The second FBI Iphone entry

The FBI has offered to help police in Arkansas who have accused two teenagers of killing the grandparents of one of the kids. The help consists in trying to 'unlock' the phone of one of the kids.

How long do you think it will take for these 'unlockings' will no longer be newsworthy?

Lack of Coordination by Financial Regulators

The subtitle of the latest GAO report on Financial Regulation - Complex and Fragmented Structure Could Be Streamlined to Improve Effectiveness - is a good summary of their findings. From the view of the financial entities that are being regulated the entity may fall under the regulatory authority of multiple regulators who don't always communicate with each other. As a result, there are inconsistencies in how regulators oversee similar types of institutions. The report cites three examples:

• Depository institutions. Inconsistencies in examination activities of the depository institution regulators can result in different conclusions regarding the safety and soundness of an institution and difficulties identifying emerging trends.
• Securities and derivatives markets. Securities and derivatives markets have become increasingly interconnected, and regulation of these markets by separate agencies has created challenges. For example, regulation of entities that engage in similar activities is at times duplicative and at other times nconsistent.
• Insurance. Insurance regulation is primarily state-based, and a lack of uniformity, including inconsistencies in the licensing of insurance agents and the approval of insurance products, has resulted in uneven consumerprotection and increased costs to insurers.

Congress created Financial Stability Oversight Council to thwart another Great Depression by its response to systemic risks.  However, its recommendations are not binding and do not guarantee regulatory response. 

Prosecutors seldom charged

The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal group that represents people seeking exonerations, examined records in four states and interviewed a wide assortment of defense lawyers, prosecutors and legal experts. The researchers looked at court rulings from 2004 through 2008 in which judges found that prosecutors had committed violations such as mischaracterizing evidence or suborning perjury. They found 660 cases of prosecutorial error or misconduct. In 80% of the cases judges upheld the convictions, finding that the prosecutorial lapse did not impact the fairness of the defendant’s original trial. Convictions were thrown out in 20% of the cases. Only one prosecutor was disciplined by any oversight authorities.

How dangerous is ISIS?

A typical 9-year-old?

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Courage displayed in Campaign 2016

"A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today." John F. Kennedy

Less snowfall, less water

That's the conclusion reached by a Columbia University project which examined 421 mountain drainage basins on four continents. They reviewed current climate-change models and analyzed present demographics and water-use patterns to identify ninety-seven drainage basins in which people run at least a two-thirds chance of experiencing serious water shortages in the future. 

Snow-covered mountains supply a lot of our water as they store enormous amounts of precipitation in the winter and then release it gradually as meltwater in the spring and summer, precisely when people at lower altitudes need it for irrigating crops. But snowfall levels are expected to decrease in many parts of the world as a result of climate change. What happens then? 

The scientists conclude that two billion people live in regions that are likely to experience much drier springs and summers by the end of this century as a result of nearby mountain ranges accumulating less snow in winter months. The regions likely to be affected include Northern and Central California; a large swath of the American Southwest and northern Mexico; and vast stretches of Iran, Syria, and Iraq. Also likely to be affected are parts of Portugal, Spain, and France; a section of Northern Africa; and parts of Italy, the Balkans, and Central Asia. The lead scientist says, “Mountains in these areas are likely to receive more of their winter precipitation as rain, which will wash away. The snow that does fall will melt earlier in the year."

Restating the books

Every year, hundreds of companies restate their accounts because of accounting errors in the past. Most of the time the SEC does nothing, as it's likely honest mistakes were made. Almost always the errors result in higher reported earnings.

However, some academics looked at 2,376 restatements that US companies issued between 1997 and 2008 and found when a prominent company admits to mismanaging its books, many of its competitors will begin mismanaging their own books in similar ways soon afterward. And they will continue to do so for a couple of years before issuing their own restatements. For some strange reason these restatements occur only when the company doesn’t get disciplined by the SEC, sued by its investors, or criticized in the press.

Illegal Arrests

I doubt that this is a new phenomenon. But the media think it helps sales. Where was the media 20, 30, 100 years ago?

The smallest thing can make people crazy

WFSB 3 Connecticut

The Changing Census

Methane vs. Carbon Dioxide

Our attempts to minimize the effects of climate change have focused on carbon dioxide. The boom in natural gas was triggered, in part, by its ability to reduce carbon emissions. Thus, there has been a slight decline in CO2 emissions. But, if you accept the findings of a recent paper by Harvard researchers, we still have a problem - the leaking of methane. 

Between 2002 and 2014, US methane emissions increased by more than 30 percent, accounting for 30 to 60 percent of an enormous spike in methane in the entire planet’s atmosphere. Why is this a problem? Methane traps heat in the atmosphere much more efficiently than CO2. And you need not burn methane to have a problem; it escapes into the air before it can be captured in a pipeline, or anywhere else along its route to a power plant or your stove. The situation has been aggravated by fracking.

So, what do we do now?

Disappointment

We're not the same person we were 60 or so years ago. I loved the Alec Guiness movie "The Horses Mouth"; I thought it quite funny. When I saw it again last night, I may have laughed twice. Same movie, different me.

Water everywhere and not a drop to drink

When will we reach that day? It will happen unless we start now to repair our water and wastewater systems. Yes, it will be expensive; the American Society of Civil Engineers thinks it could cost $1.3 trillion or more. 

One part of the problem is the lack of data we spoke about a few days ago. But, we do know that our pipes are old and leak. For example, in 2012 Houston alone lost 22 billion gallons.

Our pricing system is not the smartest. Prices are the same year-round whether it's the dry or wet season; supply and demand plays no role. And we charge the same no matter what the water is used for: drinking, cooking, hygiene or watering lawns, filling swimming pools, washing cars.

Bring back the draft?

William Astore believes that the abolition of the draft has resulted in a military that prides itself on its warrior ethos rather than the old-fashioned citizen-soldier ideal. He states:

Three areas highlight the post-democratic transformation of this military with striking clarity: the blending of military professionals with privatized mercenaries in prosecuting unending “limited” wars; the way senior military commanders are cashing in on retirement; and finally the emergence of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as a quasi-missionary imperial force with a presence in at least 135 countries a year (and counting).

I find it hard to see where he is wrong.

The trillion dollar plan

Eight years ago Obama was going to build a nuclear-free world. Well, like so many of his promises, this promise has become a plan that will do exactly the opposite. The administration wants to "modernize" our nuclear arsenal and production facilities. It would redesign nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs and production plants. There will be a small cost - $1,000,000,000,000.00 - and it will take some time - 30 years.

And then there is the question of agreements we have signed. This nuclear “modernization” plan violates the terms of the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires the nuclear powers to engage in nuclear disarmament. 

Do we need more than the 7,000 nuclear weapons we already have? Couldn't we use a trillion dollars in a better way?

A real cat burglar

Brigit stands at the top of the photo surveying her thefts. In the past two months she has brought home eleven pairs of underwear and more than fifty socks. No one seems to know where she finds them.

Is Forbes in trouble or are they just greedy?

I ask that question after reading an article in Wall Street on Parade. The article was triggered by Forbes' removing an article by Laurence Kotlikoff, a Forbes contributor, Professor of Economics at Boston University and bestselling co-author. Kotlikoff tweeted on Friday that would be publishing his article entitled “JPMorgan Chase – The True Story of America’s Most Corrupt Bank". Forbes claims, “Forbes was not contacted by anyone at or on behalf of JPMorgan. An updated version of contributor Laurence Kotlikoff’s post will be available on Forbes.com this week.”

JPMorgan Chase has been a good financial contributor to Forbes both by buying normal ads and also by Chase publishing its own articles and post them as news articles on the Forbes web site. Instead of stating that the content is paid advertising, the content carries the nebulous appendage of “BrandVoice.” And these articles can cost Chase more than $1 million.

Forbes has also done such strange things as placing a Fidelity Investments ad on the front cover of its February 2015 print edition.

Analyzing The WALL

Are you mindful?

It may be hard not to be. Mindfulness is close to becoming a billion dollar business in the U.S. Here are some of the products and services you can buy: Mindful Lotus tea, Mindful Meats, Mindful Mints, Mindful T-Shirts, Mindful Mayo, Mindful magazine, more than two dozen mindfulness apps for smartphones, two Great Courses, and, of course, a rash of books.

Sports teams practice mindfulness; vide the Golden State Warriors, the Seattle Seahawks and the Boston Red Sox. It's integral to some companies; such as Google, McKinsey and BlackRock.

Part of the attraction is the marketing message that it does not take much time; in some situations, mindfulness is being packaged as a one-minute reprieve from the rigors of the day.

Could this be correct?

Richard Behan makes the following assertions in an article for Alternet:

• Eleven banks (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Barclay's, JP Morgan Chase, CIBC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley) gave $83.72 million to the Clintons' campaigns for president and senator. 
• Bill Clinton's Wall Street speaking engagements over the past 14 years have earned him a total of $5,910,000.
• Hillary's Wall Street talks have brought in almost $3 million.

Behan's article includes references to footnotes. But trying to access the footnotes is impossible.

Managing without adequate information

That's the story with our use of water. We analyze that use once every five years. The most recent report we have is for the year 2010. The report, which at 64 pages is fairly small, gives the use of water in each state by quality and quantity, by source, and by whether it’s used on farms, in factories or in homes. Yet in the past few years we've had droughts, poisoned water and polluted water; none of which were foreseen in the report for 2010 (which was issued in 2014). 

It looks that finally we are trying to address the issue. The White House is hosting a Water Summit, where it promises to unveil new ideas to galvanize the sleepy world of water. The question White House officials are asking is simple: What could the federal government do that wouldn’t cost much but that would change how we think about water? The best and simplest answer: Fix water data.

Where will you be buried?

I always thought you had two choices: a cemetery or cremation. The problem with cemeteries is space; they are reaching a point where there is no space. Even now residents who have lived in Queens for eighty-five years are being laid to rest eighty-five miles away in New Jersey; low-income families in Brooklyn have to splurge on train tickets to pay respects to loved ones buried in plots miles away. The problem with cremation is ecological. The fire burns at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit for at least two hours, is ecologically undesirable because of the required energy, the use of non-renewable fuels, and the sometimes toxic gases released to the atmosphere. Studies have demonstrated that the amount of energy used to cremate a single body equals the home-energy demands of a typical American over an entire month.

The DeathLab, a Columbia University research collaborative of architects, scientists, and theologians is thinking about what becomes of our bodies when we die, and what impact that has on the living. It is experimenting with something called anaerobic microbial digestion: microorganisms that can consume bodies without the need for oxygen. This method will reduce the corpse to a smaller amount of material. But more strikingly, it will produce energy that can be harnessed to generate light. They have produced a rendering of a bridge in Manhattan with lighting created by anaerobic microbial digestion. They call it Constellation Park.

Problems with H-2 Visas

The H-2 visa enables hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to come to America to fill short-term, menial jobs. But there is one part of the visa which makes life quite difficult for the workers: they have to stick with their designated employer — or else get deported. So, the employer can make life hard for these workers. They have been cheated out of their wages, locked up in horrifying conditions, threatened, beaten, even raped. And the government, which is supposed to make sure employers are treating them fairly, admits there is not much it can do.

Some employers prefer H-2 workers, who are more vulnerable, more afraid of deportation, and more desperate for the money — and therefore less likely to complain about low pay and unfair conditions. So they play games to avoid complying with the rules. Obligated to place help wanted ads, they put them in tiny newspapers hundreds of miles away from the actual job site. Or they post the job at government employment centers, but neglect to include any contact information or whereabouts. Sometimes to please regulators they hire Americans, then almost immediately fire them, en masse. 

Helping the government?

One view of why the country has changed

The Presidential Campaign

Monday (3/14/16) is PI Day

Thoughts about security

Questions for the candidates

Andrew Bacevich asked these questions in an article about Obama's record:
What exactly does Great Britain bring to the “special relationship” that should justify its continuation?
Even if Berlin was worth fighting for a half-century ago, why does it follow that Kiev is worth fighting for today?
Does “the West” actually exist? And even if it does, why should the racially and culturally diverse United States choose to affiliate with that one particular tribe?
With the world’s economic center of gravity shifting to Asia, what is the residual significance of free-riding Europe?
How should radical changes in the global energy environment affect the status of the Persian Gulf in the U.S. strategic hierarchy?
Given the paltry results achieved through myriad recent U.S. armed interventions in the Islamic world, what exactly is the present-day utility of force?
Under what definition of the term “ally” do countries such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Pakistan—each routinely behaving in ways contrary to U.S. interests—qualify for that designation?

"When you're at war you do what you have to do"

Those are the words of Kaori Suzuki, who became a scientist and, with a few other women, started a non-profit organisation - Tarachine. Here is the laboratory they set up to monitor radiation in the city of Iwaki.

None of these women had trained as scientists. One used to be a beautician, another was a hairdresser, yet another used to work in an office. They knew nothing about radiation. Then came Fukushima, and Suzuki and her associates did what they had to do.

With the help of experts and university professors, they organized training workshops and soon knew enough about radiation and with money they had raised, bought the proper instrument to test food contamination. The lab now measures the radioactive isotopes caesium 134 and 137, strontium 90 and tritiumand and collects data on gamma radiation. It publishes its findings online every month, and advises people to avoid foods with high readings as well as the places they were grown.

People bring in food, earth, grass and leaves from their backyards for testing. The lab also provides training and equipment to anyone who wants to do their own measurements. And the group keeps an eye on children's health. It runs a small clinic where doctors from all over Japan periodically come to provide free thyroid cancer check-ups for local children. Since screening began, six months after the meltdown, 166 children in Fukushima prefecture have been diagnosed with - or are suspected of having - thyroid cancer. This is a far higher rate than in the rest of the country, although some experts say that's due to over-diagnosis. And for parents who want to give their children a break from the local environment, Tarachine even organises summer trips to the south of the country.

Old World Italy?

From a Duncaster resident

Student loans, no small potatoes

Student load debt is nearing $1.2 trillion and is 45% of the total Federal assets. Here's how it's grown over the past twenty years.

Stiglitz again

Some excerpts from his most recent article:

The world faces a deficiency of aggregate demand, brought on by a combination of growing inequality and a mindless wave of fiscal austerity.

some 500,000 fewer people are employed by the public sector in the U.S. than before the crisis. With normal expansion in government employment since 2008, there would have been two million more.

There are huge unmet global needs that could spur growth. Infrastructure alone could absorb trillions of dollars in investment, not only true in the developing world, but also in the U.S., which has underinvested in its core infrastructure for decades. Furthermore, the entire world needs to retrofit itself to face the reality of global warming.

That means overcoming deficit fetishism. It makes sense for countries like the U.S. and Germany that can borrow at negative real long-term interest rates to borrow to make the investments that are needed. Likewise, in most other countries, rates of return on public investment far exceed the cost of funds.

This is winter?

Today, when the calendar says Spring begins in 11 days, the temperature is 76. I sat on my patio without a jacket, read and listened to the birds.

A weird winter not only in Connecticut

NOAA reports that the contiguous United States had the warmest winter in 122 years of record keeping. The temperature averaged 36.8 degrees. That was 0.3 degrees above the previous record, set in the winter of 1999–2000, and 4.6 degrees above the average from the 20th century.

2015 was the hottest year globally, becoming the fourth since 2000 to break the record, and most months in 2015 were the warmest since record keeping began.

A new kind of plane?

Results of a year in space

Here are some of the facts NASA has found examining Scott Kelly:

• The fluids in your body shift due to zero gravity.
• Some bones, muscles, and organs deteriorate.
• You get taller.
• Immunity is suppressed.
• Space is a cancer danger.
• The isolation carries psychological effects.

Two fathers, One set of twins

This is known as heteropaternal superfecundation. The cause is the fertilization of a woman's eggs by two men within a short period of time. It is unbelievably rare. There are only less than 10 known cases of twins with different fathers in the world. There have been three cases in the U.S.

Time to wake up

Gun control in our schools

Cleaning up after Fukushima

You really can't say there is a cleanup, as the radioactive waste is either lying around or being moved around. Throughout Fukushima, there are large cylindrical plastic sacks — each roughly the size of a hot tub and weighing about a ton when full — stacked in desultory heaps by the side of roads, near driveways or in abandoned lots. Eventually, these bags will be transferred from one part of Fukushima to another, and then another.

But, the bags deteriorate after three years. Therefore,the waste has to be repackaged regularly. Sacks are sometimes moved from one facility to another, based on their levels of radioactivity, which vary and can shift over time. By last fall, there were more than 9 million one-ton bags of radioactive waste. Standard trucks carry fewer than 10 bags at a time — meaning that radioactive material is regularly rotating around Fukushima in a slow-motion version of pass the nuclear parcel.

Protecting our border with Mexico

The Border Patrol, more formally the United States Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.), has been protecting our borders for a long time. Most of the protection has focused on the Mexican border. As with so many things post 9/11, the size of the agency has dramatically increased, from 11,000 to 20,000 agents. This doubling in size has not been monitored very well. The idea that the Border Patrol is a law-enforcement agency has been subverted into a military agency. While the reputation of police today is not what it was years ago, few police departments consider themselves military agents. Perhaps the military agency idea is responsible for some disturbing reports about the Border Patrol.

• For example, a 2013 investigation by The Arizona Republic found that since 2005, C.B.P. agents had killed at least 42 people, a majority of them in the United States, but most of the agents’ identities had been kept secret, and the officers faced ‘‘few, if any, public repercussions, even in cases in which the justification for the shooting seems dubious.’’ Thirteen of the cases involved American citizens; at least three involved unarmed teenagers who were shot in the back.
• A 2010 internal study reported that 60 percent of a pool of Border Patrol agents and customs inspectors who had been administered polygraph tests were deemed unsuitable for service.
• By 2011, the sheer number of C.B.P. misconduct cases had become glaring — an average of one C.B.P. officer was arrested every day between 2005 and 2012, 144 of them for corruption-level offenses.
• Between January 2010 and October 2012 a Border Patrol agent had used deadly force 67 times, 19 resulting in deaths.

War on Drugs: Futile, Stupid, Ineffective, Costly

Carried Interest Carries Billionaires

Private equity firms (hedge funds) are compensated in two ways: 2% of the value of the assets they manage and 20% of the fund's profits over a certain point. The I.R.S. characterizes the managers’ cut of the profits as carried interest, which is taxed at the capital gains rate (now 15%) rather than as ordinary income (taxed at 35% for high incomes). It's not been a bad deal for the managers of these firms. Since the end of the recession, private equity has reported record profits, and at least eighteen private-equity executives are estimated to be worth $2 billion or more each. 

How much is this loophole costing us?

Don't take the elevator or ride the escalator in China

Some news from the Washington Post: 

• Last July, a woman was crushed by an escalator in central China; 
• in January 2015, a doctor and a patient bumped into an elevator door during a physical altercation when the door opened, and they plunged to their deaths;
• in September 2014, a student was crushed by an elevator;
• a maintenance worker had to have his left leg amputated when an escalator he was cleaning collapsed 
• Woman ‘starved to death’ after being stranded for a month on an elevator
• "More than 110,000 escalators have potential safety issues of which over 26,000 have not yet been repaired”

Self-Regulation does not always work

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a classic example. It is a self-regulatory body financed by Wall Street that oversees brokerage firms and has a division that runs a private justice system known as mandatory arbitration that hears all claims against bad brokers. It used to be known as the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) but its reputation became so damaged as a self-regulator that it changed its name to FINRA. 

It handles mandatory arbitration in a strange way. Since 2013, it has yet to pay $60 million to investors who won in their arbitration hearing. It also seems to want to protect brokers who have been disciplined or have lost arbitration cases. Some brokers are not listed in FINRA's BrokerCheck, where investors can check to see if their stockbroker has a disciplinary history. According to the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, a trade group for lawyers representing investors, “Brokers succeeded 96.9 percent of the time between mid-2009 and the end of 2011 in expunging details about cases brought by investors against their firms that were later settled.”

Do you live in a special district?

It's only company money

Between April 2011 and the end of 2015 JPMorgan Chase paid $21 billion in fines and settlements. That works out to $11,506,849 per day, $479,452 per hour and $133 per second.

College Business

As far as I know, Southern Methodist University (S.M.U.) is considered a pretty good school; it is ranked #61 by US News. Its basketball team is tournament-worthy, its coach, Larry Brown, is in the basketball Hall of Fame. Yet, the N.C.A.A. has banned S.M.U. from the postseason this year and suspended its coach for nine games. Today's NY Times has an excellent article revealing the factors behind the NCAA decision.

SMU must have really wanted to be a major player in the college basketball world, for they hired Brown even though the NCAA had sanctioned two of the teams he coached previously, Kansas and UCLA. With Kansas, he admitted to illegal payments and having assistants who acted as bagmen. With UCLA, two of his players were academically ineligible.

The other reason for the NCAA's actions was Keith Frazier, a superstar in high school and for SMU. It seems as though Frazier did not have much of an education; he had many absences and failing grades. But he was a hell of a basketball player. He was so good that top officials at S.M.U. ignored their own professors, who recommended that Frazier not be admitted to S.M.U., an academically tough university. A former faculty president said, “If athletes go to most classes, if they go to tutoring, we will carry most of them and make sure they pass and get a diploma.”  

After leaving S.M.U., Frazier transferred to North Texas, where his A.A.U. coaches have connections. 

Another part of the Fear Environment

The FBI is now monitoring high schools. It wants the schools to report students who criticize government policies and “western corruption” as potential future terrorists. Some of the possible warning signs are: “Talking about traveling to places that sound suspicious”; “Using code words or unusual language”; “Using several different cell phones and private messaging apps”; and “Studying or taking pictures of potential targets (like a government building).”

Cutting taxes

In 1993 a law was passed limiting federal tax deductions on top officers’ compensation to $1 million a year per executive. However, there was a section in the law referred to as “performance-based” compensation; it was not and is not subject to the $1 million limit.  So, as you would expect most companies claim that the salary of the CEO and others has a strong component of pay for performance.  In 2014, 76% of the total compensation was tax-deductible, i.e., pay for performance. 

Alaska March 2016

Is climate change real?

Some very smart and advanced 3- and 4-year-olds

That's what Jack H. Weil, a longtime immigration judge who is responsible for training other judges, must have thought when, in a deposition in federal court in Seattle, he said, “I’ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience. They get it. It’s not the most efficient, but it can be done.”

Weil is not dumb. He is an assistant chief immigration judge in the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge He is responsible for coordinating the Justice Department’s training of immigration judges.

The particular case in which he made his statement was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights groups to require the government to provide appointed counsel for every indigent child who cannot afford a lawyer in immigration court proceedings. Unlike in felony criminal cases in federal court, children charged with violating immigration laws have no right to appointed counsel, even though the government is represented by Department of Homeland Security attorneys.

42 percent of the more than 20,000 unaccompanied children involved in deportation proceedings completed between July 2014 and late December had no attorney.

Walking while paralyzed

JPMorgan Chase and some settlements

Pam Martens of Wall Street on Parade is not a friend of the big banks. She has just read and applauds a book, "JPMadoff: The Unholy Alliance between America’s Biggest Bank and America’s Biggest Crook" by Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, that  compares JPMorgan Chase to the Gambino crime family. She quotes the following from the book. (JPMC is JPMorgan Chase.)

• In April 2011, JPMC agreed to pay $35 million to settle claims that it overcharged members of the military service on their mortgages in violation of the Service Members Civil Relief Act and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. 
• In March 2012, JPMC paid the government $659 million to settle charges that it charged veterans hidden fees in mortgage refinancing transactions. 
• In October 2012, JPMC paid $1.2 billion to settle claims that it, along with other banks, conspired to set the price of credit and debit card interchange fees. 
• On January 7, 2013, JPMC announced that it had agreed to a settlement with the Office of the Controller of the Currency (‘OCC’) and the Federal Reserve Bank of charges that it had engaged in improper foreclosure practices.
• In September 2013, JPMC agreed to pay $80 million in fines and $309 million in refunds to customers whom the bank billed for credit monitoring services that the bank never provided. 
• On November 15, 2013, JPMC announced that it had agreed to pay $4.5 billion to settle claims that it defrauded investors in mortgage-backed securities in the time period between 2005 and 2008. 
• On December 13, 2013, JPMC agreed to pay 79.9 million Euros to settle claims of the European Commission relating to illegal rigging of benchmark interest rates.
• In February 2012, JPMC agreed to pay $110 million to settle claims that it overcharged customers for overdraft fees. 
• In November 2012, JPMC paid $296,900,000 to the SEC to settle claims that it misstated information about the delinquency status of its mortgage portfolio.
• In July 2013, JPMC paid $410 million to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to settle claims of bidding manipulation of California and Midwest electricity markets. 
• On November 19, 2013, JPMC agreed to pay $13 billion [that’s billion with a ‘b’] to settle claims by the Department of Justice; the FDIC; the Federal Housing Finance Agency; the states of California, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York; and consumers relating to fraudulent practices with respect to mortgage-backed securities. 
• In December 2013, JPMC paid $22.1 million to settle claims that the bank imposed expensive and unnecessary flood insurance on homeowners whose mortgages the bank serviced. 
• On May 15, 2015, five financial institutions, including JPMC, pled guilty to a criminal conspiracy to fix the foreign exchange market, paying a total of $5.6 billion in fines. JPMC paid $892 million in fines.

The total of these payments is about $21 billion in five years. Or, $11,506,849 a day.