WASHINGTON — Soon after lawmakers finished work on the nation’s new financial regulatory law, a team of JPMorgan Chase lobbyists descended on Washington. Their goal was to obtain special breaks that would allow banks to make big bets in their portfolios, including some of the types of trading that led to the $2 billion loss now rocking the bank.

Several visits over months by the bank’s well-connected chief executive, Jamie Dimon, and his top aides were aimed at persuading regulators to create a loophole in the law, known as the Volcker Rule. The rule was designed by Congress to limit the very kind of proprietary trading that JPMorgan was seeking.

Even after the official draft of the Volcker Rule regulations was released last October, JPMorgan and other banks continued their full-court press to avoid limits.

JPMorgan’s blunder amplifies calls for tighter regulation

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Banks are foreclosing on America’s churches in record numbers as lenders increasingly lose patience with religious facilities that have defaulted on their mortgages, according to new data.

The surge in church foreclosures represents a new wave of distressed property seizures triggered by the 2008 financial crash, analysts say, with many banks no longer willing to grant struggling religious organizations forbearance.

Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group.

In 2011, 138 churches were sold by banks, an annual record, with no sign that these religious foreclosures are abating, according to CoStar. That compares to just 24 sales in 2008 and only a handful in the decade before.

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.