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Loaded Potato Salad

(makes about 10 servings)
(10) Red Potatoes, Diced up with the skin on
(1) Pound of Crispy Smoked Bacon, Diced
(1) Onion, Red or White
(6) Rough Chopped Hard-Boiled Eggs
(1) Handful or Chopped Flat-leaf Parsley
(3) Celery Stalks Chopped
(1) Salt to Taste
Dressing, blend in Ranch Dressing & Dijon Mustard, using more Ranch, than Dijon

NOTE: I used Kraft Ranch Dressing, and Maille Dijon Mustard, but any brand should be fine.

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Pumpkin & Cheese Spice Bread

Yields 3 mini loaves (the mini loaf pans I use are 5 3/4 inches long X 3 inches wide X 2 inches deep)

For the Cheese Batter:

8 oz cream cheese, room temperature

1 large egg, room temperature, lightly beaten

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For the Pumpkin Spice Batter:

3/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed

2 large eggs

3/4 cup pumpkin puree

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/8 teaspoon cloves

Other:

Butter, to grease the pans

For the Cheese Batter:  Use a handheld electric mixer to beat together all ingredients until smooth and creamy.

For the Pumpkin Spice Batter:  Preheat oven to 350F; lightly grease 3 mini loaf pans with butter.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the brown sugar and eggs until light and fluffy, then stir in the pumpkin, canola oil, and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, whisk or sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves.  Gradually stir the dry ingredients into the wet, being careful not to over-mix.  Divide the pumpkin batter between the 3 loaf pans, then pour the cheese batter on top.

Bake until golden around the edges, about 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted inside comes out clean or with just a couple crumbs.  Cool 10 minutes in the pans, then remove from the pans and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

I don’t find any language in there related it except the language where there is going to be funds provided for unemployed who are facing foreclosure and that the ombudsman departments and agencies to help out.  No, I think what happened was that there was a question about procedures and proper documentations and representations made by the banks.  They stopped the foreclosures and then in the last day or so, I’ve seen that they have now started back up again.  But I think now, they have instituted changes where they are in compliance of it.  I think the foreclosures are going to continue.  From the news, it appears that they have slowed down some just because they are getting a lot of those things out into the market and some solutions.  No, the people that are facing foreclosure six months ago are going to be facing it again in the next few weeks.

Okay, great!  I don’t see any more questions in the queue so I believe we are going to wrap things up here.  On behalf of TASA and everybody in attendance, I want to thank Louis for a great presentation.  It shows that you put a lot of effort into it and a great amount of research.  We do thank for taking the time to read all the 2,300 pages of the legislation so that you can put this presentation together.  If you would like to speak to Louis about a case or a project that you have, you can contact us here at TASA, industry leaders in expert witness referrals.  The number is (800) 523 2319.  We will be sending out a link to the archived recordings of this webinar tomorrow morning.  The archived recording will also be posted in the Knowledge Center of TASA’s website.  That’s where we post all of our past webinars.  If you have any questions or comments, please email me at mhyde@tasanet.com.  We do take all your comments and we try to make our programs better based on the comments that you supply.  So I do encourage you to take the time to shoot me an email.  We do have a couple of webinars coming up.  We have one on October 21^st and one on November  4^th.  Please look for an invitation in your inbox shortly.  We hope to see you at future TASA events.  Thank you so much for your time.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act: The Impact on Regulatory Mandates & Securities Litigation Pt. 11

Here are some of the things that I encourage you to link up with slide #9 in various sections.  We will get up to very quickly.  I like to have acronyms.  It helps me remember things.  Within your practice, within your client relationship, there is going to be a requirement for more transparency, certainly with responsibility, accountability, consumer protection is an ongoing initiative but it’s not going to be solved immediately, and then embarrassment, we never want to have the embarrassment of bailouts again.  So TRACE, link it up with slide #9 the different elements and then consider how that might be effective for your practice or your business.  The political comment on this is shifting.  I thought this was interesting.  I found this in the New York Times just recently, that in January of 2008, 70% of the political donations from securities firms went to the Democrats, who obviously are the main sponsors and architects of the Dodd-Frank legislation.  However, 18 months later, nearly that same amount is going to the Republicans who are the primary opponents of the Dodd-Frank legislation.

Senator Chris Dodd made this comment and I don’t think this is a good way to close. “We don’t know the full results of what we have done until the very institutions we have created, the regulations we have suggested and provided for are actually tested.”  So we are in the gearing up phase, it really gets underway in July of 2011.  It is probably going to be another 12 months or more after until we really see what’s going to develop.  So with that, I think that, Matt, I’ll open it up for any final questions or any comments.  I will assure that I put my email address and phone number up there and my website to encourage you to ask questions or to follow it up with comments.  I truly believe that.   So with that, Matt, I’ll turn it back over to you.

Okay, great!  Louis, thank you for a tremendous presentation.  We do have a couple of questions that we have come in and I would encourage those in attendance to keep on submitting great questions.

It is noted in your presentation that there has been a lot commentary on the whistleblower provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, but as you see it and as you think forward, do you think that Dodd-Frank Act will eliminate most of the obstacles that whistleblowers now face?

No, not at all.  I think the obstacles that they face is getting fired.   I think that they still have considerable risk within their organization, either from getting fired or less direct problems.  No, it’s not going to eliminate it and you are still an outsider and it can be a long, costly and unsuccessful experience.  It’s not going to.  It’s going to reward you if you are successful but it doesn’t eliminate many of the hurdles.

The next question is with regards to the slide that you put up a little while ago those talks about the new limits of a $100 million for funds that will now fall under new state regulation.  What do you think are the biggest challenges with the new state and federal securities and investment regulations that are out there?  How will it affect how firms operate?

I think, initially, and it is a fairly beaten potatoes analysis is that staffing, training and budget issues for state and many of the states are stretched now in terms of both personnel and budgets.  So to say that all of the sudden, you have twice as many registered investment advisors or hedge funds to audit and to investigate can be a tremendous burden for a lot of these states, specially the smaller states that are having other issues.   If I just think out loud here,  I just think about the state of Michigan, I know that there are a lot of registered investment advisors there, the unemployment rate is high, the state revenues are down and I think from the staffing, training and budgetary perspective, this is going to present a real problem.

The TASA Group, industry leaders for consumer expert witness referrals, presents:  The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act: The Impact on Regulatory Mandates & Securities Litigation Pt. 10

Now, the Municipal Bond Advisers are going to fall under the SEC.  In the past, they have been under the Municipal Rule Making Board, MSRB, so now it’s going to fall under the SEC.

Safety nets and Advocacy, Mortgage Relief, as I mentioned earlier, there was some direct financial aspect to Dodd-Frank for mortgage relief.  A billion dollars going to state and municipalities, a lot of money to help avoid foreclosures.  A billion dollars in mortgage relief for the unemployed.  Then a HUD legal assistance program to help homeowners facing foreclosure.  Again these are elements that are not often discussed related to Dodd-Frank.  I think Dodd-Frank has been painted as a Wall Street reform but there is some significant consumer protection measures embedded in this as well.

Global issues

Here are some of the things that I talked about earlier.  Oil, gas, mineral fees paid to foreign persons or partners.  It is basically targeting abroad.  State departments are going to be involved in developing policy so there is no link between conflict minerals in areas where there is armed conflict.  We want to make sure that funds are going through the International Monetary Fund, are going to the right places and are limited to countries that have sustainability and not where the debt exceeds the Gross National Product of the country.

Whistleblower

This is the kind of thing that has been talked about more than any other aspect of Dodd-Frank.  I think it is like the bounty hunter of this legislation, so let’s take a look at what it means.  The program is under the direction of the SEC.  There was a whistleblower aspect of Sarbanes-Oxley, but now it has expanded.  It is now under the direction of the SEC.  It encourages people to report securities violation.  If there is more than a $1 million that is recovered, rewards are up to 30% of the recovered funds.  It must be material, actionable, it must be of substance when it is reported and not just an “I heard at a cocktail party this or that” and here is the most important thing to many of you on this call, is any whistleblower must be represented by an attorney.  I can see some issues related to that.  There aren’t a lot of attorneys who want finance and commit to long term battle against the large corporations.  So I think it is a mixed blessing.  I think it recognizes the importance of whistleblower, but also in identifying that they must be represented by outside counsel is going to potentially post a burden for both the whistleblower and any legal counsel that they may choose.

What’s in it for me?  Here’s the accompanying slide to slide #9 when I broke it down, I think there is some obvious employment investigative career opportunities.

- Flat out, this is creating a new, larger, broadly based bureaucracy that is going to need to be staffed both internally and with consultants.

- Experts are going to come under increased scrutiny to the point that they will have to be experts that will have liability.

- There is going to be system needs, both software and internal compliance systems.

- It is going to have to designed, monitored and then the legal representation for the whistleblowers.

I think those four bullet points are very important to think about, in terms of your own practice or your own business.  Here’s I think, as we end up or getting close to the end of the presentation, here is a sort of counterpoint.

The point is Dodd-Frank enables the critics to say that it must mandate and not just enable. It underscores policy behavior.  Other folks would say that it underscores weakness.  It is pointing to new staffing but largely to existing staffing with tired and ineffective habits. It identifies many independent advocates but how independent will they actually be.  Major shift of tone, the supporters will say but tweaks are really not a major shift in tone.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act: The Impact on Regulatory Mandates & Securities Litigation Pt. 9 is by TASA, consumer protection expert witness specialists for the legal community.

The Office of Press Supervision, which has been around as long as I think I’ve been in the financial services, is being abolished and those offices are being moved over to the comptroller of the currency.  Banks have now the same guidelines as the holding company, which is a big change for all of us.

Insurance is interesting as well.  We have a federal insurance office and is now going to be part of the Treasury Department and it’s going to monitor systemic risk, not only in the US, but on a global basis.  So they’re going to be looking at if there is an AIG in England or an AIG in Russia. They are going to know about it and how it might affect our insurance business.

The final element is that it’s going to attempt — there is a lot of great insurance commissions in the United States and I think the initiative to beef up the coordination between the federal and state projects is a real important element of Dodd-Frank.

Consumer Safety and Advocacy.  This is probably one of the things that a lot of investors are interested in.  Banks are no longer prohibited from paying interests on business demand deposits.  There is going to be oversight of the credit card interchange fees for small businesses.  This is an interesting one and I’ve gotten comments on is that consumers will have free access to any credit card information that impacts their employment opportunities.  If they apply for a job and because they have a bad credit report, that is the only thing holding them back from their job to get free access to that information to see if those corrections can be made.

Part Two.  As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the things that many of us are interested in and see how this develops.  SEC has the responsibility to determine if brokers or financial advisers should be deemed fiduciaries.   That’s that way it is in Canada.  So we will see what’s going to happen with the SEC in that situation.   Currently as you know, it is really fiduciary status is limited to trusted partners to treasury accounts and registered investment advisors.  For those of you who are not familiar with the difference between our system and where we deem an advisor to be a fiduciary, it really does put the client’s interest first, instead of being a reasonable recommendation or a reasonable service.  I would like to give you an example of that, on how that might work. Reasonable and suitable versus the possibility of someone’s best interest in a fiduciary capacity.  I use the analogy of someone who wants to buy a coat.  Under our current system, it is reasonable and suitable if someone wants to buy a coat; you represented them properly to sell them the coat.  You have no other requirements beyond that, but in the best interest, much like in the fiduciary capacity, you can say, “Yes, you like the coat.  It fits you.  It’s just like you described it but since you have 200, I’m not going to sell you anymore.”  That’s the difference.  That’s not where we are but that’s where some other countries are in terms of financial service.

Consumer Safety Net and Advocacy Part III

I’ve been a fan of General Accountability Office which used to be called the General Accounting Office for a long time.  They do a good job and many of you may be familiar with the study they did several years ago in terms of the recoverability of awards to arbitration.  The GAO is not going to do regular audit for the SEC.  I think that’s a terrific part of Dodd-Frank.

There is going to be an Investment Advisory Committee consisting of a group of investors and I can’t imagine being able to keep that group quiet when they get around the talk of the SEC about their recommendation.   That’s going to be an interesting meeting.

Finally, there is going to be an Office of the Investor Advocate in the SEC, to aid investors who had problems dealing with SEC.  I think that many of you read David Cox’s scathing criticism of the SEC when he did the Madoff audit.  It was unmercifully candid and direct and I think that’s institutionalized in the SEC now.

Here are some additional safety nets.  Let’s look at those very quickly because we are about to run out of time.

TASAnet, providers of the very best expert witness referrals, presents: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act: The Impact on Regulatory Mandates & Securities Litigation Pt. 8

Here’s required disclosures.    I thought this was an interesting thing.  It is something that I’ve complained about for a long time.  The SEC and the CFTC, they are going to have to settle the turf between any regulatory gaps related to over-the-counter derivatives.  It is simply not going to be the case for over-the-counter derivatives are unregulated.  They will have to settle that issue.

This is something that I would like to see how this is going to be actually be applied because they talk about a new clearing house for derivatives that can be cleared.  As you imagined, if you didn’t want your derivatives to be transparent and have visibility, you just make them something that cannot be clear, maybe by adding different elements of trade on various exchanges.  I don’t really like the language there.  I like the notion of the clearing house but I don’t like the notion of letting too many people off the hook.  Any financial institutions that are carrying derivatives on their books are going to have those available for regulators to oversee now.  I think those have been available in the past but not in a unified manner, now it’s sort of codified.

I mentioned this earlier, the shareholder voice in executive compensation.  They get to talk in terms of having a voice in executive pay by building them parachutes; the direct access to investor proxy is new.  An interesting element here is that if a senior officer of the firm has lied, the shareholders can force it to go back and recover funds from that person over the affected five years.  The SEC finally is now showing five-year record of executive compensation.

This is something new.  I think it is one of the things that I’m more excited about than some of the other elements is the oversight of the rating agencies which were often cited as part of the financial crisis.  They are going to have oversight by the SEC.  There’s going to be an office and regular inspections. The filings are going to be made public.  This would cover Moody, Fitch, Standard & Poor and any other rating agencies and those are the three that come to mind.

This is a major change and many of you may be familiar with it.  This is revoking of the Rule 436g on expert liability.    A rating agency now will be deemed acting in an expert capacity and they are not excluded from liability when it comes to their ratings.  They are not be able to say, “Don’t make your investments based on our ratings.”  They are going to have expert liability like a lot of folks on this topic of expert liability.

Here are some of the things that address that issue.  It puts them in the same boat as attorneys, accountants, engineers and expert witnesses. You can’t get off the hook because you say it is the best effort analysis and you don’t rely upon it.  So that is a major change.

Here is my paraphrasing of what I see in the bill.  It is my proprietary interpretation of it.  I think that we have to start some place and I’ll just read this because I think it is very important.  “Now the expert has liability unless it can be demonstrated that after reasonable investigation, the expert had grounds to believe and did believe that the opinions and statements were true and all material facts required for the representations where not misleading and nothing of the material nature was omitted. “   So that’s my understanding of the hurdle that experts will have, in terms of liability on the Dodd-Frank.

Here’s how it strengthens the existing financial regulations.  Again, it is not looking back.  It is looking forward.  It strengthens the Volcker Rule by keeping 3% of the bank’s tier one capital, the hedge fund.  I’m not sure how this is going to work.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act: The Impact on Regulatory Mandates & Securities Litigation Pt. 7 is brought to you by TASAnet, leader in consumer expert witness services in the legal industry.

Tax Fines

Certainly, when you are working with hedge funds, there are going to be some new rules.  There have been, as I have called it here, the paradox of oversight because sometimes they were similarly regulated, sometimes they were looked at the SEC but sometimes there was a grey area and really nobody looked at them.  Now, they’re going to have to report to the SEC.  An interesting element is that you work with interstate agencies, I think the State Securities and Insurance Commissions, they’re known by different monikers in every state, but all of the sudden, hedge funds now are – anything under $100 million, before it’s $30 million, are going to be regulated by the state.  Those apartments are really going to ramp up, especially in the Northeast, if you’re in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut area, where there are a lot of smaller hedge funds.  They’re going to be under state regulation under $100 million.

There’s issues related to minority and women inclusion. These have been overlooked, but I think these are important measures.  I think very classy measures related to Dodd-Frank.  You are going to have an office with the minority and women inclusion; it is going to target employment and contracting opportunities for these target audience.  There is going to be technical assistance and probably financial assistance, as well.

Too big the sale.

They are trying to eliminate this term from the vocabulary of Washington. I’m not sure we reached that point yet, but here’s their attempt to do it. There are several elements to these and some will call this Part 1.  The options for liquidation of financial institutions have to be prepared in advance.  It’s like writing your own funeral.  You have to write your own liquidation the way that the company should be sliced and diced in the event that it fails.

The new capital leverage reserve requirements are saying that they are not going to get less.  They are going to be where they are or even higher.  The commentators have said that this eliminates the possibility of another 2008 TARP-like bailout.  I don’t believe that’s true.  I think that it lessens the likelihood of it, but there is nothing to keep the government from stepping in and doing another 2008 TARP bailout.  It discourages it but I don’t think it eliminates it; not from my reading of it.  The financial firms are going to be required to make the deposit into this fund for bailouts or for near bailouts so the federal government is not going to have to do it.  I think they are targeting $50 billion from the financial institutions to begin with.  So it is a significant amount of money.

Look at this again.  The Paul Volcker rule certainly had a lot of sway in designing some of the elements of Dodd-Frank.  He wants to keep, sort of, the brain bank and some elements of the old last eagle where we isolate the high risk trading investment sponsorship away from the commercial side of the bank.  The FDIC limits are not going to be expanded under the Dodd-Frank.  That have been lobbied for because of the lack of coverage for some of the Madoff and Stanford victims, but the FDIC coverage is not going to be expanded and then again, you have to write your own funeral plan.

Here’s what Wall Street has thought about the new legislation.  I like to follow some of the industry that kind of speaks in terms of what the market feels about it.  This is an index in Exchange Traded Funds that based upon bank stocks.  The KBE and you can see the performance over the last several months, the red arrow indicates when the Bill was signed and the bank index actually gone up in value.  I checked this morning; it is still right around 24.  So Wall Street investors and professional investors don’t believe that this is going to be a crippling blow to financial services.

Here is the oversight council.  Here is one thing that I haven’t seen much press on.  I think it is an interesting element and I think we are going to probably hear some strong voices come out of this.  This new oversight council is going to have ten financial regulators.  On is going to be an independent member and five non-voting.  It is going to be chaired by the Treasury secretary.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act: The Impact on Regulatory Mandates & Securities Litigation Pt. 6 is presented by The TASA Group, consumer protection expert witness referral specialists.

How long do you believe it will take before financial services industry and enforcement professionals start to address the issues related to the mandate and the legislation?

I think, for what I understand, they’re getting started today, as we speak.  As I mentioned earlier, the July 21, 2011 is the official switch-over, but it’s like Y2K, you can’t wait until the first day of the new year to switch your computers over and start working on the new software.  Firms, from what I’ve understand are already working on this and are starting to organize themselves and starting to communicate within their various business units to find the topical hotspots where they really need to focus.  I think they’re doing it today.

Do you think that Dodd-Frank is strictly a North American initiative?  What will be the global impact on some of the other jurisdictions of the financial markets?

I’m glad you brought it up because I’ve been following the Canadian market for some time.  I think the Canadian — there is a clause in there related to conflict minerals. Canada is such a large mineral and mining country with a lot of trade between the US and Canada, there is a clause in Dodd-Frank related to conflict minerals.  It is really targeting Africa, especially South Africa, but it really targets area where there is armed conflict, to make sure that in some way that we are not contributing to armed conflict or terrorists groups.  But the Canadians are very concerned about it because it’s going to require some of the smaller businesses that have mining and mineral concerns to have full disclosure of all the parties involved and make sure that they are not, in some way, in conflict with that clause on mining and mineral companies.  So it’s going to affect the Canadian companies.  I’ve already seen those companies discuss that.  It is certainly going to affect South Africa and probably, Indonesia as well.  It is adding the new element of safeguards where the US is not going to be involved in conflict minerals and not going to be involved in any business that includes graft, embezzlement in any way or financing terrorism.  There are interesting aspects to this.

Okay great!  I don’t see any other questions in the queue, so we could probably continue along with the presentation of content.  We will be taking another Question & Answer break.  If any attendees have a question for Louis, please feel free to use the chat or Q&A feature to submit that and we will get that answered as quickly as possible.  Thanks.

I broke the sections down into the most important sections that I could determine.  Again, I’m not using an outside third party; these are the things that came to mind, as I looked through the legislation.

I want to start with Mortgage Reform.  Unlike some of the problems that we had in the past where lenders would simply issue mortgages without documents and without qualifying buyers and then sell those mortgages off, not holding them; certainly contribute to our financial crisis here in this country.  Under Dodd-Frank, it’s going to require lenders to ensure that borrowers can repay.  I think the “no-doc sort of loans” is going by the wayside.  You are going to prove that you can repay the loan.  It’s going to be required that the lender have all levels of assurance that you can pay the loan.

I think that as Ms. Warren, she is going to eliminate some of the language that was unclear.  She is going to make it very straightforward, in terms of what you are going to be paying.  If it’s an adjustable rate, I think in many cases eliminate, in certain markets eliminate adjustable rate loans, but it should be right straight up front under the new legislation of what you’re paying and when you pay it.

TASA, leaders in consumer expert witness referrals, presents: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act: The Impact on Regulatory Mandates & Securities Litigation Pt. 5