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Faith Communities in and around North Bay Village

North Bay Village and its surrounding areas offer a variety of places of worship, catering to diverse faith traditions. Here are some notable churches and temples in the vicinity:

Within North Bay Village:

  1. Ummah of Miami Beach
    • Address: 7904 West Dr, North Bay Village, FL 33141
    • Phone: 786-216-7035
    • Description: A local place of worship serving the Muslim community in North Bay Village.

Nearby Places of Worship:

  1. Calvary Chapel
    • Address: 7141 Indian Creek Dr, Miami Beach, FL 33141
    • Phone: 305-531-2730
    • Description: A Christ-centered, cross-focused church offering services and community programs.
  2. Temple Moses Sephardic Congregation of Florida
    • Address: 1200 Normandy Dr, Miami Beach, FL 33141
    • Phone: 305-861-6308
    • Description: A Sephardic Jewish congregation providing religious services and cultural events.
  3. Iglesia Jesus Es Rey
    • Address: 1133 71st St, Miami Beach, FL 33141
    • Phone: 305-867-7679
    • Description: A Christian church offering worship services and community outreach programs.
  4. St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church
    • Address: 17775 N Bay Rd, Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
    • Phone: 305-931-0600
    • Description: A Catholic parish providing mass services and religious education.
  5. St. Bernard de Clairvaux Episcopal Church
    • Address: 16711 W Dixie Hwy, North Miami Beach, FL 33160
    • Phone: 305-945-1461
    • Description: An Episcopal church known for its historic architecture and spiritual services.
  6. St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral
    • Address: 2401 SW 3rd Ave, Miami, FL 33129
    • Phone: 305-854-2922
    • Description: A Greek Orthodox cathedral offering liturgical services and cultural events.
  7. New Revelation Alliance Church
    • Address: 11900 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL 33181
    • Phone: 305-893-8050
    • Description: A Christian church focusing on community service and spiritual growth.

These establishments reflect the rich tapestry of faith communities accessible to residents and visitors of North Bay Village, fostering spiritual growth and community engagement.

The Failure of Crowds

Allen Stanford’s Ponzi scheme is a stark reminder of our collective inability to discern wisdom from crowd behavior, especially in financial decisions.
The Miami Herald today published an expose, here, of Allen Stanford’s final, desperate days to prop-up Stanford International Bank, in Antigua. Stanford Bank had sold $7 billion worth of fake certificate of deposits to unsuspecting investors, including the Libyan government, which was defrauded of nearly $140 million. The well-researched story, covering nearly 2 full-spread newspaper pages, details Stanford’s increasing desperation and failed attempts to attract additional investors to his Ponzi scheme in its final days.
In searching for a theme, a unifying theory of Stanford’s fraud, it became apparent that there was none. Stanford’s fraud was brilliant for its massive scale, its sheer audacity and the garish opulence of Stanford’s monthly personal expenditures, but sophisticated it was not. In fact, Stanford’s scam was frighteningly simple: as long as sufficient investors were lured into depositing their savings at Stanford International and the stock market continued to escalate, Stanford and his group could continue to live extravagant lives of leisure and deception. The fraud would continue as long as inflows of funds, or investors providing new sources of cash, exceeded outflows of funds, or investors redeeming their certificate of deposits. As in Bernie Madoff’s fraud, which likely occurred for 3 decades, Stanford’s fraud, which occurred over a decade, would collapse as soon as this dynamic was inverted, or outflows representing redemptions exceeded investor inflows.
For much of the last decade, this dynamic remained viable and steady for both Madoff and Stanford. The economic collapse of 2008 reversed this equation, and redemptions quickly exceeded investor deposits. As a result of the stock market collapse, investors required cash and redemptions quickly increased. Coupled with unsustainable personal expenses by both Madoff and Stanford, cash reserves were no longer sufficient to maintain the facade, and their paper empires collapsed. These Ponzi schemes were brilliant in their sheer simplicity, in their ability to collectively dupe regulators, investors, sophisticated feeder-funds, employees, and banking analysts for years, if not decades. But they were terribly unremarkable, unsophisticated and blindingly simple in scope and dimension. They occurred because institutions and individuals failed, no refused, to perform any due diligence and research prior to investing their savings. Regulators, who have been exposed as paper tigers, were unwilling or unable to perform basic due diligence and perform even routine analysis, which likely would have exposed these frauds years ago.
The Herald article reveals Allen Stanford the man, a charming, shrewd and cunning businessman who bungled nearly every legitimate attempt at building a business or successful real estate venture, and who resorted to very simple financial statement fraud in an effort to keep his empire afloat. The remarkable element of both Madoff and Stanford’s frauds is that both of these thieves were un-remarkable, unsophisticated, and routinely simplistic. Their fraudulent enterprises were kept afloat by charm, persistence, cunning, and a unique ability to persuade otherwise sophisticated and worldly individuals to abandon skepticism and prudence. But-for the collective ignorance of crowds, these frauds would never have occurred. Collective rumor, especially in Madoff’s fraud, fueled investor hysteria and drove massive amounts of money into these schemes.
These frauds ultimately demonstrate that, contrary to currently popular belief, there is little wisdom in crowds and groups of individuals, sophisticated or not. Group dynamics in financial fraud events are susceptible to the same errors in judgment, perception, and hysteria traditionally associated with non-fraud events, such as the housing bubble or other asset bubbles throughout history. Groups of people, random or not, are clearly incapable of making informed decisions regarding their financial futures and their investments. Individual investors must perform their due-diligence irrespective of their identification or association with a group or other dynamic, or face the consequences and their losses.

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Societe Generale’s Doomsday Scenario

Societe Generale recently published a white paper that purports to be a “worst-case-scenario” of economic predictions, but which ultimately makes a persuasive case for an economic meltdown akin to that experienced by Japan throughout its “lost decade” of the 1990’s.
The report is primarily aimed at presenting its clients with practical financial guidance should this scenario prevail, but provides extensive historical and analytical comparisons to the current economy and Japan’s lost decade. Among the striking comparisons and economic features of both the US and Japanese crises, these are the most compelling:

Ballooning public debt: “Debt is the main constraint on US GDP growth, but reducing the excessive debt burden is likely to stall economic activity.” Lower government spending will limit consumption and GDP;
End of bear market rally: The rally was “fueled by restocking and fiscal stimulus”. Normal consumer spending will be unable to pick up the slack;
Deflation is the real immediate risk, not inflation: “The printing of money by western economies has been used only to replace the credit destroyed”;
Banking crisis;
Property bubble: the largest asset bubble in the nation’s history spawned massive, artificial consumption which will likely not be replaced;
Corporate debt crisis;
High valuations going in;
Stock market crash;
Low interest rates.

The report makes some general observations:

Household deleveraging will reduce overvalued properties to a new “equilibrium”. Output will also reach a new equilibrium, as “previous output was largely the product of a consumption bubble”.
Assuming that the savings rate stabilizes at 7%, which is the current level, it will take consumers 9 years to reduce the debt/income levels to those seen in the 1980’s.
If governments are unable to adequately service their massive debts, then the only option is default. In Dubai, this option appears to be already on the table, as its sovereign wealth arm announced a six month suspension of interest payments on its debt, here.
Inflation, resulting from a devalued and weak dollar, could help ease excessive debt, as it is essentially inflated away, but would likely lead to stagflation, hyper-inflation and revaluation. Ultimately, the interest rate hikes needed to control inflation would hurt consumers as debt servicing costs would surge.
A growing transfer of wealth is occurring from advanced economies to emerging economies.
The bear scenario would lead to a deflationary spiral, as high unemployment and low consumption will drive prices ever lower. “A second round of home foreclosures in the US would lead to further write-downs on bank balance sheets, and even more government public deficits as the debt transfers from financial institutions to the state through more rescue packages.”
In the bear scenario, “avoiding depression is the focus here, though a long and arduous recession can be expected under this scenario.”
The bear scenario would ultimately lead to: a) severely reduced household wealth, as equities and property markets are hammered; b) Long and short term interest rates would remain low, as central banks battle deflation; c) massive transfers of liabilities from households to governments; d) unemployment would reach record levels, which would further destabilize the economy and consumption; e) consumption would be effectively stalled for long periods, leading to an eradication of considerable excess global production capacity; f) Excessively high government debt will force advanced economies into a painful period of deleveraging and contraction, leading to sharply reduced levels of service and government budgets.

Although the report tempers its support for the bear scenario as a likely outcome, the stark contrast between Japan’s economy of the 1990’s and our own economy is striking, and makes this scenario at least plausible and realistic. The Societe Generale report clearly signals the risks to our economy, much the same way that many analysts noted the sharp rise in housing values and warned of housing’s imminent collapse. The housing bubble was predictable, quantifiable, known and observable, yet it was ignored and even ridiculed because of the massive consumption bubble that it generated. The US economy and Wall Street’s near-obsessive compulsion with short term goals and profits ensured that the housing bubble and the artificial consumption it generated were ignored to the detriment of the larger economy, while preserving historic profits for a very rich and limited few. Will we again ignore looming crisis and bury our heads in the sand for the benefit of a few?

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Rothstein’s Onion Peeled Back

The many layers of Scott Rothstein’s Ponzi scheme continue to be peeled back, revealing a tangled web of Madoff-like feeder funds, alleged co-conspirators, and vast sums of money being transferred throughout the world.
The Miami Herald reports, here, that Rothstein moved money to Venezuela, Switzerland and Morocco, and used dummy Delaware corporations to disguise his ownership stakes in real estate holdings and other assets. The Miami Herald also reports, here, that a feeder fund may have contributed close to $2 billion to Rothstein over a 2 year period.
Unfortunately, the media’s focus has been on Rothstein’s opulent living arrangements, including fancy cars, boats, condominiums, watches and mansions. These assets, as dramatic and sensationalistic as they are, represent but a miniscule portion of total contributions by investors. Even assuming that Rothstein accumulated $100 million in trinkets, baubles and cars, that still leaves the vast portion of the money unaccounted for. For those of us unaccustomed to wealth, it is incomprehensible to understand how difficult it is to spend vast sums of money on tangible goods and assets. No, most of the investors’ funds were not spent on Rothstein’s junkets, but were likely dissipated throughout the world in a flurry of wire transfers, and are quite likely parked in exotic locales that have poor regulatory structures or banking laws.
Investigators will first determine the amount of gross receipts into Rothstein’s funds. This will be accomplished through interviews with investors or bank statements and records, assuming, of course, that suitcases packed with cash were not the primary mode of receipt by Rothstein.  Investigators will also marshall the remaining tangible assets and attempt to reconcile Rothstein’s expenditures and cash outlays. Even assuming a wide margin for error and unknown expenditures, investigators should know with some degree of accuracy the amount of missing funds. As difficult as it is to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on tangible assets, it is even more difficult to legally move these funds throughout the world without leaving telltale signatures and audit trails. Following the dissipated money throughout the world will be time-consuming but not terribly difficult or challenging. The challenge will be in recovering the funds, which have likely been withdrawn or divided into much smaller “packets” within the recipient countries.  Pursuing these funds into jurisdictions unfriendly or hostile to the United States may become the Achille’s heel of the investigation.
As the lawsuit in the Herald article indicates, it is impossible to conceive of a fraud of this magnitude that did not involve co-conspirators or at least “fraud-friendly” acquaintances. The mere act of recordkeeping, reconciling, transferring, and manipulating vast amounts of money requires a team of personnel, each of which understood that a fraud was occurring or likely. At a minimum, Rothstein’s garish lifestyle must have triggered alarm-bells in his colleagues, partners, associates, and bankers. Lawyers, even top-litigators, simply cannot earn “stupid-money”. Even if Rothstein’s role as  money manager was factored into his lifestyle, potential investors must have questioned the size and scope of the legal settlements that served as the basis for their investments. Did no one, colleagues or potential investors, deign to ask, “Where and from whom is Scott obtaining legal settlements sufficient to generate these returns”? Did lawyers in the firm compare notes and determine which partner or associate was performing work or billing on these cases, even if not filed in court yet? Again, this was a spectacular failure to perform due-diligence and demonstrates that crowds of purportedly intelligent professionals and entrepreneurs can be easily duped and misled.
Further, even assuming the legitimacy of these structured settlements, Rothstein’s commissions could not have generated the funds required to fuel his extravagant lifestyle, which reportedly cost Rothstein at least $10 million per month. Finally, lawyers at the firm must have understood or could easily have performed back-of-the-napkin calculations regarding the firm’s expected gross revenues and expenditures. The discrepancy between these two numbers should have alarmed these folks, who may now become defendants in dozens or hundreds of civil, if not criminal actions. Complicit stupidity or active fraud?

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Wall Street’s Smarts Exposed

As Wall Street became the destination of choice for MIT and Harvard mathematicians and physicists throughout the last decade, alarm bells should have sounded at our regulatory and policy-making institutions.
An interesting op-ed piece by Calvin Trillin appeared in the New York Times recently, here, that caps a recent trend exposing the so-called genius of Wall Street as a fraud. Other Times writers, including Joe Nocera, here, Dennis Overbye, here, and Steve Lohr, here, have tackled the subject of Wall Street’s smarts, but none as succinctly as Mr. Trillin. In the op-ed, Mr. Trillin claims to have met a man in a Manhattan bar who summarized the cause of the financial system’s near-collapse: “Because smart guys had started working on Wall Street.” This overly simplistic analysis became profoundly interesting as I continued reading, and developed into the following rubric:

Fortune and academic standing on Wall Street are historically inversely correlated, with Wall Street’s millionaires graduating in the lower third of their class;
The lower third, who usually made generous livings on Wall Street, became enamored of potentially huge fortunes, and began leveraging their businesses;
Top graduates, who typically became physicists or judges (tip money on Wall Street), instead began calculating arbitrage risks for hedge funds and other investors;
The top graduates, who were very smart, invented credit default swaps and other derivatives, enabling the lower third to become obscenely wealthy;
Wall Street nearly collapsed largely due to derivatives and credit default swaps developed by these very-smart people.

This theory, while enticingly simple, truly exemplifies what occurred on Wall Street as a result of the oversimplification of risk into quantifiable and discrete components. Although I have written about this before, here, this discussion has largely been ignored by both the regulatory structure and policy making institutions in the United States. We continue to be highly exposed to complex financial instruments that few understand or even acknowledge. The potential domino effect of interrelated industries and institutions is just now beginning to be understood.
Smart-thinking has enabled Wall Street to develop complex and leveraged financial products that have never been tested or vetted in less than optimal conditions and whose potential downstream impacts are unknown, while leverage has magnified the institutional risks of these products ten-fold. We literally outsmarted ourselves into believing that we had created structured products that could withstand severe economic headwinds, but without any understanding of how these products behaved or how they would impact the financial institutions they serviced.
We’re no better off than we were 10 years ago, when top graduates began migrating in large numbers to Wall Street, we’ve simply transferred most of their failures to the taxpayer. Where does it stop?

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The Millionaires Club

It bears worth repeating that the most interesting aspect of many of the recent Ponzi schemes that have surfaced, among them Bernie Madoff’s and Scott Rothstein’s, is not the motivation that propelled these individuals to commit these frauds, but the rationale of seemingly sophisticated investors and wealthy individuals to dispense with the due-diligence that would typically accompany investments in these funds.
This unexplored angle to these stories deserves significant scrutiny, not because it will prevent future fraudulent activity or greatly assist in the forensic examination of these crimes, but because it will shed light on the dynamics of human behavior and psychology, which are far more interesting and compelling. Most reporting of these stories attributes investor behavior to greed or the desire to earn outsize returns in a market largely devoid of enhanced earning vehicles.
This easy answer is convenient and may even be partially correct, but only strikes the surface of the dynamics and drivers that precipitated these frauds. Indeed, if greed was really the motivating factor for these investors, then it would be very easy in the future to trigger warning flags and alarms throughout the investment community once tell-tale characteristics or badges of fraud are detected, and prevent yet another scheme from hatching.
Unfortunately, human behavior is not nearly so linear, predictable or well-defined. Something much deeper, more profound, yet subtle was at play in at least these two frauds: our constant desire to receive attention from or align ourselves with elite membership in exclusive social organizations or clubs that are not otherwise available to “everyone else”. It’s really that simple.
While it’s a fact that Madoff mined his ethnic and religious ties within the Jewish community, and these ties greatly aided him in building false trust in that community, Madoff principally grew his scheme by cultivating the notion of exclusivity within his investors and feeder funds. This exclusivity propelled the Ponzi scheme to dizzying heights and constantly rewarded him with new investments.
Madoff understood that his “club” would not remain sufficiently enticing or compelling through simple appeals to his ethnic circle, or by repeatedly highlighting the steady and predictable returns generated by his fund. Madoff also understood that restricted membership in his investor club would be the carrot that would entice large numbers of wealthy individuals to his flock.
Potential investors were duped into assuming that if other, similarly spectacular and wealthy investors chose to participate in the Madoff fund, that alone would suffice as the acid test of Madoff’s credibilty. How others felt about Madoff would ultimately define these investors’ subjective feelings regarding their investments. The exclusivity of Madoff’s investor pool was the underlying driver that defined these feelings, and created the “Madoff Mystique”.
Similarly, Scott Rothstein’s Ponzi scheme appears to have blossomed once his association with “elite” financial and political groups within Florida became widely known and publicized. Although it does not appear that Rothstein sold investors on the notion of exclusive access to his investor pool directly, his high-level relationships and connections ultimately created the same emotional intoxication that surrounded Madoff.
Once established in investors’ minds, these notions became re-defined and confused as trust by these investors. Two pieces of excellent journalism, one about Madoff in Vanity Fair, here, and another about Rothstein in the Miami Herald, here, highlight the trust bestowed on these individuals by the wealthy and powerful. Investors granted Madoff and Rothstein their trust based not on any objective standard, but on subjective exhortations by other similarly misinformed investors.
These Ponzi schemes were created in much the same fashion as simple rumors, once they had established sufficient critical mass, they were nearly impossible to dispel and became firmly entrenched in the minds of most prospective fund investors. Madoff sold exclusivity and membership in an elite club, Rothstein sold his connectivity to Florida’s elite financial and political establishment. These intoxicants proved irresistible to thousands of very wealthy individuals, many of which deposited their life savings and earnings into the funds.
A core lesson here, though, is that investor behavior is increasingly driven by herd mentality tied to notions of exclusivity, uniqueness and intellectual superiority. These investors wanted to be different, to belong to exclusive groups that few others would have access to and achieve uncommon returns that would define them as intellectually superior. In the end, they too succumbed to herd behavior and the foolishness of crowds, although their herd was a club to which the rest of us are rarely granted access.

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