Yes China is serious. And Wall St gets Fed Prosecutor
As to China export decline, in past such an event has lead to sharp drop in market. Perhaps this time it is already baked in somewhat since been falling for a while, though not like -3.3%.
Federal Prosecutor Who Fought Wall Street Is Joining Paul Weiss Law Firm
By Ben Protess February 4, 2015 3:26 pm NY Times
In the course of 18 months, the federal prosecutor Richard Tarlowe racked up six insider trading convictions, helping secure some signature moments in a long-running investigation.
Next month, Mr. Tarlowe will leave that prosecutorial career behind.
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has hired Mr. Tarlowe as counsel in its litigation department, he said in an interview on Wednesday. Mr. Tarlowe, currently head of the complex frauds and cybercrime unit at the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, will focus on white-collar criminal defense, online security and foreign corrupt practices cases.
Mr. Tarlowe, who worked at Goldman Sachs after graduating from Harvard Law School, is the latest white-collar prosecutor in Manhattan to decamp to the private sector. Last month, three longtime federal prosecutors in Manhattan landed at Boies, Schiller & Flexner.
Mr. Tarlowe, who will most likely make multiples of his government salary, said in the interview that he chose Paul Weiss because of its track record for litigation, a reputation he knew firsthand as a prosecutor. Many of the firm’s Wall Street clients, including the hedge fund SAC Capital, were targets of federal investigations.
“I feel very honored about the opportunity,” said Mr. Tarlowe, 39, adding that he believed “there’s no firm in the world that has a stronger litigation or white-collar defense practice.”
While many of Paul Weiss’s cases are of the Wall Street variety, Mr. Tarlowe said he was also drawn to the eclectic nature of its clients. Paul Weiss, for example, is handling the investigation into so-called Deflategate, in which the New England Patriots used game balls that turned out to be underinflated.
The move to Paul Weiss will also reunite Mr. Tarlowe with his old supervisor, Lorin L. Reisner. Mr. Reisner led the office’s criminal division until he joined Paul Weiss in the summer.
The recent hires signal that Paul Weiss — home to the famed litigator Theodore V. Wells Jr., whose clients have included I. Lewis Libby, known as Scooter, and Eliot Spitzer — is building its next generation of litigators.
“It is critical that Paul Weiss continues to recruit star talent for the white-collar group in order to support our pre-eminent platform in this area,” Mr. Wells said in an interview. “We are very conscious about issues of succession.”
He added that while Mr. Tarlowe had most recently focused on digital crime and other complex frauds, “this is not a niche hire.”
The hiring coincides with a wave of federal investigations into Wall Street. As clients encounter such scrutiny, every white-shoe law firm in New York has scrambled to add prosecutors to its roster.
“Given the unprecedented scrutiny of Wall Street and other industries, we are thrilled to add someone of Rich’s talents to our firm,” said Brad S. Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss.
At the United States attorney’s office, which he joined in 2007, Mr. Tarlowe prosecuted several big Wall Street cases. The six insider trading cases he helped win from June 2011 to December 2012 included the conviction of Rajat K. Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs director accused of leaking boardroom secrets.
Mr. Tarlowe, a native of Roslyn, N.Y., was also part of the trial team that convicted Anthony Chiasson and Todd Newman. A federal appeals court recently overturned those convictions, a victory for Paul Weiss, which helped handle Mr. Chiasson’s appeal.
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
~ Thomas Sowell