Recently, the US Bankruptcy Court released the number of Americans who filed for bankruptcy and showed a steady decline in applications. While this sounds good for the economy, it will also affect a bankruptcy attorney’s career choice. Bankruptcy attorneys generally live in a bad economy as many Americans need to use their services to get out of debt. In 2010, the US had a record 1.6 million Americans who filed for bankruptcy due to the financial debacle of 2007. By the end of fiscal year 2012, that number had dropped to 1.3 million filing requests. bankruptcy and we are expected to finish this year around 1 million. Realistically, this number is still very high when compared to the 2005 record, when it was around 1 million. In 2005, there were a large number of people who filed for bankruptcy before the changes to the bankruptcy code for fear of not being able to qualify. When the dust settled and the bankruptcy code was changed, it included a means test that made people now qualify to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Due to new code regulations, many Americans were quick to file for bankruptcy sooner. it came into effect.
While I’m sure a bankruptcy attorney would be concerned about this decline, many economic experts now say that this could be the calm before the storm. Governments around the world have their printing presses running full blast, printing their own currencies. The United States is no different, as the United States has quadrupled the amount of dollars in the last five years. As history teaches us, this kind of behavior ends badly for everyone involved.
Every country that was the reserve currency for the world that has followed the quantitative easing type of model, lost its global reserve status. Many experts believe that this will lead to hyperinflation that will force many Americans to file for bankruptcy. So for someone who is a bankruptcy attorney, this is good news because many more people will be using bankruptcy in the years to come. It was also recently reported that nearly 5 million homes in the US were at least two months behind on their mortgage, defaulted or in some phase of foreclosure. This is one of the things that economic professionals look to for future economic growth. With all of these homes hitting the market, real estate is sure to take another hit. Only time will tell, but I don’t think many attorneys are really concerned about this. Remember the old adage that everything that goes up must come down and this economy is again overheated and on the verge of exploding.
