Wall Street's banditry was the proximate cause of the Great Recession, not its underlying cause. Even if the Street is better controlled in the future (and I have my doubts), the structural reason for the Great Recession still haunts America. That reason is America's surging inequality.

Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide’s health risks, records of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show. Many of these industry-funded studies, which largely support atrazine’s safety, have never been published or subjected to an independent scientific peer review.

With the stroke of a pen, President Obama could do more for the economy than the second stimulus measure that's going nowhere fast. He can create the good jobs our economy needs by using the power of federal contracting to reward employers that improve job standards.

BP, meanwhile, remains a heavy supplier of military fuel under contracts worth at least $980 million in the current fiscal year, according to the Defense Logistics Agency. In fiscal 2009, BP was the Pentagon's largest single supplier of fuel, providing 11.7 percent of the total purchased, and in 2010, its contracts amount to roughly the same percentage, according to DLA spokeswoman Mimi Schirmacher.

But an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.

First, the bill does virtually nothing to confront the single greatest structural problem we face: the continued growth of too big to fail, or TBTF, institutions. Indeed, over the course of the crisis we have gone in the wrong direction, with the banking industry now more concentrated than it was several years ago.

Wall Street and its allies have been calling the shots in Congress for decades, so they must be glad to see how things are shaping up on financial regulatory reform.

For more than two decades, Britain has operated a publicly financed "social fund" to provide short-term credit to low-income families.

To frustrated Americans who have begun boycotting BP: Welcome to the club. It's great not to be the only member any more!

“BP deserves the corporate death penalty,” Green Change co-founder Gary Ruskin told Corporate Crime Reporter last week. “ BP America Inc. does not have a God given right to perpetually violate our laws with near impunity.”

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which owns a quarter of BP PLC's blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, late Friday blasted BP "reckless decisions and actions" that led to the well's explosion.

The White House is intervening at the last minute to come to the defense of multinational corporations in the unfolding conference committee negotiations over Wall Street reform.

For the sake of saving time and drilling costs on its ill-fated exploration well, BP took "shortcuts" that led to the oil spill disaster that will end up costing the oil giant billions of dollars in cleanup and compensation costs, according to a letter from two House Democrats who have been leading an investigation of the spill.

Massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Twenty-nine coal miners dead in a Massey Energy mine in West Virginia. Eighty-nine people dead as a result of Toyota sudden acceleration crashes. Why?

Scientists have new evidence of the dangers of flame retardants and their potential damage, especially on kids.

A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.

Let’s say you live in West Virginia. And you want the local prosecutor to bring a criminal charge against Massey Energy.