Businesses Faring Better Than Consumers in Bankruptcy Stats
There is one bit of good news in the latest tally of bankruptcy filings released this week by the federal courts.
Business bankruptcies declined slightly for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. The total was 58,322 filings, down 0.7 percent from the year before, according to a press release.
Meanwhile, all other bankruptcies totaled more than 1.5 million, an increase of 14.4 percent. It is the highest number since fiscal 2005, before changes were made to the bankruptcy law.
An analysis of numbers for the first nine months of the year, reported by the Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Beat blog, also found lower business bankruptcies but higher consumer bankruptcies.
Samuel Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute, told the blog that the numbers reflect that consumers are still suffering from high unemployment and big debts.
Businesses, on the other hand, are being allowed to “amend and extend” their bank loans, he said. “The lenders are driving this by deferring the hard choices for a later date,” he told the blog.
