How Many Bankruptcies Will Be Filed In 2008?
Will bankruptcy filings exceed 1 million this year? A look at the current data and the historical data make the case for bankruptcy filings to exceed 1 million. But wait a minute, I thought Congress changed the bankruptcy laws in October 2005 to curtail consumer filings and prevent abuses in the system. I though Congress had fixed the problem. As usual, Congress fixed a problem that didn't need fixing and created several other bigger problems. Our fearless leaders have created an economic nightmare in this country that needs to be fixed, and they are doing nothing to improve the problems. I'm willing to bet that if their homes were going into foreclosure something would be getting done to stem the wave of foreclosures in this country.
Ok, I will get off the soapbox, and look at the data. As you may recall if you stay current with this blog or one of the others, BLN, DLN, CLN or MLN, that I write for, I wrote several articles dealing with the bankruptcy numbers. I predicted that the number of bankruptcy filings would continue to increase because of poor economic conditions and basically because of what my clients were telling me about what was going on in the real world.
Now, we see that across the United States in April 2008, there were 93,096 bankruptcy cases filed. So, every business day in April, 4,232 bankruptcy cases were filed. Although this number may seem huge, there were actually 4,301 bankruptcy cases filed each day in March 2008. So, there was actually a slight decrease in the number of filings per business day between the two months. However, if we compare April 2008 to April 2007, we see a substantial increase in the number of filings, approximately 37%.
Over the last few years, April bankruptcy filings were about the same as March and are a good indicator as to where they will remain for the next couple of months. Usually, you will see a spike in the numbers for October and November. If the current numbers and historical analysis holds true, bankruptcy filings will exceed 1 million cases this year.
The big question is whether this is good for the consumers? the economy? the country? the credit card companies? the secured creditors? These and other questions will be answered in future blogs.
This post is submitted by Carmen Dellutri, Esq of The Dellutri Law Group, P.A. Mr. Dellutri is one of the founding members of the Bankruptcy Law Network, Credit Law Network, Debt Law Network, and Mortgage Law Network. Additionally, Mr. Dellutri is on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Certification, and he is a Board Certified Consumer Bankruptcy Attorney.
