It's Your Money

Rothstein: Did investors see the red flags waving?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:35:19 -0500

Here's my Sunday column.... The Scott Rothstein case is far from complete. But investors can learn a few things from the unfolding story of the Fort Lauderdale attorney who is alleged to have taken at least $100 million from investors who wanted to get a piece of lucrative legal settlements. The money is missing. What exactly was he promising. Huge returns, on unregistered investments, held in accounts that no one audited, with the promise of a payout that depended solely on his word. Of course, it wasn't ever described that like that. Here's how these deals worked, based on the offering memo he was showing to local investors, obtained by the Sun Sentinel. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-harriet-110809-20091109,0,6569475.column:

President signs homebuyer tax credit into law

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:29:10 -0500

From AP, the details of the homebuyer tax credit... (The $8,000 credit), which was to expire at the end of this month, will be available through next June as long as the buyer signs a binding contract by the end of April. The program is expanded to include a $6,500 credit for existing homeowners who buy a new place after living in their current residence for at least five years.... Prolonging the life of the homebuyer credit has been a priority of the real estate industry, which says it has been instrumental in beginning to turn around a market that was a major cause of the economic downturn. About 1.4 million first-time homebuyers have qualified for the credit through August, and the National Association of Realtors estimates that 350,000 of them would not have purchased their homes without the credit.

IRS refund: It really is your money, come and get it

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:31:09 -0500

The Internal Revenue Service has $15 million in federal tax refunds for Floridians – but it can’t find those taxppayers. Undelivered refunds await 10,024 Florida taxpayers, the IRS announced this week. “In Florida, the average undeliverable refund is $1,538,” said IRS spokesman Mike Dobzinski. To figure out if the IRS has a refund waiting for you, the Sun Sentinel created a searchable database with all the names of those with undelivered refunds in Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. The amount of the refund is not posted. You can check out our IRS Refund Search site at www.sunsentinel.com/refunds. You can also go to www.irs.gov and click on “Where's my refund?” to check your status. If you find your name on the list, call the IRS refund hotline and you'll get instructions on how to update your address. The hotline number is 800-829-1954. Be prepared to give your Social Security number, your filing status and some other details from your 2008 tax return. There is no deadline for claiming your refund.

Rothstein, more

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:55:54 -0500

So many questions I still have about the investments Scott Rothstein was selling. They looked like structured settlements - which is a legitimate thing that courts approve all the time for injury victims. But these weren't, by design, structured settlements, that could be sold only with court approval. They were "pre litigation" settlements. Which appears to be a completely unregulated area, at least under state law. They don't appear to be registered with any regulator or sold by any licensed broker. But they were sold. The offering sheet I have has the figures on what kind of return you'd get. The return is declared to be "Absolute." And some of them are blacked out, with the word "Gone" written next to them. "Who would consider an offering that uses the phrase "Gone" in describing the unavailability of a multi-million dollar investment?" said attorney Mark F. Raymond, managing partner of Broad and Cassell in Miami. " This is not an auction of used cars or a mark down event at Brandsmart."

Exploding toasters and financial products

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:11:45 -0500

The news on Elizabeth Warren is interesting. She heads Congress' oversight panel monitoring the $700 billion bailout money. Cong. Barney Frank, D-Mass., yesterday said that he'd like to see her become the first head of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Well, it's her idea. Two years ago, when I first discovered her exploding toaster analogy about consumer financial products, I wrote about it. Then I circulated her article -- suggesting the government create a financial products safety commission similar to the Consumer Product Safety Commission -- to some folks in the South Florida financial community. As I remember, the consensus was, it'd never work or Congress would never go for it. I'm betting they're still wrong. The salient part of that column, from June 17, 2007: Let's give the last word to Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and her exploding toaster argument. From a recent blog post, she noted that if you bought a toaster, you could reasonably assume it would not explode. That's because the Underwriters Laboratories label showed it had been tested for safety, the Consumer Product Safety Commission would issue a recall if toasters began to blow up, and there are always lawyers to file lawsuits if that happened. But none of those forms of protection are in place for credit cards (or other financial products), she noted. No testing, no watchdogs that can pull bad products off the market, very little ability for consumers to sue. (Credit cards increasingly are requiring cardholders to agree to arbitration for resolving a dispute.) Exploding credit cards? It certainly can feel that way when your rate suddenly approaches 30 percent or you find out they charged you extra because you paid by phone. The deal you thought you had often does blow up.

Scott Rothstein files

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:22:25 -0500

Here's what I filed yesterday on Scott Rothstein, the lawyer at the center of the collapse of a Fort Lauderdale law firm. The allegation by his partners is that he was selling investments, using the firm's offices and name to promote the deals. The circular I saw for the investments offered impossibly high returns. The offering mentioned hundreds of such settlements, but I have seen the terms of only a few deals. Today's Wall Street Journal mentions 26 trust accounts that held an eye-popping sum of mone. "Mr. (Stuart) Rosenfeldt (A partner at the law firm with Rothstein) said he learned that on Oct. 23 the accounts contained about $500 million, but that the money was gone by Oct. 30," the Journal said. Investing with Scott Rothstein Circulating around South Florida in recent months were “confidential” offerings to investors about extremely high-paying but largely unregulated investments. One from April involved a $1.8 million legal settlement. Another from August promised to pay investors a 36 percent return on their investment – which is much more than troubled stock and bond markets have returned recently. “Every time I heard about them I just said, no way,” said Mark F. Raymond, managing partner of Broad and Cassel in Miami who says he convinced at least one client not to invest. “It amazes me in light of Madoff and Stanford that people even put their fingerprints on them.” The investment offering connected to Rothstein was written in a way that makes it clear it was to be kept quiet. The August circular says the investment strategy is to buy into a settlement that occurs before a trial begins, “in a manner that does not qualify as a structured settlement, therefore not being subject to court approval.” A structured settlement typically is something a court approves in a legal case in which an injured person wins a large sum of money. The person or company that lost the lawsuit hands over the money to an insurance company to purchase an annuity contract. The annuity then pays the injured person for the rest of his life. They are commonly used in large legal settlements. “In the ones for millions of dollars we always try to convince the client that they need to structure a good portion of it. Otherwise, statistically, the money’s gone,” said Adam Doner, a personal injury attorney in Palm Beach Gardens. If the person doesn’t want to wait for his payout, he has the right to sell his settlement, but the terms of the transfer must be approved by a court, under Florida law. The settlements and the brokers that buy and sell them don’t appear to be regulated by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, said spokeswoman Holly Hinson after an initial review. But the deals might fall under state or federal securities regulation if it were determined that what was being sold qualified as a security, she said.

Debt collectors: McCollum takes aim

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:13:13 -0500

Florida's Attorney General Bill McCollum today plans to ask state legislators to enhance his offices' ability to bring cases against unscrupulous debt collectors. “As Attorney General, I am willing to go above and beyond what the law currently requires so that people who have complained about abusive practices by debt collectors may finally get some relief,” McCollum said. Debt collections topped the list of consumer complaints among the nation's attorneys general last year. McCollum's office has received more than 4,400 complaints about debt collectors this year, but has not opened a single case, according to an upcoming story by The Orlando Sentinel. The attorney general's office told the newspaper it has little authority over debt collectors. McCollum, a Republican, is running for governor, as is Democratic Alex Sink, Florida's chief financial officer. Sink overseas the Office of Financial Regulation, which licenses debt collectors and which also receives consumer complaints about them. The Orlando Sentinel story notes that the Office of Financial Regulation has not fined or revoked a debt collector's license in at least two years. McCollum's office said it also plans to form a task force with the Office of Financial Regulation to address consumer complaints. McCollum's Chief of Staff Joe Jacquot said the office will ask the Florida Legislature to increase its powers under the state's deceptive trade paractices statue to make it easier for prosecutors to demonstrate that debt collectors have violated the law with such tactics as harassment. In addition, McCollum is asking for authority to bring lawsuits against out-of-state debt collectors in state court.

Watch for vote this week on tax credit for home buyers

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:52:33 -0500

First-time home buyers can waive their $8,000 tax credit around for a little while longer but they aren’t that special. A whole lot of people would get a tax credit for buying a house, under the proposal now in the Senate. Not just first-time buyers. Bloomberg reports: The lawmakers want to extend the credit until April 30. Their proposal would also expand it to allow higher-income Americans and some who already own homes to qualify for the break. Homebuyers who have lived in their prior residences for at least five years may receive a credit of $6,500 under the plan, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.. Also, couples earning as much as $225,000 and individuals as much as $125,000 would qualify for the extended break, Baucus said. That’s up from a $75,000 limit for individuals and $150,000 for couples.

Now there's Cash For.......Candy

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:41:34 -0500

A growing list of local dentists and orthodontists are using a capitalist’s tool to combat cavities. They’ll pay your kids to turn over their Halloween candy. Your tykes get $1 a pound. The candy is shipped to our troops overseas. And the dental professionals are so glad to have all that sugar off the streets. You can check who in your neighborhood is trading cash for candy by going to HalloweenCandyBuyBack.com.

Homebuyer tax credit extension likely

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:34:03 -0500

Bloomberg reported yesterday: Senate leaders are negotiating to extend and gradually reduce an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers through 2010, Senator Bill Nelson said. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, both Democrats, may seek to add the extension to legislation extending unemployment benefits that may be debated as early as this week, according to Regan Lachapelle, an aide to Reid. "We should be able to extend that later this week," Nelson told reporters traveling with President Barack Obama on Air Force One to a speech in Jacksonville, Florida.

Bank stocks:Ignoring failures and roaring ahead

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:00:00 -0500

On the one hand, we've got the highest number of bank failures in years. And in the other, we've got the stocks of Big Banks soaring. How does that add up? It doesn't. It's a lesson in how you can't always relate stocks' performance to what's going on in plain sight. And, there's a huge division between Too-Big-to-Fail banks and smaller ones. This divide has been unfolding for the last five months. If, on the day the stock market hit its recent bottom March 9, you had picked up a bundle of those Too-Big-To-Fail banks, oh how smart you'd look now. You may have thought, "What more pain could there be?" Back in March, the market had taken trillions out of the nation’s collective portfolios. The banks had tottered and the government had bailed them out. So you thought that since they were Too Big To Fail, they might just be a good bet. In the stock market, you would have been correct. But back in the real world, the shakiness of the banking industry was really just beginning to be widespread. In fact, of the 99 bank failures by Thursday Oct. 22 -- the highest annual number since the S&L crisis -- 83 of them happened since the market bottomed out in March.

TV: Here's my latest appearance

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:00:00 -0500

Go ahead, cut Wall Street's pay.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:24:24 -0500

Here’s the thing about the mandatory Wall Street pay cuts: Changing salaries won’t stop what’s really wrong there. What’s wrong is that they are handling our money in an unsafe way. They’ve taken a huge slice of the economy, set our financial system at risk and basically, we can’t make them pay us for what they’ve done. All this talk about how the brains will exit the business if pay is capped, well, would that be a bad thing? Like maybe we could take some of those smart people and set them to tasks that might actually help rather than hurt us in the long run, hurt us like toppling our banks and crashing our retirement portfolios? (They're estimating Americans' net worth dropped in this crisis by about $15 trillion.) I mean, would it be all that bad if Wall Street shrank? Earlier this week, former Fed chairman and Obama economic advisor Paul Volcker spoke of "structural imbalances" that threaten the economy, still. And need to be cured before a recovery can become a true recovery. ''We have to regain our ability to produce goods," he said at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Moving money around does not necessarily provide dinner on the table. You can't run an economy where the financial sector is making 40 percent of the profits." That's a thought.

Unretirement

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:05:23 -0500

Uh-oh, another recession lesson. It seems that 65 percent of workers say they’ll have to work past their retirement age. Sun Life Financial says its “Unretirement Index” has jumped 11 percent this year. Well, you know what? At least they’re planning ahead. And recognizing that most people have not saved enough and aren’t prepared for the unexpected. Yeah, it’s bad, the picture now. But it’s good that we see it. And do better. Another survey out today – this one from Met Life – shows that despite the recession, 60% of Americans have paid down debt and 35% are still making contributions to their 401(k) plans. That's good. Our confidence is shaken, but at least we're not just sitting there. People really are getting their finances in shape. Getting those ducks in a row.

Watch me

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:05:49 -0500

You want to know why consumer confidence is as low as it is? I think it has to do with the conventional wisdom breaking down. The conventional wisdom on how your personal finances should be, how they should improve over time. And how they haven’t. My opinion. Tonight. In my monthly commentary on The Nightly Business Report, broadcast nationwide on Public Broadcasting Service stations. For South Floridians, the show airs at 7 p.m. on WPBT, Channel 2.