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An Interview With Ken Feinberg: Masters in Business (Audio) · Masters in Business

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholds on Bloomberg Radio.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This week on Masters in Business, I really have a
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: special guest. Then. I know I say that every week,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: but this week our special guest is literally a special master.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: His name is Ken Feinberg, and you probably know him
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: as the person who essentially handled some of the compensation
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: claims of some of the most horrific experiences in in
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: recent American history. He was the special Master of the
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: September eleventh Victims compensation funds the BP Gulf Sentiment general motors.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: The pays are Boston Marathon, Barman, on and on down
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the whole list. And uh, I keep saying, I want
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: to try and interview new and different people who might
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: not be the usual economist, hedge fund manager, slash trader
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and go a loop will further Afield, And today we
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: do just that. I think he's really a fascinating, fascinating gentleman.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The country really owes him a debt of gratitude. You
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: may not know this, but he did the entire September
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: eleven compensation fund pro bono. That's him and his office
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: working for thirty three months really to to help resolve
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: one of the great tragedies in recent American history. And
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: he did it a great personal um psychological cost to
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: himself and and no compensation. And especially considering the government
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: told out seven billion dollars in in victim compensation, he
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: certainly was entitled to a reasonable fee. And and he decided, UH,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: as a patriot, this is what he wanted to do.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: This is how he wanted to give back to his country.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: And and that's really quite wonderful. I think you will
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: find him to be a thoughtful, philosophical, interesting gentleman who
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: who has just worked on some of the most amazing
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: things in American history. So, rather than have me babbel
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: without any further ado, my conversation with Special Master Ken Feinberg.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I have a special guest. And when I say special,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: he is literally a special Master. One Ken Feinberg. You
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: probably know the name, as I'm only going to do
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: the short version of your curriculum vitae Special Master for
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: the September eleven victims compensation funds. He handled the BP
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Gulf settlement, the g M ignition situation, the financial crisis
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: known as the Paysar. We'll talk about why that's an
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: inappropriate name. UM Boston Marathon, one, fun Fund bombing, Sandusky,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: pan State, Newton, Sandy Hook. The This is just the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg. There's many more. I'm gonna start
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: with a quote from the Boston Globe that says, if
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: scientists ever perfect human cloning, they should make copies of
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Kenneth Finberg, the Brocton Native informer Ted Kenney staffer who
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: has become renowned for allocating money wisely amid political and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: emotional firestorms. Ken Finberg, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you glad
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: to be here. So that's really quite an amazing curriculum, Vita,
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  Speaker 1: all the different things you've worked on over the years,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: and and we're gonna spend a lot of time talking
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: about that. But you once said something and it contradicts
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: some common experience I've had, So I wanna have you
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: start out with responding to this. I always believed that
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: anytime someone says, look, it's not the money, it's the principle,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: it's almost always the money. But when that came up
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: in the September eleven funds, you actually had an interesting quote.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: You said, it's not greed, but grief. Explain that money
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: in our society viewed as a barometer or as a
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: reflection on unanticipated, unpredicted grief resulting from the attacks that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: led to deaths and physical injuries, so that survivors, either
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: of the attacks or the family of the dead, view
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the compensation as a reflection on the value of a
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: lost loved one in times of grief. And that's why
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: it's almost like an emotional salve to what they've confronted
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and faced. So it's really in that situation, it's not
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: about the money. It's about what they're feeling and how
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: could you possibly put a number on this? That's right.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: The toughest part in all of these programs, Barry, that
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you referenced in your introduction, the toughest pot clearly is
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: not calculating damages or the amount of money that somebody
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: should receive. I think that's not rocket science. It's done
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: every day in our society. Or here, here's your earnings expectations,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: here's your life expectancy equals, here's an amount for pain
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and suffering ABC, and there's your award. No, it's the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: emotion that you confront when you sit one on one
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  Speaker 1: with people who have suffered horrible loss and listen to
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: the tales of wool, validating the memory of a lost
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  Speaker 1: loved one, venting about life, sun fairness, that is what
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  Speaker 1: takes its toll, not calculating dollars. Fascinating. So so we're
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: gonna come back to more of that, but let's let's
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: roll back to your early career. You spent some time
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: as administrative assistant in chief of staff for U S.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Senator Ted Kennedy. You graduate n y U Law school.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: How did you make your way to Ted Kennedy's office.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I was a prosecutor in the U. S. Attorney's office
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: in the Southern District of New York and assistant U
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: S Attorney, and I got word through the grape vine
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: that Ted Kennedy was looking for an experienced criminal law
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: practitioner to join his excellent staff on the Senate Judiciary
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Committee Criminal Law Issues. So I applied. While I'm a Brocton,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: mass Native, and I applied to Senator Kennedy's office, got
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: an invitation, met with him, he hired me, and that
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: was the beginning of my five years with this extraordinary man.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: And you eventually become chief of staff for his Senate office.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: The last two years nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighty
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  Speaker 1: I was his chief of staff in the U. S. Senate,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: running his operation. And I must say it was a
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: fabulous opportunity. So so here we are. You're you're now
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a known entity on Capitol Hill. September eleven comes along
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: and uh the Attorney General the United States, John Ashcroft
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: says to you, we need somebody to oversee this congressional funds.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And you said, yes, I'll do it, but only if
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I can do it without compensation. What was the thinking
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: that My thinking was? I thought it highly inappropriate to
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: be making money off of the dead and the injured
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: resulting from a foreign terrorist attack. I thought it would
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: be unpatriotic A and B. I thought that if I
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: were getting money at the same time that I was
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: calculating money for the victims and their families, there would
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: be a firestorm that I'm making blood money. And I
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: just thought I had enough challenges without being paid. But
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: you did this for thirty three months plus, you and
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: most of your office was running this that that's quite
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a commitment of time and energy and resources and money.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: It was. But on the other hand, there never was
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and there never will be a nine eleven precedent like
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that one. And and I think what the country went
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: through and is still going through in terms of UM,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the implications of the nine eleven attacks, UM made it
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: imperative that I step up and do my job as
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: a public citizen. When you graduated at n YU, did
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: you ever imagine you'd find your way to being a
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Special Master? Is this what you thought your your career
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: would be? Never? Ever? I am a post a child
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: for the proposition that people should not plan their career
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: more than one year in advance, and they shouldn't plan
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the life too far ahead, because life has a way
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: of throwing curveballs at everybody and changing the best laid plans,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: to say the least. This is Masters in Business US
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Barry Ridholts. I'm speaking with Special
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Master Ken Feinberg, and in this segment we're going to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: discuss the nine eleven victims compensation funds. So obviously nine
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: eleven is a horrific event. My office was headquartered in
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: two World Trade. I was on in the Long Island
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: office and had a running narrative from my head trader,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: who was um just outside the buildings as everything happened.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Horrible seeing the entire country rallies around, uh up surge
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: of patriotism. And now it lands on your lap to
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: figure out how do you compensate three thousand plus victims
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: seven billion dollars? Where do you even begin with something
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: like that? You begin with the statute. Congress passed a
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: law signed by President Bush, and the law said that
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: anybody who wants to come into this fund voluntarily funded
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: entire early by taxpayer public money. Anybody who wants to
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: do it can voluntarily decide, and a special Master appointed
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: by the Attorney General John Ashcroft will calculate individual awards,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: award compensation, and authorize the U. S. Treasury to cut
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: a check over the thirty three month life of that statute,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of that program, that was the whole statute. Under three years,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: seven percent of all the families that lost a loved
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  Speaker 1: one on nine eleven on the airplanes the World Trade
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  Speaker 1: Center of the Pentagon came into the fund. Only four
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: people decided they'd rather sue then come into the fund,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and they all settled their claims five years later. There
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: never was a trial on responsibility for nine eleven how
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: many of the three percent that didn't come into the
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: fund were people that you described as so grief stricken
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: they couldn't even sign. I think that was it, just
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: just because you told the story of going to a
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: woman's house and saying, I filled out the papers for you,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: this is two million dollars, just sign here, and she
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: just said she couldn't do that. Woman was so grief stricken, Barry.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: She didn't sue either, She did nothing nothing. She and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I believe a priest who lost a brother were the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: only two people that neither came into my fund nor
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: litigated against the airlines in the World Trade Center. So
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: paralyzed were they by grief they couldn't do it either.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: That's just just uh, you learn, you learn in doing
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: what I do, that grief can paralyze people. It can
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: make them act so unreasonably. I said to the woman,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Mrs Jones, you're gonna get about three million dollars tax free,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: set up a fund in your son's name. Go away,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Mr Finberg, I lost my son and you're here to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: talk about money. And she never filed. That's just amazing,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: that's just just astonishing. So thirty three months, seven billion
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: dollars um. When you first started thinking about the awards,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: you approached this almost as if it was the regular
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: calculations that courts make every day when there's any sort
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: of wrongful death claim. Was it was that part of
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the congressional mandate. That was part of the congressional mandate
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: that the congress the law instructed me in calculating damages
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to consider the torch system. Well, that's just what I did.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Some people think that I placed a value on lives
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: based on the moral integrity of an individual. I didn't
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: do that. How do you evaluate the moral integrity of
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: three thousand people, rabbis and priests making that. I don't
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: do that. I simply did what you just said, what
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: would the person have earned over a work life? But
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: four nine eleven, so you got a lot of pushback
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: from like fireman's wives and other people who were making,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: you know, middle class salaries versus investment bankers and bond
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: traders were making ten and twenty times that amount. How
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: did you deal with that sort of uh, that sort
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: of response to this very very difficult Mr Finberg. My
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: husband was a fireman. He died at the World Trade
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Center rushing in to save people. You're giving me two
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: million dollars. You're giving my next door neighbor, whose wife
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: was a bank of for Enron four million dollars. What
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: do you have against my husband? You didn't even meet
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: my husband, and yet you're giving me two million less.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: There is no justice here and you have to deal
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: with that all the time. Always remember this, I've learned.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: When you have a program that compensates victims, and there
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: are numerous victims, everybody counts other people's money. It's not
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: just what am I going to receive from Fineberg? What
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: am I going to receive as opposed to my next
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: door neighbor? And you better batten down the hatches, embrace
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: yourself because that gets very, very emotional. The old joke
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: defines wealth as a hundred dollars more than my brother
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: in law, and people are looking at at other people now.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: In subsequent settlement cases, you basically came up with an
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the same number for everybody. Did did that experience impact
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: subsequent not at all? Not at all. In subsequent matters
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: in which I again I am compensating people as an
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: alternative to the tort system bp GM, the same, everybody
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: gets a different amount because you're trying to entice people
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: out of litigating. What a bad Places like Sandy holl
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Datto or Sandy Hook, Aurora, Colorado, Virginia Tech, the Boston Marathon.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Those aren't alternatives to the tort system. Those are gift programs.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: You don't waive your right to sue. Take the money
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and sue if you want. Those programs are very different. There.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I design programs where one size does fit all because
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: there's no obligation on the pot of the recipient to
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: do anything but take the money. That's quite fascinating. So
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: a gift program, it's it's an even divide. And did
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: people complain about that? Did you get the same sort
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: of thing or much much less? People complain and criticized
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: no matter what you I wish people could see your
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: face right now. People complain. Why shouldn't they complain, Barry?
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Why shouldn't Because it's a tragedy and this is a
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: lovely gift and here this will make your life a
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: little bit easier. And let's all start the healing. Prestof Heinberg.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I lost my son driving a GM automobile. I lost
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: my son on nine eleven, and you're offering me money
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: bring my son back. How's that? Mr Finberg? And you
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: dealt with that every day, every day the Boston Marathon.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Mr Jones, you lost your leg when the Barrathon bombs
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: went off. I'm here to let you know that you're
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: going to receive from one fun Boston tax free, one million,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: one d and twenty five thousand dollars. I am, Mr Finberg.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: That's what you're gonna give me. I got a better idea.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Keep the money, give me my leg back. How's that?
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: I wish I could do that. If I had the
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: power to do that, you'd have two legs. But I
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: don't have that. I have this gift from people, and thanks,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: but no thanks. That's that's amazing. You're listening to Masters
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Special Master Ken Finberg, who oversaw some of the most
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: complex and complicated litigation and alternatives to litigation settlement cases
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: of all time, everything from the September eleven compensation fund
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: to Agent Orange that was one of your early careers,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the Dalkon shield. I went. I missed a lot of
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: these um as bestos personal injury litigation. There's a ton
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the BP Gulf Fund that's still probably
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: the most recent, although I guess GM is a little fresher. Um.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: What was your role in the BP case? The same?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: In BP, I was asked by the Obama administration I
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: BP to design and administer a compensation program funded entirely
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: by VP, to compensate the victims of the oil spill,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: those businesses and fishermen and shrimpers and hotels on the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: beach in Florida and the Gulf who were adversely impacted
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: economically by the oil spill. And that's what I did
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: for sixteen months. How much money was dispersed out of
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that fund while you were running it? While I was
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: running it, we distributed in sixteen months six and a
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: half billion dollars speak. He put up twenty billion, and
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I distributed the first six and a half billion and
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: paid about a half a million claims um and received
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: releases so people wouldn't sue. Were we we compensated of
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: all the victims of the oil spill. So now this
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: was a little different situation. In the nine eleven Victims
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Compensation Fund, you're appointed by the Attorney General, you do
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: it pro bono. Here you're hired by BP. How is
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: that process so different from each other? Oh? Very different
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: as we as you pointed out, Berry nine eleven was
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: a patriotic duty. This is a international oil company, UM
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: flush who UM decided in its wisdom, we will pay
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Mr Fineberg and the entire staff to quickly and efficiently
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: calm and said all the victims of the spill. We
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: do not want a replication of excen Valdis litigating for
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: twenty years. We want to get rid of this, and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: so we set it up, Wrap it up, move on. Now.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: There was some pushback because you're you're compensated as opposed
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: to non eleven. How did how did you respond to
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: people who said, oh, Finberg can't be fair because he's
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: being paid by BP. Very difficult. First, don't take the money.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: It's voluntary. If you think that Feinberg is not being
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: fair even though billions of dollars are going out the door,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: then by all means opt out. So did people have
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: to make that opt interrupt out decision before they knew
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: what their number was. If you present a number, you
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: could take it, or you could see exactly. So I said,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: here seems pretty reasonable. Well, here's the money. A free preview,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: a free preview. If you think this adequately compensates you
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: in Amanda, that will allow you to take the money
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: in sixty days and wave your right to litigate. Well, virtually,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: virtually everybody took the money. Why wouldn't they take the money?
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: They saw money flowing out of our office. Two thousands
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: of people who were apparently satisfied with what they were receiving,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: took the money, signed a release not to litigate, and
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: walked away. So subsequent to you leaving UM that compensation fund,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: sixty Minutes did a piece about how what happened afterwards,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: where people were making claims who essentially had no damage
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: from or at least that was the argument by BP,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: that there was no damage from the oil spill. That
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: was the argument I I explain to people I'm leaving now,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I've resolved two percent of all the eligible victims of
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: the spill, and now there's very few left. BP decided
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: to continue a program, not with me but with others,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: as you say, and it unraveled. People started filing claims
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and making making claims on damage and it became pretty ugly.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: But my favorite version of that was the guy in
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Norway who claimed claimed damage from that so I received
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: in sixteen months one million, two hundred thousand claims from
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: fifty states. I got about three hundred claims from New York.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't know the oil had got here to New York.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I got claims from thirty five foreign You got claims
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: in Hawaii, everywhere, Alaska, twenty from Alaska. I got claims
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, China, Nigeria. I got claims from everywhere. Well,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: everybody gets claims from Nigeria. But um, that's usually just
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: uh an emails fraud. Um. What percentage of the initial
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: claims were junk claims? How many claims did you have
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to throw I think I threw out two thirds of
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the Really that many people see money and they that's it.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: They just go after it. Either they file a claim
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: that makes no sense, or or they file a claim
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: that may make sense, but they have no proof. Mr Feinberg,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: I lost a hundred thousand dollars because I couldn't fish.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I see, well, do you have a tax return or
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: a profit? We do things with a handshake down. Here.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Barry Ridhalts.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I'm here speaking with Ken Feinberg special master. You know,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: the American Bar Association called you the master of disaster
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and said that Ken Feinberg is changing the course of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: mass toward resolution. Are you? Why do you say that? Why?
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I did nine eleven, I did BP, I did GM.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: That's almost wrapped up now, right, these three mass towards
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: that's it, Agent Orange, DALC on Shield. Wait a minute,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: asbestos litigations Agian Orange, DL con Shield and asbestos litigation
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: all were settled under the auspices of a mass taught court.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Only nine eleven, BP and um GM are alternative programs,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: divorced from the courts, separate. So when people say to me,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: this is the wave of the future, you're changing the law,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: I'm changing nothing. These programs are aberrations, Barry, they are not.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Let me push back on that. So the the Agan
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Orange case went on for how many years after Vietnam
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: before some young kid named Ken Feinberg comes along and says,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: to the chemistry companies who only offered twenty five dollars
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: for all of them, versus the veterans who wanted a
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: billion dollars, you said, oh, that's a range I could
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: work with. And so you have to look at this
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: on an I don't need to lecture you on a continuum.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Starting with agent orange and then going to asbestos. You
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: basically took the concept of, hey, there's a better way
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: than everybody banging heads and courts, and let's see if
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: we can find some middle grounds that will allow everyone
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to get on with their lives. There are mass toart
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: cases like agent Orange, like delk on Shield, like asbestos.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: We are the parties, I think realize you're better off
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: mediating a settlement with Ken Feinberg or a judge or whoever,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: rather than litigate for years and years and roll the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: dice and pay the lawyers and who knows how to
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: end up. That's true now, I think most mass towards
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: end up being resolved. Most cases, most litigation, most litigation
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: gets solved in that sense, I mean there there there's
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a recognition that litigation doesn't work, it's not efficient. But
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: these special programs enacted by Congress or set up by GMA,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: by BP, I think they're a precedent for nothing, really nothing.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm wondering, are you waiting for the phones to
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: ring from Volkswagen? Are you gonna have to settle their
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: case for them. I'll say one thing about Volkswagen which
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: people shouldn't lose sight of. No matter what Volkswagen decides
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to do about this problem, there are no deaths, there
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: are no injuries. These are problems of property value. Some
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: economists did a study that said, based on the falsification,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: there's this much more pollution and we could figure out
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: statistically a hundred and thirty five more people died from
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: air pollution than whatever. Interesting a model that I think
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you're chuckling a little bit. But the Volkswagen problem is
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: overwhelmingly a pr problem and an environmental problem, with the
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: e p A and the Justice Department of looking at it.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: But in terms of individual will damage to the auto owner,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: it is a property claim. Now there may be different values,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: but it's a property claim. You're not involved with calculating,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: as we did earlier in the segment, calculating lost live
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: physical injury. This is an easy, much easier so al right,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: so you know, emotionally much easier. That's the Fineberg Law
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Office in Washington, d C. Volkswagen, if you want to
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: resolve this sooner rather than later. Um, let's let's come
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: back to this. So so we we said earlier. It's
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: easy to calculate the economic value of a life. You
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: look at life expectancy and future earnings, and you could
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: you could do the math philosophically working with all these tragedies.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: How has that impacted you as the media? Has it
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: changed your perspective on the value of how we all
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: live our lives? Yes, what I do is extremely debilitating, debilitating.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Oh my good to shoot. You can't sleep. You're dealing
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: with people who lost loved ones who are venting to
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you about life sunfairness, validating the memory of a lost
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: loved one, raising issues that Solomon would have trouble resolving.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And I'm not Solomon by any means. And you've been
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: compared well unfairly. Um but but it is extremely difficult, difficult,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: and you become very fatalistic. You do Oh, I don't
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: think I'll plan more than two weeks ahead. You don't
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: know what's going to happen. Life has a way, Barry
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: of throwing curveballs at everybody. I tell people all the time,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: don't map your future too far out into the future.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Life has a way of changing the rules. I used
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: to work with a judge named Anthony Marcarello is a
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: fairly well known judge. This is twenty plus years ago,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and um back when I was a practicing lawyer, and
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: when he used to say to people trying to settle cases,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: look at and by the way, he's still around and
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: still doing mediation. Used to say at my age, I
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: won't even buy green bananas, and everybody would chuckle, but
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the thought would enter your head. You're saying the same thing,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: absolutely right. I tell law students, Mr Farnberg, I don't
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: know what I should do with my first job, because
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: three years from now I want to do. Three years
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: from now, take a job that you like, that you
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: can get, that pays what you need, enjoy it. Don't
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: worry about three years from now. I guarantee you three
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: years from now you'll have a different outlook than the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: day day one when you stop your current position. So
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: so this has really left a mark on you having
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: having gone through this. Some of the negatives are obvious.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: What are some of the positives you've taken away from
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: from listening to these horrific tales of loss? I'll tell
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: you one positive. Never underestimate bury the charitable impulse of
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: the American people. It is unbelievable to me. Boston Marathon
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: in sixty days, a hundred thousand people contribute sixty one
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: million dollars for distribution, Virginia Tech in a matter of
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: weeks eight million dollars, Sandy Hook, Connecticut eleven million dollars, Aurora,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Colorado five million dollars. People in America come to the
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: AI to the rescue of people in need. And I've
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: been around the world. No nation on Earth shows this
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: degree of charity in times of need the way the
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: American people do there. But for fortune, we're going to contribute. Hey, listen,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: life is random. And how many times you know, I
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: went to school with a woman who was on one
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: of the nine eleven playing And how many times do
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: you hear of people changing seats or missing a plane
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: and some tragedy happens. It's completely serendipitous, it's completely ran
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: And then what people have to confront I'll never forget.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: A twenty four year old woman came to see me
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: after nine eleven crying, crying. Mr Finberg, I lost my husband.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: He was a fireman at the World Trade Center. He
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: got out of the building, he escaped. He saw that
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: some people were trapped in the lobby. He ran back
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: save those people in the lobby and brought them across
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the plaza safely to Lower Broadway. While he was walking
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: on the plaza, having rescued them, he was killed when
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: somebody jumped from the hundred and third floor of the
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: World Trade Center and hit him, killing them both. Mr Finberg.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: If he had taken one step either way, he'd be
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: alive today. There is no God that would allow this
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: to happen. Mr Farmer. So what what do you say
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: to a person like that? What can you say? Mrs Jones?
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I wish I could bring your husband back. I don't
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: have that power. All I can do small solace is
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: give you money so you have a bit more financial
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: security for you and your children. But in terms of
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: the horror of this, Mrs Jones, there's nothing I can say.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: That's that's unbelievable, and and that stays with you forever, forever.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: There's no there's no shaking that often and moving moving on.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: So you we we mentioned earlier, you have a when
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: we were speaking before we started. You have a birthday
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: coming up. You're gonna be seventy. Any plans on retiring,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: You're gonna go to Martha's vinion and just watch the
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: waves or are you enjoying what you're doing too much? Enjoying?
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's the right word, but I I
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: um satisfy bye bye. By contributing and being productive and
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: feeling like making a difference, I think that's right. I
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: don't forget. I grew up in Massachusetts at a time
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: when a fair heared son of Massachusetts was in the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: White House, and I remember as if it was yesterday,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: President Kennedy exhorting all of us give back to the country.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Public service is a noble undertaking. Everybody can make a difference.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Government is not a bad word. And um, I try
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: and live out that creed, I guess you would say
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: every day. So you've been listening to Master's in Business
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. If people want to read more of
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: your work, I know you have a book that came
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: out um some time ago called Valuing the Life. You
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: occasionally published. Where where can people find um your writing?
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: My latest book? Who gets what? Public Affairs press? And
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: you know my personal supply of that book is virtually inexhaustible,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: But I think people can go on Amazon and get
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: it all right? Thank you? So much, Ken Feinberg for
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: for coming by today. If you enjoy this conversation, be
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: sure and continue listening. We let the tapes roll and
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: continue chatting. Uh. Check out my daily column on Bloomberg
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: View dot com or follow me on Twitter at Rid Halts.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters in Business on
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Okay, welcome to the podcast portion of our show.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: And and Ken, in case I forget to say this,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for doing this. This is I
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: find this absolutely fascinating. Listeners always make fun of me
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: for using that word, but really, I've watched you, as
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: have most of America, watched you operate in the public
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: sphere in real time under unthinkable conditions. And I remember
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: seeing one of the first nine eleven hearings with people
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: shaking their fist and yawned at you. I just remember thinking, man,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: that looks like a terrible, terrible job. I wonder what
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the hell they're paying him, And the answer is it's
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: a terrible job and they're paying him nothing. Although you're
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: really saying it's not such a terrible job because you're
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: giving back and you're doing something patriotic to help the country,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: heal and move on. That's right. And also, frankly, are
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: you're helping people in grief. You can never ever get
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: angry at people. I mean, what they are going through horrifect,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: that's unthinkable, and they have every right to vent about life.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Sun fairness, you are the target of this. Brace yourself
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: before you take on the assignment. You know what's going
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: to develop, and um, you just prepare yourself. So you
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: said it was debilitating earlier, But I've also heard that
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: you have a couple of ways of coping with this,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: not the least of which is long drives with music playing.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about that. I Um, during
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: the day, when you're dealing with these horrible tragedies, you're
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: witnessing first hen the worst in civilization, I mean the worst.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Then at night you go to a symphony concert, or
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: you go sit at the opera, or you listen to
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: chamber music, and it's the height of civilization. So you
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: try and measure and balance the horror with something that
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: will help ease your pain and ease your mind. When
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: you're confronting during the day, story after story, you wouldn't
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: believe these stories. Well, what we've seen and what we've
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: heard and those of us who especially here in New York,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: but obviously Boston Marathon was a similar situation. It's just
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: human tragedy rit large. There's no other way to to
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: describe it. Mr Feinberg, I'm twenty four years old. I
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: lost my husband. He was a fireman, and he left
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: me with our two children, six and four. Now you're
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: going to give me from the nine eleven fund three
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: million dollars. I want it in thirty days. Well, Mrs Jones,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: why do you need the money in thirty days? We
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: have to go to the treasury. They have to do
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: their due diligence, The bureaucracy has to cut a check.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: It might be ninety days, thirty days. I said, why,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: why do you need the money so quickly? Why? I'll
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: tell you why, Mr Fineberg. I have terminal cancer. I
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: have ten weeks to live. My husband was going to
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: survive me and take care of our two little ones.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Now they're going to be orphans. I have got to
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: get this money while I have my faculties and set
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: up a trust so that they'll be taken care of.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: We accelerated the money, Barry and that was a true story.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: That wasn't she wasn't blown, accelerated the money, and eight
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: weeks later she died. After the money was paid, the
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: trust was set up, and these two kids are taken
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: care of, at the very least their college and everything else.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: That's unbelie That istbilitating, let me tell you. And yet
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: as horrific as that sounds, there has to be an
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: incredible satisfaction that someone in such desperate need comes to
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: you and you're able to do something to resolve it
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: favorably too. I don't want to say to their satisfaction,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: but to take care of that situation under those circumstances, Well,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: you're right that you're not going to satisfy the victims,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: and there is no there is no filling that whole.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: All you could do is try and ease the suffering
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: a lot. But it is satisfying to know that you
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: have run a program, administered a program that has succeeded
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the way that Congress or the President of the United States,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: are a judge or a governor or a mayor wanted
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: that program administered. That is very satisfying to know that
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the Attorney General of the United States and President Bush
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: can we want you to do this and that. Afterward
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: they say, job well done. Yeah, that is very satisfied.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: And you've probably handed out more money than just about
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: anybody else. Uh, certainly more of other people's money than
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: anybody else in the history if you ever sat down
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and figured out the total amount of checks that dispersed.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: But you're right, you're right. Eleven BP, there's fourteen add
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: everything else up. You're not that far away from eighteen
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: billion dollars or so. I've become. I tell people, I've
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: become a nationally known philanthropist with other people's money. It's
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: sort of an interesting gig. Actually it's not. I don't
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: know if philanthropy is the right word, but essentially you're
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: dispersing money, for lack of a better word, A lot
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: of this is charitable deductions. All the money you mentioned
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: earlier for the Boston Marathon bombing, and Sandy Hook and
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Aurora and and Virginia Tech. Every time there's a problem,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: there's a huge outpouring of support. You're the philanthropist than
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: chief for the United States. Well, um, you're don't. Forget
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: of all these programs, the one that is the most unique.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: They're all unique, but the one that's really unique is
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the nine eleven victim Compensation fund. That fund used public money,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: public money, not airline money, not World Trade ceremoney, public money.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: And I remember some of the emails I received, Dear
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Mr Finberg, my son died in Oklahoma City? Where's my check?
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: How about the people who are the Mr Finberg? I
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: don't get it. My daughter died in the basement of
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the World Trade Center in the original nine attacks committed
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: by the very same type of people. Were as my check?
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just terrorism, Dear Mr Finberg. Last year
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: my wife save three little girls from drowning in the
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Mississippi River, and then she drowned a heroin were is
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: my check? You better be careful about setting up special
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: programs for just certain people. That nine eleven fund was
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the right thing to do. Absolutely, don't ever do it again.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: It was a one off, of one of a kind,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: of one of a kind. That's right, That's just amazing.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: So so what do you say to someone whose family
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: member died in the World Trade Center attack? This is Jones.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, asked Congress, why you're not eligible? I
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: can't change the law. The law is the law. I
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: have no discretion to add people from nine three or
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma City or or a drowning victim. I can't do it.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: I can't. And your beef justifiable criticism is with the
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Congress of the United States. They enacted the law, so
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: you threw them under the bus, and hey, I don't
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: want to because she's she's she's a very good issue. Now,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: I must say, the nine eleven attack, that was something
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: unique in a American history. I think that's rivaled only
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: by the Civil War Harbor and maybe the assassination of
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: President Kennedy. That's it. That's it. That's sue generous and um.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: But still I tell people all the time nine eleven,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: don't ever replicate that fund. That was using taxpayer money.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: So so, speaking of nine eleven and using taxpayer money,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: we subsequent we subsequently learned a decade later that a
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: lot of the first responders who showed up at the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: World Trade Center subsequently became very very ill, all sorts
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: of respiratory diseases and cancers and god knows what. The
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: nine eleven fund was then extended with an additional set
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: of funding for these first responders. Tell us a little
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: bit about that. You weren't involved in that. That's well,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: that's an offshoot of the nine eleven fund. In other words,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: elementary fanness. I can see that people got paid for
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: those very diseases back then, but now they have manifested
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: for more people. So the only reason they weren't paid
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: back then is they hadn't become ill yet now they're ill.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: So if you paid them, then you should pay him now.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I can understand that argument, I guess, and pretty that's
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: really that's it. After that, you don't ever want to
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: see anything like this again, I I hopefully, I don't
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: think you want the United the taxpayer to be funding
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: compensation for certain victims and not others. Bad things happened
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: to good people every day in this kind. There's no
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: nine eleven fund. And I I am dubious about the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: wisdom of creating special taxpayer funded programs. We didn't just
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: one for certain people. We didn't do one after Pearl Harbor,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: did we? Well, what happened following the Pearl Harbor. Didn't
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: do one after the Boston Marathon. That was all private money,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: all private money. That's that's quite fascinating. So so tell
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: us a little something about your background that most people
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: don't know anything about We know you as the special Um,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: special mediator, special master. What don't people know about? Ken
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: findber If people want to understand my philosophy and all
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: of this, they have to understand growing up in the
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties in Brockton, Massachusetts, when President Kennedy
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: was in the White House, a much more optimistic time.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: He's promoting public service, ask not what you can what
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: your country can do for you, the Peace Corps and
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: UM giving back to the country, and that every individual
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: can make a difference. And that resonated with me. It
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: also resonated with me. I grew up in a tight,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: loving Jewish family in Brockton when everybody was much more
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: optimistic about the future and and and and pulling yourself
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: up and moving forward. My grandparents were immigrants and UM.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: It just it helped mold my my outlook. So post
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: World War two, people are fairly optimistic. But let me
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: push back a little bit from the history books. In
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: the fifties, the sort of democles hungover the United States
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and the Soviet Union. There was the constant threat of
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: of nuclear annihilation. In the sixties, it felt like the
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: entire social fabric of the nation unwounds. And then the
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: seventies was a period of long it was it was
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: high gas prices and inflation and recession and of even
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: worse polyester and disco. So that was a terrible era.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until the eighties and nineties again the things
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: seemed to turn. How negative is that view of history
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: or how nostal, Jake are you being in your view
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: of history? What what we're in We're in lay the
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: truth for for what those eras were, like maybe somewhere
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: in between. I'm talking about nine fifty seven until the
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Vietnam build up around and during that eight year period
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: when I was a teenager and then got older in
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: my early twenties. Um, that that was the period where
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I was most influenced by optimism. Vietnam and the Civil
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Rights movement changed a lot of that. You're absolutely right, Um,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: but it had an impact so so essentially deep down
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: inside you're an optimistic guy, right. You grew up in
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: that post World War two era where a can do
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: spirit affected the country. Brockton, Massachusetts and urban Center. Over
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: half these shoes worn by Union soldiers in the Civil
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: War manufactured in Brockton and um a great industrial mecca.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Really it was. And when I was growing up, it
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: was still a town where imports and Chinese imports and
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Italian imports of shoes, those were that was the next
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: day or the next year, or the next month or
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: the next hand. Shut the factors down. That's trying and
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: and it was just a great time to be a youngster,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: A great time to be a youngster. Let me guess
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: you're a Red Sox fan. Well, I was a Red
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Sox fan for many years now. Of course I've lived
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: in Washington for thirty five years, and my my children
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: grew up as Baltimore Oriole fans, redskin fans, Wizards caps
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: so um. It's hard to maintain in New England allegiance.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: When your kids are praising the local schools social teams,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: the head of the Redskins comes to you and says, hey,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: we have an issue with this naming thing. How do
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: you resolve the team name? Resolved the team name? For
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: goodness sakes, it bothers people. It's building up. It cantinues
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to build up. If that many people and that many
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: critics find a name as being a problem, change the name.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: What is the what is the big deal? I am
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: not especially a politically correct guy, but it's hard to
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: look at redskins and not say, gee, that's a little
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: bit offensive. You know. I look, it's not my team.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I'm just if I were. You asked if I'm advising
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: him for Pizze says, you'll make a fortune the last week.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: All that merchandise is out there for the last week,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: it'll be every shelf will be sold out, and then
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: all the new stuff. So just from a business perspective,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: they should change the name. That. That's something I bet
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: we've never heard heard said before. Um so you mentioned
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: briefly working with Ted Kennedy, an early mentor of yours.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Who else was as well as jfk H philosophically, But
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: who else was a mentor of yours early in your career?
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Have been four that I've written about. Ted Kennedy was
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: one master legislator, um unrivaled I think as an effective
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: US Senator and getting things done. I would say the
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: other three people that have really influenced my thinking Judge
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Jack Weinstein, federal judge here in the in Brooklyn Southern District,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: New York Eastern Eastern District, that still sitting ninety four
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: years old. A giant and sharp as attacked, sharp as attack.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: He was the fellow the judge who put me to
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: work on Agent Orange and made my career. And Judge
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Weinstein's had a trement. I still wouldn't think of resolving
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: an issue without chatting with Judge Weinstein. Still talk to
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: all the time. Justice Brier, Stephen Brier, very close to me,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: just has a book out, has been doing the circuit. Later,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Justice Brian and I worked together as aids to ended
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: to Kennedy. Really next door to one another. We sat
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: in the same room and we're very close friends. And
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Justice Bryan has had a profound impact on my outlooking,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: on my career. And finally, a Professor Robert Potofsky, I
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: know the name of nationally recognized anti trust expert who
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: taught me and I was his intern and school and
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: then he went on to head up the FTC. He's
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: still alive living in Washington. And Professor Potofsky got me
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: into a teaching career. Teach, and those are the people
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: that really influenced my outlook. That's a heck of a
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: good list right there. Well, everybody needs mentors. You have
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: mentors for sure. Absolutely. My mentors don't sit on the
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court or are one of the great senators. But
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: I have some people who have influenced me over the years. Um,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: that are pretty interesting. Your father and mother. I grew
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: up in Brockton in a very loving family with my
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: brother and sister, and we knew that no matter what
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: happened during the day at school or at work or whatever,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: we would always come home and a very loving mother
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: and father would be waiting to nurture, to counsel, to guide,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: to love, and believe me, that had a huge impact
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: on the children. I can imagine. It's one of those
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: things that are impossible to replicate, and people look at
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: that as a core issue in in the direction the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: country is going. The current generation, so your kids are
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: now old enough to have kids of their own, that
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: generation seems to be very different than the parents you
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and I grew up with. Their now helicopter parents who
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: do everything from the kid for the kids, from you know,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: cradle to until they're married. It's it's a very different
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: upbringing than I think my generation or your generation experience. Yes,
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: but you hope that you instill values in your children
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: that a time honored. No matter what the material change
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: or the environmental change, the pace of life, you hope
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: that the core values about love and respect and and
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: reputation and judgment stay with them. Hope you could do
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: much worse than that. Um So we mentioned the big
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: four mentors of yours philosophically, who are the people who
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: influenced your your outlook? Of those those people, Judge Weinstein
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: are very activist. Judge believes that the courts should be
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: there to help the disenfranchised and the and the and
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: the less well off. Senator Kennedy, who of course was
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: a champion of liberal causes and it was determined to
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: help the little man. HM. Justice Bryan, who's consistently one
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: of the four justices on the Court that um it
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: feels very strongly about issues like gay marriage and affirmative
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: action and things like that civil it's justice. So those
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: are the people that influence you. So let's talk a
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: little bit about authors who you've written a couple of books.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Who are some of your favorite authors. What are some
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: of the books that you've enjoyed over the years, whether
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: they relate to law or or elsewhere. Ernest Hemingway, Really,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: I mean Ernest hemmy Way. They say that he may
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: have he may be in decline today in terms of
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: some of the major authors. Is revisionist. I don't know
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: about that. I think Henyways tremendous. We were in Key
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: West not too long ago when we got to tour
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: the Hemingway House, which was quite fast, great and people
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: don't understand a um a massive collection of Hemming Hemingway
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: memorabilia and drafts. Said in the Kennedy Library in Boston,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: the JFK like really um. Hemingway's children, I guess were
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: very close to Jacquelin Kennedy Onassis, and Jacqueline Kennedy when
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: she was alive, suggested that an appropriate place to lodge
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: those house those materials. And now the JFK Library in
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Boston is a key depository of Hemyway memorabilia. Who else, well,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: the Great gats Be. Everybody reads to kill a Mark
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: and where everybody reads. I don't get a chance really
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: to read much fiction. How about nonfiction fiction? I'm you know,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: it's it's on the run. So it's the New York
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Times every day, in the Washington Post, it's the New Yorker,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: It's the New York Review of Books, you don't really get.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't get now in the summer, I
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: just finished reading Evan Thomas's book on Richard Nixon. Fabulous book.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: I mean Richard Nixon. I don't want to say that
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Evan Thomas is a revisionist who who um is sympathetic
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: to Nixon. But by laying out the story you can't
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: help but UM see a side of Nixon that otherwise
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: people forget because of Watergate and everything. Well, the post
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: Watergate image almost becomes a caricature and you lose sight
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: of the real man underneath that. That happens in those
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: sort of situations, and you don't have to be revisionists.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: You just have to show the full picture, and I
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: think Thomas does that. Then I read on a lark,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: I read the History of the Nile River. Really, I
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: just picked it up at a local bookstore on Martha's Vineyard.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: The history of the Nile going back to the ancient
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Egypt right up to the present time. That's the history
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: of civilization. That is the history of civilization going back
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: thousands of years, and the importance of that river in
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: world history. And um, I found that to be interested.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: So I get sometime but um uh, it's cliche. But
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I'm too busy. It's I can't remember the last piece
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: of fiction I read, and I end up really plowing through,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: not nearly as much nonfiction as I like. But I
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: try and go through a book or two a month
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: if i'm if I'm lucky. But I'm on a train
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: every day, so that's where I get to do it. Now.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: My friend, my friend Mark Byros is a big believer
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: in in these um oral books. He must read a
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: book a week on tape. He's read everything on tape,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: goes to work on tape, coming home on tape at
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: night on tape, on vacation on tape, and takes airplane
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: trips on tape. And he says, oh, I read that.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: I read that. I read All the Light You Cannot
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: See and The Girl on the Train and all these
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: best sellers. He listen him and not this listening isn't
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: the same as reading. I have people tell me, you know,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: I I listened to your podcast. I'm on the treadmill,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: or I'm taking the train back and forth to work,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: or I go out biking. So it's a different experience
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: hearing it than reading it. I like reading when I can,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: but how often do you get the three or four
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: uninterrupted hours you need? And I find that, um, if
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: I have a moment of where I'm not meeting with
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: somebody or doing it, I'm so tied up thinking about
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: my work that it's hard to focus on fiction or
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: non fiction or anything else because you're so occupied with
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: what should that person receive or should that person be
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: eligible or how much? And you take it home with you.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: You strike me as someone if you would have been
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: born in a just a few the next generation, you
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: would be a guy doing meditation on a regular basis
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: and a cross legged somewhere and thinking deep thoughts. Um.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: You think constantly about what you learn and what I
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: do is that public policy involves real people, live people
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: that have needs. And when you're thinking about whether it
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: a close down the government or you're thinking about um
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: uh filibuster rain a health bill, you know you better
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: step back that there are real people in ramifications. There
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: are ramifications. When I do the nine eleven or BP
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: or any one of these program Boston Marathon, Aurora, Sandy Hook,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Sandy Hook, twenty four first graders murdered. Just unbelievable. Unbelievable,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: it's unthankful, it's unconscionable. And and here I am meeting
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: with families who lost first grades, and I'm just telling them.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: What can you possibly say? You just sit there and
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: listen to them. UM vent about life, sun Fannus. That's
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: what it's all about, Mr Fineberg. I lost my first
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: my first grade child. There is no God, No God
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: would allow such a thing. I will never again step
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: foot in a church or a synagogue. It can't be
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: that this God that would allow this. And you have
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: no answer none. You just listen that that depth of grief.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Supposedly the psychologist will say, losing a child worse than
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: losing a husband or a wife or a parent. It's
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: the worst pain a human can feel. And you hope
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: when you do what I do, you hope you will
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: not make a mistake. Every time I do one of
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: these programs to compensate innocent people, I make a mistake.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: You can't help it. You can't help it. I remember
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: an eighty three year old man came to see me
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: after nine eleven, Mr Fineberg, crying. He was crying, Mr Finberg,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Guy lost my son at the Pentagon when the plane hit.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: He got out, he escaped, but he thought that his sister,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: who also worked at the Pentagon, was trapped, so he
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: went back in to look for her. She had escaped
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: through a side door. He died looking for now, Mr Finberg,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: my life is over. I'm burying a son. A father
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: should never bury a son. And I looked at this
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: man crying, and I can't believe it. I said to him,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: Mr Jones, this is terrible what happened to your son.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: I know how you feel. H He looked at me,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: nice quiet, Mr Finberg. I have some advice for you.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: You have a tough job. I don't envy you. Don't
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: ever tell somebody like me that you know how I feel.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: You have no idea how I feel. And it sounds
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: pretentious and condescending. I wouldn't do that. I will never
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: do that. I will never make that mistake again. And
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: you learn every time about mistakes and trying to avoid them.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: See my You know, my wife says the difference between
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: men and women is women hear something and they want
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: to listen. Men here it and like, all right, what
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: do I have to do to fix this? My first
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: response when you're telling that is, you know, to honor
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: what your son tried to do in saving his sister
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: is you have to keep going for the benefit of
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: your daughter. And I don't know if that's the right
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: thing to say, because I know that they're not looking
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: for your advice, They're just looking for an year. Be
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: careful about that type of response. That's my wife's advice.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Shut up and listen, don't offer advice, empathize. I wish
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: I could change this, I can't, and that's it. That's
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: really not easy to do. And what I've learned over
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: the years, the less you say two people in grief,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: because you'll be fueling this thing to say the least. Um,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: let's take a look at what else. So we went
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: through books. I only I know. I only have you
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: for another eight minutes. So let's go through some of
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: my favorite questions I asked for my last four questions
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: I asked all my guests. So you entered the legal
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: industry almost forty years ago. What has changed in the industry.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: What is the most significant shift in that field? I
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: think the legal industry hasn't changed that much, except there
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: are too many lawyers. I mean, we're reading about this
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: all the time. These lawyers, you know, we're churning out
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of lawyers every year, and we're over lawyered.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: So I I advise young people all the time, don't
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: go to law school unless you really want to be
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: a lawyer and you want to practice law. Don't go
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: because I'm not sure what I want to do. That's
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: a pretty expensive ambivalence, I must say, an expensive ambivalence.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I want to go to law school. I want to
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: go to a very good law school, and I want
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: to do very well at law school. Otherwise, good luck.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: It's a very competitive world out there, and you better
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: think twice the stats. And these are old already, But
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: seven years after graduation, law school gradutions aren't practicing. I
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's changed in the past twenty years,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it could could very well. They just aren't
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: that many legal jobs out there. And wait till we
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: start out sourcing more and more of it to India.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: Well that's right. And now you go online and you
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: see legal dot Com and Zoom and all of this
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: and legal Zoom and we can give you a will
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: and we can do a simple divorce and blah blah,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: it won't cost you very much. And it's all online.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: And I mean the world has changed software, software is
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: changing that. So what do you see as the next
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: major shifts in that profession? Well, I don't know. I
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: mean I do think there's a trend that three years
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: of law school, the third year should be more clinical,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: actual experience out in the field, practicing at the d
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: a's office, a legal aid, doing some me the Asian
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: work as a student, but getting out there and getting
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: some real world experience. There may be a trend towards
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: making three years of law school two years. Now. There
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: are some law schools now like Brooklyn here dean Nick Aller,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: very very um creative guy who's jamming three years of
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: law school credit into two years and inviting students who
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: want to get out of law school and two years
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: to work hard, take the same number of credits, but
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: get out earlier, stop working. So we'll watch and see
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: how this develops over the next two years. Quite fascinating. So, um,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: what advice would you give to a millennial or someone
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: just getting out of school today at the beginning of
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: their career, and I mean law school graduates, college graduates,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: what advice would you give to kids like that? Look,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: get yourself a job that you really enjoy, enjoy getting
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: up on Monday morning and going to work. That's your
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: Yet you're that's the test, smile post. If you hate Mondays,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: you're doing the wrong right and don't worry too much
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: about what you're going to be doing. Three years, four years,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: five years, five years ago, Barry Ridholts didn't see himself
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: doing this fabulous show. I actually did, but that's a
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: whole different story. But for the most but it wasn't real.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: It was aspirational and actually it wasn't this show. Five
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: years ago, I was doing television and radio, but not
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: my own show. I always thought, Hey, I'm I'm a guest,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not a host. What the heck do I know
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: about hosting a radio show? So actually, you're you're right.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: I had no idea this, you know, in my day job,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: so we run an asset management shop and we're always
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: talking to people about don't think about the day to
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: day noise in the market. Think about when you're gonna
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: retire in twenty or thirty years, what do you need
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: to live on? What sort of we have to walk
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: people through and their software that helps us do this,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: but we walk through people through prog actions ten, twenty
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: thirty years out, and you're saying, don't worry so much
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: about forty years from now. You don't know what next
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: year is gonna break. Live in the moment a little more,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: enjoy what you have today. And boy, have I seen
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: that in my work. For sure? People went to work
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: on nine eleven. They never perfunctory goodbyes to husbands and
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: wives and brothers and sisters. I'll meet you for dinner,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: I'll beach, I'll be home earlier. There never saw him again,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: incinerated dust, and um, you know, you know, my wife
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: and I have a routine every time we fly. I
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: fly and we go through the same process of Hey,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: I'm in C three B. They're shutting the cabin door.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: I love you, talk to you later, call me as
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: soon as you're down, and so all right, we'll landed
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: in Miami, landed in because you And that's only since
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: nine eleven that routine developed, because you never know when
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: a flight is your last flight. You could write a
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: book other people could as well, on how nine eleven, thirteen, fourteen,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: fifteen years ago has influenced the way we live today,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: the way we think, the way we act. I would
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: have thought after nine eleven, that over a relatively brief
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: period of time, nine eleven would be history, and that
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: the American people wouldn't stand for these lines at airports
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: going through. It turns out the American people, I think,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: have made um airports security a regular fixture of their lives.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: They expected, they don't want it modified. And I'm surprised
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: at that. You know, the American people usually are very forgetful,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: but on something like nine eleven, the impacts lasted much
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: longer than I thought, to say the least. And and
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: my final question, because I promised to get you out
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: of here at five thirty, what do you know today
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: about your practice that you wish you knew forty years
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: ago when you began. Oh, I don't know about that.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: That's a very interesting question. I Um. What I know
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: today is more than forty years ago. Is that you
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: build a sense of trust and credibility on the pot
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: of people, not by marketing and not by branding and
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: not by advertising, by doing and experience. I'm a firm
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: believer that talent will out and that if you're a
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: good lawyer, or a good doctor, or a good interviewer.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: On Bloomberg TV, a Bloomberg Radio, a Bloomberg podcast, that
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: it generates itself. It it provides you not only a
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: sense of satisfaction, it does me in my practice, but
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: that don't worry too much about tomorrow or the next day. Um,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: your experience and your credibility enhances tomorrow and the next day.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: It'll worry about the substance. The branding will take care of.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Certainly in your case, that's the case. Please,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: can I if I can call you can At this point,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: after an hour and a half, I can't begin to
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: thank you enough for this. This has been absolutely delightful. I've,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: like I said earlier, I followed your course of your
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: career as pretty much everyone in America has. And um,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: I hope we asked you some questions that we're a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: little different than you used to and I hope, I hope,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: I know I've learned a lot of fascinating things about
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: you have And let me tell you you have a
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: very civilized approach to this because your show and the
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: reason I was attracted to it, it's not a six
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: minute sound bite, it's not eight minutes. How many quick
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: points can you make? You flesh it out? You give
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: everybody the opportunity. You get into a dialogue and it's
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: very substantive, and I think you're performing a valuable public service.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: So thank you. Well, well on behalf of the American public.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Let me say thank you for your service. Um, we've
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: been speaking with Special Master Ken Feinberg. Uh. What's the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: name of your firm? Ken? The the law You're ready
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: for this, The Law Offices of Kenneth A. Feinberg. Alright,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: there you go that that's uh, the Law Offices of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: Kenneth R. Feinberg. I wanna thank my recording engineer, Reggie,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: my producer, uh, Charles Volmer, and my head of research, h.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Michael bat Nick. Be sure and check out all of
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: our other podcasts. Just look up an Inch or down
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: an Inch on Apple iTunes. You've been listening to Masters
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio.