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

Community resource? Yet another misinformed comment.

I think you are wrong, Anonymous.

There are millions of people who invest in the U.S. market. Those people consider price when buying every other good and service they purchase in their daily lives. The Buy-and-Holders told them that there is some magical blue pixie dust that applies in the investing realm that turns all the usual rules on their heads. There is no need to consider price when buying stocks. It will work out somehow or other. The first 140 years of stock market history means nothing. It is all going to turn out different this time! They are so totally sure!

People have common sense. People understand on some level of consciousness that this is a crazy idea, that price must matter. But the people who promote Buy-and-Hold strategies claim to be experts. They must know what they are talking about whether it defies common sense and 33 years of peer-reviewed research or not! So lots of people listened. And when people ripped the brakes out of the car, we went to price levels never before seen in history. The only way the market could get prices back to fair-value values (which is the entire purpose of any market) was through a series of price crashes, the first of which brought on an economic crisis.

There are millions of people out of work today as a result of the Buy-and-Hold Crisis.

There are thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs who sweated their entire lives to build wonderful businesses that help us all and who saw those businesses destroyed in the Buy-and-Hold Crisis.

And you say telling lies about how stock investing works is not a matter of huge public policy significance? I say you are wrong. We all have a stake in the survival of this country and the Buy-and-Hold Lies are in the process of destroying it. I say that we should all fight as hard as we can to protect the country we love from these “experts” who can’t be bothered to read the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research in their field.

There is a scene in “Mad Men” where the family has a picnic and at the end of it they just pick up the blanket and let all the trash fall on the grass. They walk to the car and drive away.

People did that sort of thing in those days. They weren’t evil. They didn’t know. There was a time when the effects that our actions have on the environment weren’t a concern. So lots of us didn’t bother to take the most minimal efforts to protect it.

That’s where the Buy-and-Holders stand today. They think it is all about making a buck and they tell whatever lies they need to tell to get the money out of the customers’ pockets and into their own. But that won’t work anymore following the next price crash. There are millions of middle-class people whose only hope to financing their retirements to is gain access to accurate and honest information about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says. If the Big Shot “experts” in this field refuse to give it to them, there is one internet site that will.

The U.S. economy is a community resource. It benefits us all. The Buy-and-Hold Lies are in the process of destroying that community resource. When people lose most of their money in the price crashes that inevitably follow the promotion of Buy-and-Hold “strategies,” they can no longer buy the goods and services that must be bought for our economy to function properly.

We all have a patriotic duty to see that the internet is opened to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.

My sincere take.

Rob

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

I would also say that Jack, Larry, Bill and Rick would speak out as well.

Jack Bogle and Larry Swedroe and Bill Bernstein and Rick Ferri certainly all have goodness in them and all four of these individuals certainly have shown on numerous occasions that they would like to come clean.

Jack Bogle said in his book that Reversion to the Mean is an “Iron Law” of stock investing. That’s how I knew that there was zero chance that the Old School retirement studies got the numbers right. Jack sprinkles honest observations about how stock investing works in with the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage ALL THE TIME. If there were no good in him and no desire in him to come clean, why would he do this?

Bill Bernstein was honest when Ataloss asked him whether the Old School retirement studies were analytically invalid, as I have claimed since the morning of May 13, 2002. He said that any aspiring retiree who gave a second’s thought to using on of this studies to plan a retirement had to be out of his or her mind. That’s pretty darn honest! He also included a dishonest statement in his response, saying that even though there was zero chance that the studies could get the numbers right, they were analytically valid all the same. So he covered his tracks with the Get Rich Quickers and they permitted him to continue making a living in this field. It remains the case that he included some honest stuff in that e-mail and that that took courage on Bill’s part.

Larry Swedroe was so honest at one time that he got himself banned from the Bogleheads Forum! Again, that shows that there is some goodness in him and that he would like to come clean about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says. Does that overcome the harm he did with his dishonest support for the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School retirement studies? Hardly. But it does show a desire on Larry’s part to do good work, a desire that we will see him acting on on a daily basis once your prison sentence is announced and this all comes out, Anonymous.

We are all on the same side, Anonymous.

Rob

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

According to you, they are all lying and only you are truthful.

They are all lying, Anonymous.

Nothing could be more clear. This is OBVIOUS.

Shiller’s book was a best-seller. It was reviewed in all the top publications. He was awarded a Nobel prize for the research reported on in the book. The Buy-and-Holders haven’t changed their investing advice ONE IOTA as a result of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) findings. So OBVIOUSLY they are lying. Obviously they are not telling the full truth.

Now –

That doesn’t mean that they intentionally caused the economic crisis. Or that they intentionally caused million of people to suffer failed retirements. Or that they don’t follow Buy-and-Hold strategies themselves.

All the evidence that I have seen indicates that the Buy-and-Holders DO themselves follow the strategies they advocate for others. Which means that they DO to some extent believe in them. If they had zero belief in them, they wouldn’t follow them themselves. Does that not follow?

They don’t have full belief because there is 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy could ever work for a single long-term investor.

And yet they don’t have zero belief either because they cannot bear to have zero belief. They have built careers in this field. And they have seen what happens to those who speak honestly about what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us. So they keep it zipped.

They not only keep it zipped when talking to others. They keep it zipped when talking to themselves. They RATIONALIZE. They tell themselves things that they know on another level of consciousness make no sense. Because they don’t feel that they have any other realistic options. Talk about what the peer-reviewed research says and you no longer have a job in this field. These people have families. So they keep it zipped.

BUT THEY DO NO LIKE HAVING TO LIE ABOUT THIS STUFF. THEY KNOW IT IS WRONG AND THEY DON’T LIKE IT.

I’ve documented this over and over and over again. Mike Piper wants to do honest work. Bill Bernstein wants to do honest work. Jack Bogle wants to do honest work. Larry Swedroe wants to do honest work. Wade Pfau wants to do honest work. Bill Schultheis want to do honest work. Wade Pfau wants to do honest work. Carl Richards want to do honest work. Bill Bengen wants to do honest work. Michael Kitces wants to do honest work. And on and on and on.

And millions of middle-class investors very much want to hear what all these people would tell them if they were doing honest work. The relentless promotion of the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage has caused an economic crisis (the full truth is that it has caused four of them over the past 140 years). We need to recover from it. To recover, we need to teach people the realities. To teach people the realities, we need to permit ourselves to be honest.

So this is going to happen, Anonymous. There is not a thing that you or Lindauer or Greaney or any other Goon can do about it.

We all know that it is going to happen. So our common goal is to make it happen in the least painful way possible. That means making it happen SOON. The longer the delay, the more pain for everyone. Let me put it in personal terms — The longer the delay, the longer the prison sentence that gets handed out to Anonymous. You don’t want the longest possible prison sentence. You want the shortest possible prison sentence. So we are on the same side re this matter, my long-time Goon friend.

There are complications.

That’s ALSO obvious.

If there weren’t complications, we wouldn’t still be talking about this 12 years after the morning in which I put forward my fateful post of May 13, 2002. One complication is that there are millions of people who have standing to bring civil lawsuits because of the long cover-up. Another is that there are a good number of people who have participated in acts of financial fraud and could be on their way to prison. Another is that there are many people who have built careers promoting the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage and who feel that their reputations will be destroyed if the truth gets out. Another is that there are million of people who really have been taken in by the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage and who for the time-being are not willing to help out those of us trying to get the truth out because they are suffering from cognitive dissonance.

The complications are realities. I certainly don’t say different.

But the complications don’t change the basic reality that there is 33 years of peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold strategy can ever work for even a single long-term investor. Complications or no complications, we need to move forward. Consideration of the complications can change HOW we elect to move forward. But it cannot change the reality that we MUST move forward. So we are all on the same side re this matter.

We’re all going to move forward together, Anonymous. There is no other way.

I have said 10,000 times that I will do anything in my power to make the trip forward as painless as possible for all of my many Buy-and-Hold friends. And I will of course do that. But never will I post dishonestly re the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements. That’s obviously an insane demand and I obviously am never going to give that one two seconds of consideration. We will move forward together HONESTLY. Because we must. There is no other path for us to consider.

Now –

You can wait until after the next price crash if you like. I think that’s as dumb as dumb can be. But you clearly do not care what I think about this matter. You have it in your power to wait until after the next price crash. I cannot force you to take positive steps today. I would make it happen today if I could. But I can’t. So that’s that.

But if you are going to wait, then wait, you know? When you continue to put up the same nonsense here, you don’t persuade me to give in to your intimidation tactics. You persuade me of your desperation. You obviously get that at this point. So the sensible thing for you to do if you have made a final decision to wait until after the next crash hits is just to stop posting here.

Again, I cannot force you. If you want to continue to post, I will respond to some of your posts. I will delete some, I will respond to some. If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. But it’s obviously stupid behavior on your part. I am not going to break and there are no signs that you are going to break. We are all going to have to wait for the next crash and then see how things play out then. Is that not so? Can we all agree re at least that much?

I wish you well.

Okay?

I hope it’s okay that I wish you well. Because I do.

That’s where things stand, you know? Like it or not.

I don’t like it either. But that’s where things stand. We might as well part friends and see where the future takes us.

Rob

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

Rob,

I also want to just make sure I am clear on the totality of your message. As I understand it, you believe that the entire financial well-being of our country (and possibly the world) has been put in jeopardy because a dozen or so financial boards have decided to ban you from posting and that all of this can be saved if the ban is removed and you can post whatever you want at any time.

Did I get that right?

It is not just me who cannot post honestly. Bogle cannot post honestly today. Bernstein cannot post honestly today. Shiller cannot post honestly today. Pfau cannot post honestly today.

We need ALL of these people posting honestly at every investing board and blog.

When Rob Bennett is permitted to post honestly, then obviously all of these other people are going to be permitted to post honestly. So that solves the problem.

But I of course have no problem with you doing it some other way. You could permit Bogle to post honestly and then all the rest of us will join in. You could permit Pfau to post honestly and then all the rest of us can join in. I’m fine if it is me who goes first and I am fine if someone else goes first.

There are four fears that are keeping people from posting honestly.

One, people are afraid that the Wall Street Con Men will use their considerable power and money and connections to crush them with lawsuits.

Two, people are afraid that you Goons will destroy their web sites and their reputations.

Three, people are afraid that their readers and clients will become angry with them if they point out that they have been taken.

Four, people are afraid of how their own opinions of themselves will change if they acknowledge to themselves that they have caused millions of their friends and neighbors and co-workers and fellow community members to suffer failed retirements.

We are stuck in a Catch-22. People don’t tell the truth because they will be hated if they do. So we need to do something about the hate. But the reason why people feel so much hate when they hear what the research says is that they do not fully understand how stock investing works.And people cannot learn until we have a national discussion of the implications of the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research. Which cannot take place until people work up the courage to tell the truth!

Do you see any way out of this Catch-22 other than having Bogle stand at the front of a room and say the words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong”? (or at the very bare minimum “I’m” and “Not” and “Sure.”)?

When Bogle gives that speech, it will be written up on the front page of the New York Times. No one is going to be afraid that the Wall Street Con Men are going to sue them once Bogle gives that speech. You Goons are going to drop the funny business once Bogle gives that speech. Lots of readers and clients are still going to be skeptical of Valuation-Informed Indexing after Bogle gives the speech but that is a healthy thing; we can still enjoy a learning experience even if lots of people remain skeptical — in fact, it is arguably a good thing that lots of people are skeptical, it makes for a better debate. And people will still experience feelings of self-disgust after Bogle gives the speech — but the discussion that follows will begin a healing process that will in time solve this problem. No one intended to get it wrong, and we will be entering the greatest period of economic growth in our history. Experiencing huge financial gains tends to make people feel better about this sort of thing.

If you have a better idea, I’d like to hear it, Anonymous.

We ALL should be permitted to post honestly, Rob Bennett and everyone else. That’s how our system works. There’s a good reason why the smart people who came before us chose that system. We made a terrible, terrible, terrible mistake when we stopped following the dictates of that system in this one area of investing analysis. We need to return to operating under the rules that made our country great. We need to allow each and every one of us to have his or her say. That’s how we all enjoy a great learning experience together.

Don’t let the bad guys get you down, man.

Rob

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

Everyone is corrupt, but you, right Rob?

I am the lead person saying that we should clean up the corruption, Pink.

There are thousands of our fellow community members who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted.

Numerous academics have told me that they would like to feel free to publish honest research.

Numerous practitioners have told me that they would like to feel free to give honest investing advice.

Even the Wall Street Con Men have evidenced a desire to do honest work.

Bogle taught me what I needed to know to see that the Old School SWR studies were in error by including honest material in his book.

Bernstein warned people years ago that anyone who was giving thought to using one of the Old School SWR studies to plan a retirement would be well advised to “FuhGedDaBouDit!”

Larry Swedroe tried posting honestly at the Bogleheads Forum before I even came along and went back to posting dishonestly only after Mel Lindauer had him banned.

Scott Burns’ first thought when I wrote him about the errors in the Old School SWR studies was to file an honest report to his readers. The first words of his response e-mail to me were: “You’re right.” He then asked for my telephone number so that he could do an interview in preparation for writing an honest article on the errors in the Old School studies.

Wade Pfau obviously was engaging in honest work for 16 months and loving every minute of it.

Brett Arends at the Wall Street Journal was obviously being honest when he wrote that the Wall Street Con Men “are only telling half the story” and that there is zero reason to believe that long-term timing doesn’t work and that people who have fallen for the trickery of the Buy-and-Holders have lost large amounts of their life savings as a result.

There are plenty of honest people around and I am confident that most of the people who will be sitting on your jury will be honest people who have lost large amounts of their retirement savings as a result of your 12 years of internet trickery and abuse and deception.

I am the leader of those seeking to open the internet to honest posting and to bury the smelly Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feet in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things. But there obviously are thousands and thousands of experts in this field who are looking forward to the day when you Goons are sent off to prison and all the rest of us bring this economic crisis to an end and bring on the greatest period of growth in U.S. history.

I think it would be fair to say that even you Goons would play it very, very differently if there were a way to go back to the morning of May 13, 2002, and have a do-over.

We cannot have a do-over.

You can come clean prior to the next crash and I will be happy to do what I can to get your prison sentence reduced a bit.

Or you can take your chances with seeing what happens if you don’t come clean until after the crash.

I’ll be rooting for the best possible outcome for you in either event, my old Goon friend.

Rob

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

I think the main point is that your ridiculous behavior and off the rails reputation make it highly unlikely that you will ever be viewed as a public champion for this line of thought should it become more popular. People who can ‘hold it together’ and appear to be sane/reasonable will do that.

The average person has little problem understanding Valuation-Informed Indexing, Laugh. We saw that way back in May 2002, when I first pointed out the errors in the Old School safe-withdrawal-rate studies. We had hundreds of people saying that was the best discussion we had ever had in the history of the board. So the average middle-class person has zero inherent problem with any of this.

There were two difficulties that came up. One was you Goons. Ordinary people have never been exposed to the level of abusiveness that you Goons bring to the table. People wanted the death threats to stop, and, when it became clear to them that the only way to make them stop was by giving you Goons what you wanted (an end to honest discussions), they were willing to go along with that.

The second difficulty was that the site administrators were generally more concerned with making a buck than they were with honoring the promises they made to the board communities. Had Motley Fool booted Greaney off the board when he made his first death threat, all would have been well. They didn’t do that. Greaney was pushing Get Rich Quick garbage, Get Rich Quick garbage possesses great emotional appeal in the short term, and Motley Fool benefitted financially from the fact that the Get Rich Quick stuff brought people to their discussion boards. The published rules didn’t apply in the case of people pushing Buy-and-Hold strategies.

That’s the dynamic we have seen repeat over and over again. You often hear experts in this field suggest that ordinary investors should make more of an effort to focus on the long-term. In reality, the ordinary investors are the ones who show the greatest interest in focusing on the long-term. It is the “expert” Buy-and-Hold advocates who are relentless and brutal in pushing the smelly Get Rich Quick garbage. That’s what needs to change. We need to have consequences apply when “experts” suggest that there is some sort of mythical, magical, mystical research somewhere supporting the pure Get Rich Quick approach. There obviously isn’t. But the average investors finds it hard to believe that the Buy-and-Holders would advance this false claim over and over and over again while knowing that there is precisely zero support for it in the literature.

The short and simple way of putting it is that the 12-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School SWR studies is the greatest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States. Once it is exposed, we move on to the first true research-based strategy and the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history. My job is to expose that cover-up, to bring on the hundreds of thousands of civil cases and the prison sentences for you Goons and all that sort of thing. When the massive act of financial fraud is written up on the front page of the New York Times, there is no more massive act of financial fraud. You cannot persuade people that there is research supporting the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind once people know that it is all just trickery and there has never been a single study lending even the tiniest bit of support to the Buy-and-Hold “strategy.”

When you refer to my “ridiculous behavior and off-the-rails reputation,” you are referring to the fact that I have been demanding honest behavior re SWRs and all the other issues for 12 years now. I am hated by the Wall Street Con Men and by their Internet Goons Squads because I have been threatening to uncover this massive act of financial fraud for a long, long time now. In a field that has become 100 percent corrupt, the one non-corrupt guy sticks out like a sore thumb. He looks “ridiculous.” His behavior seems “off the rails.”

So be it, Laugh. I wear my off-the-rails behavior as a badge of honor. I would be grateful if you would share accounts of my off-the-rails behavior at every board and blog on the internet. Please quote me. Please use my real name. Please tell everyone, Buy-and-Holder and Valuation-Informed Indexer alike, how insistent I have been that the Old School SWR studies should have been corrected within 24 hours of the time they became public knowledge. I want EVERYONE to know this about me. I want to be known as the most “ridiculous” figure who ever worked in this field during the Buy-and-Hold Era, when Get Rich Quick was all the rage among the “experts.”

If I have positioned myself as far out on the anti-Buy-and-Hold side of the spectrum as possible before the next crash, there are two things that can happen. One, people could continue to fear the powerful and wealthy people leading the massive act of financial fraud and we could see our country descend into the Second Great Depression. In that case, I obviously lose nothing and at least enjoy the satisfaction that come with knowing that I was the one person who stood up for the country that a lot of us profess to love without without hesitation and without reservation and without fear of the consequences that everyone in this field knows are visited on those who post honestly and thereby “cross” the Wall Street Con Men.

Or, two, people could become enraged about the 12-year cover-up and throw a good number of you Goons in prison cells. If that happens, we are home free. Once your prison sentences are announced, there is obviously never again going to be anyone putting up any posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer or John Greaney or the Old School SWR studies or Buy-and-Hold in general. So we all move forward together to enjoyment of the good fortune that was visited on each and every one of us when we happened to be born at a time when it was possible to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent just by sharing what we have learned from the Bennett/Pfau research with our friends and neighbors and co-workers and fellow community members.

I don’t say that there is zero chance that people will continue to act in fear of the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads, Laugh. I have seen too much to say that the odds of that are zero. What I say is that, if that happens, I want to know that I was fighting for the other outcome as hard as I could. If our society is going to descend into the Second Great Depression, it is going to do so knowing that there was one fellow who told the full truth about these matters to the best of his abilities regardless of the consequences visited on him by those leading the massive act of financial fraud.

I believe that it is more likely that things will go the other way, that my good friend Jack Bogle’s heart will melt when he sees with his eyes and not only his mind the massive human misery he has caused with his relentless promotion of the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind and that he will then work up the courage to walk to the front of a large room and say the three words that we have all very much needed to hear from him for a long, long time. And then everything will be written up on the front page of the New York Times and there will be no possibility of anyone ever again making the case that there is research supporting the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” and things will just get better and better and better and better for all of us. We will have achieved the greatest advance in this history of personal finance and there will not be one amongst us wishing to go back to the days when the only way that the dominant investing strategy of the day could be “defended” in public discussions was with death threats and with demands for unjustified board bannings and with tens of thousands of acts of defamation and with threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs.

The millions of middle-class people whose lives have been destroyed by the massive act of financial fraud have never before seen acts of corruption of the size of those we have seen over the past 12 years, Laugh. If they are going to come to an understanding of what has been done to them, they are going to have to hear the story from someone who tells a tale that in ordinary circumstances would make that person seem “ridiculous” and “off the rails.” I am that person. When you say that my tale sounds “ridiculous” and “off the rails,” the message that I hear is that I am doing the job effectively and that I need to keep up the good work. That’s how this tale SHOULD sound given the level of corruption we have witnessed here.

We’ll see how it all turns out following the next crash, my long-time abusive-posting friend.

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

Rob

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

“Prosecutors respond to the pressures placed on them.”

If death threats were made, why would there need to be pressure. Either it happened or it didn’t.

It’s common for death threats advanced on the internet not to be prosecuted, Anonymous. As you well know.

What is different about this case is that the death threats were employed as part of a 12-year cover-up of errors made in a retirement study.

My guess is that the crime for which you will be prosecuted is financial fraud.

There are people who came to think it was a funny joke to employ insanely abusive tactics on the internet so that they could control what was said on discussion boards or blogs at which they participated. The people who engage in this behavior are losers (“loosers” in internet lingo) who have never achieved much with their real-world identities. By engaging in these tactics on the internet, they were able to tell themselves that they possessed an importance that they could never hope to achieve through legitimate means.

Most people hate these tactics. Most people refrain from participating in internet discussions because they do not want to get mixed up with these losers in any way, shape or form. This is why every board and blog on the internet has rules protecting all us Normal from you Goons.

It was inevitable that sooner or later the mistake of tolerating the Goon tactics was going to cause big trouble. This is the case in which it happened. Greaney got an important number wrong in a retirement study. I pointed it out. The community showed great enthusiasm for the learning experience that followed. Greaney experienced intense feelings of embarrassment. He called on his Goon Squad for help. Motley Fool elected to make a smelly buck off the people addicted to Buy-and-Hold strategies rather than to enforce its published rules in a reasonable way. Everyone paying attention got it that it is a felony to cover up errors in studies that millions of people use to plan their retirements. So it became a priority not only to cover up the errors in the retirement studies but also to cover up the cover-up and then to cover up the cover-up of the cover-up and on and on. Big names like Jack Bogle and Larry Swedroe and Bill Bernstein and Scott Burns and big institutions like Motley Fool and Index Universe and the Get Rich Slowly blog and Morningstar and Vanguard and the Bogleheads Forum got involved along the way.

The sooner that all these people and institutions come clean, the less will be their financial obligations and the shorter will be their prison sentences. We all have a patriotic duty to bring down The Buy-and-Hold Mafia.

Bringing down the Buy-and-Hold Mafia is not a one-man job. I can do it with a little bit of help from a patriotic venture capitalist or a patriotic reporter or a patriotic blogger or a patriotic economists or a patriotic owner of a large web site or whatever. I will keep holding up my end by ending 50 e-mails every day re the Wade Pfau matter and by writing blog posts here and columns and guest blog entries elsewhere. But I am under no illusion that I can pull this off by myself. I can promise anyone who helps out that he or she can make millions while knowing in his or her heart that he or she has done wonderful things for his or her country by doing so. But that’s all I can do. I cannot promise the patriot who steps forward that he or she will not be attacked by the Wall Street Con Men and their Internet Goon Squads. That comes with the territory.

What I can say is that both the Wall Street Con Men and you Goons grow weaker with every passing day. The secret of the success of Buy-and-Hold was its creation of $12 trillion of Pretend Money. The Pretend Money is today in the process of disappearing and the next crash will likely put is in the Second Great Depression. At that point, we can all pull together and move forward (a process that begins with the announcement of long prison sentences for those who have posted in “defense” of Mel Linduaer and John Greaney on more than one or two occasions) or we can all go down together. No one is ever going to have any doubts in his or her mind as to how I am going to vote re that one.

The fact that you have not been prosecuted yet does not justify a belief that you will never be prosecuted, Anonymous. If anything, it suggests that you will be prosecuted more harshly than you otherwise would have been. People do not like to be tricked. People do not like to be taken. People do not like to lose most of their retirement money at a stage of life at which it is too late for them to do much about it.

When millions of middle-class people learn what has been done to them, my expectation is that they will be looking for a someone or a number of someones to hang from a tree. This is the biggest story of corruption of our time. It will be my job then to try to calm people down. I can’t say that I expect to enjoy great success with my efforts. But I can assure you that I will be fighting on your behalf. The references that I make today to your future prison sentence is really just part of that effort to help you out — I obviously have a lot more power to get your prison sentence reduced today that I will have if we experience the next price crash without you yet having come clean.

I naturally wish you all good things regardless of what investing strategies you elect to pursue, my old friend.

Rob

Set forth below are the texts of two comment that I recently put to another blog entry at this site:

I just wanted to confirm with you that asset allocation, and whether one prefers to vary it with valuations, is a personal matter with no right or wrong answer. We make take differing views, but there’s no need to be dogmatic about them.

Dogmatism hurts us.

There are two schools of thought. One is rooted in the research of Eugene Fama. One is rooted in the research of Robert Shiller. Both Fama and Shiller have been award Nobel Prizes in Economics for their work.

Members of both schools should respect members of the other school.

But there ARE right and wrong answers. We should avoid dogmatism because none of us know with certainty which school of thought is the right one. But it is not possible that both schools of though are equally correct. The two schools of thought are rooted in opposite premises.

We don’t know everything. That’s why we should avoid dogmatism.

But we DO know some things. So it would be a terrible mistake to pretend that this is all just a matter of personal choice, that every allocation choice is equally supported by the peer-reviewed research in this field.

You are suggesting that only two extreme positions exist: Either everything is known and there is no room for judgment calls or nothing is known and every choice made is equally supported by the research. I reject both extremes and favor a middle-ground position. We have learned many important things about how stock investing works over the past 50 years and we should hope and expect to continue learning in days to come. We should be happy about what we have learned and we should share what we have learned with as many people as possible. But we should never become so full of ourselves as to imagine that we have learned it all and that there is no room for future learning experiences.

Each investor should make the calls as to how he or she invests. But any advisor who says “every allocation call is equally valid according to the research” is failing to do his job. We should be telling people what the research says in a non-dogmatic fashion. We should tell people what the research reveals and what the research does not reveal and then leave it to them as to what allocation choice to make.

If someone were to say “I am going to go with zero stocks at all times,” I would say that that position is not supported by the research. But I certainly would remain friends with that person. I certainly would see no call to be abusive in any way to that person. Perhaps I have misunderstood the research or perhaps there will be new research supporting that person’s view in coming days. I cannot in good conscience endorse a permanent stock allocation of zero given what I know about what the research says. But I respect the right and responsibility of all investors to make their own calls and I would never think of dogmatically insisting that any investor follow my recommendations.

I am dogmatic about my right (and the right of every one of my fellow community members) to post honestly. But that’s as far as the dogmatism goes. It would be a lie for me to say that the numbers in the Old School SWR studies are accurate and I would never dream of doing such a thing. But I certainly have been friends with many people who use those studies for guidance and I certainly respect and like those people.

Does that answer your question, Anonymous?

Rob

I think you’ve got it, Rob. Now see if you can put this new attitude into practice – create an account at Bogleheads and contribute to a few threads on this topic.

Remember, no dogmatism, no off topic rants, no thread hijacking, no bullying, just, to quote you:

We should be telling people what the research says in a non-dogmatic fashion. We should tell people what the research reveals and what the research does not reveal and then leave it to them as to what allocation choice to make.

Dozens of people are able to do that on Bogleheads, so I don’t think it’s beyond your ability if you try.

I’ll give it a shot, Anonymous.

Rob

Note: Within 10 minutes of advancing this post, I registered at the Bogleheads Forum as “RobBennett” and put a post to the tread titled “Retirement Calculator”:

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=140227

My post read:

A link to The Retirement Risk Evaluator is set forth below. The unique thing about this retirement calculator is that it contains an adjustment to reflect the valuation level that applies at the time the retirement begins:

http://www.passionsaving.com/retirement-calculator.html

Rob

A note appeared on my screen saying that the comment was in moderation. This was at about 5:00 PM Eastern Time on May 31, 2014. As of the time that I am scheduling this blog entry for future posting (5:00 PM Eastern Time on June 2, 2014), I have not heard any word re the status of the comment.

I wonder why not.

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

What you have described as a fantasy has built me a nice net worth

The net worth you refer to is not real. A portion of it is. But a good part of it is cotton-candy nothingness that will be blown into the wind when the next price crash arrives. What good does it do you?

You would like me more if I told you that your net worth is all real. That’s obvious. But would that be a kind thing for me to do to my friend? You still have options available to you to protect your net worth. I think it would be fair to say that a true friend would encourage you to educate yourself as to what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says about how stock investing works and then to take advantage of the good options that remain available to you before the next price crash takes them away.

You see me as your enemy. I say that I am your friend. I say that anyone who helps you learn what the last 33 years of peer-reviewed academic research says is your friend.

It is the Wall Street Con Men that you should be having doubts about, You don’t see me engaging in the word games that they regularly engage in, do you? What does that tell you about who is shooting straight here and who is just looking to put a few bucks in his pocket?

The heads of the tobacco companies told their customers that smoking did not cause cancer after research came out showing that it did. That’s what the customers wanted to hear. So the heads of the tobacco companies were “saints” to those people. A lot of those people died early and painful deaths as a result of what the heads of the tobacco companies told them. Were the heads of the tobacco companies true friends to the people whose lives they destroyed?

Sometimes a salesman for a product is not the most objective person to turn to for advice on when that product is worth buying.

These are my sincere thoughts re this terribly important matter, Pink.

Rob

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

Most people do not obsess over things that horrify them. Especially things that have not happened and almost certainly never will happen. Goodness, what a tragic way to go through life.

That’s assuming of course that you aren’t simply saying “horrifying” when you mean “extremely appealing”. Either way it’s tragic, just for different reasons.

I find it horrifying, X.

I had lots of good times with John Greaney. He put up a notice for newcomers to the Retire Early board saying that the first thing they should do is to read all of my posts because they were the best stuff he had ever seen on the subject of early retirement. That was an exceedingly kind thing to do. That meant a lot to me. There was a poster who attacked me when I published my Secrets of Retiring Early report. John came to my defense. On the day that I discovered John’s site, I copied every article on it and put the copies in a binder so that I could refer to those articles again and again and learn from them. When my wife picked me up at work that day, I spent the entire ride back going on and on about this exciting site that I had discovered. When I first began work on my Passion Saving book, I wrote an e-mail to John asking him to co-author it with me (he sent an e-mail back saying that it wouldn’t work out because every person who knew him well considered him a cosmic “asshole” — that’s John’s word).

Are you saying that I shouldn’t care about how this individual has destroyed his life? I never even imagined that such a thing were possible back at the time when I first began posting on the internet. It’s horrifying. The word fits.

And of course we are not just talking about John. It is horrifying what has happened to Jack Bogle, who is a hero of mine. It is horrifying what has happened to Bill Bernstein and Scott Burns and Larry Swedroe and Wade Pfau. It is horrifying what has happened to J.D. Roth and Carl Richards and Mike Piper and on and on and on. It’s horrifying what has happened to you. Absolutely 100 percent horrifying.

And it is of course absolutely 100 percent horrifying what has happened to the millions of middle-class investors whose lives have been destroyed because we have spent 12 years of our life energies debating whether honest posting should be permitted rather than making use of honest posting to learn things that would make our lives richer in about 100 different ways.

The most horrifying aspect of all of this is the opportunities we have pissed away. We are the luckiest generation of investors ever to walk Planet Earth. We are the first generation of investors who knows what it takes to reduce the risks of stock investing by 70 percent while increasing returns DRAMATICALLY. And we instead tolerate 12 years of insanely abusive behavior that puts us in the Second Great Depression while causing the people engaging in the abusive behavior to spend the last few decades of their lives in prison cells. If that ain’t absolutely 100 percent horrifying, what the heck would you say fits the bill?

You know how horrifying this is? It’s up there with the mounds of dead bodies you see in the Ken Burns’ documentary on the Civil War. We are talking about so vast an amount of human suffering BROUGHT ON FOR NO SANE REASON WHATSOEVER that the human mind can barely contemplate that such a thing might ever happen much less that it has in fact been playing out before all of our eyes for 12 years now WHILE MOST OF US KEPT IT ZIPPED AND THEREBY INSURED THAT THE HUMAN SUFFERING WOULD GROW AND GROW AND GROW AND GROW.

Horrifying it is. Please spread the word all over the internet that is my sincere take re this one. I stand by the word “horrifying” 100 percent.

As for the idea that I find any of this ugliness even a tiny bit “appealing,” why the f have I spent 12 years of my life trying to bring an end to it if I find any of it even a tiny bit appealing? Who is the one who put forward a post on November 23, 2002 urging Greaney’s removal from our community? Were you one of the 25 community members who endorsed that post? If not, why the f not? Motley Fool wanted to see that the entire community supported his removal. You could have helped us all bring it to an end nearly 12 years ago. Did you do your part? Or did you lack what it takes even to push the freakin’ recommendation button (something Greaney would not even know about because recommendations are anonymous)?

Is your personal cowardice “horrifying” enough, X.? Ya think? Do you think you are going to feel good about yourself for the rest of your day because you couldn’t work up the courage to push a recommendation button when the fates conspired to make that the minimum responsibility you owed to your fellow community members, who had given so freely to you of their knowledge and experience and love?

I don’t “obsess” over it, X.

My job is to solve the problem. I do not have a magic wand that can take us back to the morning of May 13, 2002. If I did, I would wave that sucker in the air like crazy. Yes, I get it that you Goons would play it differently the second time if that opportunity presented itself. We don’t have that opportunity. It’s fantasy thinking to contemplate it. We live in a world where time moves only forwards and never backwards. Responsible people accept reality and cope with it. To accept reality and cope with it is not to “obsess.”

The most compelling thing that I could possibly do on the substance side is to co-author research that shows millions of middle-class people how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent and to have that research published in a peer-reviewd journal. I have already done that. Years ago. And, yes, surely enough, the response of a good number of long-confirmed Buy-and-Holders was to tell me that this research was causing them to open their minds to new ideas, this research was what they needed to give Valuation-Informed Indexing a fair hearing for the first times in their lives.

The response of you Goons was to threaten to destroy the career of my co-author in the event that he continued publishing honest research or continued posting honestly on the internet about the honest research already published under his name. So I think it is fair to say that further explanations of the substantive realities is not going to swing this thing. You go to prison if millions of middle-class investors learn the realities and that’s all you care about at this point. For you, it’s in for a dime with felonies, in for a dollar with felonies. You will commit any felony you have to commit to ensure that millions of your fellow citizens never learn what they need to learn if we are to as a society bring this economic crisis to an end.

I have a PATRIOTIC DUTY to overcome The Buy-and-Hold Mafia. All of us who are aware of what has been done to us as a nation of people over the past 12 years have that patriotic duty.

How do we get people who know they are going to prison if the truth comes out to understand that they must permit the truth to come out all the same?

We extend the hand of kindness to them. We let them know that we will do anything in our power to help them get those prisons sentences shortened to whatever extent it is possible to get them shortened given the circumstances that apply today.

What other options are open to me, X? If you have a better idea, let’s hear it. If not, please stuff your foul-smelling “obsess” garbage where it belongs, in that big, fat bottom of yours where you keep all your “defenses” of the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies.

Not this boy. Find someone else. It’s not my particular cup of tea. I can’t go for that. No can do.

I post honestly or I post not. Non-negotiable.

That policy works just fine in every field of human endeavor other than stock investing. There is going to come a day in the not-too-distant future when it is going to work just fine in the field of stock investing as well. I intend to see to it, long Goon prison sentences or no long Goon prison sentences.

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

Rob, the Determined and Loving and Honest and Optimistic One