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Nevada bankruptcy filings fall
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Personal bankruptcy filings in Nevada declined 17 percent during the first five months this year, according to an analysis by a Columbia Law School professor.
Yet based on population, Nevada still leads the nation in new bankruptcy cases, according to a study by Ronald Mann for the National Bankruptcy Research Center.
Nevada personal bankruptcies ran 1,053 per million population in May, and 5,176 per million total in the first five months of the year, Mann reported.
Stephen Brown, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the slowdown isn't a result of better economic times. Rather, many struggling consumers have already filed for bankruptcy and cannot do so again for a few years.
"We're kind of running out of people in financial trouble," Brown said. "On the whole, things are not highly favorable, but they are better than they were six months ago."
Even with the declining case numbers, Nevada still led the nation in per-capita filings in May, followed by Utah, Tennessee, Indiana, Georgia, California, Colorado, Arizona, Idaho and Michigan.
Nationally, the number of bankruptcy filings dropped to 115,000 in May, 10 percent lower than in April and 16 percent lower than in May last year.
"It's especially remarkable when contrasted with the four years beginning in 2007 when every month's filings were higher than the filing for the same month in the previous year," Mann said.
Nevada also diverges from the national average in the kind of bankruptcy filed.
Mann noted that Chapter 13 bankruptcies, which are often used to avoid home foreclosures because consumers can keep their property while complying with court-ordered debt repayment plans, represented 23 percent of the Nevada filings compared to a national average of 28 percent.
"Whatever Nevada filers are doing, they are not in bankruptcy to save their homes," Mann said in a statement.
Contact reporter John G. Edwards at jedwards@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0420.
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2ND CHANCE FINANCING ON HOMES OR WE WILL NEVER RECOVER, WITHOUT HOUSING YOU HAVE A FAILED ECONOMY.
lvfacts 101
Never have truer facts been written.
Nevada businesses are indeed hanging on for dear life. The conservative ones that is. Those that were over extended are long gone and account for all the empty business real estate in Nevada.
Nevada numbers will only get better as the unemployed and financially troubled continue to leave our state to look for greener pastures. That must be the Hope that Obama and Dirty Harry promised us Nevadans in 2008.
Finally, some one else who sees the big picture. Brown hit the nail on the head when he observed that, "we're kind of running out of people in financial trouble," and that's why bankruptcy filing are dropping. Bravo! The same holds true for the the fact that businesses are laying off fewer employees. Most businesses are down to bare-bones as of now and, in order to lay off more workers, they'd probably have to shut down completely and go out of business.