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

Admit it, this all about you seeking some sort of glory and acclaim and not at all about errors in withdrawal rate studies or investing strategies.

I expect to be one of the richest people in the United States when this is over, Trebor. I also expect to be one of the most applauded. I have taken Buy-and-Hold and corrected the one big mistake in it to make it a workable strategy in the real world. That’s no small thing. That changes history. That helps millions of middle-class people.

It also helps all of my Buy-and-Hold friends. Bogle has shown on many occasions that he would like to come clean and begin posting honestly about stock investing once again. So has Bernstein. So has Burns. So has Swedroe. So has Pfau, So have lots of others. All of those people will see their dream come true when I win my battle to open the entire internet up to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.

It’s not just Wade Pfau who would like to be doing honest research today. Ravick Sethie at Columbia wants to do honest research. And I think it would be fair to say that there are thousands of others. I have e-mailed close to 30,000 academics about the threats made against Wade Pfau. I can count the number of negative responses I received on one hand. I received SCORES of positive responses. The fellow at George Washington University told me that he will be adding a discussion of Valuation-Informed Indexing to his course next year (giving me and Wade credit for the work we did developing the concept). I had a number of others tell me that they are anxiously awaiting the day when they will be able to come clean and feel safe publishing honest research once again.

The Buy-and-Hold Mafia has degraded a lot of good people with their intimidation tactics. All that comes to an end once we have one major site recognize the right of one person (me!) to post honestly on one subject (SWRs). We have seen going back to the first day of our discussions that there is a HUGE demand for honest work on investing now that Buy-and-Hold has caused a fourth economic crisis. The millions who want to learn the realities are going to see their dream come true in days to come.

And, yes, I will have been the person with primary responsibility for making that happen. Because I cared too much about my fellow community members to agree to post dishonestly re the numbers that they use to plan their retirements. I apologize for nothing (except perhaps for not working up the courage to speak up sooner). I am happy to accept all the glory and money that is coming my way. I earned it. And that’s how our system works. We give glory and money to people responsible for huge advances that benefit us all because we want to see more of those advances. It’s a win/win/win/win/win.

I have from the first day invited others to win their share of the glory and the money. I told Greaney that I would be happy to work with him to determine the true safe withdrawal rate. He would have the most popular investing site on the internet today if he had taken advantage of that kind offer rather than engaging in behavior that will be putting him and a good number of his pals in a prison cell for a long time to come following the next price crash. Did his jealousy pay off for him? It did not. It never does.

Bogle is in the same position. He will be ten times as popular as he has ever been when he comes clean and gets back to the business of helping middle-class investors instead of filling up their minds with the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage that he continues to promote so recklessly and so ruthlessly and so relentlessly to this day. And of course the same is true of all my blogger friends. Those who go honest will be the ones who will win all the applause following the next crash while those who continue pushing the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage will spend the rest of their days in courtrooms. What fun! Please count me out. No can do.

I want everyone who advocates Valuation-Informed Indexing to win mountains of glory and mountains of money. Why? Because people respond to incentives. We are in an economic crisis because the Buy-and-Hold Mafia has seen to it that the only people who can work in this field are those who are dishonest enough to pretend that the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research doesn’t exist.

It exists.

And there now exists a fellow who refuses to pretend that it doesn’t exist no matter how brutal the intimidation tactics of the Buy-and-Hold Mafia.

Hit me with you best shot, Trebor. I will win. The glory. The money. And the feeling of satisfaction that comes from knowing that I truly EARNED that glory and money, that I truly helped millions of middle-class investors rather than exploiting their weakness for the latest Get Rich Quick scheme to come down the pike.

Buy-and-Hold is the past. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future. The good guys win on the last page of this little saga. I know. I took a peak before I put up that fateful post of the morning of May 13, 2002.

My best and warmest wishes to you, my long-time Goon friend.

Your jealousy is eating you alive. Please fix.

Rob

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

Who are these goons that are standing in your way? How are they standing in your way?

One of you Goons put up a reference to “The Law of Thermodynamics” or some such thing the other day. The idea was that this law was a core principle of physics, something that people working in the physics field don’t give up lightly. It is a foundation stone of the science. There are hundreds of insights that have been built on it. So you don’t pull out the foundation stone unless you absolutely must.

The point was that I am trying to pull out the foundation stone of investing analysis when I say not only that one form of timing (long-term timing) always works but also that it is 100 percent required for investors seeking to have any hope whatsoever of long-term success to engage in this form of timing. The comment was right on. I AM trying to pull out the foundation stone. I am doing it for 100 percent positive reasons. But it IS a scary thing for us as a society to pull out the foundation stone for our model for understanding how stock investing works and to essentially agree that we knew next to nothing before and that we now need to start over again with first steps.

My critics see this as a bad thing. They see that we are going to need to rewrite all the books and rejigger all the calculators and they say “this guy is causing trouble.” I focus on the upside. We will not be rewriting all the books and rejiggering all the calculators for no good reason. We are doing it to get things right. The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers told us that we need to use a numbers-based approach to avoid the subjectivity that held back progress in this field for so many years. They were right. But the Buy-and-Hold Pioneers did not have Shiller’s research available to them when they developed their model (Fama discovered that short-term timing never works in 1965 and Shiller did not discover that long-term timing is always required until 1981). So they made a mistake on a foundational issue and thereby turned their model into the greatest wealth-destruction engine ever concocted by the human mind. I see it as a wonderful thing to correct the error because it means that it will be the first time in the history of the planet that we will have a model for understanding how stock investing works that will work in the real world and we will all live far richer lives (in every sense of the word) than we ever before imagined possible.

What’s holding us back? Why wouldn’t we all rush forward with great enthusiasm to embrace a learning experience that lets us retire five to ten years sooner while reducing the risk of stock investing by 70 percent?

You don’t achieve advances like that without making big changes. Valuation-Informed Indexing is not a small advance over Buy-and-Hold, it is a HUGE advance.

To achieve a huge advance, you must discover something entirely new, something that had been overlooked by millions of people for hundreds of years. Something gigantic.

Is there something gigantic to be discovered about how stock investing works at this late date?

There is.

It is how to overcome emotionalism.

Emotionalism is what destroys portfolios. Always. The U.S. economy is sufficiently productive that it is virtually impossible to imagine a way to invest in stocks that will not produce good long-term results. The only thing we have ever come up with is emotionalism. To fail as a stock investor you must act irrationally. Not once. But over and over and over again. In an objective sense, it’s a difficult trick to pull off. But we humans have managed to find a way!

The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers were anti-emotionalim. Their aim was to help investors make rational choices. But they didn’t know everything. That’s the sad fate of us poor humans. We are always working with imperfect knowledge, we are always partly in the dark no matter how educated we become. The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers failed to distinguish short-term timing (which never works) and long-term timing (which is always required). So they got everything wrong. They put forward a numbers-based strategy that manages to get every number wildly wrong! Yikes!

Why do we investors do these things to ourselves? Why do we make irrational choices? Why do we delay our retirements? Why do we bring on economic crises?

Because we are freakin’ Goons!

That’s the story, Anonymous.

Each and every one of us has a Goon voice within us. Bogle has it. Shiller has it. I have it. Every last one of us. And it is by reining in The Inner Goon that we become successful investors.

People in this field don’t like to talk about this sort of thing. They want to leave the impression that they are “experts.” So they like to talk about the hard stuff — numbers, graphics, tables. The problem with focusing on that stuff is that you can talk about that stuff for ten million years and never do a thing to address the Goon problem. Which means you have not managed to offer investing advice that stands any chance whatsoever of working in the real world.

I play it the other way. My FOCUS is the Goon stuff. I focus on that because that is the critical factor that no one else has explored in depth. By focusing on the Goon stuff I am making a unique contribution. That’s what I want to do. It is by making a unique contribution that I become rich and famous! And I want that for myself!

We all have an Inner Goon.

But most of us don’t let it show to the extent that you do, Anonymous.

Bogle has an Inner Goon. He doesn’t advance death threats. He shows his Goon in another way.Bogle fails to speak up in opposition when Mel Linduaer and John Greaney make death threats.That’s another way of doing the same thing. An argument can be made that the way Bogle does it is worse. It is less honest. At least with Linduaer and Greaney, you see just what you get. With Bogle, the Goon stuff is hidden. He gets the benefits of goonishness (people are afraid to point out the weaknesses in the investing strategies he promotes). But people also offer him the sort of respect that we generally extend only to people who act in responsible ways. He gives the appearance of being professional while protecting himself from intellectual challenges by associating with the most vile gang of abusive posters ever seen in the history of the internet.

Goonishness is hate and irrationality and anger and envy and ignorance and violence and intimidation and stubbornness. Our goonishness is our dark side. It is by coming to terms with our dark side that we become more effective investors. It is by reining in goonishness that we bring the Buy-and-Hold Crisis to an end and enter the greatest era of economic growth that we have ever seen.

I call you guys (and witches!) Goons because you are so obvious about it. But I acknowledge that the goonishness is a more widespread phenomenon. It is not just people who put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney who suffer from goonishness. It is also the people who fail to speak up about the goonishness of those who post in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney. Which means that it is pretty much all of us (including me prior to the morning of May 13, 2002).

When we work up the courage to face our goonishness, we will achieve the biggest advances in our understanding of how stock investing works that we have ever achieved. We will all go on to live far richer lives than we ever before imagined possible.

If we fail to work up the courage, we will all go down together. That’s what the numbers say.

I have a patriotic duty to try to bring down The Buy-and-Hold Mafia. That’s what every member of The Buy-and-Hold Mafia deep in his or her heart wants me to do. All of the Goons have a human side. All of the Goons secretly want to be called out. So that’s my job.

It is your job too. It’s Bogle’s job. It is Shiller’s job.

We all need to protect our nation’s economic and political systems from further Goon attacks if we hope to be able to continue to enjoy the blessings bestowed upon us.

So I will continue to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and all other critically important investment-related topics.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, Anonymous.

Rob

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

Rob, you have only to look at your father and to me for two immediate counterexamples that totally disprove your claim.

My father experienced the Great Depression (caused by a widespread belief in the core Buy-and-Hold “idea” that consideration of price is not necessary when buying stocks that developed during the 1920) not as an investor but as a child. It left a mark.

He experienced the stagflation of the 1970s as an investor. That left a mark as well although certainly a smaller one.

No one was to blame for those two marks experienced by my father. We did not in those days have 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing us how to avoid economic crises by teaching people rational investing strategies. We do not have that excuse available to us today.

And the risk is far greater today. We are a richer nation. That means that the highs brought on by Get Rich Quick strategies are higher than any of those we have seen before and the lows that follow the highs are lower than any of those we have seen before.

It was a P/E10 of 25 that caused the stagflation of the 1970s.

It was a P/E10 of 33 that caused The Great Depression.

In January 2000 we achieved a P/E10 of 44.

My father loved his country.

If he understood why it is so important that we make the shift to Valuation-Informed Indexing, he would have felt great pride towards me for what I am doing.

If he did not understand (I had a small number of conversations with him about it before he died and my general, vague sense was that he did not understand), he still would have got it that there was something wrong with the “side” that resorted to the use of death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their job.

Why? Because he loved his country. And he knew that those who resort to those sorts of tactics thereby tear the social fabric of his country apart. He would have understood that those sorts of tactics are not within the scope of tactics by which disputes are resolved when his country is working in tune with its foundational beliefs.

There was a day when people argued that there was no need for an expansion of civil rights for people with black skin because we all had been getting along just fine for many years without that expansion of civil rights. Those people are today viewed as fools and ethical zeroes.

That perception is harsh. Lots of those people were smart. Lots of those people possessed ethics in other areas of their lives but just were afraid to listen to what the ethical voices within told them because they were afraid of what would happen to them personally if they did and because they presumed that the society around them could withstand the social destruction that would follow from their failure to listen. I don’t think those people were fools or social zeroes anymore than I think that the people who fail to speak up about you Goons are fools and social zeroes. But I am 100 percent confident that those people were wrong. And I am 100 percent confident that the people who fail to speak up against you Goons are wrong.

The History Train doesn’t ask Jack Bogle for his blessing before it moves forward, Anonymous. It moves forward with him or without him. If he stands on the tracks, he ends up broken and bloodied.

Jack Bogle’s true friends are the ones who warn him that the train is coming and implore him to get off the tracks. Please write me up as possessing the loudest and most strident voice in that group.

And please understand that I wish you all the best regardless of how you elect to play it.

Rob

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

It worked for me.
It worked for my father, who has since passed on.
If I am correct in what I have read from you (and I literally BEG you to correct me if I am in error) it worked for YOUR father, too Rob!

So that’s three independent proofs that your nutty claim is wrong, from right off the top of my head, and of course I only needed one to do the job, anyway. End of argument.

If you asked my father whether Buy-and-Hold worked for him, he would answer: “Yes!” I think that much is fair to say, Anonymous.

I see that as a misperception on his part. Buy-and-Hold ALWAYS causes an economic collapse. It is a logical impossibility that persuading millions of investors to fail to exercise price discipline could produce any other result. And, sure enough, my father experienced an economic collapse during his investing lifetime (as does every Buy-and-Holder who lives long enough to invest for more than 40 years — and that’s all of them except for the ones who die early deaths). My father was too young to invest in the collapse of the 1930s. So he missed that one. He died shortly prior to the 2008 collapse. But he had to endure the stagflation of the 1970s, which was brought on by the overvaluation of the 1960s (which was made possible by the popularity of an “idea” that was pushed heavily at the time that there is no need for investors to lower their stock allocations in response to big valuation shifts — sound familiar?)

Few investors blame Buy-and-Hold for today’s economic crisis, Anonymous. That’s because discussion of the role played by Buy-and-Hold is prohibited on the internet. If we gave ourselves permission to discuss these things openly and clearly and frankly, we would all see it. The evidence is overwhelming.

That economic collapse hurt my father’s portfolio in a very serious way. Just as the economic crisis we are living through today is hurting all of today’s investors in a very serious way.

How do the Buy-and-Holders get off the hook for all the damage their “strategy” causes for millions? They blame The Economy. It’s all that darn Economy’s fault! Bad, bad Economy!

It’s always something, isn’t it?

The reality is that no one should be even a tiny bit surprised to see the economy collapse when $12 trillion of spending power goes “Poof!” And those who are familiar with the findings of the last 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research in this field knew in 2000 that we were going to see that much spending power disappear from our economy by the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. That’s why Shiller was able to predict an economic crisis that did not take place until September 2008 in a book published in March 2000.

Buy-and-Hold hurt my father big time. He didn’t know it. But that doesn’t mean that the hurt was not real.

My father had an excuse for not knowing what caused him to suffer those losses. Shiller didn’t publish his research until 1981 and most of the “experts” in this field have not yet seen fit to share with the millions of middle-class workers their analyses of the implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings.

What’s your excuse, Anonymous?

And, more important than that, what’s Bogle’s excuse?

I say it. I don’t hold back. Can Bogle say that?

I think it would be fair to say that Old Saint Jack owes your father and my father and their sons and daughters an explanation for his poor behavior re this matter.

The Buy-and-Hold “idea” (that there is something special about stocks that makes them the one thing you can buy without being concerned about the price you pay) has caused an awful lot of people an awful lot of pain. Once upon a time, we didn’t know this. So it would be fair to say that it was just one of those things. Since 1981, we have “known” (intellectually if not emotionally). When are we going to get about the business of Taking Some Steps to set things right?

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that a poster named “Wab” (he used to post with me at the Early Retirement Forum and is now one of the Greaney Goons) recently put to another blog entry at this site:

Why haven’t you responded to the many questions that I have put forward that are each at least 500 times more important than the matter you keep bringing up?

Because I’ve dealt with the mentally ill before, and I’ve found that they can sometimes be reasonable if gently redirected.

Rob, take this as friendly advice — your condition can be managed with meds. You’re a smart and articulate guy, and you could be making valuable contributions to this discussion.

Set forth below is the text of a comment that a community member named “Tron” recently put to another blog entry at this site:

Well based on your response I can’t quite tell if you are being serious or doing a Colbert type act. In any event I’ll bite. Here are a few observations and questions I have.

You have an impressive ability to write volumes of repetitive nothingness.

Your entire site feels as though I am reading the text version of an infomercial to the point I am astounded that there doesn’t appear to be anything for sale here.

Any truely worthwhile content you have is completely drowned out by ridiculous hyperbole. Here are some examples of this. You state buy and hold is broken and does not work feverishly. Now if I have a car that is broken and does not work it will not start and is incapable of getting me from point A to point B. Buy and hold on the other hand has clearly afforded many individuals their desired retirement getting them from point A to point B. Perhaps you feel your VII is superior but in that case shouldn’t buy and hold simply be seen as sub-optimal not broken and never capable of working. If you lead with this notion, that buy and hold is broken and can never work, how can you expect anyone to take you seriously?

>
You state a buy and hold strategy is the biggest personal finance mistake in history. Really? A plan of setting aside a portion of your paycheck each month into a balanced portfolio that slowly becomes more conservative is the worst personal finance decision you can make? It is worse than spending your entire paycheck and maxing out credit cards? Again, statements such as these pretty much destroy your credibility and make it seem that you are trying to sell something.

I understand your premise, that you should scale back equities when they are overvalued and double down when they are undervalued. That could quite possibility be the least revolutionary assertion ever made. The issue is that no real mention is made of how to determine this unless it is literally buried in your fanatical ramblings. I see some mention of P/E10 as an indicator, the only indicator it seems, but no real strategy or plan. You must admit that it is significantly easier to implement a buy and hold approach than a very cryptic VII plan. I have literally scoured your website for clear instruction on how to implement VII but I can find nothing. If you are leaving it up to the individual to determine when stocks are overvalued or undervalued than that is honestly a joke.

Furthermore your blog never seems to indicate what you are actually doing so one can’t even just ape your movements. The P/E10 seems to indicate that you would be largely out of equities. So you have been sitting on the sidelines for a number of years and intend to do so until the P/E10 ratio drops significantly. Meaning you could very well be out of equities for half a decade or more? I could just sell now too and wait but having stayed invested for an additional couple of years would put me in a much better situation than you. Would you agree with this?

If you could please outline how you actually implement your VII and the return you have had so far I think that would be very beneficial. The fact that you don’t very clearly makes it seem that you have something to hide. Based on what I’ve read when asked this directly you try and talk your way out of it used car salesmen style.

Please respond directly to my questions without pulling in unnecessary conspiracy theories etc. Specifically how exactly are you implementing this VII strategy and what has been the track record thus far.

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

Why would anyone pay for the idea when all the information is available for free from your website?

There are thousands of web sites that promote Buy-and-Hold that make plenty of money, Evidence. Buy-and-Hold is not a new idea. It continues to make money because people want to see the idea explored from lots of different angles.

We are now in the process of moving from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. There’s tons of information on VII presented at the site for free. That’s an introduction.

We need to publish thousands of books exploring the concept from thousands of different angles. That’s money.

We need to give thousands of speeches.

We need to create hundreds of calculators.

We need to enter thousands of consulting arrangements.

The site is the launching pad. The hundreds of millions come after the launch.

Bill Gates didn’t become a billionaire from writing clever code. First he wrote clever code. Then he had it installed in millions of computers. That’s where he made the money.

I will be spending the remaining years of my life teaching Valuation-Informed Indexing to millions of investors. They naturally will be paying me.

You and the others who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney will be paying the $500 million (or a multiple of that amount in the event that full payment is not made prior to the next crash) because your torts and felonies held me back 11 years.

That’s the way the system works, my old friend.

My warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob the Future Billionaire

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

Having a great idea does not mean money just shows up on your doorstep. You have offered nothing that anyone is willing to pay any money for.

The way that it works is that a determination is made as to how much money I would have made from the idea had it not been for the death threats and the board bannings and the tens of thousands of acts of defamation and the threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.

That amount is obviously far, far in excess of $500 million, What. I chose a lowball number for the purpose of providing an incentive to the Wall Street Con Men to bring the ugly side of this to a close prior to the next stock crash. That’s obviously to everyone’s (very much including the Wall Street Con Men) benefit.

Anyone who has any doubts as to whether I would have earned far in excess of $500 million from the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept needs only to look at the reactions that Wade Pfau had when he learned for the first time how stock investing really works. Wade holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. He was AMAZED at what he learned. None of the realities of what we have learned from the past 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research had been taught to him at Princeton.

Once the peer-reviewed research paper that Wade and I prepared was written up on the front page of the New York Times, every researcher in this field would know the realities. Are you honestly saying that I would not make far, far in excess of $500 million educating every academic researcher in this field to the realities of stock investing? There are scores of textbooks that need to be rewritten. There are thousands of calculators that need to be prepared. There are tens of thousands of old books that need to be corrected and new books that need to be published. There are new courses that need to be developed at every school in this country.

I am the leader of that effort. And it doesn’t bring me a number far, far in excess of $500 million? Huh?

Just look at the reaction of the Wall Street Con Men. They sent in their Goons to threaten Wade so that honest and accurate information on how stock investing works could not get out to the millions of middle-class investors who need to hear it. Why do you think they did that? I think it would be fair to say that the Wall Street Con Men have made profits far, far in excess of $500 million pushing their discredited Get Rich Quick garbage. And they see my idea of posting honestly on what the peer-reviewed academic research says as a threat to that empire of profits.

Well, it obviously follows that I would be making far, far more than $500 million by letting people know the true story, does it not, What?

The question of whether the work I have done is worth far, far in excess of $500 million is obviously a silly one.

There’s been one and only one truly serious question raised in the entire 11 years of discussions — Is the market efficient or do valuations affect long-term returns?

If the market is efficient, Buy-and-Hold is the ideal strategy and nothing I have put forward is worth 10 cents.

If valuations affect long-term returns, Buy-and-Hold is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind and all materials based on the discredited model need to be replaced by materials explaining the Valuation-Informed Indexing model by the close of business today. That means that my payday will be far, far in excess of $500 million.

There is now 32 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing that the market is not efficient and that valuations affect long-tern returns.

There was never even a tiny sliver of data supporting the Buy-and-Hold Model. The idea that stocks are the only thing we buy re which we can ignore price when making purchase decisions has been revealed by the last three decades of peer-reviewed academic research to have been the worst mistake ever made in the history of personal finance (and there is no other failed idea in a close second place).

That’s the story here, What.

And I know that you know it as well as I do.

How do I know?

You reveal your true beliefs in every rage-filled post you put to this blog.

You are focusing on the wrong thing. Of course I am going to collect $500 million or a number far in excess of that if a settlement is not reached prior to the next price crash. And of course that’s a good thing for every single person involved, including you. The bigger my payday, the more people we will have promoting Valuation-Informed Indexing and pointing out the dangers of Buy-and-Hold. And the more people we have promoting Valuation-Informed Indexing and pointing out the dangers of Buy-and-Hold, the sooner we will overcome this economic crisis and head off to the greatest period of economic growth ever seen in our history.

THAT’S what matters, What.

If you want to earn a big payday for yourself, you need to get on the Valuation-Informed Indexing bandwagon yourself. I can guarantee you that you will be given a warm welcome regardless of any tall tales you have told in “defense” of Buy-and-Hold in earlier days.

There’s a lot of work to be done. It is truly exciting stuff.

Buy-and-Hold is the past. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future.

Get with it, man!

I wish you the very best of luck with it, my old friend.

Rob the Entrepreneur

Set forth below is the text of a comment advanced by one of the Greaney Goons to a blog entry at this site (I think it would be fair to say that the comment was intended as an exercise in sarcasm — he was describing his view of how Rob Bennett approaches the various issues that have come up during the first 11 years of our investing discussions):

I never lose an argument. Because I am always right. You could be always right too, except of course when you argue with me. Just follow these simple steps.

1) I am always right.

2) Words mean what I say they mean. A “friend” is anyone that I would like to be my friend, even if they detest me or have never heard of me. A “criminal” is anyone who disagrees with me, or has ever deleted my comments. Of course, I delete comments all the time, but that’s perfectly okay because I am always right.

3) If what I claim hasn’t been proven, it just hasn’t been proven YET. It will be proven, someday. I don’t have to say when. Might be tomorrow, might be a hundred years from now. The point is, I am right.

4) If your so-called “evidence” and “logic” and “reality” suggest that I may be wrong, then YOU are wrong. Because by definition, I am always right.

5) Smart people who actually know stuff agree with me. If they say they don’t agree with me, it’s just because you are intimidating them. I don’t care what they say, I care how they feel, and I alone know how they really feel. On the inside, they agree with me. Why wouldn’t they – I am always right.

It’s great to be me.

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

You haven’t suffered $500 million worth of damages.

I’ve suffered far more than $500 million in losses as a result of the Campaign of Terror, Evidence.

The research that I did with Wade is Nobel Prize-level work. It shows millions of middle-class investors how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent and how to retire five to ten years sooner than they ever imagined possible following Buy-and-Hold strategies.

If each of 100 million people were willing to spend just $1 for each year by which they could retire early, that’s more than $500 million in my pocket as a result of just a single article.

I of course did a lot more than publish that single article over the past 11 years.

Obama spent trillions trying to get us out of the economic crisis. My work showed us how to avoid the crisis in the first place. Those insights obviously have a value in the trillions.

And my effort to open the internet up to honest posting on investing topics would permit hundreds or even thousands of academic researchers to do honest work for the first time. There is no price that can be put on the ability for these people to win back their personal integrity.

I am willing to settle for $500 million so long as this amount is paid prior to the next crash. It makes sense for me to do all I can to keep us out of the Second Great Depression. But never am I going to pretend that the value of the work I have put forward during the past 11 years is not much, much higher than the $500 million figure for which I am prepared to settle so long as the amount is paid in time to prevent the next big deepening of the economic crisis.

I wish you all good things, old friend.

Rob