Federal authorities are investigating Fiat Chrysler over allegations that it encouraged dealers to falsely report the number of cars sold, the automaker confirmed Monday.

In a statement, the company said it was cooperating with a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and that the numbers in its financial statements were based on shipments to dealers, not on sales to customers.

Fiat Chrysler also added it had fielded questions from the Justice Department on a similar matter. The Wall Street Journal reports that FBI agents visited the homes of Fiat regional managers “allegedly involved in the potential misconduct.”

Furthermore, the Journal reports, the investigation seems centered on allegations made in a lawsuit filed by an Illinois car dealer in January alleging that Fiat Chrysler had “manipulated” new-vehicle sales:

“The dealer, Napleton Automotive Group, accused Fiat Chrysler of financially rewarding stores that manipulated sales reports, inflating the company’s overall U.S. sales results. Napleton operates dealerships in Illinois and Florida.

“The lawyer for Napleton, Steve Berman, said the people the FBI interviewed are those implicated by the lawsuit.”

The Associated Press reports the company has had an exceptional record since leaving bankruptcy protection in 2009 with 75 straight months of year-over-year sales increases. And as NPR’s Sonari Glinton adds for our Newscast unit, car sales are a crucial measure for determining an auto manufacturer’s operation:

“Every month the car companies report on their sales. The numbers are important for almost everything. They affect the stock price, government regulations, union issues.”

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The air conditioner at Jim and Julie Powell’s house has been fending off the 100-degree summertime heat for two decades — ever since they came to the Sun City retirement community just west of Phoenix.

“It’s been a workhorse,” Julie says. “It’s probably 20 years old, but it does the job.”

Inside, Jim leafs through their summer bills from the power company Arizona Public Service, or APS. He counts: “$183, $262, $250.”

Steep, but predictable. Ever since he’s heard about a new fee, though, he’s begun to worry.

“With this demand charge, it could be out of the blue, every month something different,” Jim says.

For that so-called “demand” charge, the power company will look at the one hour of the month during peak time when the couple uses the most energy.

This kind of rate’s been around for decades — mostly for commercial operations, though as of 2015 at least 14 utilities across the country offer it to residences as an option, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. But APS would be the first utility in the country to mandate it for almost all residential customers.

Julie peers at the old unit from the shade of her back porch. Like many here, they keep close tabs on their electric bill during this time of year.

“I’m a turn-the-fan-off, turn-the-light-off, turn-everything-off person,” she says.

But those energy saving efforts may soon not be enough.

Jim wonders what happens if they turn up the AC one evening, while the oven and washer are running.

“All of a sudden we’ve spiked our kilowatt usage way up from what it normally is for a short period of time, but yet we’re going to get stuck with a bill for that,” Jim says. “And I don’t think that’s right.”

Retirees Jim and Julie Powell of Sun City worry their electric bill could be subject to unpredictable swings if Arizona’s largest utility puts in place a new charge tied to their hourly power demand. Will Stone/KJZZ hide caption

toggle caption Will Stone/KJZZ

The Powells aren’t the only ones upset.

Within a week of the utility proposing the charge, protesters had taken to the streets with signs like “Surge Pricing is Unfair” and “Profits Over People.”

“It’s not as complicated as some make it sound,” says Stefanie Layton of APS. “Really, if you just stagger the use of your major appliances, that’s an excellent way to manage your demand.”

Layton says the charge gives customers another tool to actually save money, but acknowledges some will not.

“It better aligns how much customers pay with the costs they impose on the system,” she says.

Most of a utility’s costs are fixed — things like substations, transmission lines, power plants. All that infrastructure must be in place for when demand spikes. APS hopes to encourage customers to put less strain on the grid, especially during summer afternoons and evenings.

“In order to send customers a signal that says our costs are driven by demand, if you can lower your demand, you can lower your costs,” Layton says.

James Sherwood, who studies rate design at the Rocky Mountain Institute, says there’s a void of data about how residential customers respond to this kind of rate.

“There are still a lot of unknowns around this and whether demand charges send a price signal that is effective,” he says.

But more utilities might use demand charges as they adjust to new technology. “Like rooftop solar and batteries and things like that, which are coming onto the market in a way that people can afford them and adopt them,” he says.

He says energy use has shifted to more appliances later in the day, which drives up the utility’s costs.

About 10 percent of APS residential customers voluntarily use a demand charge, and the utility says most are saving money.

“It’s certainly good for the company,” says Pat Quinn, one of those volunteers. But he isn’t happy.

Quinn is a former consumer advocate for the state and says demand charges lead to unexpected swings in the monthly bill. In fact, last year, his charge varied month to month from $30 to $150.

“Think if you’re somebody that’s basically homebound,” Quinn says. “You need the air conditioner in the summer. You may not have an option to change the way you’re actually living.”

After all, rates aren’t just about recovering costs; they also need to work for customers. Whether this kind of charge can do that will be the question facing regulators in Arizona and across the country.

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Herbalife has agreed to pay $200 million to reimburse consumers who lost money on its nutrition supplements and will also make major changes in its sales and distribution practices, the Federal Trade Commission announced on Friday.

The FTC filed a complaint accusing the company of deceiving consumers about how much money they could make selling its products, noting that most Herbalife distributors make no money at all.

But federal officials stopped short of calling the company a pyramid scheme and allowed it to keep operating. That was seen as a victory for the company on Wall Street, where Herbalife had become the target of a short-selling campaign by investor William Ackman.

Still, the FTC had extremely tough words for Herbalife and made clear it sees many of its practices as deceptive.

“Herbalife is going to have to start operating legitimately, making only truthful claims about how much money its members are likely to make, and it will have to compensate consumers for the losses they have suffered as a result of what we charge are unfair and deceptive practices,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.

Among other things, the FTC said Herbalife would have to revamp its compensation system so that participants are rewarded for how much they sell, not simply for signing up new distributors.

At least two-thirds of a participant’s compensation must be based on actual sales that can be tracked and verified, it said.

“This settlement will require Herbalife to fundamentally restructure its business so that participants are rewarded for what they sell, not how many people they recruit,” Ramirez said.

The FTC said in a statement that the overwhelming majority of Herbalife distributors earn little or no money:

“Finding themselves unable to make money, the FTC’s complaint alleges, Herbalife distributors abandon Herbalife in large numbers. The majority of them stop ordering products within their first year, and nearly half of the entire Herbalife distributor base quits in any given year.”

Harsh as the decision seems, it is a big blow to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management, who has been trying for years to tar Herbalife as little better than a pyramid scheme.

Ackman reportedly shorted the company by a billion dollars, essentially betting that it would fail, in which case he would have made a lot of money. But after the FTC’s announcement allowing Herbalife to keep operating, its stock price rose.

Herbalife said in a statement that many of the FTC’s allegations are “factually incorrect” but chose to accept the settlement to avoid lengthy and costly litigation.

“Moreover, the Company’s management can now focus all of its energies on continuing to build the business and exploring strategic business opportunities,” the statement said.

“The settlements are an acknowledgment that our business model is sound and underscore our confidence in our ability to move forward successfully, otherwise we would not have agreed to the terms,” said chairman and CEO Michael O. Johnson.

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Ever feel as though you’re not getting ahead financially?

Join the club. The very big club.

A new study shows that across the world’s 25 advanced economies, two-thirds of households are earning the same as, or less than, they did a decade ago.

McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., studied incomes for 2014. It found that between 540 million and 580 million people are living on lower or stagnant incomes compared with similarly situated people in 2005 — just before the Great Recession hit.

Between 1993 and 2005, less than 2 percent of households — with fewer than 10 million people — found themselves worse off than in previous years. “That has now changed,” according to the study with the discouraging title of “Poorer than their Parents? Flat or Falling Incomes in Advanced Economies.”

When comparing the income brackets, McKinsey finds that these days, even in the world’s wealthiest countries, families in the bottom 60 percent have lower incomes, while those in the 60th to 80th percentile are just treading water.

“The recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis was one of the deepest and longest lasting downturns of the post-World War II era, and the recovery that followed it has been unusually sluggish in many advanced economies, especially in Western Europe,” the study said.

And here’s the big problem for many workers in this recovery: “Robots and computers have automated tasks that once required workers,” McKinsey said. “Demand for low- and medium-skill workers has been lower than for high-skill workers,” it concluded.

So even when orders rebound for companies, the jobs don’t come back. That puts downward pressure on wages. In this country, young workers in the lower third of educational attainment saw wages fall on average by 15 percent between 2002 and 2012.

“There are 20 times as many single mothers in the lowest income decile as in the highest,” the study said, and the income drops for them have been faster than other households.

At the same time, many families in advanced economies have fewer spouses and children than in the past, so today’s shrunken households have fewer wage earners, the study shows.

But here’s a finding that also stands out: Affluent Americans are flourishing.

McKinsey says in this country, upper income households saw rising wages as more and more jobs opened up for people with higher skill sets. They actually made larger gains on a percentage basis than the wealthiest people whose incomes had shot up like rockets in the years before the recession.

Economists are not shocked to see such data about affluent, well-educated workers doing well, according to Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel Fixed Income in Chicago. “This study seems very much in line with what we have seen” in one survey after another, she said.

Incomes are rising if you happen to work in information technology, accounting, engineering and other high-demand fields, she said. But for low-skilled workers, automation is replacing labor and causing a wage downdraft, she added.

“When you see incomes falling year after year after year, you can’t look at it as a blip,” she said. Even as the impact of the Great Recession fades, the wage trends identified by McKinsey are likely to continue, she said.

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