Hey, It's Great to Be a Bankruptcy Attorney,

as bankruptcies have shot up to 1.5 million, the highest since 2005.

I thought the Credit Card Bailout Act was supposed to STEM the tide of bankruptcies. It doesn't appear to be this way.

The growth in personal insolvency last year was seen in virtually every part of the country, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. The sharpest rise was in the Southwest and Southeast, with Nevada recording 15,000 filings per million, more than double the 6,600 filings per million recorded nationwide. The state has the nation’s highest unemployment rate and credit card and mortgage delinquency, and one in every 99 homes are in foreclosure, according to realtytrac.com.

After Nevada, Georgia and Tennessee had the highest filing rates, each with more than 10,000 filings per million, according to the report. The states with the highest year-to-year increase were Hawaii (22 percent), California (19 percent), Utah (19 percent) and Arizona (18 percent).

Good ol' Nevada. Still another record to be proud of.

Despite Bankruptcy "Reform"

trying to help crack down on "deadbeat" debtors while giving more goodies to credit card companies and the like by making it more difficult to file, more bankruptcies than ever are occurring. Northern Nevada is one such example. Nevada in general is number one in the number of bankruptcies filed.

Chart:

News for the Likes of Joseph Biden

I thought the Credit Card Industry Bailout law was supposed to reduce bankruptcies. Well, that is simply not the case. Bankruptcies have gone up 33 percent:

Filings of Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcies rose 33% in 2008 as the economy worsened, according to data from U.S. bankruptcy courts and compiled by bankruptcy data firm Automated Access to Court Electronic Records. Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows people to pay off debts under a three- to five-year plan; Chapter 7 bankruptcy allows for a discharge of all debts.

In 2007, there were 819,115 such filings in the 50 states and Washington, D.C. The number rose to 1,086,130 in 2008 as the recession took hold. That's nowhere near the record of 2.1 million filings in 2005, as consumers rushed to file before a federal bankruptcy reform law went into effect and made filings more difficult and expensive, but it's still a significant leap.