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

Rob,

I was curious as to why you never post a link to the actual death threat tat you claim was made. All I have seen is your link to your own comments. Can you enlighten us?

I don’t do it because it would be stupid to do it, Anonymous.

The Campaign of Terror has been going on for 12 years. There are THOUSANDS of cases of brutal abusiveness. I posted about the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies on the morning of May 13, 2002. The studies have not been corrected TO THIS DAY. This sort of thing was obviously going on for years before I came on the scene. Shiller published the research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy can ever work for even a single long-term investor in 1981.

Why is it that I was the first person to discover the errors in the Old School studies? It wasn’t because I am some super-genius. IT HAPPENED THAT WAY BECAUSE THE BUY-AND-HOLD MAFIA DOES NOT WANT MILLIONS OF MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE LEARNING THE REALITIES OF STOCK INVESTING. It happened that way because of the massive corruption in this field. I mean, come on.

It’s a waste of my time to prove the corruption. Anyone who wants to assure himself that the investing advice field is 100 percent corrupt just needs to look around for about 10 seconds to gather all the evidence he needs to prove the case beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever. The question that we struggle with is not — Is the investing advice field 100 percent corrupt or not? The question we struggle with is — Why do so many of us NOT CARE that our retirement accounts are being destroyed by this corruption?

I remember the first article that I had published at the Daily Caller site. I thought that it was going to be a breakthrough. One, the site is bigger than most of the sites I have posted at. So the potential of my article going viral was much higher. Two, it is not an investing site. So I didn’t have to worry that the people who own the site want to make a buck giving Get Rich Quick investing advice or want to get links from the Big Shots in the investing field or whatever. So I thought that publication of that article was going to be a turning point.

I wrote about the errors in the Old School SWR studies. I don’t think I directly said that there was a cover-up but I hinted at it by pointing out how long it had been since I had put up my post pointing out the errors. And I hinted at the political implications since this was a political site. Those errors were in the process of causing MILLIONS of failed retirements. That’s a huge social problem, one of the biggest we have faced as a nation. And this wasn’t a case where it was other unfortunate people who were being hurt. The retirements of the people reading the article were the retirements being destroyed. Looking at this objectively, there should have been a HUGE reaction to that article.

There was no reaction. No going viral. No comments even. Nothing.

That’s why I rarely write Guest Blog Entries today. So long as people refused to run my Guest Blog Entries (this was usually the case in the days before the first price crash) I kept fighting to get them posted because I felt that getting them posted was the answer. After the crash, I got lots of Guest Blog Entries posted. But that didn’t change things. It was a step in the right direction. The truth about stock investing now appeared on people’s computer screens. The corruption was now exposed in an objective sense. But no one took action to fix the corruption! So what the heck good did it do?

We saw this at FinCon13. I gave a presentation presenting an airtight case for why we are in an economic crisis today. You couldn’t have a more exciting topic for a financial blogger’s convention. But what was the reaction? A number of people in the audience told Jaime Tardy that I seemed “bitter.” These people are not interested in doing anything to fix the corruption or to tell their readers how to invest more effectively. They LIKE Get Rich Quick. They won’t acknowledge it if you ask them but that’s the reality. They view anyone who does battle with Get Rich Quick as “bitter” because they LOVE Get Rich Quick.

Evidence is of great importance in intellectual battles. We have evidence of the corruption coming out of our ears and it is not helping us. That’s because this is not an intellectual battle. This is an EMOTIONAL battle. We cannot persuade people to give up their love affair with Buy-and-Hold by presenting them with evidence. Evidence speaks to the intellect. There is no intellectual case for Buy-and-Hold. The case for Buy-and-Hold is EMOTIONAL. We need to change people’s hearts.

Bernie Madoff did not get people to sign up for his fund by pointing a gun to their heads. He enticed them by appealing to the Get Rich Quick urge within them. It’s the same trick that Bogle uses to entice people into Buy-and-Hold, except Bogle practices it on a scale 5,000 times bigger. The Wall Street Con Men are destroying the lives of millions of people. But they don’t have to use force to do it.

And the full reality is that they don’t even need to use all that much secrecy to do it. The peer-reviewed research showing that there is zero chance that Buy-and-Hold could ever work for even a single long-term investor was published in 1981. And Shiller wrote about those findings in a best-selling book that is available in most public libraries. The corruption is taking place out in the open. But the millions of us who have been taken in by Get Rich Quick strategies look the other way each time we see it appear before us.

The investing advice field is 100 percent corrupt today, Anonymous. The evidence is everywhere. I don’t need to lift a finger to prove the case because the evidence is all around us.

The corruption is WITHIN us. Humans LOVE them some Get Rich Quick. The Wall Street Con Men exploit us because we WANT to be exploited. They couldn’t pull off what they have pulled off without our cooperation. The Wall Street Con Men don’t push Get Rich Quick so hard because they think it is a hot idea. They push it because they want to be popular and they want to make a buck and THEIR CUSTOMERS DEMAND IT.

After the next crash, I don’t think the customers will be demanding it anymore, Anonymous. At that point, everyone will see the massive corruption in this field everywhere they turn. Even you.

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

Rob

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

I could if I were willing to take the time to look it up, Evidence.

This happened before I posted there. Several community members made reference to Swedroe’s banning. It’s not hard to figure out what caused it. Swedroe talks about the importance of valuations all the time. During the time I was posting there, he never once posted in support of those of us who were saying that honest posting should be permitted on safe withdrawal rates. But I’ve seen that he has in recent days written an article that points out the errors in the Old School SWR studies. When he is not on the Bogleheads Forum, he is willing to post honestly on SWRs. Perhaps it was that.

But it could have been any of a hundred things. Valuations affect every aspect of the stock investing project. So it could have been just about anything. What I know from reading posts that others put up is that Larry was banned for a time and then he agreed not to post honestly and he was let back on.

People said that he did this because he wanted to use the forum to promote his books. I suppose that that is speculation. No one can know the precise motive. But it certainly is a reasonable guess. Say that it’s not that. Say that Larry just wanted to be able to talk things over with other people. It’s still wrong to demand that he post dishonestly as the price of admission to the forum, no? It’s degrading. And it’s dishonest. And its fraudulent.

The people who demanded that he post dishonestly should cover the loses of all those who lose money as a result of the ban, no? It certainly does not make sense to have those who followed advice offered at a forum where the one thing that is banned is honest posting on what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research says pay the price for those acts of fraud. Those people did nothing wrong. How could they ever suspect that honest posting was banned at an investing forum? The published rules of the site suggest that honest posting is PERMITTED. So how would they know?

We all should be speaking up against this sort of thing EVERY TIME WE SEE IT. Bogle should be speaking out against it in the strongest possible terms. Wade Pfau too. Scott Burns too. Bill Bernstein too. Mike Piper too. EVERYONE. That’s how we bring Buy-and-Hold down and put the first true research-based strategy (Valuation-Informed Indexing — which is Buy-and-Hold with the dishonest Get Rich Quick part removed) in its place.

I have a file where I keep copies of hundreds of threads from the Bogleheads Forum (which was called the Vanguard Diehards forum in an earlier day). When the time comes to testify, I can go to that file and pull up the posts at which Swedroe’s banning was discussed. I am not going to go to the trouble today because anyone who spends a little but of time at this site gets it that Buy-and-Hold is today a 100 percent discredited strategy promoted through corrupt means. Those who pretend otherwise aren’t going to start posting honestly because I provide the links to the threads where Swedroe’s banning was discussed. But, if a jury needs to see them for some reason, I have them.

We are not talking about a simple cover-up today, Evidence. We are talking about a cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up. As times passes, it gets worse and worse and worse. It can never get better until my good friend Jack Bogle walks to the front of a room and says those magic words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” It is by Jack’s speaking of those magic words that we all come clean and gain the ability to bring this economic crisis to an end, show millions of middle-class Americans how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent, and bring on the greatest period of economic growth in our history.

My best wishes to you, Evidence.

Rob

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

There really is no value in this site. All you do is sit around telling us about your hate for buy and hold and for those that don’t agree with you (that you describe as goons).

It’s not possible that I sit around talking about my hate for Buy-and-Hold or for my many Buy-and-Hold friends, Anonymous. It’s not possible because I do not FEEL hate for Buy-and-Hold or for my Buy-and-Hold friends.

I am the world’s most severe critic of Buy-and-Hold as it is promoted today. I say that it is a big pile of smelly garbage. I say that the relentless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies caused the economic crisis. I say that millions of middle-class people are going to suffer failed retirements because my good friend Jack Bogle has not yet worked up the courage to walk to the front of a room and say the words “I” and “Was” and”Wrong.” All of that is so, and, yes, because all of that is so there is one sense in which I suppose it would be fair to say that I hate Buy-and-Hold.

But hold on.

Is all that ugly stuff what Buy-and-Hold really is?

I say no. I say that Buy-and-Hold is something very different from what you Goons (and, yes, even my good friend Jack Bogle) today claim it to be.

Buy-and-Hold is two things. It is the thing that was put forward in the days before Nobel-Prize-Winning-Economist Robert Shiller put forward his “revolutionary” research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. In those days Buy-and-Hold was all about using the peer-reviewed academic research to guide one’s investing strategies. But today there is a new version of Buy-and-Hold that is something very different. The phrase “Buy-and-Hold” today signifies an investing “strategy” that calls for the investor to possess a burning hatred for discussions of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research and to employ all forms of trickery and deception and intimidation to keep all investors (including one’s self) from learning how stock investing really works in the real world.

Everyone alive hates one of the two forms of Buy-and-Hold, Anonymous. Those of us who feel a passionate love for what the Buy-and-Hold project was in its early days (a quest to help millions of middle-class investors invest more effectively) naturally hate to see the Buy-and-Holders of today drag the concept through the mud with their deception and intimidation tactics. We want Buy-and-Hold to work. So we naturally want to update the concept to reflect the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research. Those who are emotionally addicted to the Get-Rich-Quick version of Buy-and-Hold naturally hate those of us who argue that exploration of the peer-reviewed research should be permitted. There’s no support in the academic research for Get Rich Quick. It makes the Buy-and-Holders who are in the Get Rich Quick camp “look bad” for millions of middle-class people to find out what the research really says.

Which Buy-and-Hold is the real Buy-and-Hold?

That’s the question here. If the ugly form of Buy-and-Hold is the real form of Buy-and-Hold, Jack Bogle is the Frank Underwood of Personal Finance. Jack has caused more human misery than anyone who has ever worked in this field. That’s objective fact. Millions of people have already lost their jobs in the Buy-and-Hold Crisis. Millions more will lose their jobs following the next price crash. When you suggest that the ugly form of Buy-and-Hold is the only legitimate version of Buy-and-Hold, you suggest that Jack Bogle caused this economic crisis by intent You suggest something very, very, very horrible. When you suggest such horrible things, you speak in hate.

I speak in love. I suggest something very different.

I argue that Jack Bogle is a good man who allowed his pride to get too caught up in a highly promising but ultimately flawed idea and who today suffers from a horrible case of cognitive dissonance as a result. I say that, when Old Saint Jack wrote in one of his books that, were he ever to be found to have made a mistake that hurt millions of investors, he would want his friends to point it out to him, he was speaking from the heart. I am Jack’s truest friend. So I have done what my friend asked of me. I will continue to do it until my friend’s heart melts and he works up the courage to do the right thing. I believe that after the next price crash he will do it. We will see. In any event, my actions are rooted in a deep love of the man that I call “friend.”

Your actions are rooted in hate, Anonymous. Every day that the Ban on Honest Posting continues, more lives are ruined. Every day that the Ban on Honest Posting continues, more people cross the lines that lead to prison sentences down the road. Every day that the Ban on Honest Posting continues, the prison sentences that will be imposed on those who crossed those lines years ago grow more lengthy. Bad stuff piled on top of bad stuff piled on top of bad stuff. Hate piled on top of hate piled on top of hate.

That’s the real Buy-and-Hold?

I say otherwise.

I hate the hate. That much is fair to say. But the reason why I hate the hate is because I love the true Buy-and-Hold Project, I love what Buy-and-Hold stood for in earlier days and I love what Buy-and-Hold will stand for again after my good friend Jack works up the courage to walk to the front of a big room and say The Three Magic Words. I love the true Buy-and-Hold, not the b.s. version pushed by the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.

This site is of immense value.

There has not been any intellectual support for the phony version of Buy-and-Hold for 33 years now. We are on the one-yard line. The one thing that the millions of good people who today reside in the United States need to bring this economic crisis to an end and to bring on the greatest period of economic growth in our history is the courage to stand up to you Goons and to insist on the recognition of the right we all possess to post anywhere we please on the internet in accord with what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world. We know that there are millions of people who possess a great desire to hear the realities. We need one venture capitalist or one large site owner or one big-name journalist or one economist or one policymaker to work up the courage to take on you Goons and the entire Buy-and-Hold house of cards comes crashing to the ground.

This site gives those people what they need to steel themselves against your Campaign of Terror.

People worry that the Wall Street Con Men will employ their huge financial resources to destroy them through phony lawsuits. It’s pretty hard for the Wall Street Con Men to do that when the materials collected at this site are available for use in any trial. The Wall Street Con Men obviously don’t want the Wade Pfau matter getting public attention. The threat of lawsuits that have held many honest people from speaking up against the Get Rich Quick garbage for 33 years now has been neutralized by the materials collected at this site.

People worry that you Goons will attack their sites and that other site owners will not step in to help them because they feel that the number who want to hear the realities of stock investing is so small. But that number is NOT small. We know that by what the materials at this site tell us. Those people are AFRAID to speak up. But they are not small in number. I wouldn’t have over 200 expressions of intense support at the “People Are Talking” section of the site if the number favoring honest posting was small. Again, the intimidation tactics engaged in by those seeking to “defend” the b.s. version of Buy-and-Hold have been neutralized by the materials collected at this site.

I win, Anonymous.

You Goons lose.

I knew it all the time!

Rob

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

your lies about what you call buy and hold.

Do Buy-and-Holders urge investors to change their stock allocations in response to big valuation shifts or not, Pink?

I am 100 percent okay with calling Valuation-Informed Indexing “The New Buy-and-Hold” or “Buy-and-Hold 2.0? or whatever. I considered myself a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. Jack Bogle is a hero of mine. It has always been my dream to work WITH the Buy-and-Holders to get the mistake re long-term timing fixed and to move forward TOGETHER.

But it’s pretty darn hard to work with people who threaten to kill your wife and children, you know? I came up with a fresh name for VII not because I wanted a divorce from the Buy-and-Holders but because the Buy-and-Holders wanted a divorce from me.

Buy-and-Holders say that there is no need to practice price discipline when buying stocks. That is not a lie or even an opinion but a stone cold fact that is documented in MILLIONS of posts. And there is ZERO research indicating that long-term timing might not be required. Zero. Wade Pfau checked the entire record and found nothing.

Buy-and-Hold is a lie.

It started out as a mistake. That needs to be acknowledged in fairness.

But a mistake that isn’t fixed for 33 years after the peer-reviewed research in the field reveals it has become a lie. The idea that long-term timing isn’t required of every investor hoping to have any realistic chance whatsoever of long-term success is a LIE. It is the LIE that has brought on the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history.

The lie will fall with the next price crash. And you will be sent to prison when it falls. And I will become one of the richest men in the United States when the full impact of this ugly LIE is experienced by millions of middle-class people.

Or so says Rob Bennett, in any event.

Hang in there, my old friend.

Rob

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

He [Scott Burns] says no such thing. What’s jumbled and confused is your basic reading comprehension. Here is what he said:

“Whether starting from current stock and bond yields or from more modest return expectations, the latest portfolio survival exercises show that withdrawal rates should be lowered to 3 to 3.5 percent.”

It couldn’t be any plainer. He says 4% is unsafe. You say 4% is unsafe. Yet you rip away, saying he is “wrong”. Why, because he didn’t mention your name? If this is how you treat people who agree with you, small wonder that yours is such a lonely quest.

The safe-withdrawal-rate is a data-driven concept, Miasma. It’s not something based on opinion. It’s not something you just make up in your head.

The safe-withdrawal-rate in 2000 was 1.6 percent. The safe-withdrawal-rate in 1982 was 9 percent. Are you saying that that is what Scott is saying? If you are, you are wrong.

Of course Scott should have mentioned my name. I am the person who discovered the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies. This was in May 2002, nearly ten years before theWall Street Journal reported on those errors. I think that it would be fair to say that that gives me a level of credibility on SWR questions that no one else possesses. No?

I am of course happy that Scott now acknowledges that the Old School SWR studies get the numbers wildly wrong. That is obviously a plus.

But is that all he is going to do?

How about writing a column urging that all the studies that are in error be corrected?

How about writing a column reporting on the first ACCURATE SWR calculator (The Retirement Risk Evaluator)? Wouldn’t that help the millions of people on their way to suffering failed retirements because they were taken in by the demonstrably false claims in the Old School studies that have remained uncorrected for the 12 years since the errors in them became public knowledge?

How about writing a column about how he was taken in by those false claims? There was a time when Scott was writing positive things about the Old School studies, no? He puts himself forward as an expert in this field by writing about it regularly, no? Why not tell people how he was fooled? Would that not be a helpful thing to do?

How about writing about the 12-year Campaign of Terror led by you Goons to punish anyone who dared to write honestly about this subject? The 12-year cover-up is the biggest case of financial fraud in the history of the United States. Do people not need to know about that?

How about writing about how big names in the field like Jack Bogle and Bill Bernstein and Larry Swedroe have known about the errors in these studies for years now and have participated in the cover-up rather than expose it? I have had many middle-class investors tell me that Valuation-Informed Indexing makes perfect sense but that they do not feel comfortable investing pursuant to a research-based approach so long as the “experts” in this field so adamantly oppose doing so. Wouldn’t it be a good idea for Scott to let his readers know that most of the “experts” in this field are engaged in a massive act of financial fraud? Do ethics not matter in the investing advice field?

How about writing about all the other things besides SWRs that the Buy-and-Holders got wrong? Buy-and-Holders don’t include valuation adjustments in ANY of their calculations. Does Scott not have a responsibility to tell his readers this?

How about Scott acknowledging to his readers that he was handed this huge story on a silver platter NINE YEARS AGO and at first showed great enthusiasm about it but then was intimidated into silence? Is that not relevant to a nation of people suffering from the worst economic crisis in U.S. history, a crisis brought on by the reckless and relentless and ruthless promotion of Buy-and-Hold strategies for 33 years after they were discredited by the peer-reviewed research?

On the morning of May 14, 2002, a column by Scott Burns pointing out that the Old School studies got the numbers wildly wrong would indeed have been much welcomed, Miasma. Twelve years down the road, it’s shockingly weak tea.

There are responsibilities that go with setting yourself up as an expert in this field. One of those responsibilities is to keep up with the peer-reviewed research. Nobel Prize Winner Robert Shiller published research showing that there is precisely zero chance of a Buy-and-Hold strategy ever working for even a single long-term investor 33 YEARS AGO. I think it would be fair to say that our good friend Scott Burns needs to pick up the pace of his reporting on new developments just a wee bit.

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

My best wishes to you.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to a thread at the www.SiteSell.com forum:

Super post, Rob…

http://forums.sitesell.com/viewtopic.php?p=1284835#1284835

You obviously know your stuff. Your paper about Shiller’s paper is spot-on. It’s an excellent indicator and folks SHOULD be worried about the high CAPE of the current market.

I don’t think that paper was trying to deliver an optimized approach, merely prove the value of CAPE as a predictor of value, which is what drives the long-term future.

So they should definitely “TAKE” your contribution for the valuable information that it contained. It’s the only reason that I spent so much time and space addressing “active” investing before I was planning to do so. 

Please, Rob, keep posting! 

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the SiteSell.com discussion forum:

Rob, I have much respect for your work and you have a lot of valuable knowledge to share, but I would not bet that human nature will change and people will stop making decisions based on greed and fear.

The words above are from a post by Dave put to the Passive thread. I thought it would be better to respond to them here.

Your comment gets right to the core of things, Dave. Investors have for a long time been acting in one way and I am proposing that we all (I don’t mean all of us at this site, I mean all of us in this country) pull together to help them act in a very different way. It would be fair to describe this as an ambitious undertaking!

That granted, have people’s actions not changed in fundamental ways before? There was a time when people with black skin could not drink from the same water fountains as people with white skin. That changed, didn’t it? And there was a time when there were advertisements in magazines arguing for the health benefits of smoking (Google it if you don’t believe me). That changed, didn’t it? And there was a time when after a picnic people just tossed all the trash on the grass (there was a scene depicting this on Mad Man — I remember this sort of thing really happening when I was a child in the 1960s). That changed, didn’t it?

There’s a thing called Progress. Our country is pretty much built around a belief in it. I understand that it is an ambitious undertaking to try to change how people think about investing in a fundamental way. But I believe that things have reached a point where we have no choice and I believe that millions of people are up to making the change if only the need for it is presented to them in the right way.

You have to do the math to appreciate the fix we are in today. Stocks were priced at three times fair value in 2000. We always drop to one-half of fair value before the secular bear market that inevitably follows a secular bull market comes to an end. That means that people who were invested in stocks heavily in stocks in 2000 are going to lose five-sixths of their accumulated life savings before this economic crisis comes to an end. Someone who had saved for years and years to accumulated $600,000 is going to end up with $100,000 (in real terms). Defined benefit pensions are pretty much a thing of the past. We have given to workers the responsibility of financing their own retirement plans. And the investment advice that is pushed relentlessly is going to cause them to lose five-sixths of their accumulated life savings. Is our political system even going to be able to withstand the stresses that are going to be placed on it as a result?

And how about when the millions of people who end up losing most of their retirement money learn that there is 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing them how to invest in a way that would prevent this from ever happening while also permitting them to retire five to ten years sooner than they ever imagined possible? When the Buy-and-Holders spent millions of dollars promoting the idea that investment strategies should be rooted in peer-reviewed academic research, they changed this field forever. We now HAVE to provide a means for people to have access to accurate and honest reports of what the research says. We’re not there yet. But we have no choice but to go there. Events are going to push us there no matter how much we try to avoid it. And in the end we are of course all going to be very happy we made the trip.

I have a lot of experience talking to people about the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept. I can tell you that people LOVE learning about it. That’s been so going back to 2002, when I began this journey. People also HATE the friction that comes up when conventional Buy-and-Holders become defensive about what the last 33 years of research says. So I have not been successful in spreading the word far and wide. But I know from the reactions that I have seen that there are MILLIONS of people who would like to know the truth about stock investing. The market is huge. Someone is going to figure out a way to serve this huge market.

When they do, a lot of people who today advocate the conventional Buy-and-Hold strategy are going to flip. I know because a good number have told me so. There are economists who want to be reporting the realities. There are journalists who want to be reporting the realities. There are investing advisors who want to be reporting the realities. There are researchers who want to be reporting the realities. There are bloggers who want to be reporting the realities.

The hard part is going first. Those who go first get their heads chopped off. Everybody knows this and so everybody holds back. But once the dam breaks, watch out! Once the dam breaks, lots of people are going to flip in a short amount of time. My guess is that this will happen shortly following the next price crash. Shiller’s research shows that we should see that crash within the next year or two or three.

Please understand that I am NOT saying that the Permanent Portfolio concept is the problem. The Permanent Portfolio concept is a HUGE improvement over the conventional Buy-and-Hold concept. The reality here (in my view) is that the Permanent Portfolio concept and the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept solve the same problem (the danger of the conventional Buy-and-Hold strategy) in slightly different ways. PP has you invest in asset classes that will do very well in stock crashes and thereby protect you from their impact. VII has you lessen your participation in stocks when the odds of seeing a crash grow too high. Both approaches represent huge advances. An argument could be made that BOTH require a change in human behavior. Both are going to seem highly appealing to lots and lots of people following the next crash, and for good reason. My personal take is that it may be too soon to say with certainty which is better. But both represent huge advances. That’s what matters.

Investor behavior will change because it must if our free-market economy is to survive. We all want it to survive and so we are all going to pull together to achieve some changes when it hits us that we have no practical choice. There was a day when only very rich people had money in stocks. That’s not the case today. Middle-class people fund their retirements by investing in stocks. They must have accurate information. There’s just no other way. We are a richer people than we were in earlier times. That changes the realities. I believe that we are ready for this change and I believe that, when we are faced with no option but to move ahead with it, we will pull together to help bring about the change.

It is NOT true that middle-class investors are governed entirely by greed and fear.I have talked to THOUSANDS of people who are seeking a smart and safe and simple way to invest in stocks. The problem today is that most people are intimidated by the subject of stock investing and put too much belief in what “experts” tell them and the primary expertise of many of the people who work in this field is in marketing. Once a small number of people stick their necks out and try to make names for themselves pushing strategies that help people avoid the pitfall of giving in to feelings of greed and fear (whether by recommending PP or by recommending VII or by recommending some third approach that achieves the same ends), the wall is going to break and we are going to see that millions of middle-class people are willing to work hard to avoid fear and greed if only they can find some people to help them understand better what they need to do.

That’s my sincere take, in any event, Dave. There are lots of smart and good people who think I am a dreamer. I guess we will find out for sure when that next price crash hits and we see how people react.

Rob

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

Continues stalking of Wade Pfau who has distanced himself from only one person. Very telling, isnt it. When you send out thousands of emails on just one person, that is considered stalking. If someone kept emailing comments about your wife, how would you feel? Guess how Wade and his family feels.

There were numerous articles written about Lee Harvey Oswald when he killed President Kennedy. Did those articles constitute “stalking” in your view, Anonymous?

The 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate is the biggest act of financial fraud in U.S. history. There are now millions of people unemployed as a result of the Buy-and-Hold Crisis, a crisis that never would have taken place had Motley Fool honored its promises to us and banned John Greaney when he put forward his first death threat. The American people need to know the true reason why we are in an economic crisis. The American people need to know the true reason why so many are in the process of suffering failed retirements. Wade’s decision to sign up with you Goons is a matter of great public policy import.

No, I don’t think Wade’s family likes the idea of people knowing about the bad stuff he has done. His family doesn’t want him going to prison.

But how about the families of you Goons? Does your family want you going to prison? Does Greaney’s family want him going to prison? Does Linduaer’s family want him going to prison? Does Bogle’s family want him going to prison?

How about all the Goons to be? Every day, there are financial bloggers faced with the choice of permitting honest posting on their blogs or participating in this grand act of financial fraud and being sent to prison following the next price crash. Do the families of those people matter too?

I say they matter. The more people who learn about how you threatened Wade and about how he agreed to stop publishing honest research in return for you not acting on the threats, the sooner we bring this economic crisis to an end. The sooner we bring this economic crisis to an end, the fewer people end up going to prison. Sound good?

I am fair to Wade. I point out that the peer-reviewed research that we prepared together is Nobel prize-worthy stuff. That is obviously to Wade’s credit. I point out that he expressed contempt for you Goon on numerous occasions in the days before you threatened to get him fired from his job for the “crime” of publishing honest research and he saw from Jack Bogle’s lack of response that the Wall Street Con Men intended to hang him out to dry if he didn’t get with the program. I point out that he has financial responsibility for two small children and that that would influence anyone placed in similar circumstances. I point out that he was the first expert in this field to work up the courage to send an e-mail to the authors of the Trinity study seeking a correction in the errors in their study. I have done right by my good friend Wade.

But I have ALSO done right by those future potential Goons. I believe that following the next price crash we are going to find people of heart and courage who will stand up to you long-confirmed Goons and who will thereby bring this economic crisis to an end. We have had people die for this country, Anonymous. Do you really think that people who are willing to lay down their lives for this country are not going to be willing to stand up to the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney (and John Bogle?)? Give me a freakin’ break.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I personally believe that Old Saint Jack himself is going to work up the courage to speak up when he sees the vast human wreckage he has caused. The man made a big mistake and has not corrected it despite 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research showing it to be the worst mistake ever made in the history of personal finance. That said, I somehow find it hard to believe that Jack Bogle woke up one morning and said to himself: “I know what I’ll do, I’ll make a mistake that will cause the economic collapse of the United States — Won’t that be fun!” The man is in great emotional pain (as are you Goons). When he sees millions of people living in the Second Great Depression, my bet is that his heart is going to melt and he will give the “I Wa Wrong” speech that we all need to hear for us to join together and begin a rebuilding process. Where will you Goons be then? Where will Wade be?

I am the biggest Wade Pfau fan on the planet. Please recall that, when Wade announced that he would be joining up with you Goons, I sent him an e-mail asking “Are you insane?” Did you do anything like that? If not, I think it would be fair to say that I have been a better friend to Wade than you. Actions speak louder than words, Anonymous.

Wade has a job that comes with responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to be true to his research and his profession and his country. It’s not all about making as much money as you can as fast as you can. There are millions of people today suffering as a result of the 12-year cover-up and Wade’s job is to help those people. His act of joining up with the greatest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States was not a personal act. It was an act that affects all of us. It was an act of great public policy significance. It was a felony under the laws of the United States and the people of the United States need to know about it.

I cannot permit my personal love for Wade stand in the way of reporting this crime no matter how bad it makes me feel personally to do so. If I were to aid the cover-up, I would be going to prison along with you and Wade following the next crash. Huh? How does it makes any sense for the person who discovered the errors in the Old School retirement studies to place himself in circumstances in which he will be going to prison for their cover-up? I mean, come on.

Wade has distanced himself from only one person because there is only one person who has refused in no uncertain terms to participate in the cover-up. I have scores of e-mails in which he praises me to the skies and expressed revulsion at the tactics that have been employed by the Wall Street Con Men and you Goons to continue the cover-up that has cost so many millions of people large portions of their retirement money. The 16 months before you and the Con Men threatened to destroy Wade’s career were the happiest days of his life. I have a funny feeling that he will be feeling a lot better about himself and about his future when he comes clean, whether he ends up going to prison or not. Prison terms eventually come to an end. The feelings inside that comes from betraying your country stick around for a long time. I think it would be fair to say that you and the other Goons could offer powerful testimony re that one, Anonymous.

In any event, I have precisely zero interest in committing any felonies myself. I will continue posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates and re many other critically important investment-related topics. That’s the kindest course of action not only for the millions of middle-class Americans whose lives are in the process of being destroyed by the 12-year cover-up. It is the kindest course of action for you Goons and for the Wall Street Con Men whom you serve.

My best and warmest wishes go out to you, my long-time abusive-posting friend.

Rob

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

Rob

I am curious how you would respond to this article entitled “Forget the 4% Rule” in which Wade is interviewed. He doesn’t seem fearful and is speaking his mind. I realize you probably will delete this as it flies in the face of the elaborately constructed fantasy world in which you live

http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/26/retirement/retirement-income.moneymag/

My hope is that you will see the light and get the mental help you need. I am afraid I must move on . I see no good coming from continuing to follow you.

Best of luck

Trebor

Here are some things that Wade would be talking about in the article if he were not afraid to speak honestly re these matters:

1) Why did it take 10 years for the Wall Street Journal to write about the errors in the Old School studies? I put up my famous post pointing out the errors on the morning of May 13, 2002.

2) Why did the people who devised the methodology for the Old School studies fail to include a valuations adjustment in the first place? What were they thinking?

3) Why were the errors not discovered long before May 13, 2002? There are lots of smart people who work in this field. No one ever checked?

4) Why did investors respond the way they did when the errors were discovered? Many investors supported Greaney when he refused to correct his study. Why? It was their retirement money at stake, was it not?

5) Why did other big names who discovered the error in the studies not use their discovery to promote themselves? Bill Bernstein wrote about the error in his book “The Four Pillars of Investing.” Why didn’t he go on interviews to talk about the error and thereby give his book the publicity it needed to become a best-seller?

6) Why didn’t reports of the errors in the studies go viral? They affect millions of retirees and aspiring retirees.

7) Why didn’t reports of the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the studies go viral? This is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States, is it not?

8) Why didn’t hundreds of bloggers pick up on this? Bloggers want to help their readers and become successful, do they not?

9) Why didn’t the big names in this field and the big institutions (Vanguard, Morningstar, Index Universe, etc.) all contribute funds to get the word out once the errors were discovered as a way of showing the millions of middle-class people whose lives were destroyed by the error that the industry wanted to do all it could to help alleviate the human suffering that they caused?

10) Why has no one yet gone to prison over this?

11) How did Wade learn about the error?

12) How long was it from the time that Wade learned about the error until he first went public with a demand that it be corrected?

13) When Wade contacted the authors of the Trinity study demanding a correction, what was their reaction?

14) Does discovery of the failure to include a valuations adjustment in the Old School retirement studies suggest that the Buy-and-Holders might have produced studies in other areas which also do not include valuations adjustments?

15) Have all the studies been corrected as of today?

16) Have all the people who relied on the studies to plan retirements been compensated for their losses?

17) Is there anyone in the field still pretending that the studies are not in error and yet also still pretending to be an “expert” in investing analysis?

18) Did Wade himself ever fall for the claims in the discredited studies?

19) What has the industry done to insure that nothing like this ever happens again.? Has the peer-review process been reformed?

20) Do people who work in this field feel better about themselves now that they have come clean re the errors in the studies?

21) Are there New School studies that include valuations adjustments to which we could point our readers?

22) How different are the New School numbers from the Old School numbers?

23) Can Wade estimate how many millions of people will suffer failed retirements as a result of the 12-year cover-up?

24) Is Wade able to think of any earlier act of financial fraud that comes close to matching this one?

25) Does Wade not find this entire situation exceedingly odd? Does he think this is all the result of corruption or does he think that cognitive dissonance played a role?

26) Is it only Buy-and-Holders who are responsible for what has happened or could it be that even those who have grave doubts about the legitimacy of the Buy-and-Hold strategy have held back from expressing their sincere views for a long time because they realize how much it would upset those who believe in Buy-and-Hold to learn what the peer-reviewed academic research really says?

27) Wade once said that it would have been nice if the research behind the discredited studies had been corrected when the errors were discovered but that “that’s not how things work” in the investing field during the Buy-and-Hold Era. Does he still believe that today or has he come to regret that statement as he has learned about the millions of failed retirements and the prison sentences for those who have covered up the errors for 12 years now?

28) Does Wade see a need for a national debate on whether Fama or Shiller (twoNobel prize winners who say opposite things about how stock investing works) is right?

29) What are Wade’s true feelings about Rob Bennett? He praised him to the skies during the 16 months that he worked with him. Then, when the Greaney Goons (with the implicit support of John Bogle and other Wall Street Con Men) threatened to destroy his career, his public statements changed dramatically overnight. Why?

30) Other academic researchers and investment advisors have expressed a desire to be able to express their honest views on a wide variety of investing topics. Does Wade think this should be permitted or should the Buy-and-Hold Mafia be permitted to continue to corrupt all work done in the field of investing analysis because coming clean would undermine support for the long-discredted Buy-and-Hold strategy that has made all the Big Shots in this field so much money over the 33 years since the error in its foundational belief was discovered?

Wade seems very, very, very, very, very afraid to my eyes, Trebor.

So do you.

My best wishes to both Wade and you and the millions of middle-class people whose lives are in the process of being destroyed. I care about all of you and will continue doing all I can to help ALL of you out (NOT just Wade and you and NOT just the millions of middle-class people whose lives have been destroyed).

Rob

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

Rob,

A community resource is some that is part of shared services, like a park. When you buy stock, you are taking ownership in a piece of a company. It isNOT open for consumption by the community at large. Instead, it is solely for the owners.

The last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research produced KNOWLEDGE.

There are millions of people who are investing in stocks to finance their retirements and need access to that KNOWLEDGE to do so effectively.

When the Wall Street Con Men deny those millions access to the KNOWLEDGE they need, they destroy our ECONOMIC SYSTEM. We all have a vested interest in seeing that that ECONOMIC SYSTEM not be destroyed.

The ECONOMIC SYSTEM and the KNOWLEDGE produced by the academic research are community resources.

The Wall Street Con Men make a buck by destroying these community resources. These community resources do not belong to them. They have no right to destroy these community resources for their personal profit. We have adopted LAWS to protect us from this sort of behavior. These LAWS call for prison time for those who commit massive acts of financial fraud.

There are RESPONSIBILITIES that go with offering investing advice. It is not just about turning a buck by telling any lie that will get the marks to turn over their life savings.

My sincere take.

Rob