Bankruptcy does not have to mean the end of the game. When you and your friends played “Monopoly,” declaring bankruptcy meant financial failure so intense that recovery was difficult or impossible. Some moneylenders and debt-buyers like to perpetuate that idea in the real world, to keep honest American families form declaring bankruptcy to eliminate debt...Read More

A major mortgage lender is returning to the subprime market. Since the mortgage collapse in 2008, skittish banks have only loaned money to the most credit-worthy consumers. Now, faced with a major revenue loss as mortgage lending volume declines overall, Wells Fargo may be loaning money to consumers with credit scores as low as 600....Read More

Americans are back to borrowing at a near-record pace. The government recently announced that consumer debt rose 1.1 percent to $11.28 trillion in the third quarter of 2013, the highest such increase since the first quarter of 2008 and close to the all-time record high, set just before the housing collapse in the third quarter...Read More

An increasing number of cities are turning to the power of eminent domain to reduce the number of residential home foreclosures. Cities in New Jersey, New York, Minnesota and California are exploring the possibility of “friendly condemnations” in which the city buys the mortgage of an underwater homeowner. If the investor refuses to sell, the...Read More

Consumer bankruptcy filings are expected to remain high in certain parts of the country. Although the filing rate is expected to decline overall in 2014, consumers in areas dominated by high unemployment and a poor housing market are expected to keep filing Chapter 13 Bankruptcy in large numbers. Meanwhile, more and more Chapter 7 bankruptcies...Read More

President Harry Truman once wished for a one-armed economist. The reason? Seemingly all his economic advisors consistently said “on the one hand X, but on the other hand Y.” Wage stagnation is a current case-in-point. It has become almost axiomatic to say that the middle-class is shrinking. One economist begs to differ, claiming that this...Read More

Many New York and Tri-State-area residents are still struggling with the aftermath of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy. The storm made landfall in October 2012 and caused an estimated $65 billion in damages. While many neighborhoods and homes have been rebuilt, others are virtually untouched. Residents cite such things as property value disputes in these cases. Storm...Read More