2024-04-25 04:49
Seeking to end one of the last remaining forms of indentured servitude in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has issued a final rule that would largely ban the ability of compan… Read More
Blog Directory > Business Blogs > Dirt Diggers Digest business Blog >
Dirt Diggers Digest Blog
dirtdiggersdigest.org
Tags:
credit
corporate crime
pfas
capital
paid
employee
chemical
wilshire consumer credit
drug
worker
Monsanto, one of the most controversial corporations in the United States, now finds itself the target of a takeover campaign by German pharmaceutical and
2024-04-18 04:15
Three attorneys at Covington & Burling recently received a letter that could be seen as the ultimate achievement of a corporate lawyer. The U.S. Justice Department wrote to inform them t… Read More
2024-04-10 04:27
When you hear a reference to $1 trillion, it usually is in connection to the stock market capitalization of a handful of the largest tech companies. Yet that ten-figure number can now also b… Read More
2024-04-04 04:34
Much of the concern about a possible second Trump term has focused on what seem to be his increasingly authoritarian impulses. Yet we should also worry about old-fashioned corruption.
A g… Read More
2024-03-28 04:34
For the past two decades, groups of merchants have been suing Mastercard and Visa for charging excessive credit card processing fees, also known as swipe fees. That effort has now paid off w… Read More
2024-03-21 05:07
Over the past quarter century, large corporations have paid hundreds of billions of dollars in fines and settlements for a wide range of misconduct. In Violation Tracker we document many tho… Read More
2024-03-14 04:41
Tensions are mounting between the Biden Administration, which wants to implement legislation passed in 2022 allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, and the pharmaceutical industry, which… Read More
2024-03-07 05:39
A substantial number of working-class Americans have decided that the Biden Administration is not acting in their interest and is instead serving the elites. One area in which that notion mo… Read More
2024-02-29 05:44
The Alabama IVF court ruling and the move for a national abortion ban highlight the rising threat to reproductive freedom. Another battle over bodily autonomy is taking place in the corporat… Read More
2024-02-22 06:44
BP and its drilling partners were hit with out over $60 billion in fines and settlements in connection with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. That remains the larges… Read More
2024-02-15 05:16
A federal judge recently ordered Gen Digital Inc. to pay $53 million in damages for cheating the federal government. The case against the company—formerly known as NortonLifeLock, a sp… Read More
2024-02-08 05:28
The relentless corporate pursuit of special tax breaks is bad for the fiscal health of cities and states, but it is usually completely legal. An exception to this rule is taking place in New… Read More
2024-02-01 05:40
It has taken a long time, but Royal Philips finally did the right thing with regard to its troubled machines for sleep apnea and other respiratory problems: the company has stopped selling t… Read More
2024-01-25 05:16
One of the drawbacks of the growing presence of electronic technology in the labor process is the ability of managers to conduct continuous surveillance of workers. Those who toil at compute… Read More
2024-01-18 05:26
Donald Trump’s rants about the deep state are designed to deflect attention away from his own transgressions. An even more sinister attack on the legitimacy of the federal executive br… Read More
2024-01-11 05:44
High food prices have been one of the most contentious issues of the past few years, causing many people to remain negative about the U.S. economy even as other indicators have improved. Gro… Read More
2024-01-04 05:09
Cummins Inc. waited until just before the Christmas holiday to announce that it had “reached an agreement in principle to resolve U.S. regulatory claims regarding its emissions certifi… Read More
2023-12-14 05:29
The splashiest corporate crime prosecutions in 2023 came in the crypto sector. Binance pleaded guilty to charges of violating anti-money-laundering regulations and paid over $4 billion i… Read More
2023-12-07 05:10
A proposed acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines by Alaska Airlines would be bad news for those traveling between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii. The combined company would have a huge share of tha… Read More
2023-11-30 05:58
For most of its history, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has not been the most aggressive federal regulator. Created in 1972, the agency has depended primarily on voluntary recalls of… Read More
2023-11-16 05:40
The Washington Post recently published a long examination of the obstacles facing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its effort to rein in payday lenders which prey on low-income fa… Read More
2023-11-09 06:22
There are about half a million people in the United States with Armenian surnames. Managers at Citigroup apparently decided that all of them are criminals and went to great lengths to deny t… Read More
2023-11-02 04:20
Joe Biden came to office vowing to get tough on corporate abuses, reversing the soft-on-white-collar-crime approach of his predecessor. Biden went on making those promises, and they were ech… Read More
2023-10-26 04:36
Progressive Democrats such as Bernie Sanders have long promoted Medicare for All as the solution to the country’s health insurance problems. Given the popularity of Medicare among the… Read More
2023-10-19 04:11
About 5,000 workers are killed on the job in the United States each year. Some of these are pure accidents, while others may result from a lapse in safety procedures. Most disturbing are tho… Read More
2023-10-12 04:25
There’s a crisis related to junk food in America, but unlike in the past, the problem is not that people are eating too much of it and harming their health. Instead, consumption levels… Read More
2023-10-05 04:50
Investment advisors that adopt the label ESG present themselves as arbiters of corporate behavior. They claim to identify which companies are serious about environmental, social and governan… Read More
2023-09-28 05:16
Too often, the news is filled with stories of large corporations getting away with all kinds of abuses—mistreating workers, fouling the environment, cheating consumers, undermining our… Read More
2023-09-21 04:24
It used to be that you had to go to the websites of groups such as Greenpeace to learn how large corporations are failing to live up to their promises to help solve the climate crisis. Now t… Read More
2023-09-14 04:53
Most of the cases handled by the Justice Department’s National Security Division involve individuals accused of providing support to foreign terrorist organizations, or more recently… Read More
2023-09-07 04:35
When we hear references to wage theft, there is a tendency to think of low-paid workers being cheated by fly-by-night employers. That is only part of the story.
Wage and hour violations a… Read More
2023-08-31 04:19
The pharmaceutical industry is indignant that the Biden Administration is actually moving ahead with plans to implement the provision of the Inflation Reduction Act that allows Medicare to n… Read More
2023-08-24 04:26
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have been promoting the adoption of new guidelines that would give them a greater ability to block anti-competitive mergers. Now DOJ m… Read More
2023-08-10 05:40
The varied environmental, social and governance efforts that go under the name ESG are facing increasing attacks from the Right. Attorneys general in red states have sought to prevent public… Read More
2023-08-03 05:39
There is a word, recidivists, for those who repeatedly commit crimes. But there is no term, as far as I know, for those who commit the greatest variety of offenses.
If we are talking abou… Read More
2023-07-27 04:16
Few large corporations are as dependent on public sector clients as the consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. During its last fiscal year, 97 percent of its $9 billion in revenue came from t… Read More
2023-07-20 05:10
Proposed new guidelines on merger enforcement just released by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are a welcome development. In many industries, takeovers have put U.S… Read More
2023-07-13 04:52
For the past few years, it was easy to get the impression that Wells Fargo was an outlier when it came to the mistreatment of customers. That bank paid billions in penalties for the creation… Read More
2023-06-29 04:36
Large companies like to give the impression they put customer satisfaction above all else. They constantly tout their rankings in surveys such as those conducted by J.D. Power.
Yet it als… Read More
2023-06-22 04:57
For the past decade, Johnson & Johnson has symbolized the deterioration of a well-regarded consumer products corporation into the target of multiple lawsuits over alleged disregard for p… Read More
2023-06-15 04:53
There is a lot of loose talk these days about the supposed weaponization of the Justice Department in regard to a certain former president. Yet no one on any part of the political spectrum c… Read More
2023-06-08 04:13
Big Pharma has been fleecing its U.S. customers for so long, the industry came to regard it as a right. That arrangement started to come to an end last year, at least as far as one large cus… Read More
2023-06-01 04:53
It appears these are boom times for corporate compliance officers. According to an article in Law360, a recent survey by the recruiting firm BarkerGilmore found that that “the demand f… Read More
2023-05-25 05:28
The Agriculture Department’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program is one of the many forms of social assistance that could be seriously affected by Republican efforts to cut suppo… Read More
2023-05-18 04:22
When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced in 2016 that it was fining Wells Fargo $100 million for creating fee-generating customer accounts without permission, bank executives… Read More
2023-05-11 04:51
The verdict in the Trump case was not the only court victory against sexism this week. Lawyers for women who worked in securities and investment banking positions at Goldman Sachs announced… Read More
2023-05-04 04:46
Once again federal regulators have turned to JPMorgan Chase to rescue a failing smaller bank. For the moment, the customers of First Republic Bank may be pleased that their accounts are bein… Read More
2023-04-27 04:54
The Biden Administration appears to be really serious about economic sanctions–and not only those against Russia. The Justice Department and Treasury just imposed more than $600 millio… Read More
2023-04-18 04:39
A federal judge in Minnesota recently granted final approval to a $75 million settlement between Smithfield Foods and plaintiffs alleging that the company was part of a conspiracy to fix the… Read More
2023-04-13 04:53
Forty years ago, federal policymakers thought they had found a solution to the problem of escalating prescription drug prices. The Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984 made it easier for generic manufac… Read More
2023-03-30 04:34
One person from Starbucks responded to a subpoena from Senate labor committee chair Bernie Sanders, but there seemed to be two versions of Howard Schultz at the witness table.
Schultz num… Read More
2023-03-23 05:08
The acquisition of struggling Credit Suisse by its rival UBS may calm the international banking waters, but it will do nothing to improve the compliance profile of the Swiss financial servic… Read More
2023-03-16 05:24
Some of the same people who are trying to convince us that January 6 was a peaceful sightseeing outing and that the situation in Ukraine is a minor territorial dispute have come up with a re… Read More
2023-03-09 05:10
The Justice Department has just announced a pilot program in which corporate executives involved in wrong-doing would be personally penalized. This is meant to alter the usual practice of ha… Read More
2023-03-02 05:46
The Biden Administration is causing a stir with its decision to place some conditions on the massive subsidies that are to be awarded to semiconductor companies under the CHIPS and Science A… Read More
2023-02-23 06:37
When an apparent contract impasse between rail unions and management threatened to bring about a national shutdown late last year, the Biden Administration was quick to act. Unfortunately, t… Read More
2023-02-16 05:25
At a time of widespread labor shortages, one might expect policymakers to welcome asylum seekers and economic migrants eager for an opportunity to make a living in the United States. Instead… Read More
2023-02-09 05:58
There was not much soaring oratory in President Biden’s State of the Union address, but the speech was an unapologetic call for a full set of progressive policy initiatives. It was als… Read More
2023-02-02 05:47
Figuring out how to get corporate executives to obey the law has been a perennial challenge. The Justice Department has apparently concluded that the key to compliance may be to threaten som… Read More
2023-01-26 06:18
illustration from Corporate KnightsThe new issue of Corporate Knights, a magazine which usually focuses on celebrating environmental initiatives in the business word, has a cover story with… Read More
2023-01-19 05:13
The Justice Department cannot seem to decide what stance it wants to take toward corporate criminality. After Biden came into office, DOJ initially signaled a get-tough approach, only to hed… Read More
2023-01-05 05:17
Perhaps because it was announced just days before Christmas, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s giant enforcement action against Wells Fargo has not received all the attention… Read More
2022-12-15 06:13
The prognosis for the U.S. economy remains uncertain, but it is clear that 2022 has been a bumper year for corporate penalties. Including an update that will be posted soon, Violation Tr… Read More
2022-12-08 05:39
ABB Ltd, an industrial equipment giant based in Switzerland, seems to have a problem doing business honestly. The company has a tendency to get caught paying bribes to government officials a… Read More
2022-12-01 05:04
The Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats purport to be pro-union, but in their desperation to prevent a rail strike they fail to understand something fundamental about collective… Read More
2022-11-17 04:54
Thirty years ago, the United Nations shut down its Centre on Transnational Corporations. Over the prior two decades, the UNCTC had sought to shine a light on the growing influence and power… Read More
2022-11-10 06:26
We know that industries which produce fossil fuels or make heavy use of them in their production processes are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. A new tool identifies which of… Read More
2022-11-03 04:57
The Antitrust Division of the Justice Department has announced that the former president of a paving and asphalt company based in Montana has pleaded guilty to criminal charges of attempting… Read More
2022-10-27 05:02
In the debate over the causes of today’s persistent inflation, corporate profiteering tends to get put far down on the list, well below factors such as supply-chain bottlenecks and the… Read More
2022-10-19 22:26
Corporate responsibility and ESG issues are receiving more attention than ever in the United Kingdom. Numerous services now exist to help investors pick ethical companies to add to their… Read More
2022-10-13 05:21
On October 10 the San Diego City Attorney announced that the grocery delivery service Instacart had agreed to pay $46.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it violated California&rsquo&hell…Read More
2022-10-06 04:26
Providence, a gigantic non-profit health system with more than 50 hospitals in five Western states, describes itself as “steadfast in serving all, especially those who are poor and vul… Read More
2022-09-29 04:23
In 2020 a furniture company called Flexsteel Industries laid off about 300 workers at its plants in Dubuque, Iowa and Starkville, Mississippi. According to a class action lawsuit filed on be… Read More
2022-09-22 04:35
Last year, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco gave a speech promising a crackdown on corporate criminals, especially repeat offenders. That gave rise to hopes that the Justice Department, a… Read More
2022-09-15 13:50
Ever on the lookout for threats to the American way of life, the Right has begun pointing its finger at a surprising set of adversaries: BlackRock, Vanguard Group, State Street Corporation a… Read More
2022-09-08 04:54
Large corporations are fond of saying that they are all about giving customers what they want. But what happens when the product, though legal, is harmful or addictive? Should companies be a… Read More
2022-08-25 04:52
There has never been much doubt that the tech giants do not take government regulation seriously, but it is helpful to get confirmation of that from inside the corporations. This is the impo… Read More
2022-08-11 04:49
The downfall of Purdue Pharma illustrated the role played by drugmakers in the opioid crisis. Large settlements paid by the likes of McKesson and AmerisourceBergen highlighted the culpabilit… Read More
2022-08-04 04:45
When one large corporation is found to be breaking the law in a particular way, there is a good chance that its competitors are doing the same thing. The latest evidence of this comes in an… Read More
2022-07-28 04:04
The addition of historical parent data to Violation Tracker, including a list of the most penalized corporations based on that data, may have led some p.r. executives to hope that their empl… Read More
2022-07-20 23:41
Since Violation Tracker was introduced in 2015, my colleagues and I at the Corporate Research Project have put a lot of effort into identifying the ultimate parent companies of the firms nam… Read More
2022-07-14 04:43
Uber Technologies, a company which already had a less than sterling reputation, now has to contend with more blemishes on its record, thanks to a massive leak of internal documents to the In… Read More
2022-06-30 04:59
At first glance it seemed to be a satirical piece from The Onion. The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a press release announcing that Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young was… Read More
2022-06-16 04:39
In its never-ending effort to use culture war issues for political advantage, the American Right has a new favorite target: woke corporations. This is the derogatory term conservatives have… Read More
2022-06-02 05:11
Things have been rough lately for those high-minded asset management services promoting ESG investment practices. The Right is dragging ethical investment into its culture war, accusing the… Read More
2022-05-26 05:45
According to conventional economic thinking, commodity prices are governed by impersonal market forces. That’s how oil companies, for instance, are able to claim they are not to blame… Read More
2022-05-19 05:01
Observers of the corporate crime scene have been waiting to see when the regulators and prosecutors of the Biden Administration would announce a mega-case of the sort that had largely disapp… Read More
2022-05-05 05:18
Large companies prone to misconduct usually have to contend with three main kinds of watchdogs: government regulators and prosecutors, class action lawyers, and activist institutional invest… Read More
2022-04-28 12:50
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis struck back at Disney for declining to support his culture war demagoguery, some observers were quick to see this as evidence of a supposed rift between the Re… Read More
2022-04-21 13:01
War always creates business opportunities, and the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine is no different. Some of those opportunities are direct: producers of military hardware stand to benefit… Read More
2022-04-07 04:27
Privacy violations, which used to be a relatively minor compliance issue for large corporations, have now become a much more serious concern. And a recent Federal Trade Commission case could… Read More
2022-03-31 13:44
Big business has despised the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since its creation, and now the director of the agency has provided additional basis for that enmity. Rohit Chopra recently… Read More
2022-03-24 04:53
State public utility commissions are most frequently in the news in connection with their role in setting rates for electricity, gas and other regulated services. Yet they have another respo… Read More
2022-03-17 13:52
The Securities and Exchange Commission, according to various media reports, is getting ready to issue a rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions in… Read More
2022-03-10 18:31
After the invasion of Ukraine brought sanctions against the Russian economy, the parent company of Japanese apparel retailer Uniqlo insisted it would continue to operate its 50 stores in the… Read More
2022-03-03 21:37
Russian banks are among the targets of Western sanctions in response to the invasion of Ukraine, but a financial institution in the middle of Europe is also part of the problem. According to… Read More
2022-02-24 15:12
More large corporations are said to be signaling their commitment to environmental and social goals by including those targets in the incentive packages offered to their chief executives… Read More
2022-02-17 14:58
Lockheed Martin’s decision to bow to pressure from the Federal Trade Commission and abandon its takeover of Aerojet Rocketdyne is a rarity. Such mergers among weapons producers were lo… Read More
2022-02-10 15:26
While its Build Back Better bill remains in limbo, the Biden Administration has been doing the smart thing by undertaking significant policy initiatives via executive order. Such steps canno… Read More
2022-02-03 06:20
Most large companies like to brag about their corporate culture, seeing it as a key factor in their success. Yet when an independent assessment is done, the results may tell a very different… Read More
Subscribe to Dirt Diggers Digest
Get updates delivered right to your inbox!