Research Project: How much debt is discharged nationally.

[HHM]

I have done a few google searches, but have not found what I am looking for. I am interested to know if anyone can find some stats on how much unsecured debt was discharged in bankruptcy on a national level.

I am curious to compare total discharged to the gross revenue and profits of the various banks.

I suppose one way to get at the information is to look at the financial reports of each bank and see how much bad debt they wrote off, but I am not sure they break it down specifically to represent bankruptcy or not.

In any event, good hunting and thank you.

[HHM]

Ok, I found this

http://www.uscourts.gov/bnkrpctystats/2008/Table1A.pdf

Indicates that for 2008 (closed cases), that means that some of the cases were filed in prior years, debtors in chapter 7 non-business cases claimed a total of just over $54 billion in non-priority unsecured debts.

[dspii]

I found this at one of your favorites, BTW, a great resource for some BK research.

http://askmethner.com/?p=709

"For predominately non-business chapter 7 bankruptcies filed in 2008, debtors claimed $54,019,201,000 of non-priority unsecured debt."

That's BILLION, for those who don't want to count all the digits.