This week’s scary stock market plunge has a silver lining: Gasoline is about to get cheaper. That’s because the same fears that forced a sell-off on Wall Street also brought down the price of oil. Gas prices usually fall in late summer as families take fewer road trips. But the recent drop in oil should lower them even more. Forecasters say the national average of $3.70 per gallon could fall as much as 35 cents per gallon over the next month.
State sues bank over foreclosures
Washington state is suing a subsidiary of Bank of America Corp., arguing that the company has improperly handled thousands of foreclosures in the state. Attorney General Rob McKenna said Friday that ReconTrust Company has repeatedly broken the law by failing to act as a neutral third party on behalf of both the lender and the borrower. McKenna says the company’s practices make it difficult for borrowers to halt foreclosures while working to save their homes. McKenna says the company also violated state law by failing to maintain an office in the state where borrowers can go to make last-minute payments or discuss the process. The lawsuit seeks civil penalties of up to $2,000 per violation as well as restitution for consumers. The attorney general’s office says it is investigating more than a dozen other trustees for suspected violations.
Postal Service loses $3.1 billion in quarter
The Postal Service said Friday it lost $3.1 billion in the April through June period and could be forced to default on payments due to the federal government when the fiscal year ends in September. Losses for the year come to $5.7 billion. “We continue to take aggressive actions to reduce costs and bring the size of our infrastructure into alignment with reduced customer demand,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said. Losses have been mounting over the last few years as mail and bill payments were switched to the Internet, and the recession caused a decrease in business mail.
‘Spam King’ indicted in Facebook case
A federal grand jury has indicted a Las Vegas man on charges he sent more than 27 million spam messages to Facebook users. Forty-year-old Sanford Wallace, the self-proclaimed “Spam King,” turned himself in Thursday to face charges outlined in last month’s indictment filed in San Jose, Calif. Prosecutors say Wallace compromised about 500,000 Facebook accounts between November 2008 and March 2009 by sending massive amounts of spam through the company’s servers. In March 2009, a judge banned Wallace from using the social networking site, but the indictment alleges that he violated that order within a month. Wallace is charged with six counts of electronic mail fraud, three counts of intentional damage to a protected computer and two counts of criminal contempt.
From Herald news services
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