The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap Highlight

In point of fact, the average balance in the thousand cases was about a thousand dollars—meaning that Chase was really only forgoing about a million dollars in collections. In other words, Linda Almonte’s whistle-blowing odyssey—a journey that had cost her all her savings, nearly wrecked her marriage, and reduced her kids to dependence on food stamps—had ultimately cost JPMorgan just a few minutes in profits. From the bank’s point of view, Linda’s defection was very nearly a worst-case scenario. And even the worst case, it turns out, isn’t all that bad.