bankruptcy

Ten years after the financial crisis, Robert F. Bruner surveys the best books on what went wrong and what still should be fixed.

On inauguration eve 1991, in Rhode Island, the departing governor, Edward DiPrete, had a morsel of news for the incoming governor, Bruce Sundlun.

Sherman, Conn.

President Donald Trump’s new willingness to deal with Democratic leaders of Congress has conservatives worried. Is the president really with us anymore? Is he going to help his fellow partisans in Congress hold the line of spending, or is he going to become a Rockefeller-style Republican, cutting…

In April, the American solar manufacturer Suniva filed a petition under Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974, asking the U.S. International Trade Commission for new tariffs on solar cells and the establishment of a minimum price for solar modules imported into the United States. Last month, the…

I was an ardent critic of the "PROMESA" legislation Congress passed this summer to help restructure Puerto Rico's debt for one primary reason: It was clear hat it would serve as a blueprint for the states that have overburdened pension funds to escape their own debts by shortchanging the…

Our government isn’t very good at knowing when and how to change bankruptcy law, and every time it contemplates doing so it makes the wrong decision. With Puerto Rico staring at insolvency and Congress debating some sort of relief for the island, it appears this dubious streak may remain intact.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, Puerto Rico is in serious financial trouble. It has accumulated more than $70 billion of debt, driven by reckless spending and short-sighted borrowing, that has left the commonwealth's public corporations and utilities virtually insolvent. To make…

Puerto Rico is in a financial bind. The Commonwealth, along with its public utilities and various municipalities, collectively owes more than it can realistically repay.

The law does not always deliver what people might consider the “fairest” outcome. But setting aside the law and the various compromises made by elected officials when they crafted it in order to deliver a “fair” outcome would be a costly mistake—costly for every single city, county or state…

My father is one of the reasons that student loans cannot normally be discharged via bankruptcy. Such an outcome was never his goal: quite the opposite, in fact, because exempting student debt from bankruptcy relief makes little economic sense and is patently unfair to the students saddled with…

From the moment Detroit filed for bankruptcy last summer, comparisons to the 2009 Chrysler and General Motors bailouts have abounded. Most highlight the differences, noting that the federal government is unlikely to pump billions of dollars into Detroit. But although the differences are real, the…

Detroit’s government by machine-party politics (Democratic, in case you were wondering) resulted in the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.  And the meter is still running.  As Reuters reports:

It's been a while since Benjamin R. Barber, the left-wing political scientist and ex-Howard Dean adviser, attracted the attention of The Scrapbook. Barber is one of those anticapitalist types who is careful to disguise his unpalatable ideology in anodyne terms—see Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism…

Although Detroit’s bankruptcy is only a few days old, it already has become clear that it could bring answers to two very important questions: whether municipal bankruptcy law is a plausible alternative to either bailouts or decades of fiscal malaise for large cities that are sagging under…

The bankrupt city of Detroit may have found a way out of its health care woes for its retired city workers: shifting the costs to taxpayers nationwide via Obamacare. If Detroit and other struggling municipalities follow through, the result could be a "huge cost" to taxpayers.  The New York…

Detroit mayor Dave Bing tells ABC's George Stephanopoulos that there's no bailout "yet":

San Bernardino on Tuesday became the third California city in less than a month to seek bankruptcy protection, with officials saying the financial situation had become so dire that it could not cover payroll through the summer.  According to the story in the Los Angeles Times, one resident “blasted…

On October 12, Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, filed for bankruptcy. The move took most of America by surprise—​

ABC News: "President Obama Phones Speaker Boehner; Gets an Earful"