Officials in Trump's Department of Energy prepared a plan to use unprecedented "emergency powers" to force the US grid to rely on expensive, unprofitable coal and nuclear power, rather than paying market rates for cheaper sources of energy: renewables and natural gas. Read the rest

Equifax division TALX has a product called The Work Number, where prospective employers can verify job applicants' work history and previous salaries (it's also used by mortgage lenders and others): you can create an account on this system in anyone's name, provided you have their date of birth and Social Security Number. The former is a matter of public record, the latter is often available thanks to the many breaches that have dumped millions of SSNs (the latest being Equifax's catastrophic breach of 145,000,000 Americans' data). Read the rest

A lawsuit against JP Morgan-Chase -- the nation's largest bank -- asserts that the institution paid off the $4,200,000,000 in mortgage forgiveness that it agreed to as a settlement for widescale mortgage and foreclosure fraud by committing a lot more mortgage fraud, in which homeowners, ethical lenders, and American cities were stuck with the bill. Read the rest

From mid-May to July 2017, Equifax exposed the financial and personal identifying information of 143 million Americans -- 44% of the country -- to hackers, who made off with credit-card details, Social Security Numbers, sensitive credit history data, driver's license numbers, birth dates, addresses, and then, in the five weeks between discovering the breach and disclosing it, the company allowed its top execs to sell millions of dollars' worth of stock in the company, while preparing a visibly defective and ineffective website that provides no useful information to the people whom Equifax has put in grave financial and personal danger through their recklessness. Read the rest

In 2013, DOJ lawyers showed JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon a draft of a 92-page complaint against his bank. Dimon coughed up $13B to settle the case, and the complaint was sealed, leaving us all to wonder exactly what kind of red-handed fraud convinced Dimon to part with what was then the largest financial misconduct settlement in US history. Read the rest

The hits keep on coming for the largest bank in America: in addition to stealing millions with fraudulent overdraft fees, creating 2,000,000 fraudulent accounts, blackballing whistleblowers, defrauding mortgage borrowers, and stealing tens of thousands of cars with fraudulent repos, they also grossly overcharged America's struggling small businesses for processing their credit-card fees, according to a new lawsuit. Read the rest

In The Personal Wealth Interests of Politicians and the Stabilization of Financial Markets, researchers from the London Business School and Tillburg University demonstrate the likelihood of US members of Congress voting in favor of bank bailouts was correlated with those politicians' individual investments in banking stocks. Read the rest

A report in BILD am Sonntag claims that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has uncovered the secret test that Audis were programmed to perform to determine whether to pollute like crazy or to pretend that they were low-polluting, legally compliant vehicles. Read the rest

The biggest banks in the world have admitted to rigging LIBOR, a key interest rate that determines the value of trillions of dollars' worth of assets -- they paid billions in fines as a result. Read the rest

The headline figure of a $5B settlement that Goldman will have to pay after admitting to the toxic-asset fraud that led to the global economic collapse is just window-dressing: in the fine print are exemptions and giveaways that could cut that number in half. Read the rest

Remember when HSBC got caught laundering billions for Mexican narco-terror cartels? Remember how they offered to pay five weeks' profits in fines and to defer their executive bonuses to escape criminal charges?

The crime-fighting legal eagles at the Department of Justice approved the settlement last week. Remember, though, if you are suspected of laundering money or selling drugs, the DoJ will take your house away and put you in jail for the rest of your life. Nice to be "too big to jail." Still, deferring multimillion-dollar bonuses has gotta hurt, huh? Read the rest