Economy - U.S. consumer bankruptcies, after rising nine per cent last month from June, might exceed 1.6 million this year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.
The 137,698 bankruptcy filings in July also represent a nine per cent increase from a year earlier, the institute said yesterday in a statement posted on its website, citing data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center.
Last year, there were 1.4 million consumer bankruptcy filings in the U.S., a 32 per cent increase from 2008, the institute said in March. The U.S. bankruptcy record for one year is two million, filed in 2005.
