What Carlyle is making reference to here is that I am the person who discovered the analytical errors in the studies that financial planners use to help us plan our retirements. I posted about what I discovered at the places referred to and there were many community members at each of these places who evidenced a desire to learn more about the realities of stock investing as revealed by the academic research of the past 30 years (that valuations affect long-term returns and that the chances of Buy-and-Hold ever working in the real world are thus precisely zero). There were also a good number of Buy-and-Hold dogmatics who insisted that honest posting on the flaws of the Buy-and-Hold model be banned and bans indeed ultimately were adopted at all of these places.

Not good. Not in Rob Bennett’s view. We are now suffering the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And this was 100 percent predictable and 100 percent avoidable. The heavy promotion of Buy-and-Hold always causes an economic crisis; there is not one exception in the historical record. I believe that there will come a time when the Ban on Honest Posting will be lifted at all of these places and when investing “experts” will come to see it as their job to report accurately what the historical data says about the effect of valuations on long-term returns rather than just to sell product through extremely misleading appeals to the most base of human emotions.

I have been consistent in urging that honest posting be permitted and in arguing that it is a black mark on the Buy-and-Hold “strategy” that so many of its advocates have been willing to tolerate bans on honest posting at so many places. We need to work together to take things to the place where deep in our hearts we all very much want to see things go.

That’s my sincere take, in any event.

Rob

Thanks much for your kindness in saying that, Samurai. It’s true that I care intensely about this stuff, for good or for ill. Perhaps I care too much. But me trying to care less is like a dog trying not to bark. It just doesn’t play out!

Enjoy your Vacay!

Thanks again. In one small concession to non-intensity, I am not bringing the computer. Only a beach chair and a book (we are going to Myrtle Beach).

Of course the book is Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death!

Rob

Either way, I’m sure you’ll write something great that some site will pick up, and you can always put it up on your site!

BTW Rob, what I like about you is how passionate you are about your writing, and your enthusiastic comments!

Enjoy your Vacay!

Sam

Please understand that it is 100 percent your call as to whether the blog entry I submit to you will appear at your blog or not, Samurai.

I have never included one word in any of my write-ups that I didn’t believe was needed. And in the days before I started posting about the flaws in the Buy-and-Hold “strategy,” it was extremely rare for me to hear complaints that I did. In the days since I began reporting accurately what the historical data says about the effect of valuations on long-term returns, I have heard many such complaints — the number is now in the hundreds of thousands!

This is an important matter. Millions of us have lost large percentages of the accumulated wealth of a lifetime because of a decision by The Stock-Selling Industry to continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars promoting a “strategy” that has been tried four times in U.S. history and that has caused huge financial misery on each of those occasions. I am going to talk about some aspect of that story to the best of my ability in the Guest Blog Entry that I submit to you.

You may choose to run it or to reject it on grounds that it lacks a beginning, a middle, or an end or any other reason you please. You can reject the write-up on grounds that you don’t like to run Guest Blog Entries by guys with an “R” in their name in the month of December. That’s cool. That part is on you. That part is out of my hands.

The part that is in my hands is for me to do my best to tell the personal finance story that most needs to be told for us to get out of this economic crisis straight and plain and true. My pledge to you is that the work product that I turn over to you for your consideration will reflect my sincere efforts to do just that. I can do no more and I can do no less.

I am grateful for your willingness to at least give something that I submit the once-over. I’m taking a few days off. When I return, I’ll get about the business of putting together something juicy for the consideration of you and your readership (with the full understanding that what I submit may not meet your needs at the current time)!

Rob

Oh my!

If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have posted that comment, FactCheck.

It is my belief that you care a lot. You don’t like hearing what I am saying. But you care intensely.

I think that’s a good thread and I encourage those with an interest in learning about the substantive issues under discussion to check it out. It is of course not even a tiny bit so that I was having that discussion with myself. All of my comments came in response to solid and thought-provoking questions being put forward by Evidence-Based Investor. Evidence is not a believer but he helped us all out by exploring some interesting angles in that thread.

Rob

I disagree with the first point Samurai makes, and as proof, offer a link that happens to also prove the second point Samurai makes – who but Rob Bennett could turn a single input on his blog into a 25 comment-long dialog with himself?

I sincerely doubt that anyone read even one of his lengthy expositions, much less all of them. If anyone wanted to dialog with Rob, he already has a blog, so I’m not sure what ‘guest posting’ provides the reader, except a bothersome interruption to those who probably don’t care for ridiculous long-winded conspiracy theories when they are trying to talk finance and investing.

Rob’s recent decent into the absurd:
http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2009/11/20/podcast-180-volatility-is-evil/#comments