Creating Wealth Real Estate Investing with Jason Hartman

Douglas J. Utberg - Biograhy

 

My professional life started when I was delivering newspapers at 15 years of age, progressed through multiple jobs paying near minimum wage.   This experience taught me the value of gaining a strong financial education to ensure that I would be able to lift myself up to higher opportunities in the future.

 

Upon completing my first year of college, I enlisted in the US Marine Corps Reserve.  The experience of training in the Marines taught me the importance of a strong work ethic, and the ability to adapt and improvise during difficult situations.  During my six years of service in the Marine Corps Reserve, I eventually earned the rank of Sergeant, and was assigned responsibility for a squad of fellow Marines.  This taught me the importance of placing the team’s needs before your own when in a position of responsibility.

 

Later on, I graduated from Portland State University, earning a bachelor of science in Finance.  Immediately afterward, I embarked on a brief career in the financial services industry, selling insurance products and mutual funds.  During this experience, I discovered the extent to which the financial industry is driven by a desire for management fees and commissions.  This experience inspired me to seek out both a different career path and to develop a way for people to learn the skills necessary for managing their own finances and investments so that they can escape the fees and commissions of the financial services industry.

 

It is at this point when I began my career at Intel Corporation, during which I was able to earn my MBA from George Fox University.  While working at Intel, I was fortunate enough to gain a broad array of experience ranging between manufacturing, cost, inventory, software business analysis, open source business analysis, microprocessor pricing, long range planning, compute continuum, and leading the P&L team in building and implementing a new forecasting system.  Each assignment during my career at Intel provided a unique opportunity to learn and develop.

 

In addition to my career working for an employer, I have also engaged in a broad variety of business and investing activities, ranging from the purchase and management of single plus multi-family investment real estate to stock market investing to building web-based businesses.  My investment and business philosophy are both the same, with each centered around fundamentals and value.  My personal and professional studies have repeatedly found that speculation is not a formula for consistent long-term success.

 

My experience has shown that the best way to succeed in both our career and our investments is to seek value in everything that you do.

 

Visit Doug's website: http://DougUtberg.com

 

Connect with Doug on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DougUtberg

Direct download: CW_393_-_Apartments_vs_SFR__Trading_vs_Investing_with_Douglas_J_Utberg.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 6:31pm EDT

Joel Naroff is the Founder, President & Chief Economist with Naroff Economic Advisors and a member of the Newsmax Financial Braintrust Alliance. He's also the author of, "Big Picture Economics: How to Navigate the New Global Economy."

 

Naroff gives his take on the economic recovery and when he expects inflation to hit, if at all. He also discusses the effects tax cuts have on the economy. 

 

Naroff then talks about international economic hotspots and where people should produce and sell in our global economy. He thinks certain international events can ripple through the economy and ultimately affect workers in the Midwest. 

 

Joel L. Naroff is the president and founder of Naroff Economic Advisors, a strategic economic consulting firm. He advises companies across the country on the risks and opportunities that economic developments may have on the organization’s operating environment.  

 

A nationally recognized economic forecasting expert, Joel has received numerous honors. In 2011, he received the National Association for Business Economics Outlook Award as the top economic forecaster. NABE is the premier professional association for business economists. He also received the award in 2007. In 2008, he was awarded the Lawrence Klein Award for Blue Chip forecasting excellence. This is one of the oldest and most prestigious forecasting honors. Joel was the Bloomberg Business News top economic forecaster in 2008. In 2006, he was MSNBC’s top forecaster.  

 

Joel received his bachelor degrees in economics and chemistry from the Stony Brook University and his Ph.D. in economics from Brown University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, teaches at the Central Atlantic Advanced School of Banking, is a past chairman of the American Bankers Association’s Economic Advisory Committee and is a past president of the Philadelphia Council of Business Economists. 

 

Find out more about Joel Naroff's research by visiting www.econsultsolutions.com.

Direct download: CW_392_-_Big_Picture_Economics_with_Joel_Naroff.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 5:21pm EDT

CW 391: Warren Buffet & Berkshire Hathaway’s Success with Vitaliy Katsenelson of Investment Management Associates

Vitaliy Katsenelson is the Chief Investment Officer at Investment Management Associates. He gives a glimpse at what has made Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway so successful. 

 

Buffett has always voted yes to the investments he's heavily invested in, even when disagreeing, which is a topic of much consternation to Katsenelson. He thinks Buffett mishandled Coke's latest compensation plan. 

 

Katsenelson then discusses ways investors can take a long-term view in their investing. 

 

Vitaliy Katsenelson is Chief Investment Officer at Investment Management Associates. While his primary focus is on discovering under-valued companies for his clients, he is also known for his uncommon common sense, which he has regularly expressed in articles in the Financial Times, Barron's, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Christian Science Monitor, Institutional Investor, and the New York Post, among other outlets. He speaks frequently to investment groups around the world, and was most recently profiled in Barron's in September 2009. Previously, he was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado Graduate School of Business, and he is also the author of Active Value Investing.

 

Visit Vitaliy's Katsenelson's blog at www.contrarianedge.com

 

Find out more about Investment Management Associates at www.imausa.com

Direct download: CW_391_-_Warren_Buffet__Value_Investing_with_Vitaliy_Katsenselson.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 3:28pm EDT

CW 390: Taking Calculated Risks with Eve Wright VP of The Miami Heat NBA Team & Author of ‘ Living Life at the Speed of Passion’

Eve Wright is the Vice President and Associate General Counsel for The HEAT Group (Miami Heat basketball team). She is the author of, "LIFE AT THE SPEED OF PASSION: Create a Life of Intention, Purpose, and Integrity."

 

Wright joins the show to discuss how people can cut the emotional “fat” from their lives and refine themselves everyday. She also explains what it really means to be happy. 

 

Wright then talks about how people can take calculated risks and re-learn risk-taking to achieve ROI. She thinks everyone can overcome their fears of failure.

 

Find out more about Eve Wright at http://evewright.us/.

 

Find out more about the Miami Heat at www.heat.com.

 

In her position, Wright advises the HEAT on a wide variety of legal issues pertaining to marketing and promotions, concerts and events, corporate sales, merchandising initiatives and player-related matters.  

 

Prior to joining the HEAT, Wright served as the Senior Director of Business and Legal Affairs for the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) where she helped to develop sports marketing opportunities for corporate sponsors, managed the LPGA's international trademark portfolio and retail licensing business as well as advised the Association on all legal matters.  

 

Prior to her tenure with the LPGA, the former associate in the Minneapolis, Minnesota office of Fredrikson & Byron, P.A. worked in the E-Business and Corporate Transactions groups.  

 

An avid supporter of community development initiatives, Ms. Wright has served in various capacities on the boards of regional civic organizations. In addition to civic organizations, she is currently a member of the ACC professional organization as well as serves on the Board of Directors for BESLA and Advisory Board for the Corporate Counsel Women of Color.  

 

Ms. Wright is a graduate of DePauw University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and International Business. She earned her Doctor of Jurisprudence from Indiana University School of Law and participated in the Consortium Program at Howard University School of Law. She and her husband, Ken, live in Bay Harbor Island. 

 

Direct download: CW_390_-_Eve_Wright_-_Life_at_the_Speed_of_Passion.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

CW 389: Evaluating Cash Flow Rental Properties in Birmingham Alabama, Cleveland Ohio & Dallas Texas with Jason’s Mom

Introduction:

Join Jason Hartman and his mom on this episode of The Creating Wealth Show as they discuss their long road trip through several markets including Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Nashville, Birmingham and Dallas. You’ll learn about the “minimalist management” philosophy in creating bulletproof rental properties that require very little maintenance and a good overview of several markets.

 

Also, a big thank you to all of the doctors in the audience who provided advice and support relating to my mothers carotid artery surgery. She’s doing well in the Cleveland Clinic provided a top-notch medical experience.

 

Visit www.JasonHartman.com to view properties in these markets and to register for our Little Rock Property Tour and Creating Wealth Bootcamp in late September. Happy investing!

 

Key Takeaways:

·      (1:40) Brief update about Jason’s Mom’s post-surgery health & the Cleveland Clinic

·      (5:54) How to handle late rent for long distance self-managed properties

·      (11:55) How to handle long-distance evictions without a property manager using an eviction service

·      (14:49) A special message from Bill Clinton

·      (18:28) Pleasantly surprised by downtown Cleveland

·      (21:23) Moving on to Birmingham and minimalist management styles

·      (26:44) Coming up in mid-late September: Little Rock Creating Wealth Seminar and Property Tour

 

Links:

www.JasonHartman.com

Audio Transcription:

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Creating Wealth with Jason Hartman!  During this program Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven’t thought of before, and a new slant on investing: fresh new approaches to America’s best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible.  Jason is a genuine, self-made multi-millionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk.  He’s been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities.  This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to financial freedom.  You really can do it!  And now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show!  This is your host Jason Hartman, and this is episode #389!  Thanks so much for joining me today.  I kind of feel like I haven’t been with you in a while!  At least not directly.  In that we’ve played a lot of interviews with guests and so forth, but not that many where I’ve just kind of been talking to you.  So I’m really glad to just be talking to you today, and going over a bunch of issues.  And I’m actually on the way to the airport.  I’m here in the south, in beautiful Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Mom is with me, she’s taking me to the airport.  The first thing I wanted to say is, since I announced my mom’s medical condition on the show, several weeks back, thank you so much to all of you.  I guess we’ve got a lot of doctors in the audience, so we really appreciate the calls, and the emails, and the advice we got from you, so thank you very much for that, and I’ll give you a little update into what has happened since then.  Here’s mom.  Mom, say hello!

 

Surgery in Cleveland

 

MOM: Hi, everyone.  I just want to say thank you also, for all of the concern that Jason’s audience seem to show about my carotid artery operation, and just want to let you all know that everything turned out terrifically well at the Cleveland Clinic.  That is just a classy place to go, if you have anything wrong.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Good stuff.  I would totally agree; the Cleveland Clinic is an incredible operation.  I was very impressed.  So, with all of that, real estate is kind of in our DNA.  What happened is, I actually flew to Cleveland to meet my mom there, and she drove up there, and, well, I was in Cleveland, we were there for about a week with her recovery and so forth from the surgery, that went very well, as you just heard, and I met with our Cleveland local market specialist, who actually is one that we’ve been working with for quite a while in another market.  He formed an alliance with a group up in Cleveland, and I met with him, and I looked at their properties, and I gotta say, I did not think I would like Cleveland very much.  We have shied away from a lot of the previously blighted markets. 

 

We’re still shying away from the real blighted ones like Detroit.  But, you know, I was pleasantly impressed with Cleveland.  I really was.  It was amazing.  Now, I was impressed with all of the extensive downtown redevelopment projects; I was impressed with the properties, and the cash flow on those properties; I was impressed with the rehab.  Again, we’re working in Cleveland, with the same provider we’ve been working with for many, many years in another market.  So, you’ll hear more about that, and you’ll hear more about his partner in the Cleveland market that’s doing the direct business.  More on that to come.  I did shoot some video, and I’ll share that with you on our YouTube channel, and maybe we’ll even play the audio track from some of that video.  We might even do that on this podcast, time permitting, because one of those audio tracks is really just a conversation, while the other videos are looking at properties, and so the visual helps.  But for the conversation, we can probably just play the audio part of that video on the podcast here today.  And then, mom and I, after looking at Cleveland—oh, mom, you gotta share the funniest thing.  And I was very concerned about you during the surgery, as I was pacing around the waiting room and so forth there at the Cleveland Clinic.  But I knew you were okay when you were in the intensive care unit and you demanded your iPhone, and what were you doing on your iPhone?  I actually took a funny picture of you, why don’t you talk about that?

 

MOM: Well, I had the operation the 2nd or 3rd day of the month—

 

JASON HARTMAN: It was the 2nd, it was July 2nd.

 

MOM: Okay, it was July 2nd.  Anyway, the rents are supposed to be in my bank account on the first day of the month.  So, I was simply calling those that I didn’t think had paid yet, that weren’t registered in my bank to pay their rent, immediately.

 

JASON HARTMAN: I know my mom’s been on a few shows before, everybody, and you’ve heard her talk before.  She’s the—I call it an extreme do-it-yourselfer.  She’s not a do-it-yourselfer; she’s an extreme do-it-yourselfer.  That mansion in which you live, you probably would have built it yourself if you could have.

 

MOM: I could have gotten rid of all of the bad health.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah.  I tell you, building a house is a nightmare project.  So I would never recommend that to anybody.  But you know, that was your childhood dream ever since you saw Gone With The Wind as a little girl.  But anyway, what you do, that I think is kind of interesting—number one, you self-manage all your properties.  You don’t use managers.  And you self-manage from a long distance.  You have properties as far away as about 2,000 miles or so, and then you have closer properties that are within, I don’t know, maybe 60, 80 miles.  Biloxi, Gulfport, that’s where you’ve got one.  You’ve got another one in Tuscaloosa I think, right?

 

MOM: Yes, uh huh.  Those are the closest.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Do you have anything in Mobile, Alabama?

 

MOM: No, uh uh.

 

Dealing with Late Rent

 

JASON HARTMAN: So, those rental properties, what you do that’s interesting, is you have all your tenants deposit the rent into your bank account.  So, you bank with a big national bank, and they’re responsible for going to the bank and depositing the money into your account on the first.  And I remember when you were in the intensive care unit, and this was literally, I mean—look, folks.  I tried to stop her.  I tried to take the phone away.  She wouldn’t have it.  Just, you have to know my mom to understand that.  You’re not gonna stop her from doing anything.  And so, you had a sheet of paper there, and you were looking at the deposits, and you had a pencil, and you were writing down on a sheet of paper which ones had deposited, and you discovered that of all your rental properties, four people had not made their deposit, and you were calling them on your iPhone from the ICU, where they strictly say that you are not allowed to have phones in there.

 

MOM: Well, actually, it was only three people.  The bank had kind of made a mistake on one of the tenant’s deposits; I couldn’t quite recognize it, but they corrected that the next day, and the tenant told me that they had definitely deposited, and they were telling the exact truth.  So it was only three people that hadn’t deposited immediately.

 

JASON HARTMAN: What strikes me as interesting—and again, if you use property managers, you don’t have this opportunity—but I remember listening to you talk to your tenants on the phone, and what strikes me as interesting is how I think that because you have this kind of a personal relationship with them—of course it’s a business relationship, you’re not friendly with them, so to speak.  You’re not getting too close to them, in other words.  But because they know you, and they view you as an actual person, rather than some sort of nameless, faceless institution, I feel that you exert some more pressure over them to get them to pay, and pay quickly.  Do you agree, or have anything to say about that?

 

MOM: I just make it very clear that I cannot tolerate late rent payments when they sign that lease.  And they know that I expect and demand that my rent be paid the first day of the month.

 

JASON HARTMAN: So, tell the listeners kind of how you handle that, and what you say to people, and things like that.  And by the way, folks, we’re gonna cover a lot of other subjects in this show, in this episode, so I’m just going over a few things here that struck me as kind of funny with mom.  But, tell the listeners how you handle that, what you say to them.

 

MOM: Well, I simply call them and say, hi whoever it is on the other end of the line.  I don’t see your rent in my bank deposit yet, and is there a problem, or did you already put it in, or what is going on?  And they tell me what has happened.  And I say, look, you know there’s a $60 late fee if you don’t have the rent in there the first day.  I really do not want your $60.  I simply want your rent on time.  When will the rent be put in the bank?  And they tell me.  And if it isn’t in there on that first day of the month, I say, well, be sure to put in the $60.

 

JASON HARTMAN: For the late fee.  Okay.  And do they usually do that?  Do they cooperate, and put it in?

 

MOM: Yes, most of them all do that.  There is one tenant that does not do that, and all of those $60 late fees will simply be deducted out of their security deposit when they leave.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Okay.  So, now, you did have a problem, though, that was kind of stressing you out on one of your properties.  And this is a long distance property again; it’s about 2000 miles away from you, so, it’s far away, and you actually called up a real estate agent, I think you were called a Century 21 office, and kind of describe for the listeners that whole story.  And that happened this month.  You know, these are unusual, but it happened to happen this month, you happened to be in the intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic, which I think is ridiculous that you were doing this, but, I don’t know.  Maybe that’s what keeps you alive, is you have a purpose, you know?  You knew you had to recover from surgery, and recover quickly, because you had to collect your rent.  So, it’s kind of like Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning.  Another version of it.  The modern version.

 

MOM: Well, what happened is that this tenant is now—we’re in the eviction process.  And the tenant had moved in a girlfriend, and he simply didn’t pay.  So, I called a local real estate agent, and I told them the situation, and I asked them to, would they please go over there and just check and see if the place looked like it had been abandoned?  If tenants were still living in there, or what.  Anyway, the gentleman, very nicely did go over there, and—

 

JASON HARTMAN: The realtor.

 

MOM: The realtor.  And as he was there, someone was coming out of the door.  And it happened to be the girlfriend.  And I said, please let me speak with her.  And so, she just took his phone, and took it in the house; the poor real estate guy lost his phone.  He was ready to call the police to get the phone back.  She carried out a ten-minute conversation with me about when they were going to pay rent, and all of the details.  I said, please, now give that man back his phone.  I talked to the realtor—

 

JASON HARTMAN: This is hilarious.  It’s like a reality show, you know?

 

MOM: I talked to the realtor, a few hours later I called him, and said, I wanted his address, I wanted to send him a check for his work in helping me out.  And he refused the check, and he says, that’s just my job, to give really good service to people.  So I thought, that’s a great guy.  And I will certainly go back to him when I need to.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah.  So, the realtors—you know, there’s—what you’ve gotta realize, if you want to self-manage your properties, and if you want to be an extreme do-it-yourselfer like my mother—I mean, the vast majority of my clients, you know, and I’m talking vast, vast majority.  Maybe 95% of our clients, use property managers.  And you know, I do it both ways myself.  Some of my properties I self-manage, and as I’ve said to you on many episodes for a long time now, I was happily, pleasantly surprised that I could do this from a long distance.  I never thought that was achievable.  And for our members, I taught a whole webinar on that topic, and I’ve talked about it on the podcast as well, on prior episodes, about long distance self-management of your properties.  So, there are advantages and disadvantages to each.  What you’re hearing now is from an extreme do-it-yourselfer.  So, good.  Anything else on that?

 

MOM: No, other than the fact that I have now done all of the eviction preparation work.

 

Do-It-Yourself Eviction

 

JASON HARTMAN: So, how do you handle a long distance eviction like that?  Without a property manager?  Tell us what you do.  You go online, you find an eviction service, etcetera—tell us what that’s about, and how it works, and how much it costs.

 

MOM: Well, first off, I do file a three-day notice to pay rent or quit.  Because I know all of the details.  And I then hire a process server, which costs anywhere from $30 to $50 or $60 to get the thing served.  Then you send the proof of service to the attorney.  And you can go online and just Google eviction services.  You always want to get a firm that specializes in evictions.  Don’t get a firm that does every other kind of legal work.  Just evictions only.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah.  So, there are lots of law firms out there.  They are technically law firms, that offer eviction services, that are like an assembly line.  They’re a mill, and they just process evictions, and deal with tenant issues, like crazy.  And one of the things I say when I talk about self-management, is that sometimes, your property managers will actually do this process themselves.  You know, they will go, and they will post a three-day notice right on the door.  Sometimes they nail it right to the door.  And it’s kind of embarrassing for the neighbors to see that.  And they will actually do all of this, and they will handle the eviction, they will show up in court, they will take it all the way through getting your judgment against the tenant, which you can later collect on.  Or, at least, try to collect. 

 

And I’ve talked a lot about that.  A lot of those judgments are a lot more collectible than people think.  In fact, when you were online today, I saw on your computer screen, mom, when you were online looking at eviction services, I saw that there was like a banner add there on that website that said, we want your old judgments.  And so, a lot of these services, and a lot of other people out there, will actually buy these judgments from you.  Now of course they’re gonna buy them at a discount, so if you have a tenant who owes back rent, or has damaged the property, and you’ve got a judgment against them for, say, $2000—I’ve never sold off a judgment like this, but I would assume that these services will buy the judgment from you, and do all the collection themselves for maybe 50, 60 cents on the dollar, depending on how big it is, how collectible it is, etcetera, etcetera.  But you can just sit there with a judgment and wait, and collect eventually too, and those judgments do accumulate interest.  So, this can actually be kind of a good investment, oddly.  And if that tenant ever tries to get an auto loan, or apply for credit somewhere, or someday buy a house, that prospective lender will usually say, hey, you gotta pay off this judgment before we’re going to give you a loan.  So, don’t just assume that because the tenant is broke today, or they’re a deadbeat today—fortunes change, and that won’t stay the same forever.

 

BILL CLINTON: Hi.  This is Bill Clinton, and I want to invite you to hang out with my friend, Jason Hartman, in my hometown of Little Rock.  Jason and his interns, you know I like interns, are having his famous Creating Wealth Seminar and Property Tour here!  So drop everything, including Hillary, and go register at www.jasonhartman.com, right now.  This event is coming up soon, but, as I like to say, it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.  See ya there.

 

JASON HARTMAN: So, what else happens in the eviction service?  Tell us about that.  Anything else?  Did you hire the attorney on that one already?

 

MOM: Yes, he sent me a couple of forms to fill out.  And his price for an eviction in Riverside County is $670. 

 

JASON HARTMAN: Now that’s pretty expensive, actually, huh?

 

MOM: The prices went up, I think, about a year ago, or a few months ago.  Because it was usually around $599, something like that.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Boy, I’ve heard of people hiring them for a lot less than that!  I’ve heard of people getting them for $2, $300.  You know, I bet you—and now, those are old properties that are in the Socialist Republic of California.  And I’ll bet you, although I do not know, this is just a guess—that part of that has to do with the fact that California’s such a tenant-friendly state, and it’s just harder to evict people there.  You know, one of the reasons we don’t recommend it as a market.

 

MOM: You know, I don’t know.  In some counties—Los Angeles County has a different price, and I think San Bernardino County has a slightly different price, and Riverside County has a slightly different price.  So it depends on which county you’re operating in.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Have you ever done one—did you do one here in the south, where you’ve got your Southern United States properties?

 

MOM: No, I’ve never done an eviction here.

 

JASON HARTMAN: And your cash flow’s so much better here too.  You’ve gotta—see, my mom’s strategy—look, folks.  Of course your family’s never gonna really listen to you too much.  But now I can say, you should see her expression right now.  Oh, here we go again, rolling the eyes.  But, selling those properties, those properties that she’s had for decades, okay?  From the 70s, 80s, 90s, maybe you bought some in the 90s, I think you did, and selling them on 1031 exchanges, and exchanging those into other properties in more landlord-friendly places, and you know, with much, much better cash flow, that would be a great strategy for you.  But speaking of that, let’s talk about some of the markets we saw.  Because we took a road trip after your surgery; they let you out of the hospital after two days in ICU, and one day, or one night, I should say, in the regular room in the hospital, where we watched fireworks from your room.  And it was pretty good, actually.  Cleveland had, I don’t know.  How many fireworks displays did we see there?  Maybe 13, 15 fireworks displays?  And a beautiful sunset. 

 

The Cleveland clinic is like, a hospital that’s sort of on the swankiness level, almost, as the W Hotel, but with the service of a Ritz Carlton.  I was just totally impressed.  And I know you were too.  And so, we watched fireworks there, and you checked out the next day.  And then we drove around Cleveland.  And number one, that was super impressive.  But then we took a road trip, and we went to Cincinnati, we looked at properties, we went to Birmingham, we looked at properties, we went to Nashville, and then back home to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and then I took off to Dallas to go look at some discounted mortgages, discounted notes.  And we’re thinking of offering that to our investors.  So, we’ll talk about that on a future episode in more detail, but it’s interesting.  Talk a little bit about Cleveland, if you would, mom, and then let’s talk about, maybe the other highlight would be Birmingham.  I’ll talk a little bit about the properties I looked at in Dallas, and then we’ll kind of wrap up here.

 

MOM: I was really, really, really impressed with the city of Cleveland.  I had it in my mind that it was one of these old steel kind of rust belt cities.

 

JASON HARTMAN: A blighted area.

 

MOM: But wow was I impressed.  Downtown—beautiful, beautiful displays of flowers everywhere.  And darling restaurants, and shops.  I just couldn’t get over how lovely it looked!  It was incredible!  And then, the drive that we took along Lake Erie, where all of those big, beautiful houses were—I mean, some of them were just like castles.  I was just blown away.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Those are like the old money—probably old industrial money—homes, and they were very impressive.

 

MOM: But there were also beautiful neighborhoods that, these weren’t castles, but they were beautiful big homes, just one house after another, huge big lawns, everything was green, lots of trees, flowers, just a lovely sight to drive around.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Amazingly, you know, some of these former rust belt cities are really finally getting it.  They’re not doing the idiotic thing, you know, the big government liberal thing, where they drive all the businesses out, like California has been for so many years.  And they’re getting it.  I mean, there are a whole bunch of incentives to move your business to Cleveland.  They’ll give you free real estate, they’ll give you free warehouses.  And I mean, mom, one of the things that just, I couldn’t believe it—you know, we went to the rock and roll hall of fame, we had lunch downtown, we had dinner downtown the night before, at that beautiful restaurant—what was that called?  Blue Nose, or something?

 

MOM: I think it was Blue Point, or Point Blue?

 

JASON HARTMAN: Blue Point, yeah.

 

MOM: And there was a horse with carriage that you could drive around the city with—

 

JASON HARTMAN: There were a few of those, remember?  And remember my dog Coco, who’s in the back seat here—

 

MOM: Oh, there was more than one of them, definitely.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Remember how Coco freaked out thinking that horse is a big dog?  She didn’t know what to think of that.  But, that was amazing.  And, it was so clean, I didn’t see a single homeless person anywhere.  Now, maybe it’s just too cold to have many homeless people.  But it wasn’t cold when we were there, of course, in the summer time, but it is other times of the year, and I mean, I was just amazed.  I did not think it would be that nice.  It certainly wasn’t that nice last time I was there years ago.

 

MOM: And there was one charming area called Little Italy, with all of the tables out on the sidewalks, and the tablecloths, and people eating out in the evening.  It was just totally charming.  I was—I liked it a whole bunch.

 

Birmingham, Alabama, Real Estate

 

JASON HARTMAN: Okay, let’s switch gears, and let’s talk about our next real big property stop.  I mean, we did some others, but you know, these are the major highlights we’ll give you.  And that was Birmingham, Alabama.  Now, we’ve been doing business in Birmingham for a while.  We stayed at that beautiful Weston Hotel in Birmingham, and that whole new area of redevelopment there that was really, really nice.  Shops, restaurants—it was gorgeous.  It was really nice.  Then we went out with our provider who we’ve been working with for a long time.  We saw some of the homes that you, the listeners, our clients, have purchased and rented.  And some that are in escrow, or under contract, I should say, and you know, you haven’t closed on them yet.  We saw some of those, and took some video.  And the thing about Birmingham is that there are different management styles, different rehabbers or local market specialists that we work with have a different style of doing business.  And you know, one of the things I say is that this is a very fragmented industry.  Everybody works a little differently.  That’s what keeps the institutional investors largely out of our business.  I know we’ve been talking about hedge funds, and private equity being in the real estate business.  But, they don’t like it very much, and they’re not really staying in it.  They’re not here to stay.  Because

 

it’s just too fragmented for them.  It’s not easy for them, like other institutional investments that offer lower returns.  But when it’s not your money, your return is not that critical of an issue, okay?  And that’s how they think.  They just get paid to manage capital, right?  So, Birmingham, the key thing there is, our local market specialist there, is what I call the minimalist manager.  And what I mean by that is that these properties are really designed, and the rehab is done in such a way that the property is kind of bulletproof, if you will, where there’s just not that much to break.  And you know, I was thinking about all the properties I own, and have owned over the years, and the things that break, and the things that I get—you know, calls on, or you know, the property manager shoots me an email on, asking me, do I approve this expense to fix this or that.  And I couldn’t believe our local market specialist there, who’s also a property manager.  You know, mom, do you want to talk about some of this minimalist management?  That you, by the way, loved it, okay.  I was a little bit less enamored of it than you.  But the more I think about it, the more I think, gosh, you really could have nearly expense-free properties with this style.  What are your thoughts?

 

MOM: I was impressed.  Because if you don’t have a garbage disposal to fix, or a dishwasher—

 

JASON HARTMAN: You know, they said the actually prefer properties with no garages, and if it has a garage, they usually take the garage door out and just make it a room!  Because it’s less things to break, you know?  There’s never going to be a garage door to repair.  There’s never going to be a garage door opener to repair.  Things like that.

 

MOM: Yeah.  And no microwave oven to replace.  I just love the whole concept of this minimalist type of thing.  It reminded me of houses that were built in Los Angeles in the 1940s.  They didn’t have all of these great, modern improvements, you know?  All of these kitchen packages, the stove, the refrigerator, the microwave, the garbage disposal—that wasn’t in existence in Birmingham.  And those would be great houses.  The rent might be lower, but you’re not going to spend all of that money fixing them up and hiring plumbers to go out there.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Well, the rent really is quite good.  I mean, these are lower middle houses, okay?  And so, the typical deal there that we looked at, where you’ll buy the property for maybe $55-65,000—I mean, there are—this fluctuates, but this is what we kind of looked at that day.  And it will rent for about 1.2% of the value.  Maybe somewhere in that range.  So, your $60,000 property will rent for $800 a month.  And it’s a minimalist deal, so again, the tenant doesn’t have very high expectations.  They get a single family detached home, and they get a yard, front and back, and they get three bedrooms, and one or two baths—

 

MOM: And another nice aspect of those homes is, because they are the older homes, is that they typically have hardwood floors in.  So, hardwood floors are much more desirable than carpets.  And you don’t have to keep replacing the carpets.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah.  A lot less maintenance there.  So, that’s the minimalist style of management.  And what it means—no garbage disposals, no dishwashers, no microwave, no garage, and obviously, no refrigerator, washer, and dryer.  The tenant supplies their own.  And the tenant can treat the dishwasher just like any other appliance.  They don’t, a lot of times, expect a washer, dryer, or a refrigerator.  So, they bring those, and they can bring a dishwasher too.  There are dishwashers that are mobile, that are, you know, not built in.

 

MOM: When I said the rents are lower, they’re not lower in—they’re lower than the rents that you would get in California.  But in relation to the prices that you pay for those houses, you are having positive cash flow!  I mean great positive cash flow.  And the point is that you get to keep most of it, because you don’t have to spend it all in repairs.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, good stuff.  And we’re gonna be touring, by the way, slated for mid, maybe late September, but our Little Rock Property Tour.  By the time you hear this I’m pretty sure it’ll be on the website at www.jasonhartman.com, so there’s another great market that you can look at.  And I just—we’re kind of running out of time, so I think I’m going to skip telling you about our Dallas tour.  I mean, not ours as a company, but my Dallas tour.  And I’m not gonna tell you about discounted notes, and those kinds of opportunities, in this show, because we’re already at about 30 minutes here.  But I do want to tell you, go to www.jasonhartman.com, join us for our Little Rock Creating Wealth Seminar and Property Tour, and that will be in mid-late September, more details to follow very soon, but you can register and get the early bird pricing, at www.jasonhartman.com, in the events section. 

 

[MUSIC]

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): I’ve never really thought of Jason as subversive, but I just found that’s what Wall Street considers him to be!

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): Really?  How is that possible at all?

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): Simple.  Wall Street believes that real estate investors are dangerous to their schemes, because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): I know!  I mean, how many people do you know, not including insiders, who created wealth with stocks, bonds, and mutual funds?  Those options are for people who only want to pretend they’re getting ahead.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): Stocks, and other non-direct traded assets, are losing game for most people.  The typical scenario is: you make a little, you lose a little, and spin your wheels for decades.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): That’s because the corporate crooks running the stock and bond investing game will always see to it that they win!  Which means, unless you’re one of them, you will not win.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): And, unluckily for Wall Street, Jason has a unique ability to make the everyday person understand investing the way it should be.  He shows them a world where anything less than a 26% annual return is disappointing.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): Yep, and that’s why Jason offers a one book set on creating wealth that comes with 20 digital download audios.  He shows us how we can be excited about these scary times, and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): We can pick local markets, untouched by the economic downturn, exploit packaged commodities investing, and achieve exceptional returns safely and securely.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): I like how he teaches you to protect the equity in your home before it disappears, and how to outsource your debt obligations to the government.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): And this set of advanced strategies for wealth creation is being offered for only $197.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): To get your creating wealth encyclopedia, book one, complete with over 20 hours of audio, go to www.jasonhartman.com/store.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker, Jason’s creating wealth encyclopedia series is for you.

 

[MUSIC]

 

ANNOUNCER: This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company.  All rights reserved.  For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email media@hartmanmedia.com.  Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice.  Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for any individualized advice.  Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network, Inc. exclusively.

Direct download: CW_389_-_Cash_Flow_Rental_Properties_in_Birmingham_Cleveland__Dallas.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 4:59pm EDT

Introduction:

John Lawrence Allen is a securities litigation attorney helping investors recover funds lost through investment fraud or incompetence. He’s a former Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney and author of the new book, “Make Wall Street Pay You Back.”  Allen talks about the dirty tricks Wall Street plays and how average people can protect themselves from Wall Street.

Allen also gives some tips for investors before they invest a large sum of money with an advisor or hedge fund. He also shares how financial advisors can mitigate their risk of fraud.

 

Key Takeaways & Time Stamps:

  • (2:20) John Lawrence Allen: background and history of latest book
  • (3:06) How Wall Street and the investment landscape have changed over the last 20 years
  • (4:06) On the arbitration process
  • (7:34) On the laws not being in favor of the consumer
  • (11:34) A brief message from Bill Clinton
  • (12:13) Causes of action: fraud, incompetence, etc.
  • (17:00) The extraordinarily high commissions on life insurance sales
  • (19:11) How does the investor know what fees are being assessed by financial advisors?
  • (22:08) The length of the FINRA arbitration process
  • (22:55) On “simplified arbitration” for small claims
  • (24:58) Discussion of other types of fraud, beyond incompetence and excessive commission
  • (30:20) Discussion of a managed future deal Jason was pitched on
  • (33:30) Some tips on buying gold: always invest in bullion, never numismatic coins
  • (38:12) Who claims are usually made against
  • (39:42) Jon Corzine, MF Global, & the Insider’s Game
  • (44:19) Bad monetary policy forces people to take inappropriate risks
  • (45:03) Closing statements

 

Links:

www.MakeWallStreetPayYouBack.com.

www.Amazon.com to purchase the book: Make Wall Street Pay You Back

Find out more about John Lawrence Allen at www.myinvestorfraud.com.

 

Bio:

Former Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lawrence Allen represents investors nationwide in securities arbitration. Mr. Allen spent seven years working for two major Wall Street firms and was chief investment officer for two hedge funds. Mr. Allen pens a blog on impactful subjects that affect all of us and is a respected legal expert who provides insightful commentary on national TV, radio and print.

 

Audio Transcription:

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Creating Wealth with Jason Hartman!  During this program Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven’t thought of before, and a new slant on investing: fresh new approaches to America’s best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible.  Jason is a genuine, self-made multi-millionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk.  He’s been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities.  This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to financial freedom.  You really can do it!  And now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show.  This is your host, Jason Hartman, and thank you so much for joining me today.  We’ll be back with today’s guest or segment, in just a moment.

 

[MUSIC]

 

JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome John Lawrence Allen to the show!  He is a securities litigation attorney, helping investors recover funds lost through investment fraud or incompetence.  He’s a former Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney, and the author of a new book, entitled, Make Wall Street Pay You Back.  And of course you know over the years I’ve said with some degree of sarcasm, that Wall Street is the modern version of organized crime, and my Commandment #3 for successful investing is, maintain control, because when you don’t maintain control, you leave yourself susceptible to three major problems.  Number one, and we’re gonna address that during the interview with John today, you might be investing with a crook.  Number two, you might be investing with an idiot.  And so we’ll address those two.  And number three, even if they’re honest, even if they’re competent, they take a huge management fee off the top for managing the deal.  So, we’ll kind of dive into this.  John, welcome.  How are you?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: I’m good.  How are you today?

 

JASON HARTMAN: Good, good.  Well, it’s great to have you.  And just to give our listeners a sense of geography, where are you located?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: My office is in White Plains, New York.  I used to have an office in California and midtown Manhattan, and I’ve now moved out to the Connecticut countryside to work in White Plains.

 

John Lawrence Allen: background and history of latest book

 

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic.  Well, tell us about your background, and how you came to write the book.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, I wrote my first book, Investor Beware, 20 years ago.  And that was—actually, more than 20 years, I guess it’s been now.  Almost 25 years ago.  And that was the result of having been in the industry.  I spent 7 years on Wall Street, and I invented an arbitraged [unintelligible] program.  That’s how I went into Wall Street.  And I got very, very dissatisfied with the [unintelligible], and the outright unethical activity I saw around me.  And it got so bad that I quit, and I wrote my first book, Investor Beware, to help people protect themselves from the way Wall Street operates.  But over the last 20 years, the entire investment landscape has radically, radically changed.  And the entire way brokers do business has changed.  And if investors aren’t aware of these changes, they may very well end up becoming victims of the Wall Street community.

 

How Wall Street and the investment landscape have changed over the last 20 years

 

JASON HARTMAN: You know, when you say those changes, I don’t know what you’re referring to, so I’ll have you tell me.  but is one of them—one way that I think large corporations really oppress people, is through the commercial arbitration act.  And I know so many years ago in the 90s, when there was a lot of securities fraud in the news—of course, that seems to be an ongoing issue, of course.  And, you know, a lot of people have lost money in the stock market.  They made some new rules—I don’t know, you know, exactly which agency that came out of.  Maybe it was the FCC, or FINRA, I didn’t mean to say FCC, did I say that?  The SEC, the Scoundrels Encouragement Commission, as it’s been called.  But it is—is that arbitration?  Because arbitration, really I think takes away people’s rights quite a bit.

 

On the arbitration process

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, that’s an interesting—there’s two sides to that coin.  Yes, they take away people’s rights.  And people don’t know it, but if you have a problem with a broker dealer—that’s, you know, any licensed firm that buys and sells securities for you—if you have a problem with the representative who works at a broker dealer, when you sign your contract with them, you waive your right to a court trial or jury trial.  That means, you don’t get to be in front of a group of your peers, you don’t get to have any of the help that you would get in a court room, or in a civil or jury trial.  That’s the negative side.  But there’s a positive side to it.  The positive side is, you’re gonna go into arbitration, which is significantly less expensive, significantly less time-consuming, and far swifter justice than you could ever get in a court.  Let’s say you win a court case, and what’s gonna happen?  Well, the arbitration—not the arbitration.  Securities firm is going to appeal that matter, and you’re gonna get stuck in court for another couple of years.  On the other hand, if you go to FINRA—Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration—you’re gonna be in front in a case of $100,000 or more, three arbitration judges, who are gonna rule very quickly, and you’re gonna have a result very quickly.  And if you win, they have to pay within 30 days.  You don’t have any of the problems of collecting, or appeal, or the lengthy process that’s involved in the court proceeding.  And there’s one more positive, I find, in arbitration.  That is, if you get into a complex securities case, there are complex issues and facts that the average juror really can’t grasp that well.  But these arbitrators are usually business people, and they have a business background, and they understand wrongdoing when they see it, and they’re not afraid to make an award.  The one thing that is difficult is to try to get punitive damages.  That’s very difficult arbitration.  I’ve attained it more than once, I’ve gotten it, but it’s a difficult road to go, to try to get punitive damages.  And lastly, you don’t have to get bogged down in a motion practice where a wealthy brokerage company with an unlimited pocket can paper you to death with motions and motions to compel and sanctions and hearings and depositions and request remissions and all the discovery stuff that goes on.  None of that’s allowed in arbitration.

 

JASON HARTMAN: I mean, I’ve been in arbitrations.  They have depositions though.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Not in federal arbitration.  For securities cases.  Yes, in civil arbitration, but if you go into a FINRA arbitration, there are no depositions, there are no request remissions, there are no interrogatories.  You can do a document request, but it’s very limited, which means that you’re gonna save a great amount of time and a great amount of expense, and a great amount of heartache.  So, all in all, oddly enough I actually—when I started, I didn’t like, or I perceived not to like, the arbitration process.  But now that I’ve done it for so many years, I think that it’s a good methodology to get swift justice.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Okay.  Well, I don’t want to belabor that one, because it’ll take away from sort of the crux of our discussion, but it’s good to hear your point of view on that.  So, the thing you were saying, in terms of the laws not being in favor of the consumer, in this case the investor, is no jury trial, and what was the other one?

 

On the laws not being in favor of the consumer

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: No court trial.  No judge—

 

JASON HARTMAN: Okay, no court trial at all.  So, arbitration.  But, were there any other things you wanted to mention there, before I got you on this tangent of arbitration?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, I just—I think that the cost effectiveness is so overwhelmingly in the—you know what it does?  It puts you on an even footing with someone who has an unlimited budget, which you can’t do in litigation unless you’re willing to spend the money to ante up.  But in arbitration, you’re on an equal footing with your opponent.  And if you have a competent, skilled, highly qualified and knowledgeable attorney who knows the ins and outs of FINRA arbitration, you’ve got a long way towards getting your money back.

 

JASON HARTMAN: So, that may be different—and again, I don’t want to belabor this arbitration point too much, because there’s other issues, of course.  But, it sounds like it’s better, with a FINRA situation, for people that have been defrauded, just lost money because of incompetence on Wall Street.  But in a typical arbitration, those arbitrators—I think, I’m pretty sure, they really lean toward the person who put the arbitration clause into the contract, because they view them as repeat customers, and we’ll call it part of the vast Wall—the vast arbitration conspiracy.  It blows my mind that AAA, the American Arbitration Association, is actually a nonprofit organization.  The fees are enormous.  And we all pay taxes to have a public court system.  And listen, I’m no fan of prolonged litigation, or litigation at all, but gosh, why do you have to pay for a private court, which in the typical arbitration, probably not FINRA, with what you explained, acts, in my opinion, as a bit of a kangaroo court—especially the fact that these things are confidential.  And you get these real estate developers that develop these condo properties and so forth, and you know, they all put arbitration clauses in their contracts.  And you can’t do a litigation search on them before you, say, buy a property, to see if they’re a bad apple, if they’ve been sued by hundreds of investors!  It’s all hidden from public view.  And that just makes me think of a Third World, Banana Republic country where they’ve got these kangaroo courts, and you know, our whole system is based on transparency.  At least that was the original idea of it.  So, that’s my bone to pick with arbitration.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, you raise a good point.  And I would tend to agree with you.  Up until a couple years ago, arbitration had two panel members that were public, and one who actually came from the industry, and it was in many cases biased in favor of the arbitration people, meaning the broker dealers.  And I think the statistics, not from me personally, but the statistics generally bear out your concerns.  People don’t do all that well in arbitration.  They win about half their cases, and of the cases they win, they win about half the money they got back.  So, I don’t put that as good odds.  That’s not been my experience, but I am very selective in the cases I take, and I put in a great deal of time to win these cases.  I understand that you’re not gonna get money from three business people unless you can find a way to emotionally connect your client with them.  if you can’t find a way for them to care about your client, they’re not gonna give you anything back.  But if you can find a way to develop the cast to find an emotional connection—something that touches them, they’re gonna be far more willing to knock the arbitration—when I say, to go after the broker dealer for fraud.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Let me take a brief pause; we’ll be back in just a minute.

 

A brief message from Bill Clinton

 

BILL CLINTON: Hi.  This is Bill Clinton, and I want to invite you to hang out with my friend, Jason Hartman, in my hometown of Little Rock.  Jason and his interns, you know I like interns, are having his famous Creating Wealth Seminar and Property Tour here!  So drop everything, including Hillary, and go register at www.jasonhartman.com, right now.  This event is coming up soon, but, as I like to say, it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.  See ya there.

 

[MUSIC]

 

Causes of action: fraud, incompetence, etc.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Let’s talk about what are some of the causes of action.  I mean, of course fraud is one of them.  But you also mentioned incompetence, and when someone has a securities claim, whom is the claim directed at?  You know, you’ve got the advisor who works at Merrill Lynch, which in my opinion, or whatever firm, I’m just saying Merrill Lynch because they’re big.  But they can work at any firm; Ameriprise, Merrill Lynch, whatever, okay, and I tend to find those advisors are usually just slick salespeople who wear nice suits, okay?  Nothing more than salespeople.  They have cursory knowledge.  Very little real depth of knowledge, usually.  Of course I’m making a generalization here, and I apologize to those smart, great, ethical good brokers out there, because there are some.  But you’ve got the broker, you’ve got the investment banker, you’ve got the firm.  Who are you really—you’ve got the company.  There are so many layers to this.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, let’s talk about that for a second.  People don’t know that you can hold a brokerage firm and its registered representative—that’s the stock broker who provides you with a recommendation—for giving bad advice.  People think, well, that doesn’t sound right!  If he gave me bad advice?  I mean, if I get advice, and the stock doesn’t do what he thought, how can he be responsible?  And the corollary, or the answer to that, is this.  Under the FINRA guidelines, and the Securities and Exchange Commission guidelines, brokers are required to know your risk tolerance, time horizon, financial goals, and anything that can affect your capacity to invest.  That means if you’re employed, unemployed, medical problems, but mostly, what they have to do is they have to match the correct product with your goals, objectives, risk tolerance, and time horizon, so that they make a recommendation that’s suitable for you.  So, if you’re 35, and have a good job, and you want to take some risk with having 70, 60, 75% of your money in the stock market, probably not bad.  The opposite of that is, what if you’re 65 or 70, and you’re retired, and living on your retirement assets, it would not be appropriate for a broker to recommend that you buy a highly speculative stock, or that you have 70 or 80% of your investments in equities, and stocks!

 

JASON HARTMAN: They seem like they do a pretty—I mean, I’m sure there are brokers out there that do that kind of stuff, but it seems like they do a pretty good job of making all the appropriate disclaimers, and you gotta sign a mountain of paperwork that of course is all written in their favor, and has a zillion disclaimers, and a lot of legalese—I mean, don’t they pretty much cover themselves on that type of stuff usually?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: The paperwork covers them perfectly fine.  But that doesn’t relieve them from their obligation.  A broker that makes a recommendation to a customer has a fiduciary duty to that customer to put the customer ahead of the broker.  So, let’s say I have a client who wants to make an investment of a couple hundred thousand dollars, and I want to put them in what quote is a suitable investment, based on what they’ve told me about themselves.  Unless they put it in a suitable investment, I can make, let’s say, $200,000 investment, maybe I can make $100, $150 in fees.  However, if I put them in something that the brokerage company is promoting, or pays a double commission, or is highly speculative, I might be able to charge them significantly more.  Let’s say $1000.  So, if I can make $1000 on a improper or unsuitable investment, and $100 or $200 on one that’s suitable, that puts in kind of a trap for the broker to say to themselves well you know, I’m really gonna forgo that extra 800 bucks I’m gonna make on this transaction and do what’s right for my client.  How many people have the ethical and moral heart to do that?

 

The extraordinarily high commissions on life insurance sales

 

JASON HARTMAN: Not a lot of people, certainly on Wall Street.  Not a lot.  And you know, when you say that, it reminds me of two investments that are really just laden with heavy commissions, from what I understand.  One of them is oil and gas, and another is life insurance.  The fact that life insurance is even kind of promoted as an investment bugs me in some ways, although the needle might be moving a little bit, for me, on that.  But still, I just think it’s insurance.  You know?  But those—I mean, some of these things have extraordinarily high commissions.  I mean, I’ll give you an example of one.  One time a life insurance guy came into my office, and he wanted to market his life insurance products as an investment to my investors in my real estate firm.  And he slapped down literally a copy of some checks that he earned on some policies that he sold.  And one of them was like a $7 million life insurance policy.  And I’m not gonna get this exactly right, because I don’t remember, but the check was for like $250,000.  I mean, it was insane, how—he says, look, I could split this with you.  I’m like, well don’t I have to have a license or something?  And he says, well, there’s a way around that.  We’ll reclassify the fee.  And obviously I didn’t do any deal with him, but I mean, some of these commissions on these things are just extraordinary.  On these oil and gas deals?  I hear that some of them are like half of the investment amount!  You know, if they get an investor to put $100,000 into some oil and gas deal, the salesmen will make 50 grand!  Whoa!  That’s crazy!

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Yep.  That’s true.  And in fact, if you want to go back a little bit further in time, there was a period in the late 80s and middle 90s where Prudential [unintelligible], which, you know, the rock solid, sold 400,000 of its customers $8 billion in phony partnership deals.  And those deals, they were making 30, 35, and 40% off the top before the customer saw a single dime.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Unbelievable.  That’s just—that’s just crazy.  So, is—so, okay.  So, the broker, or the investment advisor, with a registered rep—I don’t know exactly what to call them—but, they steer the investor into something that’s not as good for them, that obviously pays them a higher fee.  Right?  So, that’s one form of—that’s one actionable thing.  Now, how is the investor ever going to find that out though?  How does the investor know what the menu of fees is for the things that that advisor has to steer them into, available to them?

 

How does the investor know what fees are being assessed by financial advisors?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, that’s a very tough question.  And that’s a very good question.  And the reason is because on a lot of these products that they’re selling a product, the commission’s in the product, and the customer will never know.  So, on that $200,000 example, if the broker makes $5000, you know, a 2½% fee, and that’s in the cost of the $200,000, that means that really 195 of your money actually ever went into the investment.  And there’s no way you can know, unless you read the prospectus, or you ask the broker.  They’re certainly not gonna volunteer and tell you, oh yeah I’m gonna make 5 grand on this break.  And also, that also happens on principle transactions.  If you ever buy a stock or a bond, most bonds are sold on principle transactions.

 

JASON HARTMAN: What is a principle transaction?  What does that mean?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: A principle transaction is where there’s no commission charge.  The fee is in the price of the bond.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Alright.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: So, as an example, if I call up my broker and say, you know, I want to get a 10-year bond, and let’s say you can get a 10-year bond for 2.3% return per year over the 10 years.  So, you buy the bond with this 2.3%.  You don’t know what the brokerage firm picked that up for.  Let’s say they picked it up for 2%, and they charge you 2.3.  That difference in that spread is an enormous markup.  It could be many thousands of dollars.  So you just don’t know in a principle transaction, and that’s another way brokerage companies can—in fact, I’ve gotta case right now, I have a lady who had a very, very, very substantial portfolio, many millions of dollars, and she was charged over $3 million in markups and fees on bond transactions, and she never knew it, over the course of a 6-year period.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Wow.  Wow.  So, $3 million in fees and markups on what—

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: On municipal bond transactions.  The safest most conservative of all transactions.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Right.  Yeah, right.  And I’ll tell you something.  If you ask me, a lot more municipalities are gonna be filing bankruptcy in the future, because there are so many of them underwater.  Of course we’ve seen that with Detroit, Vallejo, California, some others.  But very interesting.  So, $3 million in fees—that is unbelievable!  What was the principle investment though?  I’ve gotta have some comparison.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: She had $30 million in municipal bonds.

 

JASON HARTMAN: So, 10%.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: In a laddered portfolio that never should have been touched, that had never been—not that—there should not have been any transactions, and in 6 years they traded $120 million with the bonds in her portfolio.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Unbelievable.  That’s just insane.  So, she’s in process, right?  Did you recover for her yet?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: We’re in the arbitration process now.

 

JASON HARTMAN: How long does that take, when it’s a FINRA arbitration?  What’s the length of that process?

 

The length of the FINRA arbitration process

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Somewhere between 11 and 14 months, on average.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Okay, alright.  And, what is the amount of money—I mean, obviously that’s a large client with some big money you’re talking about, in terms of the investment size, and the investment losses.  But, how much does someone need to lose in order to make going to a FINRA arbitration worth it?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, that’s a good question.  I would answer that in twofold.  First of all, anybody that wants to seek help should only hire an attorney that would be willing to work on a contingent fee so they don’t end up spending a lot of money trying to get back their losses.  That’s item one.  Two, there are different levels of arbitration.  FINRA, within the last year and a half, has established a new type of arbitration called small claims.  They call it simplified arbitration.

 

On “simplified arbitration” for small claims

 

JASON HARTMAN: Oh, that’s great.  Like small claims court kind of idea.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Kind of, but a little different.  And that would—for FINRA, small claim is any loss below $50,000.  And if you have a loss below $50,000, you don’t—and you go into this simplified arbitration, you don’t even have to appear at a hearing.  You submit the entire claim, on paperwork; the respondents, the broker dealer, file an answer, and one arbitrator makes a ruling without you ever having to appear.  So it saves you testimony, litigation cost, travel expense, hearing fees, expert testimony.  It’s all done in the pleas.  Now, you don’t have to do it that way.  If the case is $50,000 or smaller, you have a one party, one arbitration chairperson, that’s it.  You don’t have a panel of three.  You have a panel of three above $100,000.  So really, I would say anybody that loses $10,000 or more, even $5000 or more, it’s certainly worth it to pursue it.  I don’t think you’d probably get many attorneys to handle a $5000 case.  But I’ve developed a methodology to help people with cases between $10 and $50,000, which is on my website, and I take them into the small claims arbitration process, and the whole thing can be done for very, very little money, and the best part is, unlike regular arbitration, small claims are usually resolved in 7 months or less.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Excellent.  So give out your website if you would.  That’s a great resource, thank you.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, my website is the same as my book; the book is Make Wall Street Pay You Back, and the website iswww.MakeWallStreetPayYouBack.com.

 

JASON HARTMAN: www.MakeWallStreetPayYouBack.com.  And you’ve got the small claims information on there, which is fantastic.  But then also, for larger losses, they can hire you, or another attorney?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Correct.

 

Discussion of other types of fraud, beyond incompetence and excessive commission

 

JASON HARTMAN: Okay, good.  So, talk to us more about some of the other types of fraud out there.  there’s incompetence, there’s, I guess I’ll call it steering to the product that pays the highest commission.  What else is there?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, beyond the suitability issues, which are very numerous, and that expands a lot of things that brokers might do.  They might put you in—there’s an example, as I said before, if you’re 70 years of age, you probably shouldn’t be in a 75% stock portfolio.  On the other hand, if you’re 75 and they put you on 100% in one investment, and over-concentrate you, that’s not correct, that’s not suitable either.  So, it really doesn’t matter what age you are.  if a brokerage company takes all your money and puts it in one investment, that’s clearly unsuitable, because if that investment goes down—even Apple, as an example.  People do fabulous in Apple, but Apple also had, about six months ago, a 300-point drawdown.  And if you had all your money in Apple, you’re hurting!  So, that’s another thing they do.  Also churning.  Churning is where a broker makes excessive buys and sells in your account, without an interest in making you profits, the broker’s interest is in getting as many commissions as they can from your account.  And what’s interesting is in a churning case, you could actually—I’ve had cases in churning where the client never knew the account was churned, because they didn’t lose any money!  The account was churned for a couple years, they ended up—you know, the stock market was up 30% over a two-year period and their account was flat.  They couldn’t understand why.  And when I dived into it, I found out, well, it was flat because $200,000 in commissions were paid over that period, and if you hadn’t had the $200,000 in commissions, you would have been up 200 grand, and you would have been up pretty much where the stock market was.  So, if a broker exercises control over the account, and buys and sells excessively to generate commissions, they churn your account, and that’s actionable.

 

JASON HARTMAN: So, in other words, you don’t have to have actually lost money in the aggregate.  You could still have an investment.  Your portfolio could still be up.  But just because of the malfeasance of the brokerage firm, or the individual broker, you could have lost money through churning—now, the churning thing, is that as big as a deal anymore?  Because it seems like the industry has moved to a model of managed money, where all they’re really doing is, you give them $100,000, and they’re charging you, you know, 2% a year, or whatever the number is.  And you’re not really paying for trades.  But, one of the scams is, a lot of times, you’re paying in multiple layers!  So, you’ll give the guy sitting at Merrill Lynch your $100,000, and he’ll say, well, I’m gonna charge you 2% a year, or whatever the number is, and so, he doesn’t make money on churning per se, but then what he does is he goes and he puts your money into a bunch of other funds like mutual funds where they’re making money inside that fund too, because of all these management fees.  I mean, that’s just, wow.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, you’re absolutely correct.  And that is—and that’s one of the things I had to cite in the book.  The methodology on Wall Street has shifted from a commission-driven business to an asset-gathering business.  So, the churning claims are down dramatically.  They’re not out.  And the reason they’re not out is because there are products called managed futures.  And most of these managed future products really don’t exist to have the customer make money.  They exist for the broker dealer to reap huge commissions from buying and selling at a high velocity commodities.  And, what’s interesting about these managed futures, is most of them have a program in which, let’s say you give somebody 50 grand.  And let’s say they have a hot hand and their managed commodity accounts have doubled, and you go up from 50 to 100,000.  The prudent thing to do would be to pull your 50 out and play with their money.  But that’s not what they do.  What they do is, if you go to $100,000, they merely double the amount of contracts they’re trading, so they can generate double the commissions.  So, if you had a $50,000 account, and you were doing, let’s say, five contracts in a trade, and you now have $100,000 account, they double that, they go to 10 contracts.  Let’s say you make an incredible profit, you go to $200,000. Your 50 has grown to 200.  Well, you’re now gonna go from 5 to 20 contracts.  Which means that even the smallest move, after those enormous profits, will wipe out all your gains in a very short time.  Classic example of that is long term capital, which made 30, 35, 40% a year for three years, and then in six weeks, wiped out not only all of the gains, but the $4.5 billion that was still there.  Totally wiped it out when the commodity markets went the wrong way.

 

Discussion of a managed future deal Jason was pitched on

 

JASON HARTMAN: Wow, unbelievable.  Hey, can I run something by you that I was pitched on?  I actually had the guy on one of my shows, and it sounded pretty good…it’s a managed future deal, and I just wanted to see what you thought of it.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Sure.

 

JASON HARTMAN: I didn’t do this investment; at least not yet.  But, the guy was pretty convincing, I have to tell you.  And so, he works in Chicago, and you know, is on the floor of the exchange there, and the big pitch is that Japan, which most of us know is massively in debt, the whole country is just in a mess.  I mean, the US is too, but the US has the reserve currency, and you know, some different circumstances, obviously.  And the pitch is that Japan will default on their debt, and what you should do is over a 5-year plan, with a $30,000 minimum investment, let me buy options on this debt, that it’ll default.  Let me short the Japanese debt.  It’s just saying, it’s gonna default at some point.  And there will be what’s called option decay.  Now, granted, I don’t have a big understanding of this.  I’m just a consumer.  But there’s something called option decay, and as the option decays, what he’s basically doing is over the course of five years, using $500,000 per month of your $30,000.  I think—I don’t know the math on that.  Yeah, 60 months.  500 a month.  To pay for option decay.  But at some point in that 5 years, there’s gonna be a default, and you’re gonna win, you’re gonna make money.  That’s the prediction.  Of course it’s a prediction.  What do you think of that?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, that’s a long-term bet, and I guess the thing I’d be most concerned about would be, do they have the—I presume this is not an exchange-traded fund?  If it doesn’t trade at any known stock exchange or commodity exchange, you have to worry about the counterparty risk of the person, should they do what they claim it’s gonna do, are they gonna be able to pay you?  And a lot of these counterparty risk cases that have come up during the 08, 09 crisis when a lot of off-market contracts were traded, and they couldn’t make good when the unlikely event occurred, like AIG, which was betting on collateralized debt obligations, they said, oh, no country’s ever gonna go into bankruptcy.  No, we’re not really gonna have to worry about that.  And lo and behold, Greece goes into bankruptcy, and AIG almost went under!  Took us close to a trillion dollars to bail out AIG, which I think was a big mistake.  But there was a counterparty who couldn’t pay!

 

JASON HARTMAN: Maybe the concept is a winner.  Maybe it actually works.  But then the counterparty just defaults, and they can’t pay you.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Yeah, that’s why I try to stick with anything that’s exchange listed.  So then at least I know they’re going through a well known New York stock exchange, the COMEX, the NASDAQ, and there’s some third party who’s trying to make sure that they’re gonna honor their margin requirements.

 

Some tips on buying gold: always invest in bullion, never numismatic coins

 

JASON HARTMAN: Good.  Okay, good point, good point.  Okay, what else should people know?  Do you want to talk about any other types of investments?  I mean, maybe you want to mention just quickly maybe gold?  I know that that’s not a huge market, but we touched on oil and gas.  If, you know, you want to mention any other alternatives.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, I think for gold, my suggestion would be, anybody who wants to invest in gold, I don’t have a problem with them investing in gold.  I do have a problem in how they do it.  I don’t think anybody who wants to own gold should ever use leverage, options, or margin.  They should only buy it for cash.  They should take delivery, they shouldn’t allow any third party to store their gold, and they should only buy gold from a reputable dealer who’s been in business over 10 years, and then finally, only gold bullion, not numismatic coins which are supposed to have great asset value.  And when I say bullion, I mean a Canadian maple leaf, an American gold eagle, you know, a South African Kruger rand, an Austrian krone, some well known gold bullion that’s difficult to make in a, what I would call a forged or dishonest way.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Right, right.  A lot—the scams and the numismatic market are rampant, and every gold dealer, when you call them up, you know, a lot of times they’re advertising on the radio, and they’re promoting the concept of gold or silver or platinum or palladium, and they’re talking about bullion.  But when you call them, they try to up sell you to numismatic coins, because they’re just much higher margins.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Tremendous, tremendous margins.  You’re talking sometimes 30, 40% margin on a numismatic coin.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Right.  But you know, that’s not a security necessarily.  I mean, are you talking about—see, I think the only way someone should invest in gold, or precious metals, is in the way where you actually take possession of it.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: I agree.

 

JASON HARTMAN: You’re talking about inside of a fund, right?  I mean, you’re not talking about—I mean, there’s—there are frauds where people actually take possession, and they find out the metal is fake.  But I don’t think that’s super common, probably.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Those are very, very rare.  And those are usually not government-sponsored products like American eagles or maple leaves from Canada.  And, they’re usually sold by disreputable dealers.  But if you buy gold from a reputable dealer and have it shipped to your home, put in a safety deposit box, or bury it somewhere, that’s the safe way.  You don’t want to have them tell you, oh, we’ll store it for you.  No, you want your gold, if you’re gonna buy gold.

 

JASON HARTMAN: I agree with you.  The point of that types of investing is to be in possession of it.  absolutely.  And I just can’t believe the people that go for these deals where they say, oh, they’re gonna store them in a vault in Switzerland.  Yeah, right.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: And another thing now—another section of my book, Make Wall Street Pay You Back, is, as you said very early on, we’re no longer a commission-driven business; we’re a management business, where they grab their assets and send them out to management.  That adds a layer of protection to the broker dealer and the registered representative, the stockbroker.  However, that doesn’t stop them from still having to make a suitable recommendation to this manager.  So, when you go to a broker dealer and you give them your assets, and they agree to manage them, and they’re not gonna charge you a commission, they’re gonna charge you a percentage of the assets you have under management, you need to be sure that whatever manager they hire, that that manager is—and the manager style—is in keeping with your goals, objectives, risk tolerance, and time horizon.  You don’t want to go into an all equity small cap microcap fund, if you’re trying to invest in what is supposed to be on the stock investing side, a more conservative portfolio.  And also, you want to be sure that the style of that manager doesn’t involve, unless you’re willing to take that risk—you know, I’m not saying risk is bad.  You just need to know about it, make an informed consent about it, and be willing to accept it.  But you need to be sure that that style of that manager is in keeping with your risk assessment.  Because, if you don’t want to take a lot of risk, then you can’t have options, derivatives, or futures, or leverage, employed by that manager.  So you need to know the style, and the type of investments, and where they’re gonna make those investments.

 

Who claims are usually made against

 

JASON HARTMAN: Toward the beginning of the show I talked to you about all the different layers of this onion, and how, who are you really—who is your claim against?  We’ve talked about registered reps, brokerage firms.  What about the other people in the food chain?  And then, all the way up to the actual company, whose stock you own.  In the board of directors, and the CEO, and the CFO, and the CTO—all of these guys are just skimming off the top.  I mean, the Dennis Kozlowskis of the world, and all the rest of them.  I mean, there’s a lot of fraud going on at that level too, where, you know, the brokerage firm could be okay, the rep could be okay, but the actual company whose stock you own, do you go after them too?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Well, I try to make a rule not to go after anybody who has a questionable pocketbook to recover from.  Generally—

 

JASON HARTMAN: Oh, right.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Generally, when there is a corporate crime, or a corporate fraud, most of the time, not always, most of the time, there aren’t assets sufficient to recover for the shareholders.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Because they’ve sucked it all out of the company, and the company’s basically an empty shell.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Exactly.  Madoff, or Enron, or Delphi, you know, if we were to go back a few years to all of the security problems going on.  But interestingly enough, if you do it at a grand enough scale, you get to walk away scot-free and you don’t even go to prison.

 

JASON HARTMAN: It’s unbelievable.  Yeah.

 

Jon Corzine, MF Global, & the Insider’s Game

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: A perfect example is Corzine, who was the governor of New Jersey—

 

JASON HARTMAN: MF Global.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: And Jon Corzine.  And he was a huge donator to the Democratic Party, and a big supporter of Obama, and he took over a company, MF Global.  And they were just a plain bread and butter vanilla commodity broker.  They bought and sold commodities, they made, you know, a few pennies off of the buying and selling of these commodities.  Well, he didn’t think that was enough money.  So he went and made a multi-billion dollar—I think 3.6, to be exact—billion dollar bet on the debt of other countries and companies.  And that bet went awry.  Very badly awry.  And Corzine went in, and he claims he did not do this.  He claims he didn’t know.  But under his supervision as the chairman of the company, they invaded the assets of their own clients, and stole $1.3 billion of assets from their clients to cover their bad bet.

 

JASON HARTMAN: And that’s Jon Corzine, and $1.3 billion, that’s billion with a ‘b.’  Not million—billion, okay?  Huge.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Correct.  Took it out of their clients’ accounts.  They got caught, they had to return what money they could find, he paid a fine, and he walked away without going to jail for committing absolute grand larceny on a monster scale.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Un-fricking-believable.  I mean, this is so disgusting.  It’s just—it’s just disgusting!  And it’s amazing to me, like, one of the things I tell my listeners is, don’t trust resumes.  Ken Lay, with Enron—he was buddies with George Bush, okay?  I’m sure the pictures were all over the company for people to see when they came in.  Bernie Madoff was president of NASDAQ.  Jon Corzine was governor of New Jersey!  I mean, your resume doesn’t get much better than any of those, right?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Oh, absolutely.  And let’s add to the list Mr. Mozilo, who was the chairman of Countrywide, who got bought out by B of A, and he was one of the large perpetrators of the entire mortgage debacle, and people lost billions, maybe even trillions, and he walked away scot-free and he, he had his “friends of Mozilo,” who got mortgage—well, I should put it this way.  Members of Congress and the Senate, who got special mortgages from Countrywide at highly reduced rates, because they were friends of Mozilo.  And he walked away scot-free.

 

JASON HARTMAN: It’s just a total insider’s game.  That old question, you know, when the broker takes his buddy down to show his buddy his new yacht, and his friend says, where are all the clients’ yachts?  You know?  It’s an in—that’s what people have to understand.  Wall Street is an insider’s game.  And the insiders are the ones who get rich, because the insiders have all the connections, and they basically make the laws.  Because they have lobbyists, they have lawyers, they have PR firms, they have accounting firms, and the game is just so stacked against the investor, I don’t know why the general public is still playing in this field.  They’re totally outgunned!  And then you look at Michael Lewis and his great new book, Flash Boys, which I’m sure you’re familiar with—I mean, are these—Goldman Sachs—are they just a totally criminal organization too?  Probably.  I don’t know.  It sure seems like it.  It’s just unbelievable.  I mean, in Flash Boys, which I highly recommend, Michael Lewis talks—he just profiles all of these companies that are like, getting in line to do this high frequency trading, where the speed of light is not even fast enough anymore, at 186,000 miles per second, and all the people profiting from all of this stuff in the food chain, it’s beyond despicable.  It’s totally rigged.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: It’s very difficult.  It’s a hard game to play.  But, the other side of the coin is, with the Fed maintaining these totally illusionary, 0% interest rates—

 

JASON HARTMAN: What else can you do?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Everybody’s having a hard time trying to make ends meet, and they’re forced, almost, to go into the stock market.

 

Bad monetary policy forces people to take inappropriate risks

 

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, they’re forced to do—see, this is—bad monetary policy like we have, forces people to take inappropriate risk!  Because they can’t get any yield in their bank account.  And it’s so sad to see the people that are older and have really done the right thing all their lives.  You know, they saved money, they planned for the future, they delayed gratification, and now they got a few bucks.  It’s sitting in a bank account, being destroyed by taxes and inflation, especially inflation, which, you know, is higher than what the government would have us believe, and they just can’t get any yield.  So, they go in, and they play with the stock market, and, you know what happens.  I mean, that’s your business.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Yes.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah.  It really—

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Sad but true.

 

Closing statements

 

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah.  It really is sad.  Well, this has been a fascinating discussion.  A lot of people tell lawyer jokes, but I’m glad there are lawyers out there who really help people get some justice.  And one of them is you, so, thank you for doing that.  And give out your website again.  Of course the book is onwww.Amazon.com.  I definitely encourage people to read it: Make Wall Street Pay You Back.  The website is the same name, right?

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Yeah.  www.MakeWallStreetPayYouBack.com.  There’s also a section in the book about arbitration, what it’s like, what you have to know, what it’s like to go through one, so people won’t feel so nervous about going through the process, and realizing that they have rights, they ought to stick up for their rights, and not be afraid to pursue even Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs.

 

JASON HARTMAN: Good.  Good stuff.  Well John Lawrence Allen, thank you so much for joining us today.  This has been very informative.

 

JOHN LAWRENCE ALLEN: Thank you very much, Jason, and I appreciate the time.

 

[MUSIC]

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): I’ve never really thought of Jason as subversive, but I just found that’s what Wall Street considers him to be!

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): Really?  How is that possible at all?

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): Simple.  Wall Street believes that real estate investors are dangerous to their schemes, because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): I know!  I mean, how many people do you know, not including insiders, who created wealth with stocks, bonds, and mutual funds?  Those options are for people who only want to pretend they’re getting ahead.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): Stocks, and other non-direct traded assets, are losing game for most people.  The typical scenario is: you make a little, you lose a little, and spin your wheels for decades.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): That’s because the corporate crooks running the stock and bond investing game will always see to it that they win!  Which means, unless you’re one of them, you will not win.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): And, unluckily for Wall Street, Jason has a unique ability to make the everyday person understand investing the way it should be.  He shows them a world where anything less than a 26% annual return is disappointing.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): Yep, and that’s why Jason offers a one book set on creating wealth that comes with 20 digital download audios.  He shows us how we can be excited about these scary times, and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): We can pick local markets, untouched by the economic downturn, exploit packaged commodities investing, and achieve exceptional returns safely and securely.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): I like how he teaches you to protect the equity in your home before it disappears, and how to outsource your debt obligations to the government.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): And this set of advanced strategies for wealth creation is being offered for only $197.

 

ANNOUNCER (MALE): To get your creating wealth encyclopedia, book one, complete with over 20 hours of audio, go to www.jasonhartman.com/store.

 

ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker, Jason’s creating wealth encyclopedia series is for you.

 

[MUSIC]

 

ANNOUNCER: This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company.  All rights reserved.  For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email media@hartmanmedia.com.  Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice.  Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for any individualized advice.  Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network, Inc. exclusively.

 

Direct download: CW_388_-_Make_Wall_Street_Pay_You_Back_with_John_Lawrence_Allen.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 8:18pm EDT

Robert Kiyosaki is the acclaimed author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. The Rich Dad Company has made Rich Dad Scams: 8 Financial Scams Disguised as Wisdom available for free eBook download, so Kiyosaki talks in detail about scams everyone needs to understand.

 

Kiyosaki discusses the fundamental challenges with the traditional school system and how corporate America kills the entrepreneurial genius of many bright workers.

 

Kiyosaki then answers how much money one should save in his or her bank account. 

 

Robert Kiyosaki is a fourth-generation Japanese-American who grew up in Hawaii. He joined the Marine Corps after graduating from college in New York, and went to Vietnam as an officer and helicopter gunship pilot. After the war, Robert went to work for the Xerox Corporation and in 1977 started a company that brought the first nylon Velcro surfer wallets to market. Feeling that he had something important to teach, Robert founded a new company in 1985 to teach business and investing to tens of thousands of students throughout the world.  

 

At the age of 47 Robert retired from his business to devote time to writing, and in 1997 published the #1 New York Times best seller, Rich Dad Poor Dad. Soon afterward he wrote Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant, Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing, and Rich Kid Smart Kid.  

 

All the books have been on the best-seller lists of the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, New York Times, E-Trade.com, and other distinguished lists. Robert also created educational board games to teach individuals the same financial strategies his rich dad spent years teaching him… strategies that helped him retire at the age of 47.  

 

Robert Kiyosaki’s goal is to give people information that will help them make their money work hard for them, rather than simply working hard for money.

 

Find out more about The Rich Dad Company at www.richdadcoaching.com and www.richdad.com.

 
Direct download: CW_387_-_Robert_Kiyosaki__Rich_Dad_Scams.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 2:26pm EDT

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