The law firm of Labaton Sucharow is celebrating its 50th year in business by giving free legal advice to people who think they’ve been defrauded by crooked financial firms.
I decided to celebrate my 25th year of writing this column by helping Labaton Sucharow locate the aggrieved.
Labaton Sucharow specializes in securities law, and it is not charging a dime for this aid — no hourly fee and no percentage of whatever return an investor might get. I specialize in busting chops, and you already know how little I get paid for my services.
The legal firm is working with students of the Brooklyn Law School. I’m working solo, as I have on this column since March 1989. (Yeah, it shocks the hell out of me too.)
“It’s been wonderful working with my alma mater and with law students who have demonstrated an early commitment to pro bono [meaning, free] work,” says Joel Bernstein, a partner at the firm who graduated BLS in 1975.
Says Mark Arisohn, another partner, “Since securities litigation is generally more accessible to large institutional investors with dedicated legal teams, it is important for us to provide our services as legal professionals to under-represented investors in order to level the playing field.”
Take, for instance, the case of Rachel, a 57-year-old widow, mother of three and homemaker. Her case recently came to Labaton after her husband suddenly died and she was left with only $16,000 a year in Social Security benefits for a limited period of time.
In 2008, she went to a broker in upstate New York because she wanted to protect the assets she and her husband had saved. The broker told her “he would do what was best for her family and that he had the expertise to manager her investment assets,” said Labaton’s Bernstein.
I’ve changed the name and some of the details here to protect “Rachel’s” privacy. But the bottom line is that she opened an Individual Retirement Account and a regular account, containing a total of more than $400,000, with this broker. But he ended up losing $350,000 of her dough.
The broker has since left his firm. Labaton Sucharow is still working on Rachel’s case and a number of others.
So, you get the idea.
If you think you have a legitimate gripe and need free legal advice, contact the Brooklyn Law School Securities Arbitration Clinic at 718-780-7994, or clinics@brooklaw.edu. If you feel more comfortable contacting me, email me at john.crudele@nypost.com And don’t forget to wish Labaton Sucharow a happy 50th birthday.
Spring is here (even if the weather doesn’t know it yet).
Now let’s get to the issue of how the severe winter weather — as all of us survivors like to think of it — affected the US economy. Or, maybe, didn’t affect it.
RBC Capital Markets has an interesting take on the notion that snow and cold weather hurt sales. And more important, that there would be a bounce back in the springtime.
The March RBC Consumer Outlook Index reported that 55 percent of the people who responded to the survey said the weather didn’t change their spending habits. More important, 10 percent said they spent more, and 17 percent said they spent much more because of the weather.
Only 14 percent said they spent less because of the weather and 5 percent said they spent much less.
So, if this survey is correct, all the retailers who blamed poor January and February sales on Mother Nature are full of crap.
And everyone who thinks spring will see a surge in spending is deceiving himself or herself. But isn’t that what most economists and Wall Streeters do best?
If Washington gets its way, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — two so-called government-sponsored enterprises — will cease to exist. How then will politicians make their friends rich the next time the housing industry has a legitimate boom?
A check of our files tells me that I haven’t written about this in a decade. But back in the early 2000s, I spent a whole lot of time explaining how Bill Clinton buddy Franklin Raines was getting paid exorbitantly to run Fannie Mae, a disaster waiting to happen.
“Wall Street loves Fannie Mae’s stock. But the love affair is showing some strain,” I wrote in May, 2000 — admittedly a few years ahead of the complete collapse of Fannie’s affair with Wall Street. Raines was pulling down millions in pay and promising to provide $2 trillion for mortgages over the next decade.
We all know how that turned out. Raines got rich. The country got broke and the government pushed houses on people who couldn’t afford them.
“Fannie Mae or mae not be healthy,” I wrote in March of 2000 in what was luckily a mostly ignored tip of my hat to The Bard.
So, again, my question: How are politicians’ friends going to be rewarded if organizations like Fannie and Freddie disappear? I’m sure Washington will figure out how to enrich friends another way.