Massachusetts’ top law enforcement official has sued five top U.S. banks, charging they foreclosed illegally on homes in the state and used deceptive loan servicing practices, including robo-signing.

Attorney General Martha Coakley filed suit against Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and GMAC.

“The single most important thing we can do to return to a healthy economy is to address this foreclosure crisis,” Coakley said in a statement. “Our suit alleges that the banks have charted a destructive path by cutting corners and rushing to foreclose on homeowners without following the rule of law. Our action today seeks real accountability for the banks illegal behavior and real relief for homeowners.”

NEW YORK — Bank tellers, restaurant workers and other service employees in New York lifted credit card data from foreign tourists and residents as part of an identity theft ring that stretched to China, Europe and the Middle East and victimized thousands, authorities said Friday.

In total, 111 people were arrested after a more than $13 million spending spree in luxury goods, and five separate criminal enterprises were dismantled. District Attorney Richard Brown in the New York borough of Queens called it the largest fraud case he’d seen in his two decades in office. The charges include enterprise corruption, theft and grand larceny.

“These weren’t holdups at gunpoint, but the impact on victims was the same,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. “They were robbed.”

Authorities say the graft operated like this:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The fees keep coming. Citi is the latest big bank to slap customers with a round of fee hikes. This time, on its checking accounts.

Starting in December, customers who hold its mid-level Citibank Account will be charged $20 a month if they fail to maintain a minimum balance of $15,000 in their combined accounts. Previously, account holders had to carry a minimum balance of $6,000.

Fresh evidence of a global economic slowdown has raised fears that governments around the world may be powerless to reverse it. If the world does fall into back into recession, it could be much harder to escape than the contraction that ended in 2009.

With banks still recovering from a decade-long credit bubble, governments slashing spending to cope with unsustainable debt, and unemployment at levels not seen in decades, a new recession would be “disastrous,” according to Roger Altman, a senior Treasury official in the Clinton administration.

Budget bickering and brinkmanship in Washington this summer are getting much of the blame for the recent slowdown in an already weak U.S. economy. Now, the two-year-old stalemate over Europe’s debt problems threatens to bring on another recession.

The crisis in Europe has already sapped the confidence of consumers there and slowed the region’s economy to a standstill. Gross domestic product rose just 0.2 percent in the second quarter. In Germany, the Eurozone’s largest economy grew at only a 0.1 percent pace; France’s GDP was flat.

Some people who need medical care but can’t afford it go to the emergency room. Others just hope they’ll get better. James Richard Verone robbed a bank.

Earlier this month, Verone (pictured), a 59-year-old convenience store clerk, walked into a Gaston, N.C., bank and handed the cashier a note demanding $1 and medical attention. Then he waited calmly for police to show up.

He’s now in jail and has an appointment with a doctor this week.

Verone’s problems started when he lost the job he’d held for 17 years as a Coca Cola deliveryman, amid the economic downturn. He found new work driving a truck, but it didn’t last. Eventually, he took a part-time position at the convenience store.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been in discussions with the White House about leaving her job next year to become head of the World Bank, sources familiar with the discussions said Thursday.

The former first lady and onetime political rival to President Barack Obama quickly became one of the most influential members of his cabinet after she began her tenure at State in early 2009.

She has said publicly she did not plan to stay on at the State Department for more than four years. Associates say Clinton has expressed interest in having the World Bank job should the Bank’s current president, Robert Zoellick, leave at the end of his term, in the middle of 2012.

WASHINGTON — Three big U.S. banks are nearing a settlement in which they would compensate borrowers whose homes were improperly foreclosed upon, according to a CNBC report.

Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. would also agree not to start foreclosure proceedings until they have exhausted all efforts to modify a borrower’s mortgage, CNBC is reporting. Many borrowers have complained of receiving foreclosure notices while they’re negotiating to lower their loan payments.

Why use our money to give bonuses. Get the banks back on their feet first. America is the only place that lets these places have a vacation with our money instead of first fixing the problem. We as citizens can’t do that. They would put us in jail for miss using the money we would get. These people just don’t care as long as their live stile does not change.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s pay czar said Friday that 17 banks receiving taxpayer money from the $700 billion financial bailout made “ill-advised” payments to their executives. But he stopped short of calling them “contrary to the public interest,” language that would have signaled a fight to get it back.

Kenneth Feinberg also said he did not try to recoup $1.6 billion in lavish compensation to top executives at the bailed-out banks because he wanted to protect the banks from possible lawsuits from shareholders trying to recapture the executives’ money.

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took over a foreclosed home roughly every 90 seconds during the first three months of the year. They owned 163,828 houses at the end of March, a virtual city with more houses than Seattle. The mortgage finance companies, created by Congress to help Americans buy homes, have become two of the nation’s largest landlords.

Bill Bridwell, a real estate agent in the desert south of Phoenix, is among the thousands of agents hired nationwide by the companies to sell those foreclosures, recouping some of the money that borrowers failed to repay.