Debt Collection

Federal bankruptcy law defers to the states on a critical issue: what is the basic minimum income and property that debtors need not surrender to creditors.  Four states protect 100% of workers' wages, while 21 states allow creditors to garnish debtors' wages down to 50% of the poverty level for a family of 4, according to a new report from the National Consumer Law Center.   Similarly only 9 states protect a used car of  average value from seizure, and

In the fict

Jonathan Ginsberg posted an interesting article
on the National Association of Chapter 13 trustees web site this weekend, that will be relevant to many of our readers as well.

A recent FTC study of errors in credit reports is getting a lot of press. According to the most recent in a number of studies of the accuracy of credit reports, about 5% of U.S. consumers have an error on their credit report that is serious enough to increase their cost of credit. Although the credit industry is arguing that this is a small percentage (and I agree that this is a lot smaller than I expected), the head of the FTC does not consider it small.

Until a month or so ago, you could have asked almost any economist or political scientist whether sovereign borrowers worry about legal enforcement, and, by way of answer, you would gotten a technical version of "Huh?" Academics disagree about why sovereigns repay loans, but almost no one thinks they do so to avoid being sued. So although bond investors are technically entitled to sue sovereign borrowers, there is no evidence that these formal legal entitlements actually impact the likelihood of repayment. That's why NML v.