Personal bankruptcies on the rise

Some new numbers have come out that serve as a reminder that the country is in a recession, regardless of what economists say. Last month, personal bankruptcies increased by 9 percent,according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.

That translates into 135,914 people who last month decided that their lives would be better off post-bankruptcy, than continuing to slog on and sink into a morass of financial despair. Hopefully, the fresh start will help, though you can just imagine that plenty of those people are still unemployed, and while now debt-free, or relatively debt free, aren't yet bringing in a serious income to fund their personal recoveries.

As bad as these numbers are, they seem primed to get worse, now that the latest jobs report is out. U.S. unemployment hit 10.2 percent in October, the highest rate since April of 1983. Job losses totaled 190,000. More layoffs almost guarantee we'll have more bankruptcies.

Unemployment isn't the only reason for bankruptcies. As American Banking News recently observed, "Having large amounts of medical debt is another major reason that people have filed bankruptcy in the last several years... Some statistics indicate that between one-third and one-half of bankruptcies involve large amounts of medical debt."

Oh, and business bankruptcies climbed seven percent, by the way.

And after imparting this lovely news, I think I'm going to go spend some time on YouTube.com and see if I can find any videos with talking kittens or rainbows. Or maybe I'll just go hide under my bed.