A study by a consultant hired by GM has led to a nearly ten fold increase in the number of deaths linked to the faulty switches. The new estimate, released on August 21 by a consulting group led by famed attorney Kenneth Feinberg, puts the number of deaths from the defected ignition switches at 124. Previously, GM said it only knew of 13 deaths.

On August 19th, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent wherein Kent admitted that Coca-Cola funded scientific studies that attempted to shift blame for the growing obesity crisis off diet and onto exercise. Kent said the scheme to fund questionable studies was meant to take attention away from the beverage company he runs but was “not working” and that this behavior by Coca-Cola “does not reflect our intent or our values.”

Former Park Avenue Bank President Charles Antonucci has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for his role in a scheme to defraud the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Antonucci will also pay $54.6 million in restitution and forfeit $11.2 million.

On August 19, Monica Sud, a woman from California, filed a class action lawsuit against Costco Wholesale Corporation claiming that the retailer knowingly sold prawns produced by slave labor and never disclosed these practices to customers like herself who bought the products without knowing they were produced by illegal labor.

On August 17, Citigroup agreed to pay $180 million to settle charges from the SEC that two of the megabank’s hedge funds defrauded investors. According to the SEC, Citigroup’s hedge funds “made false and misleading representations to investors” about how risky investing in the funds were.

Last month, the nonpartisan financial reform organization Better Markets put out a report claiming that the total cost for the 2008 financial crisis and resulting recession reached$20 trillion. The number comes from an estimate of how much of a toll the crash put on the gross domestic product with high unemployment/underemployment and the hollowing out of the middle class through foreclosures, deferred education, and bankruptcies.

The modern work environment was already becoming more than a bit Orwellian, with employees being electronically spied on by their bosses to ensure productivity, but now the corporate push for total information awareness of workers is hitting new levels of creepiness. According to a report in Bloomberg, companies are now using biosurveillance technologies to monitor workers.

According to a recent survey by insurance company Allianz Global Assistance, most Americans have not had a vacation in over a year. At one time vacations were considered a necessary benefit of a job, but now workers will not take a paid vacation even when one is offered to them by their employers.

Yesterday, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged data brokers with illegally selling payday loan applicants’ financial information to a scam operation that then fraudulently took at least $7.1 million from those customers’ bank accounts.

As the White House pushes for more corporate trade deals like TPP, the effects from older ones are still leaving their mark on American workers. Nabisco, now owned by Mondelez International, plans to get rid of half of the workers at the the company’s Southwest Side Chicago bakery and send the jobs to a new facility in Salinas, Mexico. The Mexican facility will now be responsible for making some of Nabisco’s most popular products, including Oreos, and Ritz crackers. In total the Chicago plant will lose 600 jobs and nine production lines.