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Bled white and destroyed by Barack Obama’s “hope and change” hundreds of thousands of Americans have been forced to use tax refunds to pay the filing costs of their bankruptcies. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) reports that bankruptcy lawyers have seen an increase in personal bankruptcies filings which follow this pattern: many clients are filing bankruptcy soon after receiving their tax refunds. This has been especially true since a law passed in 2005 made bankruptcy more costly and more difficult. For some people, in Barack Obama’s upside down America as fast as money comes in it goes to...

Stop me if this sounds familiar. The Department of Energy approves multi-million-dollar loan to green-tech energy firm as part of its job-stimulus bill, only instead of stimulating jobs, the company declares bankruptcy. In this case, it only took a year after the loan was granted for Beacon Power to file for protection from its creditors: Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial Department of Energy program.The bankruptcy comes about two months after Solyndra — a solar panel maker with a $535 million...

In addition to medical bills, divorce and chronic overspending -- ever-present bankruptcy catalysts -- the more recent problems of long-term unemployment and homes that are worth less than people paid for them continue to push people to court. Even December, usually a slow month for bankruptcy attorneys as families try to forget their financial struggles and celebrate the holidays, remained busy for Barbara May. "We're swamped here," the Roseville attorney said. Nationally 1.53 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2010 -- 9 percent higher than 2009, when 1.41 million people filed, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. The 22,070 Minnesota...

Prior to the 1930s, it was not legally possible for a U.S. municipality to declare bankruptcy as no legislation existed covering this event. The growing number of insolvent towns during the 1930s depression necessitated a change in the Bankruptcy Act. The act was amended by Congress in 1934 to cover municipalities... The majority of municipal bankruptcies are the result of two things, 1) economic problems, and 2) financial mismanagement by elected and/or appointed officials. No surprise here... Chapter 9 bankruptcies are not designed to forgive debt. Rather, their intent is to aid a municipality through reorganization ... There are two...

Kudlow Gets Into ForeclosuregateThe Market TickerKarl DenningerOctober 5, 2010 Yes, I've dubbed it: Foreclosuregate. I'd love to tell you that I think there's some reasonable way to get out of this. There isn't. The reality of this is far worse than it appears. Kudlow is still downplaying it, really, even though I emailed him today with the source documents of a half-dozen Tickers. Whether they prompted him to spend the time on it tonight I'll never know. The real problem isn't the foreclosures. It's the REMICs. The "loose document standards" of the go-go years were all predicated on this never...

U.S. bankruptcy filings have reached the highest level since 2005, government data released on Tuesday show, as the economy slows and the unemployment rate hovers just below double digits. There were 422,061 bankruptcy filings between April and June, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, up 9 percent from 388,148 in the prior three-month period, and up 11 percent from 381,073 a year earlier.

Personal Bankruptcies Jump 9% In May, And The Outlook For The Year Has Been Jacked Up Calculated Risk Jun. 2, 2010, 9:54 PM From the American Bankruptcy Institute: May Consumer Bankruptcy Filings up 9 Percent from Last Year The 136,142 consumer bankruptcies filed in May represented a 9 percent increase nationwide over the 124,838 filings recorded in May 2009, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI), relying on data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center (NBKRC). NBKRC’s data also showed that the May consumer filings represented a 6 percent decrease from the 144,490 consumer filings recorded in April 2010. ......

AP: 2009 bankruptcies total 1.4 million, up 32 pct By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Writer Mon Jan 4, 4:12 pm ET RALEIGH, N.C. – U.S. consumers and businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a pace that made 2009 the seventh-worst year on record, with more than 1.4 million petitions submitted, an Associated Press tally showed Monday. The AP gathered data from the nation's 90 bankruptcy districts and found 1.43 million filings, an increase of 32 percent from 2008. There were 116,000 recorded bankruptcies in December, up 22 percent from the same month a year before. While experts believe some of...

The Obama administration's new plan to give a boost to small businesses reflects continued trouble in that sector, which is facing new failures even as much of the nation's economy is stabilizing. As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year. The plight of struggling firms has been aggravated by the reluctance of banks to lend money, said Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration's office of advocacy. "While bankruptcies are up, overall, small-business closures are up even more," Headd said. California has...

Small Business Bankruptcies Rise 81% In State With credit tight and consumers still pinching their pennies, many business owners find they can't go on. By Nathan Olivarez-Giles December 21, 2009 The Obama administration's new plan to give a boost to small businesses reflects continued trouble in that sector, which is facing new failures even as much of the nation's economy is stabilizing. As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year. The plight of struggling firms has been aggravated by the reluctance of banks to...

WILMINGTON, Del. - Consumer bankruptcies soared 41 percent in September from a year before and climbed from August, as high unemployment and the housing market crash took their toll, the American Bankruptcy Institute said on Friday. September filings totaled 124,790, the fourth-highest month since the bankruptcy law changed in 2005.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage foreclosure filings in August hovered near July's record high despite broad efforts to keep borrowers in their homes and will probably rise for another year, according to a report released on Thursday. Filings -- including notices of default, auction and bank repossession -- dipped 1 percent last month from July's all-time high and were up 18 percent in August from the same month a year earlier, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said. "The pipeline of early stage foreclosures and delinquent loans is still probably going to overwhelm the system's ability to quickly modify" terms...

Early in June The New York Times was all aghast that overwhelming debt from medical bills will cause “nearly two out of three bankruptcies” in the US. Since then the White House has also used the statistic as a way to sell Obamacare policies and frighten voters into accepting a nationalized healthcare system. But is it true? Are medical bills the culprit of more than 60% of American bankruptcies? The stark claim that medical debt is the scourge of citizens everywhere comes from a study published in The American Journal of Medicine. Its findings are certainly alarming with an outrageous...

The stimulus bill "includes help for those hardest hit by our economic crisis," President Obama promised when he signed the bill into law on Feb. 17. "As a whole, this plan will help poor and working Americans." But FOXNews.com has analyzed data tracking how the stimulus money is being given out across the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and it has found a perverse pattern: the states hardest hit by the recession received the least money. States with higher bankruptcy, foreclosure and unemployment rates got less money. And higher income states received more. The transfers to the states...

Circuit City, Mervyns and Filene’s Basement; just a few of the many recent retail casualties. If you think it’s bad now, it’s only going to get worse, says Jeffrey Hoffman.

More than 1 million sought protection last year and filings are expected to rise in 2009. U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings jumped nearly 33% in 2008 amid a recession that's expected to keep filings rising into the new year. Overall consumer filings reached 1.06 million last year, up from 801,840 in 2007, according to data collected by the National Bankruptcy Research Center and published by the American Bankruptcy Institute, a research group based here. The recession that began in December 2007 has stretched many consumers who are turning to bankruptcy protection amid job losses, mortgage foreclosures and heavy personal debt. "Consumers...

Long before she filed for bankruptcy, Ann Neukomm was "under water" -- she owed more on her mortgage than her house was worth -- a situation more and more Americans are finding themselves in. As the financial crisis hits Main Street America, nearly one in six U.S. homeowners are finding themselves in the same position, threatening the U.S. economy with a new wave of foreclosures and bankruptcies. About 12 million U.S. homeowners owe more than their homes are worth, compared with 6.6 million at the end of last year and slightly more than 3 million at the close of 2006,...

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - The white bus rumbles into the quiet suburban neighborhood, heading toward a foreclosed home that sits empty. Neighbors, young and old, cock their heads in curiosity or point at the slow-moving coach. Once the vehicle stops, about 20 potential buyers file out and become detectives, opening and closing cabinets and drawers, knocking on walls and asking about the price, the previous owners and what repairs may be needed. Welcome to the Foreclosure Bus Tour, a six-hour expedition to show Orlando-area homes and educate potential buyers on the vagaries of snatching foreclosures in a state where the...

The real estate auction business is booming. Real Estate Disposition Corp is auctioning 2,000 homes in California and 575 in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. More states are coming up.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In May, Alvin Clavon received a foreclosure notice on the simple, Spanish-style house in South Los Angeles that he shares with his wife and three boys. Clavon bought the place in 2003 with a fixed-rate loan. They painted the walls, fixed the yard and made friends with the neighbors, who let the Clavon boys pick their basil. In 2005, he worked with a mortgage broker to refinance his home with another fixed-rate loan. But on the night before signing, the family was offered an interest-only, adjustable-rate mortgage. Clavon, a 35-year-old executive assistant at a bank, said...

<p>The last politician who took advice from the bond market was Bill Clinton. When he pushed for a tax hike back in 1993 to cut the budget deficit, it was under the assumption that bond investors would respond by bringing down interest rates. (The theory here is that deficits are inflationary. Inflation is bad for bonds.) Yet long-term interest rates surged from 6.45 percent when Clinton signed his tax-hike bill on Aug. 10, 1993, to 8.16 percent on Nov. 7, 1994, the day before the midterm congressional election where Republicans won back the House and Senate.</p>

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The banking industry is opening its doors to a controversial new market: illegal immigrants. Despite heated political debate in Washington over illegal immigration in the United States, an increasing number of banks are seeing an untapped resource for growing their own revenue stream and contend that providing undocumented residents with mortgages will help revitalize local communities. It's a win-win situation, they say. But skeptics worry about the message these home loans send to illegal immigrants: break our laws and we'll reward you with a home. "It's institutionalizing illegality," said Marti Dinerstein, president of Immigration Matters, a...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

<p>Residents across a large portion of Indiana filed for bankruptcy at a record pace during the first half of this year, and experts say the number of filings could reach an all-time high by year's end.</p> <p>Filings by individuals in the Southern District of Indiana, which includes Indianapolis and the lower two-thirds of the state, numbered 17,074 on June 30, compared with 15,806 in the first half of 2002.</p>

Monday, 20 January, 2003, 10:45 GMTJapan bankruptcies near record Record numbers of Japanese companies are taking a tumble Nearly 20,000 firms went bankrupt in Japan during 2002, the second-highest number of corporate failures since World War II. The danger exists that the special bank inspections... could act as a spark for a surge in bankruptcies And experts predict that this year even more companies will go under, because the government is pushing Japanese banks to adopt stricter accounting standards. Later this month the Financial Services Agency will begin a second round of special inspections to examine the balance sheets of...

A Look at the 12 Largest U.S. Bankruptcies The top 12 U.S. bankruptcies, ranked by assets: -- WorldCom Inc., July 21, 2002; $103.9 billion -- Enron Corp., Dec. 2, 2001; $63.4 billion -- Conseco Inc., Dec. 18, 2002; $52 billion -- Texaco Inc., April 12, 1987; $35.9 billion -- Financial Corp. of America, Sept. 9, 1988; $33.9 billion -- Global Crossing Ltd., Jan. 28, 2002; $25.5 billion -- UAL Corp., Dec. 9, 2002; $25.2 billion -- Adelphia, June 25, 2002; $24.4 billion -- Pacific Gas and Electric Co., April 6, 2001; $21.5 billion -- MCorp., March 31, 1989; $20.2 billion...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A large chunk of the money paid to asbestos claimants comes at the expense of U.S. workers in the firms being sued, a new study co-authored by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said Tuesday. The study urged re-examining the lawsuit system used to compensate asbestos claimants, saying it appears to unfairly penalize workers. They each lose tens of thousands of dollars in wages and pensions as their companies are driven into bankruptcy by the claims, it said. The paper seemed certain to be seized by the U.S. business community as more evidence of the need for a...

Every law school should offer a course in legal ethics called "How Lawyers Abuse the Law." The first case study would be asbestos litigation, which shows how the thirst for profits has led a small group of trial lawyers to erode the rights of legitimate victims while driving dozens of companies into bankruptcy and -- worst of all -- corrupting the court system. If Congress does not fix this problem, shame on it....

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumers and businesses amassed so much debt in recent years that record numbers filed for bankruptcy protection for the second year in a row, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said Wednesday.</p> <p>The 1.5 million new cases filed during the year ending June 30 represented an 8.6 percent increase over the record number of cases filed during the year ending June 30, 2001.</p>