JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay California $50 million to resolve claims the bank cheated tens of thousands of credit-card customers while collecting debts from them, California Attorney General Kamala Harris said.

Wells Fargo & Co., the world’s largest bank by market value, posted a third-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates on gains in interest income from asset purchases and new loans.

The wildfires that raged across Northern California last month will cost insurers more than $1.1 billion, according to catastrophe modeler Impact Forecasting.

The credit cards in most Americans’ wallets are pretty much antiques. They’re easy to counterfeit, thanks to magnetic strips that rely on basically the same 1960s technology used in cassette tapes. At last they’re getting an upgrade, giving them the technology, called EMV chips, used almost everywhere else in the world. 

“Everyone’s stressed out about money, everyone’s nervous, everyone’s embarrassed about it, everyone thinks they’re making all these mistakes and they’re the only ones doing it. The idea of getting to relax and have a meal with somebody just changes the conversation and changes the atmosphere.”

In California, higher state and local minimum wages are contributing to some owners’ decisions to sell businesses, said Bob House, general manager of the San Francisco-based brokerage BizBuySell. The company listed 2,296 businesses for sale in metropolitan Los Angeles between March and June, compared with 2,136 in the same period a year earlier.

Governor Jerry Brown convinced voters in 2012 they had to raise taxes if they wanted to avoid Draconian cuts to schools. It was temporary, he said. Now, as state coffers are heavy with surplus revenue, advocacy groups and organized labor want to keep the levies in place.

We sat down recently with CEO Lisa Rowland Basher, the fifth generation of her family to run the company, to learn a little bit about the Jelly Belly philosophy of sustaining a family business.

Have you ever walked into a semi-dried lake bed? You start out on firm sand, and little by little the ground gets softer and stickier and deeper until finally the mud pulls your boots straight off your feet. That’s the position of many companies battling today’s marketplace, particularly small-business owners set in their ways and family businesses unable to overcome Dad’s unwavering march into the ground.