“”Irrational Exuberance Is Irrational, You Know? High Stock Prices Are Irrational. It Is True That Investors Like to Act in Their Self-Interest. So, If We Permitted Honest Posting, Could We Even Have These Crazy Prices? We Could not. Your Crimes Helped Keep Prices Up. That’s Why We Permitted Them. We Like High Prices and It Takes a Lot of Irrationality to Get Them and Your Criminal Stuff Has Kept the Research-Based Stuff From Shutting Down the Irrational Stuff.”

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

Show just one reference on your site in which someone made a death threat or threatened Wade’s job.

The only abusiveness I see is this person that calls people goons and tells them they are going to prison.

You’ve seen the Wade one 50 times, Anonymous. I love it. But even I am tired of looking at it.

You’re Goons. And you’re going to prison. People who threaten academic researchers are Goons and they go to prison.

The question is — Why haven’t you gone to prison YET? Why are we talking about it? If it had happened years ago, we wouldn’t be talking about it. Why hasn’t it happened?

People are complacent. Prices are at two times fair value and that’s what people care about. They care about the number on their portfolio statement.

Will they get upset when that number drops by 50 percent or more? If they get upset about that, then they’ll get upset about the criminal stuff. So you’ll go to prison THEN.

Is that crazy? It’s completely crazy. It would be better if we told people the truth about how stock investing works before they lost their money so that they could avoid having that happen to them. And it would be better if you weren’t going to prison. But whachagonnado?

You think you’re going to prison too or you wouldn’t be posting here. At the very least you’re worried about it. It’s not my fault. I asked Motley Fool to give Greaney the boot in June 2002. He wouldn’t be going to prison if they had done that. So what’s his beef with me? He has none.

We can’t have different laws apply for the investment advice field. I know we do for now. But that cannot be a permanent situation. It’s a mixed-up short-term thing.

Irrational exuberance is irrational, you know? High stock prices are irrational. It is true that investors like to act in their self-interest. So, if we permitted honest posting, if we sent you to prison as soon as you committed your crimes, could we even have these crazy prices? We could not. Your crimes helped keep prices up. That’s why we permitted them. We like high prices and it takes a lot of irrationality to get them and your criminal stuff has kept the research-based stuff from shutting down the irrational stuff.

Good for you, I guess.

Yowza!

Rob