A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

“Shiller’s Research Lets Us Know Something Important About Stocks That We Did Not Know Before. It Lets Us Know the True Value of Our Portfolio (the Value Adjusted for the Effect of the Irrational Exuberance Present in the Current-Day Price).”

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

In 2002, you detailed your “retirement plan” in which you got out of the stock market, and continue to be as of today, according to your posts. In 2005, you provided an update in which your spending had gone up at a higher than expected rate. You at stated you were returning 3.5% real and that the market returns close to 7%. You stated that you were not worried because with your VII timing strategy, you would return more than the market average and then your finances would be fine. Here we are almost 15 years after the 2005 update. You did not get back in the market to get those higher returns. As of midnight tonight, a decade has passed without that market crash that you said would have happened long ago. Early in the decade, people kept pointing out your failed predictions, so you said that if the crash did not happen by 2015, it was right to question the VII strategy. Tomorrow, we enter 2020. Your plan clearly failed and you have acknowledged that you have to get a job again as your retirement plan failed. In a preposterous attempt to save face, you claim that you really haven’t failed because all these people will want to pay you $500 million for advice on your VII strategy, that has caused you a retirement failure. It should not surprise you that no one wants to follow your plan.

Shiller published a paper in the Summer of 1996 saying that investors who stuck with their high stock allocations would come to regret it because valuations were so high. We did not see a crash by 2006 but we did see one in late 2008. In early 2009, there really were a lot of investors who expressed regret that they stuck with their high stock allocations. But the Buy-and-Holders said that the thing to do was just to stay the course and prices would head upward again. That’s what happened. People who followed the advice of the Buy-and-Holders at that time are now happy that they did so because stocks have provided very good returns for the past 10 years.

Does that show that Buy-and-Hold is the way to go? Not in my opinion. Shiller showed that, when prices go above fair-value levels, it is not a rational assessment of economic developments causing that to happen, it is irrational exuberance. It was a collapse of irrational exuberance that explained the 2008 crash and it was a resurgence of irrational exuberance that explained the big price gains of the last 10 years. The trouble is that irrational exuberance always collapses again. So, in the event that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research, we are likely to see another price crash within the next year or two or three. What will the investors who followed the advice of the Buy-and-Holders in 2009 say then? Lots of them will wish that they had learned more about Shiller’s research.

With Buy-and-Hold, you never know where you stand. Buy-and-Holders ASSUME that the numbers on their portfolio statements are real. They have never generated any peer-reviewed research showing this to be so, they just assumed it. I acknowledge that the idea has a certain surface plausibility. But Shiller published research showing that it is NOT so. His research shows a strong correlation between the valuation level that applies today and the price level that will apply ten years from today. How is it that the CAPE level is able to tell us what the price level will be 10 years from now? This is possible because irrational exuberance ALWAYS collapses. There has never been a single exception in the historical record. When prices are high, they always go down hard in the long run.

Shiller’s research lets us know something important about stocks that we did not know before. It lets us know the true value of our portfolio (the value adjusted for the effect of the irrational exuberance present in the current-day price). I like knowing the true value of my portfolio. It is a huge help in trying to plan my financial future. And I have heard from thousands of investors (and a good number of experts in the field) who feel the same way. The Buy-and-Holders don’t like Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research one tiny bit; they like believing that the numbers on their portfolio statement are real. But that’s not what the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research in this field tells us about this important question.

I wish you the best of luck with your investment strategy even though I do not personally see it as the way to go, Sammy.

Rob

“If We Were All Independent Thinkers All the Time, We Would in General Die Sooner Than We Do. Evolution Doesn’t Like to See Us Dying Sooner. So It Edited Out Extreme Free Thinking. It Put in Us a Gene That Causes Us to Want to Follow the Herd and to Dedicate Lots of Brain Power Not to Discovering Truth But to Rationalizing Dangerous Stuff That the Herd Wants to See Rationalized. But Evolution Also Sees Benefit in a Measure of Free Thinking. So We Also Have an Ability to See Through the B.S. of the Herd and to Move Forward As a People.”

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

Your problem is with Shiller. He won’t say what you want him to say, which makes him a goon.

My problem is with human nature, as is yours.

There is something in human nature that makes us want to lie to ourselves, to tell ourselves that things are better than they really are and to thereby put ourselves in danger. There are people who are 100 pounds overweight and who are thus at risk for a heart attack but who tell themselves “I haven’t had a heart attack yet, so I will probably never have one.” There are people who tell themselves “I can still drive home even though I had four beers, I don’t need to call a cab” and there are people who fail to confront them about those sorts of decisions. We humans hurt ourselves by lying to ourselves. All the time. It’s not just in the stock investing realm that this happens.

That’s my problem. People want to lie to themselves. The last 39 years of peer-reviewed research in the investing realm makes it hard for us to do that. The message of that 39 years of peer-reviewed research couldn’t be more clear — always, always, always, always practice market timing; whenever a large number of investors fails to do so, we see a crash big enough to bring on an economic crisis, please don’t ever fall for the Buy-and-Hold garbage. The irony is that, the stronger the case is that drunk driving is dangerous, the more angry the drunk guy is when you try to take away his car keys. We really, really, really want to engage in the dangerous activity that our reasoning mind tells us we should not engage in and so we lash out at those who try to use reason to persuade us. When we possess a strong desire to do something unreasonable, reason becomes our enemy. We hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. We ban it. We follow it all over the internet and call it names, that sort of thing.

That’s my problem. That is what is working against me.

But you have a problem too. We humans are not only the unreasoning animal that shuts out knowledge so that we can continue to do stuff that seems appealing in the short term but that has been shown to be dangerous. We also are on occasion the rational animal. That’s the hat we are wearing when we do research. That’s the hat we are wearing when we adopt rules at discussion boards that say that death threats are out of line. That’s the hat we are wearing when thousands of us put up posts asking the Goons among us to knock off the funny business and to permit honest posting. That part of us is just as real as the part that wants to do crazy dangerous stuff and to lie to ourselves about the risks.

So we both have a problem. We are fighting a battle of reason versus emotion. You think that emotion is going to win forever because it has won a number of short-term victories. I think that reason is going to win in the end because it must, our economic system will not remain viable for long into the future if we do not come up with some way to provide access to honest and accurate and research-based investment advice to the millions of people who want and need access to it.

The big question is — Will things change when people can see with their own eyes how dangerous the pure Get Rich Quick approach is? Does the fat guy wish that he had made more of an effort to watch his diet after he has had his heart attack and has had a bypass and is spending months taking cautious walks trying to recover from it? Does the heavy drinking guy wish that he had let his friends take his keys after he has been in an accident and has been told that he may never walk again?

I think that seeing things with our own eyes is going to make an impression on us. The next price crash will not be just theory, as people tend to think of the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research. The next price crash will bring on thousands and thousands and thousands of painful realities. And we will as a nation have to reconsider our behavior during the 30-year cover-up and decide whether the ban on honest posting is really such a hot idea. I think we will make better choices at that time. We’ll see. It is beyond my abilities to lie about what the research says in any event. So I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Shiller has a little bit of the Goon in him. He could have included a clear statement in his book saying that: “Given my finding that valuations affect long-term returns, there is zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all times and the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies should be corrected immediately, before they cause even more harm to even more people.” That would have been a great statement. That would have helped us all. I wish that he had included that statement in his book.

But, yes, you are right, Shiller is a human, which means that Shiller has a bit of Goon in him. Shiller wants the other humans to like him so he tells lies when he is placed in circumstances in which he believes that his career will be in danger if he says things in a blunt and plain and clear way. As did that Rob Bennett fellow for a good number of years. As I probably do to a small extent even today. We all want to be liked. So we all hold back on telling the full truth when we see that our fellow humans very much do not want to hear it.

I think that evolution put that part of us in us for a good reason. We need to stick with the herd. We don’t have time to think every issue through for ourselves. So we need to rely on what the other humans around us are saying. If we were all independent thinkers all the time, we would in general die sooner than we do. Evolution doesn’t like to see us dying sooner. So it edited out extreme free thinking. It put in us a gene that causes us to want to follow the herd and to dedicate lots of brain power not to discovering truth but to rationalizing dangerous stuff that the herd wants to see rationalized.

But evolution also sees benefit in a measure of free thinking. So we also have an ability to see through the b.s. of the herd and to move forward as a people. The laws against drunk driving have been tightened. There are now cancer warnings on cigarette packages. There was a time when people laughed at the idea that there would ever be cancer warnings on cigarette packages. But we overcame the herd instinct to laugh in that case. The warnings are there. Those who thought that the research showing that smoking causes cancer was important prevailed in the end. Good for them. Good for all the humans.

We are as a nation working through a process, Anonymous. Yes, we love our Get Rich Quick investing strategies. Yes, we have been investing in ways that cause price crashes and economic crises for a long, long time now. But, no, we are not hopeless cases. We as a society permitted Shillar’s book to be published, We as a society awarded Shiller a Nobel prize. We as a society adopted rules at every discussion board and blog prohibiting the tactics that you Goons have employed to block honest discussion of the last 39 years of peer-reviewed research for nearly 18 years now. We are not an all bad people. We are not an all good people, that much is evident at this point in the proceedings. But we are not an all bad people either. We are in the process of working our way to a better place.

Shiller will make that statement about safe withdrawal rates when he sees that it is safe for him to make it. I look forward to that day. I like the humans. I would like to see them stop beating up on themselves. I would like to see fewer of them drive drunk. And I would like to see fewer of them eat themselves into an early grave. And I would like to see fewer of them believe the words of internet con men who tell them that a 4 percent withdrawal rate is “100 percent safe” even when stocks are priced at three times fair value and the true safe withdrawal rate is 1.6 percent.

It all depends on whether you think that the humans are capable of engaging in reasoned discussion or not. I believe that they are. I never would have become a journalist in the first place if I didn’t think that we were capable of reasoned discussion. Reasoned discussion doesn’t always prevail in the short term. I don’t say that. But, when the issue is important enough, I think that the better bet is that reasoned discussion will prevail in the long run.

We will see.

Rob the Goon (At Least Once Upon a Time and Probably to Some Extent Even to This Day)

Valuation-Informed Indexing #479: Investors Hurt Themselves in the Long Run By Bringing on Excessive Price Gains in the Short Run

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I’ve posted Entry #479 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Investors Hurt Themselves in the Long Run By Bringing on Excessive Price Gains in the Short Run.

Juicy Excerpt: Can I afford two weeks of vacation this year or only one? Should I buy a new car or get by a bit longer with the one I already own? Should I encourage my child to attend a state university or tell her to feel free to attend a more expensive out-of-state one? Investors ask themselves questions of this sort on an almost weekly basis. To analyze these questions properly, they of course need to know how much they have in savings. It is of course impossible to know for so long as we live in a world in which stocks are often priced at two times fair value or more, as they have been for much of the past 23 years.

“When I Am Told By a Doctor That My Time Is Close to Being Up, I Want the Feeling That Comes From Knowing That I Was on the Right Side re This Matter and Not on the Wrong Side. That’s a Form of Payment in My Eyes. A Very, Very, Very Big Form of Payment.”

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

“I guess I will just have to struggle on somehow now that the one in a million shot has come through for me.

How has this come through for you? I missed any posts that indicated that you were paid. Instead, I have only seen your recent updates indicating that you have to return back to work. These two updates seem to be in conflict.

It depends on how one measures things.

I haven’t been paid a penny. But I have a clear conscience.

I wouldn’t trade places with any of you Goons for a cash payment of $500 million, just to pull a crazy random number out of the air.

My brother Richard died two weeks ago. Richard was ten years older than me. So that doesn’t suggest that my time will be up any time super soon. But it does very strongly suggest that my time will be up one of these days, no matter how much I might like to pretend at moments that that is not so. When I am told by a doctor that my time is close to being up, I want the feeling that comes from knowing that I was on the right side re this matter and not on the wrong side.

That’s a form of payment in my eyes. A very, very, very big form of payment.

You are free to see things differently.

But I go by what I see when it comes to making decisions as to how I am going to spend any time remaining to me. That’s how it works, Anonymous.

And, yes, I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person all the same. Sending you good wishes doesn’t subtract from my own enjoyment of life in any way. So I am happy to go there. Saying that I believe that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins would subtract from my enjoyment of life in a big way. So, thanks but no thanks re that one.

My best wishes.

Unpaid But Well Compensated (and Conflict Free) Rob

Valuation-Informed Indexing #478: Conditions Were Perfect for Cognitive Dissonance When Shiller Published His Revolutionary Research Findings

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I’ve posted Entry #478 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Conditions Were Perfect for Cognitive Dissonance When Shiller Published His Revolutionary Research Findings.

Juicy Excerpt: I am generally skeptical of conspiracy theories. I think that a better explanation of the strange reality is that our confusion over how stock investing works is the result of one of the most widespread cases of cognitive dissonance ever experienced. Shiller published his research and it attracted a good bit of attention. But most of us continued thinking about stock investing in the same way in which we did before he came along all the same. Shiller’s message did not implant itself into our brains because our filters found it too radical for serious consideration.

Cognitive dissonance has been described as “the discomfort felt by a person who holds conflicting ideas, beliefs or values at the same time.” It’s not possible for the same person to believe in both the research of Eugene Fama (in which the Buy-and-Hold strategy is rooted) and of Robert Shiller. A stock portfolio cannot be worth both $200,000 and $100,000 at the same time. And it is of course not possible to form opinions about any investment strategy question without first determining the value of one’s stock holdings. Those who believe in Buy-and-Hold walk one path and those who believe in Valuation-Informed Indexing walk another.

“Is the Title of Shiller’s Book Crystal Clear? If a Large Part of Your Stock Portfolio Is the Product of Irrational Exuberance, You Need to Adjust for That When Determining Whether You Have Saved Enough to Retire or Not, Do You Not?”

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

It was crystal clear when Shiller said it. A link was posted on your website. Your comment at the fine was that you disagreed with Shiller and that he was scared to tell the truth (which you made up).

Is the title of Shiller’s book crystal clear, Sammy? If a large part of your stock portfolio is the product of irrational exuberance, you need to adjust for that when determining whether you have saved enough to retire or not, do you not?

The subtitle of his book described his model for understanding how stock investing works as “revolutionary.” Is it not crystal clear that that means that he is saying something very different than what those who came before him said? What would you say the something very different part is?

Was it crystal clear that Shiller was advocating market timing when he told investors in the Summer of 1996 that, if they dd not lower their stock allocations, they would live to regret it within 10 years?

Was it crystal clear when Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize that that was because he added something new to our understanding of how stock investing works?

I agree with you that there was one comment that he made in one interview that made it sound like he had come to have doubts about market timing. I would like to know precisely what he meant because, if he does have doubts, we all need to know that. But I am not willing to overlook his lifetime of work because of one stray comment that he never was asked to explain or to put into context. His work is based on analysis of the historical return data. And that data did not change on the day that he made that stray comment. It still says the same thing that it said on all the occasions on which he made the case for market timing.

To the extent that Shiller truly believes that market timing is not required, I do disagree with him. I am just not willing to conclude that he believes that without more evidence. I do think that he is afraid to say with clarity what he believes re this question because I have seen scores of other experts in this field evidence fear over speaking to the question frankly. There are millions of people who have believed the Buy-and-Hold claims that market timing is not required (or that it might not even be a good idea!) and they find it very upsetting to hear that there is some question about this. So this is a very controversial question. People back away from addressing it clearly.

I think that as a society we need to speak about it openly. If Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that market timing is required turns out to be legitimate, we all are going to suffer terrible losses in the not-too-distant future, losses that will be big enough to cause a reduction in consumer spending and likely bring on another economic crisis. So this is an issue that we all need to get a handle on.

Shiller’s research is a big deal. We all need to come to a better understanding of what it signifies, in my assessment.

I hope that that helps, at least a tiny bit.

I naturally wish you the best of luck with your investment strategies, regardless of what I think about the merit of those strategies.

Rob

“Is the Investment Advice Field Just About Turning a Quick Buck Regardless of How Much Human Misery You Cause Doing It? Or Is There a Place in This Field for Advice That Actually Helps Your Clients and Readers?”

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

The community gives us feedback that allows for an impartial view. The fact that you have been consistently warned and banned gives us this objective view.

But never once in nearly 18 years have I put forward an abusive post!

The shows the power of the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge that resides within each and every one of us. That’s the entire deal here. Is the investment advice field just about turning a quick buck regardless of how much human misery you cause doing it? Or is there a place in this field for advice that actually helps your clients and readers?

I believe that there is a place for honest and accurate investment advice. I believe that we are going to get there. Shiller was able to find a publisher for his book. It became a best-seller. He was awarded a Nobel prize. Wade and I were able to get our research published in a peer-reviewed journal. Thousands of our fellow community members have worked up the courage to “cross” you Goons by expressing a desire that honest posting be permitted. We are close. We are not where we all deep in our hearts want to be. But we are very close.

I agree strongly about the community feedback issue. But I don’t tale the dark view of what the community has done that you do. Yes, honest posting is banned just about everywhere today. Obviously that is an exceedingly unfortunate reality. But there have been lots of good signs. We are an imperfect people but we are a fundamentally good people. We are working ourselves to a place where we will all be able to pull together and change the world in a very life-affirming way.

I think that the next price crash will do the trick. If you look at the Bernie Madoff matter, you see that people take a very different view of Get Rich Quick approaches after they have been exposed for what they are. I think that that is what we are going to see with Buy-and-Hold. And, once there are a few people posting honestly, the floodgates are going to open. There are millions of investors who would love to have access to honest, accurate, research-based reports on how stock investing works. So there are hundreds of millions of dollars to be made promoting Valuation-Informed Indexing strategies. I don’t think it is realistic for you Goons to think that you will be able to hold back the History Train indefinitely.

I wear my many bans as a badge of honor. You can’t post honestly about the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research without getting banned in today’s InvestoWorld. I would rather be honest than be non-banned and celebrated for encouraging people to take steps that will likely ruin their lives somewhere down the road a piece. That one is not even a close call in my book. And I have a funny feeling that a lot of the people who are for the time-being keeping their mouths shut about the dangers of Buy-and-Hold feel the same. Once the floodgates open, we are going to see an explosion of honest, accurate, research-based posting.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the days following the next price crash. That much is for sure. I believe that we will be seeing the greatest economic advance in our nation’s history in those days. I just wish that we didn’t need to see the widespread human misery that will come with a price crash to get us there.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Proudly Banned Rob

” The Only problem Here Is That Fama Published His Research Before Shiller Published His. If Shiller Had Published His Research First, We Would All Be Valuation-Informed Indexers Today. But It Didn’t Happen That Way. Fama Was First and an Entire Industry Was Formed Around the Promotion of Buy-and-Hold. And Now It Is Very, Very, Very Hard for All of the People Who Have Promoted Buy-and-Hold to Acknowledge Their Mistake.”

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

Sounds like the stock market should always be about half of where it is, and you’re the only person on the planet who knows that astounding fact. Seems just a little odd.

It’s very odd, Anonymous.

But it is not only me who says that valuations affect long-term returns. Robert Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize for showing with peer-reviewed research that this is so. Wade Pfau spent 16 months studying the matter in great depth and concluded that: “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works!” And we have had thousands of community members express a desire that honest posting be permitted. If those people don’t know the realities, they at least suspect them and appreciate that they need to explore them more to enjoy a super learning experience.

So what the heck is holding us back? It’s that darn Ban on Honest Posting. Do away with that, and we all live better lives from that point forward. The only problem here is that Fama published his research before Shiller published his. If Shiller had published his research first, we would all be Valuation-Informed Indexers today. But it didn’t happen that way. Fama was first and an entire industry was formed around the promotion of Buy-and-Hold. And now it is very, very, very hard for all of the people who have promoted Buy-and-Hold to acknowledge their mistake.

It doesn’t get easier when the Ban is extended. It gets harder. Every day that the cover-up continues it is harder than it was the day before for our Buy-and-Hold friends to come clean. So we have have to pull together and do everything in our power to bring that darn Ban on Honest Posting to a full and complete stop.

Are you in?

Cover-Up Critic Rob

Valuation-Informed Indexing #477: Buy-and-Hold Has Performed Well in the Post-Shiller Era

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I have posted Entry #477 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It is called Buy-and-Hold Has Performed Well in the Post-Shiller Era.

Juicy Excerpt: The real question is not what returns have been provided over what time-period. The real question is whether stock price changes are determined by economic developments, as the Buy-and-Holders believe, or by shifts in investor emotion, as Shiller has proposed. If it is economic developments that determine stock price changes, then Buy-and-Hold is the ideal strategy. If shifts in investor emotion determine stock price changes, then Buy-and-Hold is dangerous.

We cannot say when the dangers of Buy-and-Hold will reveal themselves. But if Shiller is right in what he says about what causes stock price changes, we can say for certain that sooner or later they will. Because, if Shiller is right, none of the numbers that I cited at the beginning of this article are legitimate. If Shiller is right, all of those numbers need to be adjusted for the effect of overvaluation (investor emotion). If the numbers were adjusted, investors would form very different conclusions about the merit of the Buy-and-Hold strategy.

 

“Why Do These Comments Only Exist on This Website? If Wade and Others Truly Said Everything That You Say, Why Don’t We See This on Other Websites?”

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

Why do these comments only exist on this website? If Wade and others truly said everything that you say, why don’t we see this on other websites?

Because they are afraid to say these things, Anonymous. They are afraid that what happened to me will happen to them.

The human race did not start out knowing everything there is to know about how stock investing works. The Buy-and-Holders took a good first stab at setting up a research-based model. At the time that model was developed, the belief in the academic world was that the market is efficient. If the market were efficient, risk would be constant and market timing would be a mistake. No one had checked whether long-term timing works at that time. Shiller discovered that stock market risk is not constant but variable and that long-term timing always works in research published from 1981 forward.

If we all were perfectly rational creatures, we all would have incorporated Shiller’s research into our thinking at the time it was published and Valuation-Informed Indexing would have become the dominant model for understanding how stock investing works 38 years ago. We are not perfectly rational creatures. The idea that market timing always works and is required for investors seeking to keep their risk profile constant over time came as a shock to those who believed in Buy-and-Hold and cognitive dissonance set in.

By the time that I advanced my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002, pointing out that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins, the cover-up had already been going on for 21 years. There was a great deal of embarrassment among Buy-and-Holders about the cover-up and most who work in this field had become fearful of what would happen to them if they spoke frankly about the matter. So most held back.

But the people who work in this field are like most other people — they want to do good work and to help people with the work they do. So there have been numerous expressions of intense interest in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept and of support for the idea of widespread promotion of it. But people have seen the insanely abusive behavior of you Goons and have seen that numerous experts in the field and owners of web sites have failed to take effective action to rein you in. So support for the idea of opening every site on the internet to honest posting has not gained the traction that it needs to gain for us to bring The Buy-and-Hold Crisis to a full and complete stop.

It takes a lot of courage to speak honestly in the face of death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. Once we see prison sentences and large awards for damages suffered and front-page news reports in the New York Times and other leading newspapers, everyone will feel free to speak honestly and we will be able to quickly put all of the ugly stuff behind us and work together to achieve an amazing learning learning experience, the most important learning experience in the personal finance field in the history of the United States.

In the meantime, those who believe that it would be a good idea to permit (and encourage!) honest posting should all be doing everything in their power to assure others of like mind that they will stick with them when they are attacked by you Goons. Appeasing you Goons makes things worse. Standing up to you makes things better.

My best wishes to you, Anonymous.

Frightened (But More by What Is Happening to Our Country as a Result of the 38-Year Cover-Up Than of You Goons) Rob