Tough times for single family offices?

Being wealthy gets tougher by the day. First there was the global financial crisis. Then there was rising taxes. Then the crackdowns on offshoring. And now the government wants to mess around with one of the last vestiges of elite investing: the single family office.

The issue, like with most of finance today, is about transparency.
Single family offices are investment firms that serve only one family. They are expensive, so most families with family offices have at least $100 million under management. And they are very quiet, since they are essentially managing a single private fortune.
The trouble is that as the fortunes of the individual rich have increased, so have their family offices. Some are now so large that they really are hedge funds in disguise–without any of the accompanying hedge-fund rules (to the degree there are any).

So the government has taken it upon itself to crack down. New rules proposed in Congress, part of the Obama administration’s review of financial services, would require private-equity funds and hedge funds–and now single-family offices–to disclose more of their activities to the government. The aim is to get a better picture of risk across the financial system.

But wealthy families are fighting the move, saying it would force well-meaning (though large) families to open their books up to the government and reveal their positions. An article by Brody Mullins in today’s Wall Street Journal says the group, called Private Investor Coalition, has hired a “pair of connected Democratic lobbyists at the Washington law and lobbying firm Venable LLP to make their case with lawmakers and Obama administration, according to lobbying disclosure forms.”
They also have hired Thomas Quinn, a top Democratic fund-raiser and friend of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, and John Seher, who spent a decade as a top aide to now Vice President Joe Biden. The two are paid $60,000 a month to lobby, according to lobbying disclosure filings.

They are, of course, free to pay for lobbyists and make their interests known. And they surely have valid points. But at a time of wealth hunts, they should also be wary of protesting too much. We all remember what happened to the ultrawealthy families, like the Mars and Gallo families, that tried to kill the estate tax.
They got lots of bad press, and no real outcome.

Charitable Gifts to Drop 9% in 2009

Charitable donations to major nonprofit group are expected to decline 9% this year–the steepest drop since the publication started keeping tabs on giving 17 years ago.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy said giving to the 400 largest nonprofit group-–including prominent universities, hospitals, and foundations–actually rose 1% in 2008. But because of the lag-time involved in charitable gifts, the brunt of the global financial crisis will be felt this year. It said 2010 may also be lean.
“These are the most successful charities,” said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. “If they are going to see a decline of 9%, the smaller, scrappier charities that don’t have all that going for them are going to be having a much harder time.”

She added that “It’s going to be at least two more years until there’s real recovery” in the sector, she said.

That sounds about right. Unless, of course, the stock market continues to soar. Or the expected changes in charitable tax deductions result a surge in gifts now by wealthy hoping to get as much credit as possible for gifts. But for now, charitable giving is likely to suffer from the same problems as the luxury business–too much uncertainty, and too much lost wealth among the wealthy.

Wall Street Journal
October 27, 2009

Talk about a Halloween trick!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, KID-

Apparently,there is to be no end to the health-police take-over of our long cherished tradition of getting kids good and sick from bags of sugar-laden Halloween treats.
I'm all for health, but, this year a health food company called 'Yummy Earth Organics" (sorry, yummy & organics don't belong in the same phrase)is pushing gluten-free, sugar-free,egg-free, nut-free,all-natural, recycled-paper wrapped lollipop treats. Oh, and they use cabbage extract for coloring.

Try that with my kids and I guarantee you'll be facing some serious Halloween reprisals.

PS: Pass the Snickers.

There's frugal, and then there's Hetty Green

When Hetty Green (1834-1916) died in a shabby New York apartment, her net worth was estimated at about $2 billion in today’s dollars. Hetty was mainly interested in business, and there are many tales about her stinginess. She never turned on the heat nor used hot water. She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out. She did not wash her hands and rode an old carriage. She ate mostly pies that cost fifteen cents. One tale claims that she spent a night looking around her home for a lost stamp worth two cents.

Green made much of her business at the offices of the Seaboard National Bank in New York, surrounded by trunks and suitcases full of her papers; she did not want to pay rent for an office. It was claimed that she ate only oatmeal she heated on the office radiator. Possibly because of the stiff competition of the mostly male business environment and partly because of her usually dour dress sense (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps ascribable in part to her Quaker upbringing), she was given the nickname the "Witch of Wall Street". She was a successful businesswoman who dealt mainly in real estate, invested in railroads, and lent money. The City of New York came to Hetty in need of loans to keep the city afloat on several occasions, most particularly during the Panic of 1907; she wrote a check for $1.1 million and took her payment in short-term revenue bonds. Keenly detail-oriented, she would travel thousands of miles – alone, in an era when few women would dare travel unescorted – to collect a debt of a few hundred dollars.

Her frugality extended to family life. Her son Ned broke his leg as a child, and Hetty tried to have him admitted in a hospital charity ward. When she was recognized, she stormed away vowing to treat the wounds herself. The leg contracted gangrene and had to be amputated—he ended up with a cork prosthesis.

In her old age she began to suffer from a bad hernia but refused to have an operation because it cost $150. She moved back and forth from cheap apartment to cheap apartment in New York and New Jersey to avoid paying local taxes. She died at home, refusing to pay for an ambulance or doctor’s visit.

And what of Hetty’s two children? Her son Ned inherited half of her estate, and blew most of it living an extraordinarily extravagant lifesytle. But, when her daughter Sylvia died in 1951, she left all but $1 million of the $800 million she inherited from Hetty to 64 charities, including colleges, churches, and hospitals.

Are only kind people generous?

Hetty Green, meet the most generous woman in the history of the planet. Her name is Leona M. Hemsley (yep, the queen of mean), a New York hotel magnate. She died in 2007, and left $5.2 billion to her charitable foundation, which makes her the most generous American in 2008. But: Helmsley, bequeathed most of her estate to the Leona M. And Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, which is poised to become one of the wealthiest foundations in the country because of the bequest.

The foundation will support the care and welfare of dogs.

Er, that's $5 billion for mutts. What are the odds that Leona's family will have this one in the courts for the next century or so?

Are Life-Coaches the Root of All Evil? Book Review

Life coach/professional-motivator-types are soft targets. They don’t seem particularly bright, they use verbs in dumb ways (as in “God will prosper you”), and they cultivate a general air of overcaffeinated quackery. One wonders how anyone takes them seriously. But no one takes them more seriously than author Barbara Ehrenreich, who believes them capable of driving Americans toward a bizarre array of conflicting behaviors. In blaming so much evil on positive thinking, she casts optimism as both an opiate—numbing us into a kind of stoned complacency, as with the wronged employers—and a stimulant, pumping us up for an ill-advised investment or attack on a foreign nation She’d do far better to pick one. Does positivity lull us into quiescence or spur us toward risk-taking?

Read the entire review:

Why the ignorant are blissful

Inept individuals ooze confidence, study finds
by Erica Goode, New York Times

There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David Dunning is haunted by the fear he might be one of them.
Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know they are incompetent.
On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

Read the whole article-if you dare!

Tips for raising generous children

If parents want to raise generous children, what works? Years of looking into which youth experiences best predict giving by adults offer some clues.

Independent Sector, a group of major nonprofit organizations, found the activities below the most closely linked to adult generosity. They're in only rough rank order because respondents could name multiple activities.

Seeing an admired person who isn't a family member help others.
Seeing a family member help others.
Doing volunteer work.
Raising money door to door.
Being active in student government.
Belonging to a youth group, such as the Boy Scouts.
Being active in a religious organization.
Being helped by others.
The biggest deterrent to generosity: not seeing a family member help others.

Source: Giving and Volunteering in the United States survey.

McClatchy Newspapers
May 19, 2009

Where does the Heritage Process fit in your planning?

Mot of us are familiar with the two classic elements of planning. The first is Financial Planning, which prepares and protects your assets for you. The second is Estate Planning, which prepares your assets for your inheritors.

The Heritage Process is the third element in successful planning: it prepares your inheritors for their inheritance. For your planning to meet your objectives across generations, each of these three elements must be in place. To have only the first two elements in place would be like trying to sit for a long time on a two legged stool.

In Tough Times, Advisors Focus on What Will Bring Results

It is interesting to see how many indicators are pointing to a resurgence of the recognition of the importance of the advisor / client relationship. Advisors looking for work right now are turning away from large, transaction-driven firms in droves. In an interview this week, William D. Cohan, a former senior M&A banker on Wall Street and author of The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co., said:

"It is no coincidence {given the current economic meltdown} that the smaller, more-focused firms—the ones that are closer to their clients—are being flooded with resumes."

Advisors are going where relationships are valued. As a result, they will thrive, their clients will prosper, and the firms for which they work will grow– even in these tough times.

In the News: Gray is Good!

With Age Comes A Sense Of Peace And Calm, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (May 19, 2008) — Aging brings a sense of peace and calm, according to a new study from the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Starting at about age 60, participants reported more feelings of ease and contentment than their younger counterparts. The findings reveal aging is associated with more positive than negative emotions, and more passive than active emotions, Ross said. Secondary findings reveal women had more negative than positive emotions, and more passive than active emotions than men. Also, participants with higher income and education levels had significantly more positive emotions than those with lower income and education levels.

Why the Heritage process?

THI CEO and co-founder Rod Zeb talks about the reasons he and Perry Cochell created The Heritage Process, and describes what it does for individuals and families.


Why The Heritage Process? from Brad Haga on Vimeo.

Well, we all have to sacrifice!

Even though the market for collectible wines is slumping, Sotheby’s recently announced it will sell off 9,000 bottles in two auctions in March and April. The sale is titled “Classic Cellar from a Great American Collector," and some believe it is from the storied McClendon collection. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle quotes experts saying that lot prices for wines at auction have fallen as much as 30% since the summer. Some bottles, like 1986 Leoville-Las-Cases, averaged around $360 a bottle in the past two years but are now trading closer to $200. (For those interested in current wine prices, Steve Bachmann of Vinfolio has an informative blog analyzing auctions, valuations and advice for sellers and buyers. Link below.).
The McClendon collection may fare better than others. It features more than 1,500 bottles of Domaine de la Romanee Conti–a favorite Chateaux of the nouveaux that has held up relatively well in price. The collection also has plenty of Mouton Rothschild, Margaux and Lafite, also blue-chip names.
What is more, Sotheby’s is hedging its bets by splitting the auction in two, with half being offered in New York and half in Hong Kong. While U.S. collectors are pulling back, Hong Kong collectors have proven more resilient, with recent auctions there posting healthy results. (Sotheby’s is shipping 4,000 or more of the bottles in temperature-controlled containers to Hong Kong, something it has never done before).
Mr. McClendon may be the biggest wine seller so far in the financial crisis, but he most certainly won’t be the last. With many collectors running light on cash, we suspect more and more will turn to their wine cellars in search of real liquidity.
http://www.vinfolio.com/thewinecollector

When is the right time to teach your children about philanthropy? How about today.

Dying boy inspires goodwill in people near and far
November 21, 2008

BOTHELL, Wash. -- An 11-year-old boy's dying wish to feed the homeless has taken on a life of its own, sparking a movement to help the hungry nationwide. Doctors gave Brenden Foster two weeks to live. His time was up last Wednesday.

"I should be gone in a week or so," he said last Friday. On Monday, groggy and medicated, Brenden was having a rough day. "Tired," he said, visibly weak."(You) need some more medicine," said his mother, Wendy Foster, stroking his head. Leukemia halted the young life of Brenden, who once dreamed of becoming a marine photographer. Brenden has relapsed for the last time. There is no chemo, no more transfusions; just comfort medications. "I'm hoping I'm awake when he decides to pass because I want to make sure I'm holding him," Wendy later said.

Brenden survived his leukemia long enough to witness his dying wish come true. Last Friday Brenden shared his last wish to feed the homeless. "I was coming back from one of my clinic appoints and I saw this big thing of homeless people, and then I thought I should just get them something," he said. Volunteers handed out 200 homemade sandwiches to the homeless to fulfill his wish. "They're probably starving, so give them a chance," he said.

On Monday, Brenden could barely keep his eyes open as he watched a video of volunteers feeding Seattle's homeless on his behalf.Over the weekend, his wish went national on CNN. And KOMO News received phone calls from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Clearly in pain, Brenden still managed to smile as he listened to stories about the phone calls and e-mails his story had inspired. His story touched many people from all walks of life, from families fighting cancer to men in the military."I think it's great, all over the country..." Brenden said.

"He made my dream come true. In my lifetime, I wanted to change the world and my son did that," said Wendy. "The world is such a beautiful place and (that became) evident the last 72 hours, and Brenden did that." Brenden has one more wish for the afterlife: become an angel who accomplishes even more in heaven than he did on Earth.

"I don't need to worry about it until the time has come. So I don't bother think about it while I'm still alive; now," he said.

It isn't about the money.

A colleague of mine was trying to explain to a group of CPAs that successful planning doesn’t begin or end with a focus on the money. Every one of the conference speakers who presented to the group ahead of him talked about financial thresholds: if you have a taxable estate you need a credit shelter trust; if you have more than $xxxx you need a family limited partnership; and if you have more than $xxx you need a family foundation. The need for these tools were all based on numbers, of course, with no consideration for the values that were most important to family members.

In order to prove that that numbers were not the real key to the development of a successful plan, he divided the room into three groups. He gave each group the same financial statement: it was for a 55 year old man with three children, and a $10 million dollar estate - $5 million of which was the family business, which was a beer brewery. What he didn’t tell them was that he was giving each of the three groups a very different story about the family members themselves.

The story for the first group of CPAs was that the client had built the business from scratch, and had worked 80-100 hours per week. He loved the business more than his family, and because of that, his sons hated the business. They did not want to have anything to do with the business when he died.

The story for the second group of advisors was that the client had just inherited the brewery from his own father. The client had worked there all of his life, and his uncle, aunt, cousins, siblings, etc., all worked in the business. This was a true family business that was holding the family together – and everyone in the family loved this business!

The story for the third group was that the client had just inherited the business from his father. He had never worked there, and knew nothing about the business. In fact, he was a converted Mormon missionary, so, of course, what was the last thing he wanted to own? A brewery!

Each of the three CPA groups was given time to study the situation and offer a plan. Group Three, who were told the new owner was a Morman missionary, offered their plan first. Their spokesperson said: obviously, the first thing we are going to do is sell the family business. Group One, who understood the owner had sacrificed his family in order to build the business, got up and said: we can see selling the business when he dies, but why would you sell this business now?? Then, Group Two, who had been told the whole extended family loved the business, piped in: Why would you EVER sell this business?!?!?

My colleague stepped to the front of the group and said, “You see… it really isn’t about the numbers. You all had exactly the same financial facts, but came up with three very different plans because the values of the people in each of three versions were different.”

Completing Your Planning: Preparing the Inheritors

Since ancient times, the majority of inheritance plans have failed. Two thousand years ago a Chinese scholar penned the adage: "fu bu guo san dai," or "Wealth never survives three generations.” In thirteenth century England they said ”Clogs to clogs in three generations,” and in nineteenth century America the expressions became "From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” Many cultures. Thousands of years of history. One common tradition of failure.

Today is no different; current studies conclude that 90% of the time the money is gone by the end of the third generation. Not only is the money gone, but the family unity and individual accomplishment parents wanted to leave as their legacy is often destroyed.

The good news is that 10% of families have kept their families and fortunes together across generations. What did they do differently? In addition to good financial and estate planning, they did Heritage Planning; they prepared their heirs to receive their inheritance.

You have probably completed good financial and estate planning, and prepared your money for your family. The question is: have you prepared your family for their inheritance? Or, stated another way, will your family be part of the 90% or the 10%?

We have taken what the 10% did right and put it into a proven step-by-step process that ‘completes’ traditional financial and estate planning, and gives families renewed hope.

My Search for What Really Matters-Book Review

Highest Duty is the intimate story of a man who has grown up to embrace what we think of as quintessential American values—leadership, responsibility, commitment to hard work, and service to others. And it is a narrative that reminds us that cultivating seemingly ordinary virtues can prepare us to perform extraordinary acts.

In this inspirational autobiography, Captain "Sully" Sullenberger, the airline pilot whose emergency landing on the Hudson River earned the world's admiration, tells his life story and talks about the essential qualities that he believes have been so vital to his success.

In January 2009, the world witnessed one of the most remarkable emergency landings in history when Captain Sullenberger brought a crippled US Airways flight onto the Hudson River, saving the lives of all of the passengers and crew aboard. The successful outcome was the result of effective teamwork, Sully's dedication to airline safety, his belief that a pilot's judgment must go hand-in-hand with—and can never be replaced by—technology, and forty years of careful practice and training.

From his earliest memories of learning to fly as a teenager in a crop duster's single-engine plane in the skies above rural Texas to his years in the United States Air Force at the controls of a powerful F-4 Phantom, Sully describes the experiences that have helped make him a better leader, particularly the importance of taking responsibility for everyone in his care. And he talks about what he believes is at the heart of America's "can do" spirit: the very human drive to prepare for the unexpected and to meet it with optimism and courage.

His wife, Lorrie, has been a pillar of support through all the highs and lows that life has offered, from the challenges of commercial flying to the birth of their two daughters, from financial struggles to the event of January 15, 2009. Though the world may remember Sully as the hero of Flight 1549, the legacy he desires even more is that of a loving husband and father.

So, comb your hair!

Creditworthiness may be linked to looks
A credit score can tell a lender a lot about a prospective borrower, but so can the borrower's looks, a new study says. People who are perceived to be trustworthy are more likely to have a higher credit score and pay lower interest rates on loans, and are less likely to default, according to the study by Rice University in Houston, Texas. Even when hard facts such as credit scores are available, people rely on an assessment of trustworthiness to decide whether to make a loan.
"It turns out that if you look trustworthy, you're more likely to get a loan," said Jefferson Duarte, a professor of real estate finance at Rice University, one of the study's authors.
Tue Mar 17, 2009
Reuters

Fewer by the day

The numbers are in: Millionaires are getting clobbered by the financial crisis.
The population of millionaires in the U.S. fell 27% last year, according to a study by Spectrem Group, the biggest percentage drop since the wealth-research firm started collecting its data about a decade ago. The Chicago firm’s millionaire population study showed that the number of households in the U.S. with a net worth of at least $1 million (not including primary residences) dropped to 6.7 million in 2008 million from 9.2 million in 2007.

The number of households with investible assets of at least $1 million sank 26% to 4.4 million from 5.98 million. Households with a net worth of $5 million or more also took a hit, with the ranks falling to 840,000 from 1.16 million.
The population of millionaires is now at levels last seen in 2003-2004, meaning that the economic crisis has all but erased the millionaire boom of the past five years. “There’s no question that the crisis has had a huge impact on wealth,” says George Walper, president of Spectrem. (Official data from the U.S. census won’t be available until 2011.)
The study also showed that nearly half of all millionaire households had lost more than 30% of their net worth, with 17% saying they had lost 40% or more.
Spectrem’s study is based on a statistical model which tracks the portfolios of wealthy investors and factors in the changes in value for the broad asset classes they hold. The changes in value are calculated on a weighted basis, reflecting their importance in the portfolio.

A silver lining in a very dark cloud

Monday, March 23, 2009
Washington Times
Happy days are here again!
In his occasional messages to Americans trying to put a happy face on the economy, President Obama has been missing an opportunity. He should consult Chris Ruhm, an economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, whose study of economic downtowns for the past 20 years found that a deteriorating economy inspires people to improve their health. In short, as the March issue of CFO magazine reported, Ruhm's research shows hard times can actually be good for you.
How so? Ruhm found that “people actually eat healthier, overall, during a recession, and they are less likely to be obese,” possibly because they eat out less frequently. He also said people exercise more when times are hard because they have more time and, feeling more powerless, want to take control of other areas of their life, “so you take steps to get healthier.” He told CFO magazine that a one percent increase in the unemployment rate reduces mortality rates by half a percent, with heart attacks decreasing by slightly less than a half a percent. Traffic deaths decline by 3 percent because fewer people are commuting and drinking is down. And there are fewer smokers, which in the long term has a big impact on mortality rates.
Things just get better and better. In a recession, the professor found, deaths from flu and pneumonia decline, as do cases of acute medical conditions like back problems that may be stress-related.

Help, We're Running Out of Rich People

That, at least, is the view of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.). The congresswoman says the Obama administration is plotting to divert money from Republican to Democratic districts and plans to tax the wealthy (or those labeled “wealthy”) to fund the windfalls.
“I don’t know where they’re going to get all this money because we’re running out of rich people in this country,” she said, adding that the Obama folks have labeled as “big evil” anyone with joint income of $100,000 or more. “And I truly believe that’s going to go to $65,000 or more…and they’re going to be taxed to the hilt.”
Ms. Bachmann is right about one thing: the population of rich people–no matter what the income or wealth cutoff–is most certainly declining. All you have to do it look at the stock market, real-estate prices, business values and the lack of liquidity to know that 'Richistan' is a smaller place today than it was a year ago. How much smaller remains to be seen.
Yet she is right that the wealthy are coming in for higher taxes. The weekend brought confirmation that to reduce the deficit President Barack Obama hopes to raise the top tax rate to 39.6% from 35%, raises taxes on the investment gains of private-equity and hedge-fund chiefs and the rate for capital gains and dividends.
The disappointment will come when there are very few capital gains, dividends or high-end salaries to tax. I would bet that most of the wealthy will be reporting losses for last year and 2009, rather than taxable gains.
In short, the trouble isn’t that we are running out of rich people. There are still millions of millionaires in America. The problem is that the wealthy are running out of taxable income.
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2009/02/23/help-were-running-out-of-rich-people/

Benefits of The Heritage Process

The Benefits of The Heritage Process from Brad Haga on Vimeo.

Just thinking

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. 



Could you repeat that?

How was it you said that The Heritage Process fits into the planning sequence?

That's easy: there are three elements to effective multi-generational planning:

• Element 1– Financial Planning, which prepares and protects your assets during your lifetime;

•Element 2 –Estate Planning, which prepares your assets for your family; and

•Element 3–Heritage Planning, which prepares your family to receive their inheritance (and which includes far more than just your assets).

Pity today’s trust funders.

Their bright futures of easy money and endless leisure went up in smoke with the stock markets and financial crisis. They have seen their future Hamptons homes and Aspen villas crash in value, their charitable foundations get poorer and their bling budgets drastically curtailed. Some may not even get to replace their Bentleys this year.Then there is the group we might call Bernie’s Kids–the economically orphaned
trust funders whose parents lost money in Mr. Madoff’s fraud. We have read about dozens of foundations that lost millions of dollars in that alleged Ponzi scheme, and while most were created for philanthropy, some are vehicles for passing money from parents to their children.
Trust fund kids everywhere are up in arms. And in Palm Beach, Fla., they took matters into their own hands. According to an article in the Palm Beach Post, several teenage boys claimed responsibility Sunday night for festooning Bernie Madoff’s front yard in Palm Beach with toilet paper. The boys said they were “acting in retaliation after they lost their trust funds to the accused swindler” and that their act of toilet-paper justice was sanctioned by their parents.
By the time Palm Beach police arrived at the home Monday morning, the toilet paper was gone and the housekeeper chose not to make a police report, police spokeswoman Janet Kinsella said.
Among those who oppose inherited wealth, like Warren Buffett, the Madoff fraud might actually have a silver lining. While no one likes to see wealth destroyed, some may see Mr. Madoff’s impact on trust funds as a healthy corrective to inherited wealth and dynasty. Mr. Madoff may have finally achieved what Paris Hilton couldn’t–to limit the damages from unearned family money. It may even force some of today’s wealthy offspring to consider more drastic measures for their future–like working for a living.
Of course, it is a tragedy when anyone gets defrauded–whether the wealth is earned or inherited. But rather than this Halloween prank, which seems so, well, Middle School, couldn’t they have been more constructive, or least creative. Perhaps exercising their constitutional right to petition the government for some of that bailout cash?

From Wall Street Journal