The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that more than 40 percent of America’s unemployed have been out of work for six months or more. The Associated Press reported recently that the long-term unemployed are facing increased hiring bias, with employers refusing to take on workers who have been out of work for a longer stretch of time.

There are several deleterious effects of long-term unemployment, but the New York Times’ Binyamin Applebaum highlighted a particularly harrowing one — increased mortality rates. According to a study by Columbia’s Till von Wachter and the Chicago Federal Reserve’s Daniel Sullivan, long-term unemployment can knock up to 18 months off of life expectancy:

Mortality rates in the year after displacement are 50%–100% higher than would otherwise have been expected. The effect on mortality hazards declines sharply over time, but even twenty years after displacement, we estimate a 10%–15% increase in annual death hazards. If such increases were sustained indefinitely, they would imply a loss in life expectancy of 1.0–1.5 years for a worker displaced at age forty.

The authors noted that “several economic models of health determination predict that a decline in lifetime resources should raise mortality. Our empirical findings are consistent with a reduction in such resources leading to reduced investments in health or chronic stress, which, in turn, lead to a smaller, but longer term increase in the mortality hazard.”

Applebaum highlights other studies showing other negative effects of long-term unemployment, including loss of lifetime earnings, lower earnings for the children of unemployed workers, and even one study purporting to find that workers gradually lose skills, including their level of literacy. And of course, as the Congressional Budget Office noted, long-term unemployment is “also correlated with deteriorating mental and physical health.”

Former Goldman Sachs trader Greg Smith publicly resigned three weeks ago, decrying the firm’s “toxic and destructive” culture in a scathing New York Times editorial. But it isn’t just traders at America’s biggest investment bank that view their clients as “muppets,” at least according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In 2008, the authors conducted an undercover study in which trained actors made more than 300 visits to financial advisers available to the general public through banks, brokerages, and investment advisory firms. The results: “Financial advisers not only fail to curb investors’ worst habits, they actually tend to reinforce them — especially when those habits generate fees for the advisers,” as SmartMoney reports:

So, when the actors came into these offices, what happened? Basically, the advisers advised the dummy clients to do a whole lot of things that were in the advisers’ interests, while making some adjustments based on just how much they thought the clients could be persuaded to do.

Most strikingly, the advisers nudged people in low-cost index funds toward high-fee actively managed funds — blatantly making their clients worse off.

The researchers used an array of portfolios with differing strategies and degrees of risk in the study, but found that financial advisers recommended a change in strategy — often toward “active management” that increased their fees or commissions — 85 percent of the time. And when advisers did mention fees, they “downplayed them without lying,” the authors of the study found.

Even worse, those without knowledge of financial advising and their own portfolios aren’t aware of how bad the service can be. Despite the study’s findings, the actors were willing to return to 70 percent of the advisers.

Bank of America’s foreclosure processes have been a wreck during the mortgage crisis — the bank has foreclosed on homes that no longer exist, used fraudulent procedures to speed through documents, and pushed borrowers into foreclosure because of small clerical errors. Now, the bank is apparently using its shoddy foreclosure practices on its credit card accounts too.

Kathy Stevens paid off nearly $2,000 in delinquent credit card debt to Bank of America in 2006. Since then, she’s been fighting collection agencies who want her to pay it off again. Bank of America allegedly sold Stevens’ account to outside collection agencies, but did not include documentation to show it had been “considered settled,” according to a lawsuit filed against the outside collectors.

Bank of America is not directly involved in the lawsuit, but it was the mega-bank’s actions that set off the case, American Banker reports:

Shortly after Stevens paid off her debt, Bank of America appears to have sold rights to her account to outside debt collectors affiliated with CACH LLC. The collectors began calling Stevens and sending her collection letters, according to Stevens’ state court filings. They demanded she pay off — with interest — the B of A card account that Plaza had assured Stevens in writing she’d covered.

“They would constantly call, they would constantly mail stuff to me,” Stevens says. Even when she sent the collectors proof of having paid her debt, “that just didn’t seem to be good enough for them. They still ended up taking me to court. The proof is in the paperwork, what more do I have to present to you?”

As American Banker notes, most of the accounts Bank of America sold off to outside collection agencies were legitimately delinquent. But similar to the robo-signing scandal that enveloped it and other banks during the mortgage crisis, the bank’s oversight failures led to the inclusion of accounts — like Stevens’ — where it had incomplete records or where the borrowers owe nothing. Stevens’ attorney said he has represented nearly 500 clients with cases similar to Stevens’, and more often than not, collections agencies fail to produce complete documentation on the accounts in question.

While much of the attention on big banks has centered on fraudulent mortgage practices, government regulators are increasing scrutiny on credit card procedures as well. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is investigating credit card practices at banks like JPMorgan Chase, and the newly-formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has vowed to investigate fraudulent and predatory credit card lending practices as well.

After House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his Medicare-ending budget last spring, he and his fellow Republicans faced tough questions and protests at town hall meetings across the country. Protesters slammed Republican representatives for voting to end Medicare and cut vital safety net programs while slashing taxes for the rich.

The House passed Ryan’s newest iteration of the “Path to Prosperity” budget last week, and immediately, multiple Republicans faced backlash from their constituents. Voters gathered outside the Duluth, Minnesota office of Rep. Chip Cravaack (R), calling for a budget that preserves vital safety net programs like Medicare and raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans to help pay down the debt.

Watch a news report on the protest:

Protesters also gathered outside the office of Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick and chastised his support for a budget “only the 1 percent could love,” MSNBC reports:

Outside the office building by the Oxford Valley Mall, members of Pennsylvania Working Families, held signs and chanted: “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” [...]

“The Ryan budget, which Fitzpatrick fully supports, is all about cuts to the poor and middle class and tax breaks for billionaires and corporations,” said Steve Nathan of Sellersville, one of Tuesday’s protesters. “There’s nothing in it about job creation.”

The House GOP budget is likely to face even more protests as members return to their districts for the spring recess, considering that Republicans ignored Americans’ opposition to last year’s budget and have shown, repeatedly, that they favor raising taxes on the wealthy and preserving programs like Medicare. The Republican budget does neither, instead gutting Medicare while giving the richest Americans a massive tax break.

At the moment, women in America earn about 77.4 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, and as we’ve been noting, the pay gap extends to even the most lucrative of industries. In the financial sector, women earn about 55 to 62 cents for every dollar made by men, while women who head major lobbying firms make about 57 cents to the dollar.

According to a study by the corporate governance firm GMI Ratings, the pay gap is also quite large for women who are the chief financial officers for major companies. In fact, women CFOs make about 16 percent less than their male colleagues, which in the highly-paid corporate world shakes out to about $215,000 per year:

Female chief financial officers at U.S. companies are paid an average of 16 percent less than their male counterparts of similar age at companies with comparable market values, according to a study. [...]

Female CFOs received on average $1.32 million a year in total compensation, compared with $1.54 million for their male counterparts, according to a model based on the analysis. Compensation included base salary, bonuses, grant-date value of stock awards and stock option grants and retirement benefits. [...]

Using the model, White and Gladman found that, even after accounting for other factors that might affect CFO pay, including market capitalization and chief executive officer pay levels, the average female CFO would earn about $215,000 more if she were male.

A pay gap like this, even with the stratospheric pay that occurs at the top echelon of corporate America, should be unacceptable (and persists despite recent efforts to close it). Due to the gender pay gap, women with the same education doing the same job as men earn far less over their working lifetimes, costing a woman with a college degree $723,000 over a 40-year career.