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

Rob,

Why do you continue to do what you do? Clearly, you are not making any money running this board and it doesn’t seem to have resulting in a consulting business or other kind of revenue generating endeavor. You also don’t seem to have a following. So after spending all these years going down the same path, the question remains why you keep doing what you are doing?

I’m not making any money, Reality. You got that one right. I haven’t made a dime in 13 years. That makes me very, very, very sad. It makes my wife even sadder!

I don’t think you are right when you say that I don’t have a following. There’s one sense in which you are right. No one posts comments here but you Goons. That reality leaves the impression that I do not have a following. But I have had thousands of people express great enthusiasm re my stuff. I have had some of the biggest names in the field tell me that they rank my site as the #1 investing site on the internet. That translates into MILLIONS of followers once the Ban on Honest Posting is brought to a full and complete stop. That translates into wealth at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett levels. I could get by on those sorts of amounts, you know?

The short answer to your question is that I have never been offered any options for handling things in any other way. Back in the 1960s, the Buy-and-Holders started us all off on a grand quest to learn in a scientific way how stock investing works. They generated dozens of genuine and powerful insights. They made a mistake re valuations. Shiller corrected the mistake in 1981. The Buy-and-Holders elected to cover up the mistake rather than to acknowledge it. We are now in the economic crisis that inevitably was going to follow from that terrible choice. The Buy-and-Holders would be thrilled to go back in time to gain an opportunity for a do-over. But no time machines are available to them. So they go with this abusive stuff instead to put off for a day or a week or a month or a year the time when they will finally have to come clean and acknowledge that valuations really do affect long-term returns after all.

I love my country, Reality. That’s a four-word explanation of why I do what I do. I love my country.

Our country is in a jam. We shouldn’t be. We are the luckiest generation of investors who ever walked Planet Earth. Combine Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) finding with the many good findings of the Buy-and-Holders and it becomes possible to reduce stock investing risk by 70 percent. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows that. So we are in an amazingly positive situation.

But the Wall Street Con Men have power and money and influence and a ruthless determination to block millions of middle-class people from learning how stock investing works in the real world. So tens of thousands of entrepreneurs have seen their businesses fail. And millions of workers have lost their jobs. And millions more are on their way to suffering failed retirements.

I don’t think we will be able to make it if we don’t open the internet to honest posting following the next price crash. It’s not just that we are going to see a deepening of the economic crisis, possibly putting us into the Second Great Depression. Even the continued viability of our political system is in jeopardy. Millions of middle-class people are not going to get the joke when their retirement plans fail. They are going to be angry. They are going to be asking lots of hard questions. I want to be available to soften their anger to the extent that that will be possible. I need to have credibility in their eyes to be able to do that. I won’t have credibility if I tell lies just to make a buck today. So I continue to post honestly.

We have a great country, Reality. I believe that we will get through this. We have gone through dark times before and survived them. The Buy-and-Holders are not bad people. Jack Bogle is a hero of mine. None of the material at this site would exist were it not for the things I have learned from reading Bogle’s books and speeches. I think it is going to melt Jack’s heart when he sees the human misery he caused with his support for the Campaign of Terror led by you Goons. I think Jack is going to flip and demand an end to the Ban on Honest Posting. I expect to be working closely with Jack to turn things around. I think the years following the next crash are going to be exciting and positive times. I believe that even some of you Goons will be getting involved in constructive projects in those days. We’ll see.

I love my country and I want to help. I want to help the millions of middle-class investors. I want to help all the investment advisors who don’t like the idea of giving up their personal integrity to be able to make a buck in this field. I want to help all my Buy-and-Hold friends who started out doing something very, very good and important and now find themselves on a very dark path indeed. I get a kick out of helping people. I look forward to taking all the bad stuff we have seen over the first 13 years of our Debate About Having a Debate and turning it into gold.

I talked to lots of people at the Financial Bloggers Conference (FinCo15) that I returned from the other day. There were a few who debated me. That’s of course fine. There are lots of good and smart people who still believe in Buy-and-Hold and I think we all learn from them making their case to the best of their ability. There were a greater number whom I would describe as confused, who see that there are holes in the Buy-and-Hold dogmas but who cannot begin to perceive how fatal a mistake the Buy-and-Holders made when they elected to cover up the last 34 years of peer-reviwed research in this field. And there were a good number of people whom I spoke to who agreed with me on most points but who hold back from saying so in clear and firm and simple language because they know how that would upset lots of people and do damage to their careers.

We are on the one-yard line, Realty. It’s been 34 years since Buy-and-Hold was discredited by the peer-reviewed research. When you see people using death threats to intimidate those trying to tell people about the peer-reviewed research, you know that the “strategy” under discussion is in its last days. Buy-and-Hod died intellectually 34 years ago. It is close to dying in practical terms. It is one stock crash away from its demise. Or at least so Rob Bennett believes.

I love my country. I enjoy putting the talents that God gave me to productive use. I get a kick out of helping people. I am honored and humbled to be the lead player in the most important political/economic story of my lifetime; what journalist would turn down that opportunity? I care about every soul that I have connected with over the past 13 years, including you Goons.

Does that tell you what you need to know?

I call the situation that I am in “the Perfect Trap.” I can’t make a penny because if the model for understanding how stock investing works that I have developed becomes better known, lots of powerful people will have to say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong” and they really, really, really don’t want to do that. Yet I cannot let go because the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance we have ever achieved in the history of personal finance by a factor or 50 or more. Yowsa!

Could I be wrong?

Anybody can be wrong about anything. I check myself every day trying to find any sign that I am wrong. I have never found anything of any consequence. So I have to continue on the path that I am on today. In the event that I am wrong, I will just have to live with it. These things happen in this world. I cannot deny the mountain of evidence that says that I am right. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.

If I am not wrong, our country is close to entering the greatest period of economic growth in our history. We will in not too much more time be seeing 34 years of powerful insights becoming opened up to us in one day. Imagine seeing all the advances that we have seen in the computer electronics field arrive on our doorsteps in a single day. That’s what we are going to see in the investing field except to a far bigger extent than what that suggests because it is far more important that we get investing right than that we be able to communicate through computers.

We are in the process of changing the world in a very big way and in a very positive way, Reality. I’m not trying to keep any of this to myself. I am open to sharing with everyone. This is good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff piled on top of good stuff. No downside whatsoever. You don’t see projects with that sort of upside too often. I have never seen anything like this anytime, anywhere.

That’s the story. I love the good that thousands of us have done with a burning love. I don’t love the Goon stuff even a little bit. But I do acknowledge that even you Goons have made many positive contributions mixed in with all the smelly garbage that you specialize in. This story is so positive that even those doomed and determined to destroy themselves and their country end up making positive contributions! Wow!

Love is the answer, Reality. It really is. I 100 percent believe that you are going to see that following the next price crash. I’m rooting for you!

Rob

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

The person named Laugh is correct.

I half agree with both you and with Laugh, Reality.

I posted Laugh’s comment as a blog entry because I think he is making an important point. Shiller’s book was a best-seller. It is available in most public libraries. He was awarded a Nobel prize for his “revolutionary” (his word) research. Shiller’s findings have been covered-up in an important sense — there is not one site on the internet other than this one that explores the implications of those findings in depth. So the cover-up is real. Yet it is a very strange sort of cover-up in which the findings win a Nobel prize and in which a book reporting on the findings is a best-seller and is added to the collections of most public libraries.

We agree on the basic facts. The general public will have to decide for itself whether those facts constitute a “cover-up” or not. I say that it is a cover-up but a highly unusual one. I don’t think the Buy-and-Holders had bad intent when they started out. And I believe that they follow Buy-and-Hold strategies themselves to this day. It is not their intent to hurt people. They think they are giving good advice. I can sign onto any statement saying that.

But death threats? Demands for unjustified board bannings? Tens of thousands of acts of defamation? Threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs?

Huh?

That stuff sure sounds like the sort of stuff you see only in a massive cover-up, Reality. I cannot say different re this aspect of things.

What I believe is that there was good intent starting out. Then Shiller published research throwing doubt on the entire Buy-and-Hold project. The Buy-and-Holders suffered cognitive dissonance. They could not accept that the model that they had developed was wrong. So they ignored Shiller. They went on with their business thinking that they had done nothing wrong. And they hadn’t done any serious wrong at that point. They were wrong about how stock investing works, in my assessment. But they were sincere. And they had put forward many genuine insights. So it was a mix. Which is what you would expect in the early days of a project to take the speculation out of investing analysis and make it more of a science.

But as time passed the Buy-and-Holders became more and more embarrassed about how they had not tried to respond to Shiller’s findings. In science, we discover mistakes as new research is published and we move forward. That hasn’t happened in the investing field and it is because of the efforts of the Buy-and-Holders that it hasn’t happened. So over time it became a thing not where they were just ignoring Shiller themselves but where they were also engaging in intimidation tactics to block people from explaining to others how they had ignored him and how they had thereby caused an economic crisis.

That’s where the financial fraud comes in, in my assessment.

I think it is fraud if you run a blog and you advocate Buy-and-Hold and a fellow comes on and points out that there is 34 years of peer-reviewed research showing that Buy-and-Hold is dangerous and your readers tell you that the fellow is upsetting them and you ban him because you want to make a buck and you can’t do it so long as this guy keeps posting stuff in accord with the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. I say that that is fraud. I say that you can go to prison for that.

You say otherwise. And Laugh says otherwise.

Okay.

What do you want me to do about it?

I’m not going to join in on this massive act of fraud. I have not done that in 13 years. And I am not going to do it in 13 billion years. For obvious reasons.

I suppose that we will find out what the rest of the community of investors believes following the next crash. At that point people will have no emotional reason to continue to believe in Buy-and-Hold. They will be angry at the “experts” who caused them to lose their retirement money. They will be looking for people to hang from a tree. The Buy-and-Holders will be the obvious candidates. Especially the ones who engaged in insanely abusive intimidation tactics.

Do you know what I will be doing then? I will be arguing for mercy. I will be saying that we need to pull our country together and that going after the Buy-and-Holders and even you Goons will to a large extent be counter-productive. So I will be on your side. I am on your side now. But it will take more friendship for me to be on your side then, when I will have lots of people calling for your hanging. But, if I am true to myself, I will remain on your side even then. It’s the right way t go. I am sure.

That doesn’t mean that I will say that there should be no prison sentences. I think there should be some. And we will not be able to calm down the millions who will have seen their retirement plans collapse without mixing in a little justice with the all-important mercy. We sent Bernie Madoff to prison. You Goons have caused 10,000 times the human misery that Bernie Madoff caused. I am not able to see how we could fail to send at least a small number of people to prison following the next crash.

Maybe it won’t happen. I am not God. I could be wrong. I certainly am not going to demand prison sentences if most others don’t see a need for them. I am going to post honestly. I am going to tell the story of why millions of middle-class people will have lost their retirement money. If people demand prison sentences, I will ask for a show of mercy given the unusual circumstances re the lengths of those prison sentences. If most people do not demand prison sentences of any length, I will go about my business of helping people to understand how stock investing works in the real world, according to the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. It’s not going to bother me one tiny bit if you don’t get sent to prison, Reality. I have much, much bigger fish to fry.

We’ll see what happens, okay?

I believe that deep in your heart you want to know how stock investing works in the real world, just like everybody else. So I believe that deep in your heart you are on the same side that I am on. That’s why I chalk your behavior up to emotional pain and am able to bring myself to say that your prison sentence should be shorter than it would be in other circumstances. I believe that you will flip following the next crash. Maybe you will call for a prison sentence for your old self at that time! That’s a strange thing to say. But it’s no stranger than a lot of other stuff we have seen during the first 13 years of our Debate About Having a Debate.

I am going to continue to post honestly. That’s in stone. That can never change.

I love my Buy-and-Hold friends and am going to show as much charity to them as it is possible for me to show them without crossing the line and becoming guilty of financial fraud myself. That’s also in stone. That also can never change, no matter what you Goons say or do.

We are all going to just have to evidence a little patience and wait to see how it plays out. We don’t have any other options available to us. It’s not just that I will not post dishonestly re safe withdrawal rates. It’s that I CANNOT post dishonestly re safe withdrawal rates. It’s not in me. If something is not in a person, that something is not in that person. That’s the way it is. I mean, come on.

I will be as honest as I can possibly be without crossing the line and becoming uncharitable while also being as charitable as I can possibly be without crossing the line and becoming dishonest. And we will all see how that strategy plays out following the next price crash.

I believe that it is going to play out very, very well indeed.

Because I love my country. I believe in it. I think we have the capacity to work through these sorts of things in time.

But we’ll see.

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

Take good care, man.

Rob

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

Hey Rob. When can we expect to hear all the stories of your great successes at FinCon?

I’m at the conference now, Question. I brought my computer this year.

I have indeed had some great successes. I have had some great frustrations too. I always do. That’s been the story for 13 years now — great successes combined with great frustrations.

I organized a community event that was a lunch for people who wanted to share thoughts on why Buy-and-Hold doesn’t work. We had six people (including me). I would like to have had a lot more. But six worked well in that everyone had a good chance to talk about his or her own views and also ask lots of questions of the others attending. So I would call that a success. I intend to put together the same community event again next year. In the event that we see a price crash by then, my bet is that we will have many more people attending next year.

I sat one morning by accident (I was just looking for an empty chair where I could sit and eat my breakfast) with a group of four women who called themselves “preppers.” I had never heard the term before. These are people who are planning in one way or another for a collapse of our economy or our political system or whatever. I tend to think of such people as “doom and gloomers” and I tend not to associate with them much.

I agree with the idea that the “establishment” has failed us in important ways in recent years. But I am also a big believer in the idea that a functional society NEEDS an establishment that reins in the spreading of crazy ideas. Without any establishment, we would have chaos. I am by nature very much an establishment guy (I cannot stand Donald Trump, for example — my favorite in the Republican race is Rubio). Shiller’s views are certainly unconventional. But they SHOULDN’T be, in my assessment. Shiller is as establishment as it gets. He teaches at Yale. He won a Nobel prize. His ideas are supported by 34 years of peer-reviewed research. Fama is establishment too. It is my belief that Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing are BOTH establishment approaches and that open and honest posting should be permitted on both of them at every board and blog on the internet.

These women impressed me. They were not even a tiny bit strange. They were all intelligent and balanced in their views. They argued that I should get involved in prepper communities because lots of average people want to know more about how the stock market works and people in these communities are more open to non-conventional viewpoints. I am going to give serious thought to their suggestion. I do think there is potential in this direction. Ultimately, I want VII to be a mainstream thing. But it may make sense to work in these sorts of communities until we see the crash and the non-mainstream ideas of today are adopted by the mainstream groups.

I had conversations with lots of financial planners. Phil has been inviting small-shop financial planners who use social media to come to the conference. There were a lot of people here from the Gen X/Gen Y financial planning group. These people were without exception entirely open to hearing my message. That’s not to say that they agree with it. There were four planners I met who I would say either entirely agreed or largely agreed. But all were polite and at least a small bit interested in hearing the story. I had a discussion at dinner last night with a planner that went on for over an hour. He did not adopt my views and I did not adopt his. But we got along great.

The key to persuading people is repetition. It is virtually impossible to convert someone in the space of a single conversation. That’s actually a good aspect of human nature, in my view. If people changed their minds on important issues as the result of a single conversation, life would be harder because people would be too fickle. So it is good that it takes repetition to persuade people. We just don’t have that re VII today. If the fellow who I talked to last night saw someone on television speaking about VII after he spoke with me, things would click that didn’t click just from his exposure to me. That’s what needs to change. I believe it will change following the crash. But we will have to wait and see.

I had dinner the first night with a fellow who is super smart and super kind. We talked about all sorts of things, investing and lots of personal stuff too. He had a great deal of sympathy for my investing views but he did not have the sense of alarm that I have re the Social Taboo that has blocked the spread of Shiller’s ideas for 34 years now. He was very interested in the literature re how people fool themselves about all sorts of things an about how people gradually pick up on new ideas. He pointed me to some resources that I did not know about. He suggested that I focus on using humor as a teaching tool. I think that’s a great suggestion and i intend to ponder how I could do more along those lines.

The conference is good because you meet people in person. There are all sorts of things that you pick up on in person that you do not pick up on in e-mail exchanges. So I continue to find value in it. People have always been interested in the ideas. That has been so going back to May 13, 2002. But the change from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is so big (even though it is only the treatment of valuations that changes) that people experience lots of cognitive dissonance trying to integrate all these new ideas. That’s just the way it is. That’s the challenge.

I continue to believe that we are getting there, inch by inch. But I certainly acknowledge that I am biased and probably couldn’t bear to think otherwise. The humor guy made that point to me. We were talking about Bogle. I told him how much I love Bogle and how I believe that all that adding the valuations factor to the mix does is make all of Bogle’s many important contributions that much more important. He said that Bogle just has too much invested in Buy-and-Hold. I objected to that a little bit and he said that I would probably feel the same way if Valuation-Informed Indexing was discredited. I told him that I hoped that that was not true but acknowledged that it might be all the same. We all have a hard time seeing our own weaknesses.

I shared with him a personal story that makes the point. My wife has on occasion expressed the view that I am too hard on you Goons. I don’t agree. I agree that I am hard but I believe that I am as kind as I am able to be without crossing the line and becoming dishonest. She once used the term “self-righteous” to describe me and said that she feels that I am sometimes self-righteous in my speaking to her when we are having disagreements. My initial reaction to this was that it was pure craziness. I think of myself as the least self-rightous person I know.

I was thinking about this a week or two ago when something hit me. Many years ago I had a major blow-up with my older brother (an INTJ, engineer type!) that I have ever since regretted. I was EXTREMELY self-rightous in that incident. So the thought hit me to do a search on Google for “INFJ (my personality type under the Myers-Briggs system) and self-rightous.” Sure enough, there were several long threads at various sites about “the dark side of the INFJ personality type” that focused on how the compassionate, sensitive “F” of the INFJ can turn cold and ugly in certain circumstances. So I had a conversation with my wife before I left for the conference apologizing for the times when I have become self-rigtheous with her (I am not yet at a point where I can identify those times — self-examination of one’s negatives is a hard business).

I am going to put it on my list to do something similar re you Goons. As of today, I honestly do not feel that I have ever been unfairly harsh in my dealings with you. But I also think that it is possible that there are things that I just cannot see because of my human limitations. I may look through some earlier discussions and see if I can identify places where I have been unfair or unkind. If I can, I hope that I will have the courage to own up to them publicly. This 13-year saga is all about incorporating an understanding of human emotion into investing analysis (since investing is done by humans). This is the sort of thing that I need to do to come to a fuller understanding of how investing works. I need to examine other people’s emotions. I also need to examine my own.

The one other thing that came up is that a guy I met at breakfast this morning said that he did an Ignite talk in his own town. I loved the two Ignite talks that I did in earlier years. So I am going to put it on my list to see if there is a group that puts on Ignite talks either in Leesburg or in D.C. and try to get signed up to do one in the not-too-distant future. That would be a scary but exciting thing to do.

I hope that helps a bit, Question. Hang in there, man.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I posted in the discussion thread for a recent entry at my weekly column at the Value Walk site:

Rob,

My comments are based on the truth and supported by facts. All one needs to do is read your posts and see that the vast majority of your posts include complaints about what you think Shiller, Bogle, Pfau and others. You want to talk about taking people Down, Down, Down? Just read your own posts. Tell us again about people going to prison, or made up death threats or defamation that are frequent topics that you bring up on your board. Who is bringing us Down, Down, Down?

Secondly, you like to take a creative license to what people say. Notice how you make it seem that Aaron believes your negative views on buy and hold (which you have yet to fully define). I see nothing in his posts that mentions buy and hold (and what that really means).

Third, you position yourself as an expert, yet you want to hide from the fact that your retirement plan failed and that you also don’t really follow your own investment strategy. that all cuts towards credibility and I think gives an insight to readers as to why you say what you do. You are looking for a scapegoat for your own failures.

It’s not my intent to bring anybody down, Sammy.

The historical reality is that we did not know all we need to know about how stock investing works until 1981, when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research. The Buy-and-Holders made many wonderful contributions. I say that all the time. But they dropped the ball on one key issue — the need for investors always, always, always to be 100 percent sure to practice price discipline when setting their stock allocations (that is, to always, always, always practice long-term timing, the one form of market timing that has been working for 145 years now, as far back as we have records).

Were the Buy-and-Holders dumb or bad to make that mistake?

They were not.

Bogle didn’t found Vanguard until the mid-1970s. So index funds were not available at the time when Fama did the research on which the entire Buy-and-Hold Model is based. Long-term timing only works with index funds. So Fama had no way of knowing that it was important to check whether long-term timing works. Naturally, he didn’t attempt to perform any check. He obviously couldn’t get this one right without even doing a check!

Shiller was the first researcher to check whether long-term timing always works and is always required. He found that it is. Dozens of researchers have checked this finding in the 34 years since. Every single one has confirmed that Shiller was right. We are the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth. We are the first to know (at least intellectually) that it is possible to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent just be being open to the idea of practicing long-term timing (I am the co-author of peer-reviewed research showing that this is so).

So everything is great, right?

Not quite.

Between 1965, when Fama did his research, and 1981, when Shiller did his, tens of thousands of businesses were formed promoting the Buy-and-Hold strategy. It was promoted as “research-based.” It is not that. Shiller’s research shows that Buy-and-Hold never works in the long run. But the people who founded those businesses truly believed that Buy-and-Hold was research-based at the time they founded them. And, when Shiller showed that Buy-and-Hold can never work, they were none too excited about the idea of acknowledging their mistake.

So as a society we developed a Social Taboo against speaking frankly about the implications of Shiller’s amazing findings. 34 years have now passed. It is now harder than ever for the Buy-and-Holders to come clean. They have been covering up Shiller’s findings for 34 years now. What to do?

These people WANT to come clean, Sammy. I know. I have spoken to many of them and they have told me so. Others try to sneak lots of valuation-based stuff into their presentations even though it makes zero sense to consider valuations if the market is truly efficient, as Fama believed. So we are all on the same side. We all know that we need to make every investor on the planet aware of what Shiller showed and of what his research signifies.

But how do we get from this horrible place where we are today (where the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies has caused an economic crisis) to the wonderful place where we all want to be tomorrow (where we reduce risk by 70 percent and ALSO earn sufficiently higher returns to be able to retire five or ten years sooner than we ever imagined possible during the Buy-and-Hold Era)?

We get there by talking frankly about this stuff. That’s my take. That’s certainly how it is done in every other field of human endeavor when huge advances are produced.

The reason why we have not made more progress in the past 34 years is not that this stuff is not so important. It is that it IS so terribly, terribly important. The Buy-and-Holders cannot bear to acknowledge their mistakes because it has caused so much human misery and because the cover-up has continued for so many years, something that should never happen in a free society.

You are hurting. It comes through in ever comment you advance here. You really do follow Buy-and-Hold strategies yourself and you really do hope that they will work out. But you have doubts. And you cannot bear to have those doubts encouraged by someone who writes a weekly column on Valuation-Informed Indexing. So you come here and engage in all sorts of disruption.

That’s not the answer.

I am sure.

We have had thousands of people express a desire that every board and blog on the internet be opened to honest posting on these matters. That’s the answer. Once people are able to hear all the arguments pro and con, they will make their decisions. But we have to have honest posting. That means that the intimidation tactics need to go. The Buy-and-Holders need to work to rein in their emotional impulses.

We all have a role to play in seeing that that happens. We will benefit as a society when Shiller’s ideas are discussed more openly and more freely. And so we all need to direct our energies to seeing that we complete this transition from a model for understanding how stock investing works that at one time seemed plausible to lots of smart and good people to a model that is truly supported by the peer-reviewed academic research in this field.

I love the Buy-and-Holders. I was once a Buy-and-Holder myself. I want to work with the Buy-and-Holders to develop their ideas that make it possible that they will work in the real world. That’s why I call them out on their mistakes. The Buy-and-Holders are my friends. If I had made such a mistake, I would want my friends to call me out on it. So that’s how I play it.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, my long-time Buy-and-Hold friend.

Rob

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

Wade told you to move on three years ago. You simply can’t. Ever. That’s messed up.

Why the heck would I ever want to move on, Stag? Are you joking?

I write about personal finance. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance ever achieved in the history of personal finance. It is bigger than all earlier advances all added together. And I am going to consider moving on before the dream is realized? Huh? Wha?

ALL of the research supports this. It is a 100 percent vs. 0 percent proposition. Robert Shiller has been awarded a freakin’ Nobel Prize for his work. And yet thousands of investing analysts and academic researchers remain to this day too afraid of what the Buy-and-Holders will do to them to be willing to direct their energies to exploring the implications of the peer-reviewed research that Shiller published 34 YEARS AGO. All of those people are free to do honest and good work on the day you Goons go to prison. And I am supposed to consider moving on? Really? That’s a question you feel a need to ask?

$500 million.

That’s the size of the settlement check that I get on the day this matter is resolved. And you are thinking that I might consider moving on before cashing that check? Are you freakin’ nuts? If the tables were turned, would you be willing to walk away from a check for $500 million, Stag? No, I didn’t think so.

When I get that check, I am going to use some of the money to reform the internet. I think it would be fair to say that not one of us wants to see something like this happen ever, ever, ever, ever again. When we tell this story to the American people, we are going to have 100 percent support for making reforms in how the internet is run to make it the most powerful communications medium in history. I’m a journalist. But I care so little about achieving those reforms that I am going to give consideration to moving on at some point! Um — That makes sense, Stag! I believe you! Truly outstanding!!!!

What are you putting in your tea, Stag?

No more economic crises. That’s our reward for opening the internet up to honest posting on the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. Am I supposed to not care, in your assessment?

A 70 percent reduction in stock investing risk. Another reward available to us all in 24 hours if we use those 24 hours to insure enforcement of posting rules ALREADY IN EFFECT AT EVERY BOARD AND BLOG ON THE INTERNET. It makes sense to walk away from that for no reason whatsoever. No, really. I am serious! It makes sense somehow!

All middle-class Americans get to retire five to ten years earlier than they ever imagined possible back in the unfortunate days when we were still missing the final piece of the investing puzzle. If I were to struggle 50 years and thereby become able to help everyone on the planet retire five to ten MONTHS earlier, I would be on the cover of Time magazine as “Man of the Year.” The only “problem” I have is that I showed them how to do it five to ten YEARS earlier and it makes the Buy-and-Holders feel bad that this is so wonderful that it makes them look bad for not coming up with it themselves. So I should consider moving on. Why not? Nothing important going on here, right?

My Buy-and-Hold friends!

I love Jack Bogle. He’s taught me more about this subject than anyone else alive with the exception of Robert Shiller. I have a chance to pay him back by taking all the good work he has done and making it workable in the real world and I am going to piss that away because — because why, Stag? Why again is it that I should want to piss this all away? I keep forgetting.

All of the researchers who want to do good and honest work. All of the economists who want to do good and honest work. All of the bloggers who want to do good and honest work. All of the journalists who want to do good and honest work. All of the policymakers who want to do good and honest work. I should consider betraying all those people. Why? John Greaney got an important number wrong in a retirement study posted at his web site and he really, really, really doesn’t want to acknowledge the error. It follows that I should betray those people. Goons come first!

I don’t think so, Stag.

Some of the questions we face in life are kinda hard. Some of them are easy. I think it would be fair to say that the question of whether I should move on re this one is one of the easiest questions that any human who has ever walked the Valley of Tears has ever had to face.

My take.

My best wishes.

Rob

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

Everyone but you must be suffering from cognitive dissonance.

No that’s not right.

We are ALL suffering from it. But all to different degrees. Lots of people know that Buy-and-Hold is garbage. Many more people believe in it enough to follow it themselves but have doubts that they are trying to silence.

Even I am suffering from cognitive dissonance to some degree. I still come up with new insights all the time. Why? We are 13 years in. Shouldn’t all the implications of Shiller’s research have hit me by now? They haven’t. That’s because I do not have thousands of people writing daily about Valuation-Informed Indexing and thereby pushing me forward at a quicker pace. I am human like all the others. And I have my Goon side like all the others. I see lots of stuff that most others do not see today. But I do not see it all. And that will come only when lots of others see more than they see today.

We all learn from each other. Each time one of us works up the courage to post honestly, it helps all the rest of us. It’s not an accident that we have had big names declare this site the best investing site on the internet. When I wrote to all the academic researchers in this field, HUNDREDS of them expressed a desire to be be free to do honest work. Those people have doubts about Buy-and-Hold, Anonymous. There’s no question about it. And I have had a number of investing advisors call me and ask me to spend some time going over this stuff with them. Those people have doubts. People have had grave doubts for years. They are just afraid to express them because they know the Buy-and-Holders will try to destroy their careers if they dare to “cross” them by doing honest work.

The Ashe study from the 1950s showed the power of peer pressure. People were asked to identify which of three lines on a card matched the length of a line on another card. The test was an easy one. 95 percent of the people tested got it right. That is — until peer pressure was introduced. When four fake study participants gave the wrong answer, 65 percent of the real study participants got the answer wrong too.

Now –

What do you think happened when one of the four fake study participants gave the right answer?

That changed everything.

When the real participants were able to hear one other person giving a sensible answer, the vast majority gave the right answer themselves.

That’s what we will see following the next crash. LOTS of people want to post honestly. We have seen that going back to the first day. The next crash is likely to put us in the Second Great Depression. That will scare people. When people get scared, a certain number will work up the courage to post honestly. And then the entire Wall of Deception will come tumbling down.

There are billions to be made giving research-backed investing advice. We are in the investing field today where we were in the computer electronics field at the time when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made their fortunes. Lots of people are waiting for a signal that it is safe to write about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. Once a few stick their necks out, you will see THOUSANDS of experts in this field posting honestly in no time.

That’s what that Wall Street Journal article saying that the Buy-and-Holders tell “only half the story” was all about. Arends was floating a test balloon. He wants to see that it is safe to tell the truth. Then he will be running a ten-part series telling hundreds of truths based on the peer-reviewed research of the past 34 years.

Without the massive act of financial fraud, Buy-and-Hold would have died over the course of five or ten years. The 34-year cover-up has delayed the fall of Buy-and-Hold. But it has set things up so that it will only take six months to bring down Buy-and-Hold rather than five or ten years. Support for BH is a mile wide and an inch deep. People are just waiting for a small number of people to take on you Goons and then it is over fast.

You are running out of time, Anonymous. The Buy-and-Hold Era is on its way to the graveyard of U.S. history.

I am sure.

Take care, man.

Rob

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

If you are waiting for a 65% crash, followed by your $500 million windfall and goons going to prison, then you will probably need to come visit me at the local cemetery as I will be long gone by that time. I am not planning on passing away anytime soon, but old age will eventually catch up to me in another 50 years or so.

Fair enough?

I guess.

I don’t like this way of playing it.

But I think it would be fair to say that I don’t seem to have a whole big bunch of other options available to me.

When two sides in a dispute are both 100 percent inflexible re the key point of contention, the only thing to do is to take a step back and see if time causes circumstances to change in some way.

It’s nothing personal, Anonymous. There are things that I can do and there are things that I cannot do. You can’t teach a dog to meow and you can’t teach a cat to bark and you can’t teach Rob Bennett to say on the internet that John Greaney’s retirement study contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins.

I wish you all good things. Can you say the same back? You don’t have to. It would be nice if you did.

Either way, that’s my feeling towards you and the other Goons and the Wall Street Con Men too. I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person. I believe that we all will be working together following the crash.

I don’t like the idea of waiting. But I don’t see any other options.

Please feel 100 percent welcomed to continue posting questions here as they occur to you. Some of your questions have had great value, in my assessment.

Maybe you are right, you know? I have been wrong about important things before. It could be that it is happening again. I don’t think that’s the case. But I don’t believe that any of us fallible humans can ever be 100 percent certain.

And please take good care.

Rob

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

And, how’s that workin’ out for ya so far, slick? LOL

It’s working out pretty darn well, since you asked.

I don’t have a penny in my hands today. But look at what I do have — the most valuable web site on the internet.

There are going to be millions of people looking for someone to sue to recover their retirement money following the next price crash. I have 13 years of Post Archives showing who was responsible for the massive 13-year cover-up. There are hundreds of billions of dollars to be made suing all the individuals and corporations who in some way, shape or form participated in this massive act of financial fraud.

Do you think lawyers are going to be too shy to sue these people after the crash? I sure don’t.

Do you think the people who have lost large percentages of their life savings are going to be too shy to sue these people following the crash? I sure don’t.

There will be congressional hearings looking into how this all happened. What web site do you think will be getting linked to daily from the THOUSANDS of web sites covering those hearings?

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 don’t support the massive act of financial fraud. I have done everything in my power to bring it to a quick end. But the full reality here is that I would not be collecting a $500 million paycheck had there not been a massive cover-up. Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research in 1981. Had there been no cover-up, this site would have no special value, the stuff provided here would be provided at hundreds of other places.

Others saw the Campaign of Terror and ran in fear because of the money and power possessed by the Wall Street Con Men. I saw opportunity. I saw back in August 2002 that there was not one web site on the internet exploring the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research in depth and I set out to be the first. Now I have a mountain of material that can be used by all of us to rebuild our broken economic system following the crash.

You Goons have caused me a lot of trouble. You also appear to be in the process of making me a very, very wealthy man. We are talking Steve Jobs levels of wealth. Thanks, Goons Friends!

I’ll take the $500 million and I will say “thank you!”, Anonymous. That’s how I feel about it. I love our system of government. Our laws against financial fraud have not been enforced in a reasonable manner for 13 years now. But what matters is not what happens in the early chapters of the story but what happens in the latter chapters of the story.

I’d rather have gotten the $500 million some other way. But the reality is that few of us ever have an opportunity to earn $500 million in ANY way. So when one comes along, we are smart to grab it. That’s what I have done. We are close to the finish line today. We are close to the day when I won’t be just talking about the $500 million but when I will be collecting it and then putting it to good use spreading the word about the first true research-based strategy. Good for me! Good for the people of the United States! Good for Shiller! Good for Bogle! In a funny way, good for you Goons! (Prison sentences eventually come to an end so it is best for you that yours get started soon)

I don’t like any of the ugly side. You Goons have shown us all a very dark side of human nature.

But the good here is 50 times more good than the bad here is bad. I am proud to have led this 13-year-long effort to open every board and blog on the internet to honest posting re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment0-related topics. It’s truly exciting stuff!

Take care, man.

Rob

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

“But she doesn’t agree with my strategy for dealing with the problem.”

Your wife is a wise woman. I just hope she doesn’t expect you to change.

I half agree with what you are saying here and I half do not, Evidence.

I am not generally a non-yielding person AT ALL. When it comes to things like what movie to go see or what restaurant to eat at, I ALWAYS am the one who defers to the other person. It is a very rare thing for me to demand to have my way. People who know me would not describe me as stubborn. That reality would suggest that I would be very open to change if my wife suggested a different way of proceeding.

The other reality is that there is a pattern in my life that has only appeared on a small number of occasions but that I do think evidences itself in behavior that mystifies a lot of people. The most dramatic case was when my parents wanted me to go to a Catholic high school and I wanted to go to the public high school. They pressured me into agreeing to go to the Catholic high school for one year by saying that they would not oppose my decision to go the public high school after that year. Then they pressured me again and I agreed to go a second year. And then a third year. And then I was adamant and we had a World-War-III style battle over the thing. Temple University ended up agreeing to take me in without me attending my senior year and everyone was happy. My father told me after that happened that he wasn’t worried about me giving in to peer pressure to take drugs because I was “like steel” when I set my mind to something.

There are a small number of cases where something similar has happened. So I think the proper way to describe me would be to say that I am non-stubborn in general but very stubborn when certain conditions apply that make the issue at hand appear in my mind to be one of great consequence.

In the high school matter, the issue in play on the surface was that I wanted to grow my hair long and that wasn’t permitted in the Catholic school. When the issue is described that way, I come off sounding like an idiot. My parents loved me and wanted the best for me. I never had any doubt of that. So why make such a fuss because I couldn’t grow my hair long for a few more years?

The deeper reality is that I felt a need to separate myself from my parents and assert my independence. All young people have to do that, it is not healthy if they never take steps to make that break. So there actually were good reasons for me to take so firm a stand. If I had it to do over, I would play it differently. I think I behaved immaturely. I had good reason — I was immature! But I do possess an understanding of why I did what I did. I have an understanding of what my parents did too. I wouldn’t want to see my boys repeat my behavior if similar circumstances evidenced themselves. But I don’t beat myself up for what I did. I am at peace about it even though I see things from a different perspective today.

I have reasons for why I feel that I need to stand firm re the investing matter. You know those reasons. And my wife does too. To me those reasons seem very, very, very compelling. To you they do not. I would characterize my wife as being somewhere in the middle of the two extreme positions. She sees my reasons as being more compelling than you do but less compelling than I do.

You are saying that she should accept that I will never change. Yes and no. The principle that is at stake will always be compelling to me. It is impossible for me to imagine circumstances in which that would change. To that extent, I agree with your statement.

But my experience (both in the high school situation and in others) is that matters of this nature are sometimes resolved as the result of unexpected developments. In the high school matter, everyone was happy when Temple accepted me under their early admissions program. My parents did not say “Oh, you still cannot grow your hair long” and I didn’t say “Oh, I still want to rebel in some way and not go along with a solution that makes you happy.” So everything worked out. The sticking point (that I needed to have some say over the length of my hair and that the Catholic school that my parents approved of did not permit this at the time) was removed.

It is my expectation that some development of that nature will come along to bring on a resolution of the investing conflict. Oh Lord, let it be soon!

I don’t know what that resolution will be.

But you can guess at the sorts of possibilities that I envision by reading my posts here.

I love the Buy-and-Holders. They are heroes to me. I think they made a mistake in taking such a hard line and I think that a lot of them regret that mistake today. I believe that there someday will be circumstances that will cause them to ease up just a notch and that then they will see me evidence my love for them and wish that we had worked the matter out a long time ago. I cannot give details because I cannot foresee the details. But it is my belief that something along those lines will happen one of these days.

Something similar will probably happen with my wife. She is not against me and I of course am not against her. We have different sets of life experiences and so we come at the matter from different perspectives. There will come a day when one of us will try out an idea that all along we thought would not work and we will find that it will work. We are not enemies any more than you Goons and I are enemies. So it does not make sense to rule out the possibility of a resolution that brings something close to complete satisfaction to both parties.

People don’t always communicate effectively. People get their backs up and cut off certain lines of inquiry. Then circumstances change a bit and they open themselves to new possibilities and great things are achieved with everybody involved feeling good about it. That’s what I think will happen here.

Neither side will win and neither side will lose. BOTH sides will win.

This is what I believe. I hope what I am saying here makes at least a small bit of sense to you.

I extend 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:

So you believe that you have never made a mistake.

And you also believe you are sane?

Here is something to think about. If you have never made a mistake why are you in the situation you are in? Blame everyone else, you aren’t responsible because you are perfect? Still think that sounds sane?

The words you write here make it sound like I am in some sort of bad situation. Huh?

I am in a situation more wonderful than anything I could possibly have imagined when I was a young man.

I have a $500 million settlement payment coming my way. I am the lead author on the most important piece of peer-reviewed research published in this field in the past three decades. My web site will soon be the #1 personal finance web site on the internet. My boys have a business available to them to work at if they choose to avoid the corporate world. I will be a highly sought-after author for the remaining years of my life. I will be giving kick-off speeches at the Financial Bloggers Conference and other such places for many years to come.

Should I be crying big tears into my pillow every night?

I of course understand that you are trying to place the focus on the negative stuff.

I’ve got one big problem — the abusiveness of you Goons. You don’t want me to be rich and famous. You hate the idea. I have been proven right about a very important matter and you have been proven wrong and you cannot stand the idea of the world learning about that. I don’t want to be intimidated. I can’t do my best work if I am being intimidated. I don’t want anyone else to be intimidated. People who are intimidated cannot produce the kind of work that I can learn from. So I will not stand for intimidation tactics. There’s no give re that one.

You have 13 years of history to look at. Your reliance on intimidation tactics has brought you lower and lower and lower. Now you are on your way to prison. It’s 100 percent insane. But here we are.

There’s nothing you can do to me to cause me to flip. If you get me the death penalty, that won’t cause me to flip. My guess is that you tell yourself that I am saying that for dramatic effect. I’m not. I am telling it straight. You’ll just have to learn that on your own time. I won’t flip. I will always act with love in my heart. I will do everything I can to make things go as easy for you as possible. But that won’t include letting intimidation tactics influence me. It would be an act of cruelty if I were to suggest that there is even the smallest sliver of a possibility that that could ever happen.

We all have beliefs about the meaning of life. I am a Catholic. I am not a pious person and I am no theologian. But I have some vague impressions about why life works the way it does. Maybe I am wrong about them. Wrong or right, I believe them. So these vague impressions determine how I respond to events that play out before me.

I obviously don’t like any of the Goon stuff. But I believe on a deep level that God let it play out the way he did for a purpose. I don’t know precisely what that purpose is. It could be that God feels that the world needs the drama of this story to be witnessed by people for them to finally give up their belief in Buy-and-Hold. It could be that God wants me to get that $500 million payment and He understood that there was no other way to get that sum in my pocket without having this massive cover-up play out before us all. It could be that God loves you Goons so much that he wants you to change your behavior before your days are done and he wants me to be an instrument to lead you to a better place. I could be that He wants the internet discussion board to achieve its potential as the communications medium of the future and that He feels that getting this story out before people will lead to the adoption of legislation that will make that happen.

I don’t know which of those it is. And of course it could be that my brain is not capable of seeing what it really is. I just have to accept that there is a good purpose being served by all this. I believe that. I believe that God works in mysterious ways. I believe that huge advances are sometimes achieved through actions that in the short term seem to be producing only bad stuff. I believe that God loves me and the millions of middle-class investors and Jack Bogle and you Goons and that we all just need to be sure to play our assigned roles to the best of our abilities. I know with 100 percent certainty that my role is to be the one who refuses to give in to intimidation tactics and to encourage others to stand with resolve in OPPOSITION to the use of intimidation tactics.

I don’t like the Goon stuff one little bit. But I am humbled to have been asked to play the role that I have been asked to play. I am going to give it my best shot. I will always act in love. But there are lines that I will never cross. I will never cross The Felony Line. I will never say that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. Thousands of people have looked at it. No one has ever found a valuations adjustment. That’s because none exists. I am sure.

I wish all of you Goons the best that life has to offer a person.

Rob