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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.

Audit Failures and Ratings Agencies

Why is anyone still surprised at the magnitude of the disaster that has befallen our economy? An economic collapse that resulted from the faulty analysis performed by those organizations charged with bestowing ratings on the thousands of securitized and structured finance products.
That anyone is surprised is simply amazing, given the collective failures of auditing firms in the last 20 years, and the collapse of Arthur Andersen due to the Enron audit failure. While audits of financial statements and audits of securitized products are dissimilar in many tangible respects, the rationale behind their failures is remarkably similar.
Complex financial statements and complex securitizations share one common feature: no one really understands them. Financial statements continue to be obtuse rationalizations of highly complex organizations and disparate companies, cobbled together and “consolidated” to appear as if the reporting entity was one, giant, unified company, rather than a series of companies that may or may not have little in common. This “consolidated” financial report purports to “fairly represent” the financial results of the consolidated entities, while providing little in the way of unconsolidated and segregated information on the disparate companies that comprise the whole.
The audits are prepared by rotating bands of auditors who generally leave the “Big 4” after little more than 2-3 years in practice, having grown weary of the numbing nature of audits. These “experts” are charged with engaging senior management in lively discussions regarding the adequacy and materiality of their financial representations, while being tethered by the massive audit fees these engagements generate. Think there’s a slight conflict of interest here? Of course there is. Senior managers have a schizophrenic need to “preserve” the client relationship while ensuring the fairness of the financial statements, a tightrope that often fails.
Is the audit relationship any different from that of the ratings agencies and the securitized products? Not really, as they both walk that same conflicted path, generating millions of dollars in fees for their organizations. That no one has credibly challenged the assertion that these ratings agencies bestowed “A” ratings on products that they did not understand is not amazing, what is amazing is that these same agencies continue to bestow identical ratings on similarly structured products, even after this debacle.
That these agencies had little understanding of the complex nature of the structured finance products is understandable, given the lack of prior experience with these products. Regulators, though, failed to learn and absorb the lessons of Enron, and allowed essentially the same regulatory structure to permeate the world of structured finance. The lessons “learned” as a result of the dozens of magnificent audit failures were never understood, either in or out of the accounting profession.
These lessons involve the futility of self-regulation and the inherent conflicts that exist between client generation, responsibility to the investing public, and the sheer volume of work available and fees generated by these engagements. These conflicts may ultimately prevent any meaningful regulation of these industries. The caveat is the same for both investor groups, whether as a bank relying on a set of financial statements to bestow a loan, or an institutional investor deciding whether to purchase complex structured products: it behooves them to perform independent, critical analysis beyond that bestowed by these organizations. The value of either “stamp” has fallen precipitously over the last 20 years, and in fact may mean very little today.

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Time to Say Goodbye

Time to Say Goodbye
Well, this is it.
I have “retired” and moved to Ocala, and I can’t think of a way to attend the networking meetings from 5 hours away. So this is the end of the Business Buzz website.
It has been a wonderful 7 years for me, first writing this weekly in the Miami Herald, and then on this MiamiBusinessGroups.com website for the past three years. I have made many friends, and it is hard to leave.
I want to give special thanks to my silent partners in this website, Carol Simicich of Artege.com and technology consultant Wilson Alvarez.
Wilson had the idea of moving the column to a website when the Herald column ended, and I was reluctant. But he convinced me and provided the domain name from the more than 1,000 he owns, and he has been an important part of making this a success.
Carol designed the website and maintained it over the years, making it easy for me. If you like the Business Buzz website, send business to Carol.
Thanks, also, to Karen Nercess of All Star Event Photography, the photographer for so many of the business groups, for providing the special photos that I needed to go with the column.
I also want to thank the advertisers, over there on the left, for supporting this website, and the leadership of the various business organizations for making me welcome and providing me with the information that I have shared with you.
In particular, Mary Scott Russell of Chamber South, Jorge Pena of the West Kendall Business Association, Larry Barditch of the Pinecrest Business Association and Eleanor Winhold of the Palmetto Bay Business Association. Thanks, also, to Liede DeValdivielso, the incoming chair in Palmetto Bay, for selling our house in a month! It’s her fault that I had to move away and can’t write the column anymore.
A special thanks also to Michael and Grant Miller and David Berkowitz at Community Newspapers for offering the public a print version of this web column. It extended the readership to many more people and, let’s face it, people like seeing their picture in the newspaper!
I was hoping to find a replacement to take over the website before this sad day arrived, but it did not happen. Maybe sometime in the future. I do hope that someone steps up to fill the void, since this has been the only place where business people can find out what’s going on in the networking groups. I know the Herald is working on something, but I don’t know if it will ever be real.
I turn MiamiBusinessGroups.com back to Wilson to recycle. I think he will leave this goodbye message up for awhile until everyone knows about it, and then perhaps use it for another purpose. But if you ever need to access an old column in the archives, Carol will maintain this website at her www.artege.com website as an example of her work, so you can find it there. Also, I think it will continue to be available at www.edgorin.com.
So now I have gotten active in the Ocala chamber and I’m on the marketing committee and we have a meeting coming up about an idea I had for the chamber to do a new resident mailing with coupons from members. Maybe I will start a Business Buzz website here! I think Wilson already has OcalaBusinessGroups.com waiting for me!
To all of you who have been so supportive over the years, thank you for your friendship. I will miss you. Please keep in touch.

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