Implode-o-Meter News - The Great Debt Unwind: Business Bankruptcies Soar 38%

For the first nine months of 2016, commercial bankruptcy filings jumped 28% compared to the same period in 2015, to 28,789. Most of those are not the bankruptcies we hear about in the financial media. Most of them are small businesses that go that painful route -- painful for their creditors too -- in the shadows of the hoopla on Wall Street.
By comparison, just over 100 oil and gas companies in the US and Canada have gone bankrupt since the beginning of 2015. About a dozen retail chains have filed over the past year, along with about 12 restaurant companies, representing 14 chains.
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Rising bankruptcies are an indicator that the "credit cycle" has ended. The Fed's policy of easy credit has encouraged businesses to borrow -- those that could. But by now, this six-year debt binge has created an ominous debt overhang that is suffocating these businesses as they find themselves, against all promises, mired in an economy that's nothing like the escape-velocity hype that had emanated from Wall Street, the Fed, and the government.

Restaurants are experiencing a wage of bankruptcies that rivals that of 2009-2010, with "very challenging" sales trends...

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The Great Debt Unwind: Business Bankruptcies Soar 38%