogle and Shiller and Pfau really are liars. But they are liars who have done more good for this world than 99 percent of their fellow humans ever manage to do. If I am going to be pinned to the wall and forced to call these great men liars,” I am going to add some words about how they are a lot more than just common, ordinary liars. They are liars and they are great men. That’s the full truth re that one, in my assessment.
Humans are flawed creatures. Great mystery of the last 34 years of investing history solved in four words! Who’d a thunk it?
I hope that you have never been tempted to tell a lie, Sammy. I hope that you are as perfect as you make yourself out to be in the way you frame your questions.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob

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

Any wife would be saddened by a husband who is capable of working but hasn’t “made a dime in 13 years”. Since you acknowledge that fact, to what extent (if any) does it bother you?

It bothers me.

But it doesn’t bother me enough to persuade me to betray my fellow community members and to betray my profession and to betray my country and, yes, to betray my family.

Timothy is 15 and Robert is 13. They are going to be making their own way in this world in not too long a time, Anonymous. Are they going to be making their way in a country trying to survive the Second Great Depression? Will that Second Great Depression bring us to the Third World War in the way that the First Great Depression brought us to the Second World War? Or will they be making their way in a country enjoying the greatest period of economic growth in its history, a country in which the risk of stock investing has been reduced by 70 percent and in which millions have learned what they need to know to retire many years earlier than what they thought was possible in the Buy-and-Hold Era?

We all have jobs to do in this world. Opening the internet up to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important topics is mine. It’s a hard job. It’s not a job that I sought for myself; it is one that was handed to me. I don’t see anyone else stepping forward to take on this important work. So I soldier on.

When I am awarded the $500 million settlement payment, that will be my wife’s money too. She will have earned it with her patience as I earned it with my determination. No one gets paid $500 million for nothing. My wife will have earned every dime of that money. She will be able to live the rest of her life proud of the sacrifices she made so that our country could recover from the economic crisis caused by the Buy-and-Holders (inadvertently — but still!).

She has hung in there in the face of all that you Goons have dished out to us. I am proud of her. She shouldn’t have to exercise such patience. But we don’t all get everything that we deserve in this life. We all have times when we have to bear up in the face of injustices. She’s done a good job of that. To her great credit.

I hope that helps you understand the thinking going on in the Bennett household a bit better, Anonymous. We certainly don’t approve of any of your Goon garbage. But we try not to let it influence our behavior too much. We try to keep our eyes on the prize — the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing that will liberate millions of middle-class workers from the ignorance that made stocks a risky investment class for many years prior to the publication of Robert Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) 1981 research.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob