Remember the internal e-mail in which a Goldman exec called the Timberwolf CDO "one shitty deal"? The folks at an Australian hedge fund called Basis Yield Alpha sure do: They invested in Timberwolf, and were promptly forced into insolvency. Now, after failed negotiations with Goldman over the investment, Basis has sued, demanding $1 billion in punitive damages.

It's no Siemens, but yesterday the Department of Justice and the SEC announced two more settlements in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matter. This time Italian automaker Fiat agreed to pay $17.8 million in penalties, disgorgement of profits, and prejudgment interest for paying illegal kickbacks to the former government of Iraq. The figure is dwarfed by the more than $1 billion that Siemens agreed to pay for its worldwide bribery spree, but it's more evidence of U.S. prosecutors' global reach in this area.

The Norwegian oil company Statoil briefly held the record for the biggest FCPA fine when it entered into a deferred prosecution with the Justice Department in 2006. But after three years of good behavior, the company can put that all behind it now.

Wall Street critics were pleased to see JPMorgan admit that a breakdown in controls and leadership caused the losses, but the SEC still came under fire over fine print in the admissions and for letting high-ranking execs off the hook.

It was a big turnaround for mortgage-backed securities investors last year when an appellate court ruled that plaintiffs can assert claims related to securities they never purchased. On Monday Goldman Sachs's lawyers at Gibson Dunn and Boies Schiller lost a bid to turn things back around in the banks' direction.