Todd Zywicki (credit industry head cheerleader, Volokh Conspirator and maybe the only bankruptcy professor in America who actually supported the recent Congressional mangling) has a lot of work ahead of him. Families will soon discover what life is like when the door to the bankruptcy court, the financial refuge of last resort for the past 107 years, is too narrow to permit many of them any relief. So what’s the best way to head off a Congressional stampede to bring back the century-old system? Blame families.
It seems the filing rates were sharply up for March and April. TZ says this proves that these people are not driven by financial hardship, but that they are making “individual choices,” trying to sneak in before the law changes.
Oops, turns out that Cardweb just posted the May figures, and filings are sharply down. So, will TZ use this 16% decline to explain that people who file for bankruptcy are good people who are driven by financial hardship? Or are the numbers just a one-way street for TZ — a chance to criticize when they rise and stay silent when they fall Reading monthly filing figures as support for sweeping pronouncements about consumer behavior is silly. But for a cheerleader like TZ, it seems like a good excuse to proclaim once again that Americans are bad people who try to cheat defenseless credit card companies.
