Tuesday’s blog entry set forth the text of an e-mail that I received from Mike Piper explaining his decision to delete a comment that I put to a blog entry at his Oblivious Investor blog reviewing the Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning. The comment pointed out the role of the authors in imposing a ban on honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and other important investment topics at the Vanguard Diehards board and at the Bogleheads.org forum. Set forth below is the text of my response to Mike:

Mike:

I believe that you are trying to take things in a positive direction. I applaud you

for that.  We need some people from “your side” taking more constructive and

reasonable positions.

If you do not object, I will run the text of your e-mail as a blog entry at my site

(if you do object, I will summarize it). Your e-mail is news. It tells people how

those among the Passive Investing advocates who are trying to take things

in a positive direction are handling these sorts of issues today.

I would be grateful if you would include a note in the comments section of

the blog entry saying that Rob Bennett posted a comment that you deleted on

grounds that it was not on topic and that I will be reporting on the matter at my

blog.

My view is that integrity issues are always on topic. Mel and Taylor would

not have a book contract but for the work done at those boards by thousands of

good and smart and honest people. The ban on honest posting is a betrayal

of those people and their intent in building the board. People thinking of

taking the retirement advice offered in the book into consideration need to

know whether the authors can be trusted. The fact that they favor a

ban on honest posting on safe withdrawal rates (SWRs) goes to this question.

I am happy to hear that there are few references to SWRs in the book.

That is obviously a good thing and I think it would be fair to say that it is

my efforts (supplemented by the efforts of the thousands of community

members who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted)

that are primarily responsible for that encouraging reality of today. The darker

reality is that Taylor and Mel have not learned what they could have learned

from their discovery that the Old School SWR studies got all the numbers

wrong. Everything that I have learned about investing over the past seven

years followed from my discovery of the errors in the Old School studies

and what I learned by thinking through the implication of the reality that

so many good and smart people could get their retirement planning advice

so terribly and dangerously wrong and fail to fix things for so many years

after the errors were brought to their attention.

Thanks for the tone evidenced in your e-mail. I of course do not agree

with your decision to delete the comment. I certainly understand why

the comment causes discomfort. I interpret your reasonable tone as

evidencing a desire to see these matters handled in a constructive and

positive way. If that happens, I am confident that every single member of

the Indexing community (including Taylor and Mel and John Bogle,

to be sure) will be feeling a whole lot better about themselves and about

their advocacy of the indexing concept in days to come.

Rob

Thursday’s blog entry reported on Mike Piper’s decision to delete a comment of mine from his blog. Mike’s blog entry reviewed a book by Taylor Larimore and Mel Lindauer, The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. The deleted comment pointed out the role that Taylor and Mel have played in imposing a ban on honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and other important topics at the Vanguard Diehards board and at the Bogleheads.org forum.

Set forth below is the text of the e-mail that I received from  Mike explaining his decision to delete the comment. I will post the text of my response to Mike in Thursday’s blog entry.

Hi Rob.

I’m sorry, but I’m not comfortable publishing that comment. The reason has nothing to do with the “respectful” part of the comment rules, as you were clearly made an effort to be respectful.

The issue is that I really don’t see it as “on topic.” It brings up things that happened at another forum, which, frankly, most of my readers don’t seem to care about.

Also, for reference, the book really is about far more than just investing. “Safe withdrawal rates” has precisely two entries in the index.

The first is for a discussion of how to apply a “safe withdrawal rate.” For example, should a person select a percentage, and withdraw that percent every year? Or should they start with a percentage, and adjust that dollar amount upward every year to account for inflation? It explains that the first method is far less likely to result in the investor running out of money, but it’s not entirely practical for investors who can’t adjust their expenses on an ongoing basis.

The second is a very brief mention in the chapter on early retirement. Basically, it says that an investor who retires at age 40 will have a lower SWR than an investor who retires at age 65 (assuming they both intend to spend the majority of their money over the course of retirement, rather than leave a significant amount to heirs).

Surely both of those points are ones we can all agree on, no?

Mike Piper of the Oblivious Investor blog deleted from the comments section of yesterday’s blog entry (“Review: The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning”) a comment that I advanced pointing out the role that Mel Lindauer and Taylor Larimore have played in maintaining the ban on honest posting that applies today at both the Vanguard Diehards board (at Morningtar.com) and at the Bogleheads.org forum.

Set forth below are the words of the deleted comment. I will set forth the text of Mike’s explanation of the deletion as next Tuesday’s blog entry (he has given me permission to do so) and I will set forth my response to Mike as next Thurday’s blog entry.

Here is the text of the deleted comment:

I’m going to say some good stuff about the book because that’s the charitable and proper way to proceed. And then I am going to say some bad stuff because I believe we are all obligated to speak honestly re matters that affect people’s retirement planning.

The authors were given a book contract not because they personally possess skills as retirement planners. They were given the contract because of the wonderful communities that they played a big role in building at Morningstar.com (the Vanguard Diehards community) and at Bogleheads.org. The communities truly are wonderful. I actively participated at Vanguard Diehards until I was banned (I was banned at Bogleheads.org before putting forward a post — the board was formed to escape me). And I link to discussions held at these communities frequently at the “Today’s Passion” feature of my site.

Taylor and Mel obviously deserve credit for the work they did building learning resources that benefit us all. There are thousands of people who love them for having done this and not entirely without reason. John Bogle is today’s leading investment authority and he has endorsed the work done by Taylor and Mel. I have not read the book but I am certain that there is a lot of good stuff in it.

People also need to know about the bad stuff. I am the person who discovered the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate (SWR) studies. It is because I reported the accurate numbers at the Vanguard Diehards board that I was banned both there and at Bogleheads.org. This is wrong. It is not a wrong done only to me. It is a wrong done to all of the thousands of community members who expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted there. It is a black mark on all who participate in that community (including John Bogle) that this wrong has not been rectified for over two years now.

This failure to address the SWR topic and resolve it successfully affects the integrity of the book. I don’t know precisely what is said in the book re SWRs. But I know with 100 percent certainty that the book does not say the same things about retirement that it would say if Taylor and Mel had permitted honest discussions of the flaws in the Old School studies and had learned from those discussions. The book as it exists today is not the book that would exist had board “leaders” acted with integrity in their board administration actions.

That’s the right word — integrity. The reason why discussions of the errors made in the Old School studies have been so contentious is that there are integrity issues involved in the failure of the community of Passive Investing advocates to address these issues for over seven years now. We are not going to be able to duck these issues indefinitely. Our integrity is part of what makes us human. We cannot continue to function as humans if we do not address challenges to our ability to act with integrity. None of us should be recommending without reservation Investing guides that lack integrity in their discussion of important topics (it is of course possible that guides that lack integrity on some issues may do good service on other issues).

These words are going to upset some people. That’s proper and right. The realities here are unpsetting. We all have a role to play in getting things back on the right track.

Rob