7 Financial Facts That Will Blow Your Mind [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/7-financial-facts-will-blow-your-mind

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1. How much does it cost to die? Dying is a pricey proposition. A paper by Samuel Marshall, Kathleen M. McGarry and Jonathan S. Skinner examined how much people spend on out-of-pocket healthcare costs in the last year of their lives. Average bill? $11,618. For the top one percent, who get top-of-line care, the figure is $94,310.

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2. Big banks are getting even bigger. As Bloomberg reports, the biggest U.S. banks have gotten even bigger since their risky and criminal behavior helped spark the financial crisis. The number of too-big-to-fail banks is projected to increase by 40 percent over the next 15 years. And consider this: When big banks get help from you and me, they behave worse. According to USA Today, banks that received federal assistance during the financial crisis “reduced lending more aggressively and gave bigger pay raises to employees than institutions that didn’t get aid.” Megabanks are undermining democracy, subverting the rule of law, rigging the world’s largest markets, and doing untold damage to the economy.

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3. Offshore tax cheating v. stealing socks. U.S. courts are feeling very generous toward offshore tax evaders these days. Mary Estelle Curran, a wealthy 79-year-old Florida widow who failed to tell the IRS that she had $43 million stashed in offshore accounts, was sentenced to one year of probation by federal district court Judge Kenneth Ryskamp, who berated prosecutors for going after her in the first place. Then he revoked the probation altogether.

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4. Wall Street family values. JPMorgan Chase honcho Jamie Dimon got a 19 percent pay cut in 2012 following revelations that $6 billion had gone missing from his company in the London Whale fiasco. We now know that Dimon and JPMorgan lied to investors, regulators and Congress about the bank’s risky activities. Several shareholder groups are fighting to demote Dimon by separating the CEO and chairman's job at JP Morgan.