More bad news for the economy: After declining for the last 16 months, personal bankruptcies will spike in 2013, potentially drowning the lackluster economy in debt if the frightening prediction of a surge in additional home foreclosures comes true. Our source is reliable, not a conservative or liberal pundit or even an economic modeler from the Federal Reserve. It’s the nation’s top administrative judge, who is using actual bankruptcy filing statistics to script a looming economic horror show.
Julia Gibbons, chairwoman of the Budget Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, which manages the 400 federal courts, said bankruptcies went through “several years of explosive growth” recently, jumping 35 percent in 2009 and 20 percent in 2010, before declining last year. She said that filings should drop 11 percent to a still eye-popping 1,361,400 this year.
But it won’t last, she warned House appropriators last week. “Our projections assume consumer debt levels will begin to climb again, resulting in more bankruptcies in 2013. In addition, if home foreclosures increase, then bankruptcies will grow at an even faster pace than the level we are projecting in 2013.”
And for those who file bankruptcy, the wait for a settlement is likely to grow even longer, according to her colleague Judge Thomas Hogan, director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. In urging Congress to OK his fiscal 2013 budget request, he noted that contracts for 27 temporary bankruptcy judges, or about 10 percent of all bankruptcy judges, will soon “expire,” greatly affecting the work of the bankruptcy court system.
In dying news business, D.C. still best
Hundreds of reporters have lost their jobs in Washington over the past decade, a time when the news industry shrank and once-lofty Washington news bureaus shuttered, but the nation’s capital is still among the best places to practice journalism.
A new review of Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figures finds that the city still has 2,630 journalists in it, second to New York’s 3,740. But Washington reporters earn more than those in the Big Apple, averaging $66,360, about $5,300 more than New York journalists.
Industry analyst B.R. Hook found that overall, reporters, editors and news analysts earn 3.6 percent less than the average worker nationwide.
But for some media biggies, that deflated wage is still too high. The New York Times, for example, last week offered a new contract to news guild members, but said more cuts need to be made in light of the 22 percent revenue drop the Gray Lady suffered from 2003 to 2011. “We have to do more. To ignore it would be to put The Times itself, and all of our jobs, at risk,” management said.
Even liberals like NRA’s boss
He advised Ronald Reagan, ran the American Conservative Union and is the current president of the National Rifle Association, but liberals seem to love level-headed David Keene. We have new proof: at a gala for the Constitution Project, the voice of conservatives was honored by lefties Morton Halperin, a former American Civil Liberties Union exec, and newsman Al Hunt.
Hunt said his 36-year friendship began when, in 1976, he covered Reagan’s bid to unseat former President Ford for the Wall Street Journal. “I was a cool young lefty and I thought, ‘I’m going to have to put up with these troglodytes,’ because I really didn’t know Governor Reagan.”
But, he said, “the most interesting people I think I ever covered in my life were the Reagan people in 1976, and foremost of everyone was David Keene.” Added Hunt, now with Bloomberg News, “There is no one I have known in politics — no one — who I have disagreed with more and that I have respected as much and liked as much as David Keene.”
Paul Bedard, The Examiner’s Washington Secrets columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears each weekday in the Politics section and on washingtonexaminer.com.
