Well heres the 90 second ***** primer.
Some folks who endured him over at TMF or morningstar (I forget which) who have actual psychiatry experience determined that he has some psychosis...I think it was schizophrenia...based on watching his discourse over several years.
Some folks think he's just someone who retired too early with not enough money and either very bored or desperate to figure out how to sell some books to make ends meet.
I have a different take. I think that he's definitely got some sort of mental issue/boredom thing going on and he's a bit of what I like to call an 'organizational wrecker'. He likes to approach well reasoned people and present them with a series of discussion topics which have some marginally accessible root points, but then he throws in enough additional disconnected stuff that an organized person will comment on or challenge.
He then takes these well reasoned people and wanders with them off of the root points deeper and deeper into la la land. Until they figure out that he's really not particularly interested in a reasonable discussion and they figure out he needs to have a burning bag of poo left on his doorstep. After enough of this 'hilarity', the forum in question bans him.
It seems early retirees are exactly the sort of logical, well reasoned people that Rob finds easiest to bait and trap. Or farm or whatever is in his brain du jour.
He has a little pet, John Russell (aka JWR1945) that I think actually is eating some of the horsepuckey that Rob throws off and John carefully crafts financial models and data based arguments that have giant holes you can drive a truck through, but in aggregate they sort of back up the vague principals that this clever but limited troll bases his little routine on.
The origins of this, still fitting within the 90 seconds (i'm a fast typer, hope you're a fast reader) is that ***** felt that 4% was too much and that stocks were overvalued, and that we should all spend less and duck and cover until equities became more fairly valued. As I mentioned before, by his metrics, equities have been overvalued since the early 90's.
All fair and reasonable. Until he gets into the conspiracies, death threats, and all the rest of the nutty baggage.
But it seems he has no trouble looping newbies into his routine, and he's got a faithful stable of fascinated groupies over at another ER board that seem to be doing a good job at his care and feeding.
He also has a knack for digging in and finding out personal details about people and then trying to use them as leverage on people. Their real names, where they live, their kids names, where their grandchildren go to school...that sort of thing
