Rob to Buy-and-Hold Goon Posting at the Value Walk Site: “We Need As a Society to Work Up the Courage to Take ACTION re All That Has Gone Down….Your Motive Is Not to Bring Things to a Good Conclusion But Simply to Stir Up Trouble.”

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:

“Bogle got this one wrong”

………………….according to Rob Bennett the investment expert, who also states that Jack Bogle is more of a con man versus Bernie Madoff and also that Jack Bogle is going to prison.

I’ve said those things, Sammy. But if you were trying to be fair you would also note that I have said that Bogle is a great man and that I have learned a great deal from him and that I rank him as the second most important investing advisor in history (Shiller being the first).

You are trying to stir up trouble by pointing out things that I have said about my good friend Jack that sound harsh to people who are not aware of all that has gone on over the past 14 years. The financial fraud stuff IS shocking and I don’t object to you pointing it out — people certainly need to know about it and we need as a society to work up the courage to take ACTION re all that has gone down and thereby put the ugly stuff behind us and move on to all the wonderful stuff that has been opened to us.

But I do object to the one-sidedness of your comment. We have had many interactions over the years and so you of course know how deep my respect and affection for John Bogle goes. Why not tell that part of the story as well? You don’t do it because your motive is not to bring things to a good conclusion but simply to stir up trouble. That’s very unfortunate stuff.

Bogle is a Hero to the Middle-Class Investor. I’ve said that since the first day and that will always remain true. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing without Jack Bogle’s many positive contributions. And, yes, he has committed act act of financial fraud 500 times bigger than what Bernie Madoff did by continuing to promote Buy-and-Hold for 35 years after Shiller showed in peer-reviewed research that valuations affect long-term returns and by making use of abusive tactics to keep people from spreading the word re the many far-reaching implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my long-time Goon friend.

Rob